Encyclopedia ofReincarnation and Karma

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Encyclopedia of Reincarnation

and KarmaNORMAN C. MCCLELLAND

McFarland & Company, Inc., PublishersJefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

McClelland, Norman C., 1944–Encyclopedia of reincarnation and karma / Norman C. McClelland.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-4851-7

softcover : 50# alkaline paper

1. Reincarnation—Encyclopedias. 2. Karma—Encyclopedias.I. Title.

BL515.M38 2010 202'.3703—dc22 2009051790

British Library cataloguing data are available

©2010 Norman C. McClelland. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopyingor recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640

www.mcfarlandpub.com

CONTENTS

Preface

1

Introduction

3

The Encyclopedia

9

Sources Consulted

283

Index

299

v

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This encyclopedia of reincarnation and karma originally began as

a three-page glossary of basic terms dealing with the traditional Bud-

dhist views of rebirth and karma that I wrote for a class on those sub-

jects. However, that very limited glossary almost immediately needed

to be expanded as my students asked such basic questions as “What

exactly is the difference between Buddhist rebirth and Hindu reincar-

nation?”; “Didn’t the ancient Egyptians and Greeks believe in rebirth

or reincarnation?”; “Don’t some passages in the Bible, at least, imply

rebirth and karma?”; and “Can someone remember a past life through

hypnosis?” Some of these, and similar questions, I could answer in a

very generalized or sketchy way, but others I had no clue as to the

appropriate response.

In seeking answers, I began what turned into eight years of exten-

sive reading on the subject of reincarnation and karma that spanned a

spectrum of individuals, beliefs, theories, and practices from the very

naïve, sometimes absurd and quite subjective to the very scholarly and

objective, as represented in the “Sources Consulted” at the end of this

volume. As the work progressed I came to depend more and more on

my life partner Lynn Sipe, without whose help in copy editing and

critical commentary this work would never have been finished. He has

my deepest appreciation.

1

PREFACE

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It is more than likely that a reasonably

literate person in Seattle, Paris, Buenos Aires,

or Melbourne, upon being asked a question

about reincarnation or karma, would make

an immediate mental association with what

they knew about Hinduism or perhaps some-

thing about the Dalai Lama. While they

would not be wrong in making this imme-

diate connection they certainly would be

focusing on a very narrow aspect of a far-

reaching set of issues and ideas, defined dif-

ferently across a variety of human cultures

and times. Apart from the earliest notions of

reincarnation and karma in the cultures of

South, Central and East Asia, variations on

these themes have played a key role in the

thought of the ancient Greeks, the Celts, the

medieval Cathars, Jewish Kabbalists, certain

Sub-Saharan tribes, Australian aboriginal

peoples, and various Amerindian tribes.

From the late 19th century onward there has

been renewed popular interest in the notions

of reincarnation and karma in many western

countries, particularly in Britain, France,

Brazil, and the United States. This has led to

a significant outpouring of first- or second-

hand accounts of persons claiming past lives

along with increased scholarly attention to

those claims.

If one is to go to any major bookstore

there is a good chance of finding material on

reincarnation and karma. This includes auto-

biographies and biographies of past lives, as

well as books on past life therapy, how to

improve one’s karma in the next life, and,

most recently, supposed reincarnational

teachings of channeled extraterrestrial beings.

As long as one does not read more than

a handful of such books chances are one

might encounter only minor conflicting

information on the subject. But if one reads

many examples of these texts one is assured

of finding very little agreement among them

as to exactly what constitutes reincarnation,

beyond the all too general and simplistic idea

of having lived a past life and the prospect

of a future one.

It is the purpose of this encyclopedia to

demonstrate just how complex the subjects of

reincarnation and karma are and how little

real agreement there is on them across a very

broad range of writings. The most immedi-

ate proof of that complexity can be found by

investigating the various English terms that

have been used in reference to the process of

existing across many life times. The four

most commonly used of these terms, in order

of popularity, are rebirth or reincarnation,

transmigration, metempsychosis, and palin-

genesis. Each of these terms is used, in gen-

eral, to describe a process in which a single

soul or its equivalent survives the death of

one body just to enter another body at or

soon after the biological conception of that

new body. In addition, any one of these

terms may, but need not, be accompanied by

the phenomenon commonly known as karma.

At the outset we need to understand

3

INTRODUCTION

that the diversity of names for this re-embod-

iment process results from the fact that each

term can refer to a closely related, but not

necessarily identical phenomenon. Another

way of saying this is that each term refers to

a slightly different re-embodiment process.

This results in considerable overlap in mean-

ing between the various terms. The term

“rebirth” has the most generalized meaning,

and more often than not can be used as a

synonym for all the other terms. This is par-

ticularly the case in a Hindu or Jain context,

where all four of the above terms are fully

interchangeable. Such, however, is not the

case in a Buddhist context or in some West-

ern contexts.

In Buddhism the only acceptable one of

the four English terms is rebirth. This is

because Buddhism understands the three

terms other than rebirth to describe the

process of a very real or concrete entity (soul:

atman) passing from one body to another,

which, at least officially, Buddhist doctrine

rejects. For this reason, in this encyclopedia

the term rebirth is used only in a specifically

Buddhist context, and in those instances it is

“not” regarded as being synonymous with

reincarnation. In all other non–Buddhist

contexts the two terms will be treated as

interchangeable.

At the same time, since Buddhism does

accept “rebirth” from human to animal and

vice versa, transmigration could be used so

long as no concrete soul is thought to be

included in the process. However, as not to

confuse matters, even in this case only the

term rebirth is used. Also, in referring to a

believer in multiple or serial lives one has a

choice between phrases like “a believer in

rebirth” or “a reincarnationist.” As implied

above, I will use these interchangeably except

in specific Buddhist contexts.

In the case of western (ancient Greek to

modern Euro-American) views of the re-

embodiment process the terms rebirth and

reincarnation, while usually accepted as syn-

onymous, are often contrasted with the term

transmigration. This is because the latter

term is usually considered to mean cross-spe-

cial re-embodiment. In other words, it sug-

gests that former human souls can be reborn

into animal bodies (regressive transmigra-

tion) and that former animal souls can be

reborn into human bodies (progressive trans-

migration). For a minority of Western rein-

carnationists this cross-special movement is

not a problem, but for the majority no such

special boundary crossing is possible; in

short, the only possibility is lateral transmi-

gration, that is, human to human.

An important “Western vs. Eastern” dif-

ference revolves around the term “mind.” As

will be discovered in the entry for “mind”

many modern Western metaphysicians be-

lieve it is better to speak of mind, rather than

soul, as undergoing reincarnation because

that supposedly places it in a more psycho-

logical, hence scientific, context rather than

in any sectarian religious context. While

I question how valid this attempt at de-

emphasizing religion is, this is not the main

reason that I have resisted replacing soul as

the factor surviving death with mind. The

main reason is that in many ancient and

modern belief systems a distinction has often

been made between a soul, as that which sur-

vived bodily death, and mind as that which

dies with the body.

As noted above, Buddhism creates some

special terminological problems. This is true

not only in its rejection of a soul, but even

in trying to substitute mind for that which

passes from death to rebirth. The standard

Buddhist term for mind is manas, but this is

never used to describe the death-surviving

factor. When a psychological term for sur-

vival is used it is always vijnana (conscious-

ness); however, even this term has often been

rejected by many Buddhists as too soul-like.

To deal with this wording difficulty and to

avoid inconsistency, I have used the more

neutral term “rebirth factor” in a variety of

Introduction 4

Buddhist, and, as appropriate, some non–

Buddhist contexts.

The fourth term to describe the re-

embodiment process, metempsychosis, while

popular in pre-nineteenth century literature,

is rarely used today. When this term is used

here it is as a synonym for transmigration,

especially in the context of interspecies (re-

gressive and progressive) transmigration of

the soul. Even rarer today is the term palin-

genesis.

Because the term rebirth is both the

most generic and is also shorter than rein-

carnation, most entries titles are listed using

the term rebirth, especially if the entry is on

a sufficiently general aspect of the subject.

However, when pairing the rebirth/reincar-

nation issue with Western religious views,

from ancient Greek to modern times, rein-

carnation is primarily the term used.

Over-arching conceptual foundations

are presented in the various “Argument”

entries: the arguments pro and con on an

afterlife in general; the arguments specifically

against rebirth; the list of sixty-two argu-

ments supportive of rebirth; the detailed

examination for each of these entries to

which the reader is directed; and the argu-

ments that challenge rebirth on a logical

basis. Likewise, the extended themes are con-

tinued in the two dozen or so entries on

karma in all of their complexities and those

entries that deal with pros and cons of rein-

carnation in the Old and New Testaments.

Similar to the complexity of the rebirth

issue is that of karma. As defined in various

dictionaries karma is the moral and/or ethi-

cal behavior that influences the quality of a

person’s past, present, and future lives. While

this concept was found in a very rudimen-

tary form among some classical Greco-

Romans religious groups and later Gnostic

cults and is also indigenous in an equally

rudimentary form among some present-day

West African peoples, the concept of karma

never developed to the same worldwide

extent that the belief in rebirth did. It was

only in India that a full scale karmic concept

evolved and it was only from here that it

spread to other parts of Asian via Hindu and

Buddhist missionary activities; as a result of

this activity for over two millennia karma has

been a determinative factor in the lives, hap-

piness and suffering of hundreds of millions

of inhabitants of south and east Asia.

While covered extensively in the various

entries on karma, among the complex issues

surrounding the concept of karma is how

Buddhism has been able to account for the

working of karma without a soul; why did

the Greco-Roman rudimentary karmic con-

cept never fully evolve; what were the early

Christian fathers’ criticism of it; how does

karma support and/or conflict with mono-

theistic religion; how has the very widespread

practice of ancestor worship complicated the

karma concept and vice versa; and does the

issue of blaming the victim negate the very

morality that the concept of karma is pre-

sumed to uphold?

In most of the West, the concept of

rebirth and karma is frequently just a pass-

ing thought as in such statements as, “Well,

he must have bad karma,” referring to some

negative thing that has happened to someone

in this life, but resulting from something

which transpired in a past life. In fact, that

speaker may have only the vaguest notion of

what karma means beyond this simplistic

notion. However, according to a 2000 Har-

ris Poll in the United States, 27 percent of the

general population has a deep belief in rein-

carnation and some form of karma. Further-

more, among those in the population that are

20 to 30 years old this percentage rises to 40

percent, while among those over 65 years old

it drops to only 14 percent. Similar percent-

ages have been found in Europe.

A number of reasons have been sug-

gested for this growing interest in rebirth and

karma. One major reason is that many West-

erners have lost the belief in the concept of

5 Introduction

a future miraculous bodily Resurrection.

However, rather than abandon all hope for a

life after death they have adopted the far less

miraculous-seeming belief in rebirth. Another

major reason is that many people can not

harmonize the idea of a just and loving God

with the resurrection-related idea of an eter-

nal hell.

What public opinion surveys rarely

reflect, however, is that many Americans and

Europeans actually adopt reincarnation and

karma concepts, not to replace, but to aug-

ment their more traditional Christian and

Jewish beliefs, as noted in entries such as

Christianity, Esoteric; Christianity, Lost

Chord of ; Kabbalah; New Testament and

Reincarnation; Rebirth in the Modern West;

Resurrection or Reincarnation; and Rosicru-

cians.

In addition to the series of broad the-

matic articles the majority of the encyclope-

dia’s approximately 1,200 entries focus on a

highly specific aspect of reincarnation and

karma. These entries cover a very diverse

range, though they can be conceptually

grouped as focusing on: key individuals, both

historic and modern, as either advocates or

opponents of reincarnation or karma; reli-

gious groups, sects, associations, societies and

organizations supportive of the notions of

reincarnation and karma; and specific beliefs,

concepts, and practices across time and cul-

tures.

A Note on Spelling Conventionsand Abbreviations

As might be expected, there are many

words in the entries that are not found in an

average English dictionary because of their

foreign or esoteric origin. Many of these

words would normally have various types of

diacritical marks above, below or between

letters. Since the inclusion or exclusion of

diacritics rarely influences their pronuncia-

tion by an English speaker, I have, for the

sake of simplicity, omitted all such marks.

Similarly, I have modified the traditional

spelling of some words to make their pro-

nunciation clearer to the average English

reader. For example, the Sanskrit ¢ has been

spelled as sh, as in Shiva (the deity); the Pali

cc- has been changed to ch-, as in paticha-

samuppada. In some Sanskrit words, such as

jñana (knowledge), the ñ- immediately after

the j- means a nasalizing of the j- which is

nearly impossible for the average English

speaker, but to try to change this spelling

would make it unrecognizable so I have left

it alone, though minus the tilde. For the

same reason I have also left alone the aspi-

rated “h” as abhijna (supernatural power),

bhakti (devotion), bhava (birth), dharma

(teachings), duhkha (dissatisfaction), lobha

(greed), and samadhi (concentration), etc.

It will also be noted that in certain spe-

cifically Buddhist focused entries two variant

spellings, Sanskrit and Pali, are often given.

The first is used by Mahayana Buddhism,

while the second is used by Theravada Bud-

dhism. Since many publications on Bud-

dhism will use only one or the other of these

I have tried to give both so that a reader,

seeking more information on that topic else-

where will have no difficulty finding it. To

be consistent, the first spelling will always be

the Sanskrit followed by the Pali, as in Abhi-

jna/Abhinna (S/P) or (S/P: akushala/aku-

sala); however, after the initial double entry

(S/P: Karma/Kamma) any further use of the

term will employ only the Sanskrit as in

karma, unless otherwise indicated. If there is

only one word as in bhava (S/P) or (S/P:

cetana) it means the word is spelled the same

in both languages; however, if there is a set

of such words in an entry the S/P will not be

constantly repeated, in which case it should

be understood that the word is the same in

both languages as in body (S/P: rupa), desire

(raga), feelings (vedana). If I have given only

one of the two spellings it will appear as

Introduction 6

either (S) or (P) or as in Bhavanga (P) or (S:

tiryak).

There is also an orthographic issue when

it comes to the Buddhist doctrine of no-soul

or no self (An-atman/An-atta or more com-

monly Anatman/Anatta). In early Buddhist

India there was no real distinction between

the concept of soul and self ; in short, the

concepts were synonymous. To emphasize

this synonymous nature whenever there is

mention of the soul or self in a Buddhist con-

text the two words will appear as soul (self )

or as no-soul (self ) or as anatman.

While there is a specific Jain canonical

dialect called Ardha-Magadhi the most com-

mon Jain terms also have a Sanskrit form

such as Abhavya which will be treated as

noted above.

There are words from other languages in

which there is disagreement as to the best

way to romanize the spellings; for two or

more spellings of these the spellings are sep-

arated by an “or” and/or parenthesis, as for

example with the Egyptian terms heart (ab

or ib); the akh (akhu, khu, or ikhu); the god-

dess Ammut (Ammit or Amemait) and the

shadow (khaibit, haibit, or sheut).

Traditional Tibetan spelling involves a

number of silent letters as well as some com-

binations of consonants which are pro-

nounced in a way surprising to most English

speakers. For this reason most Tibetan words

translated into English tend to be simplified.

For example, in the phrase Chikhai [Tibetan:

Hchi-khai] Bar-do (Transitional State of the

Moment of Death), the Chikhai is about as

close to the English pronunciation one can

get of the Tibetan word which more correctly

is romanized as Hchi-khai.

This simplification has lead to some

problems since there is no one standardizing

authority for such simplification. The sim-

plified and the original spellings given here

are for the most part those that have been

adopted by the Tibetan scholar David L.

Snellgrove in his A Cultural History of Tibet

(1980). Snellgrove, in his “Pronunciation

Rules,” says that “there are eight prefixed let-

ters, g, d, b, m, r, s, l and the apostrophe

which represents a distinct letter in the

Tibetan alphabet.” According to him, all

these eight prefixes may be ignored for the

purpose of an approximate pronunciation.

Thus blama will be lama (teacher). I have

tried to give both the simplified and the un-

simplified versions of such words, but in

some cases only one was available to me. If

the reader can easily say it then it is most

likely the simplified, otherwise it is the un-

simplified.

The Chinese terms covered here often

have two transliterations. One is the modern

Pin-yin, transliteration, and the other is the

older Wade-Giles transliteration. When both

were available to me I have provided each,

with the Pin-yin first separated by a diago-

nal stroke from the Wade-Giles, for example,

Dao/Tao. If I have provided only one ver-

sion and it is the Wade Giles it will appear

as either (ch’i, WG) or Yaoshi fo (WG); oth-

erwise the entry is in Pin-yin (Py).

Use of Abbreviations and OtherEditorial Conventions

Words appearing in boldface type

within an entry indicate that there is a sep-

arate entry for that term within the normal

alphabetical sequence of entries. “See also”

references to Hinduism, Jainism, and other

religions are in boldface, but not Buddhism.

The reason is that so many of the entries are

Buddhist-related that the entry for Buddhism

would be followed by several pages of “see

also” references.

In regard to Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and

similar terminology those terms that have

become common enough to appear in a

major English dictionary, such as karma and

nirvana are not italicized, while most of the

less familiar terms are italicized. Also, the

7 Introduction

proper names of deities have been left un-

italicized, as have the names of religions or

religious sects.

Special mention must be made concern-

ing abbreviations for the various citations

from the Pali Canon, the Tripitaka, as pub-

lished by the Pali Text Society, London. The

Tripitaka is the fundamental corpus of writ-

ings of Theravada Buddhism. This very

extensive collection is divided into a number

of sets of books (Suttapitaka), each with sev-

eral volumes in the English translations. The

volumes cited in this encyclopedia are The

Book of the Gradual Sayings or More Num-

bered Suttas (Anguttaranikaya, hence the

abbreviation AN I & II); The Dialogues of the

Buddha (Dighanikaya), DN III; The Collec-

tion of the Middle Length Sayings (Majjhi-

manikaya), MLD I & III; and The Book of

the Kindred Sayings or Grouped Suttas (Sanyut-

tanikaya), SN I–V. These are more com-

pletely described in the “Sources Consulted.”

Finally, the reader will notice the

spelling of re-death. The concept of reincar-

nation includes not just a series of rebirths

but of re-deaths; however, while the term

rebirth is a long accepted spelling the logical

opposite redeath is not; therefore, when

referring to repeated death I have hyphen-

ated the word as re-death.

Introduction 8

Abhavya (S). In Jainism this is a term for a class ofsouls that can attain a heavenly state (devaloka), butno further than that. This means that such soulsare never able to gain moksha (liberation from theround of birth and death). Abhavya are in someways the equivalent of the ichantika in Buddhism.

See also Eighth sphere.

Abhijna/Abhinna (S/P). These terms refer to thepsychic or supernatural powers the Buddha, Gau-tama, is said to have gained at the time of his en-lightenment. One of these powers was “remem-brance of former births” (purvanivasanusmrti ).This is said to include the ability to recall his fivehundred or so past lives in detail, as well as to re-call the past lives of others. It is claimed that manymonks and nuns who attain full enlightenment(arhat) also acquire this ability.

See also Bhavanga; Buddhist stages of libera-tion; Jataka Tales; Memories, reasons for loss ofpast life; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Abraham of Posquieres, Isaac ben. This 12th–13th century French Kabbalist, besides possiblybeing the author of the Bahir, was the first knownperson in Judaism to openly teach the doctrine ofreincarnation. Isaac is also known as Isaac the Blindand Isaac the Pious.

See also Kabbalah.

Accidentalism (S: ahetu-apachaya-vada). The doc-trine that there are no really logically discernablecauses to actions or results from them. This meansthat there are really no bases for morality. This isconsidered a heretical teaching in Buddhism. Theopposite of it, and equally heretical, is the doctrineof determinism or fatalism, or at least of strongdeterminism. Buddhism teaches that the truth isthe middle way between accidentalism and deter-minism. Buddhism teaches that anyone holding ei-ther of these views will be unable to escape theround of rebirth and re-death.

See also Annihilationism, Buddhist view.

Acts of the Apostles 2:39. This is one of the bib-lical passages that have been cited as “possibly” im-plying that reincarnation was secretly taught by theearliest Christian authors. It reads, “For the prom-ise [of salvation] is to you, and your children, andto all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord ourGod may call.” The argument is that the words“and to all who are far away” could imply that thosewho lived in the past (far away time) will be givenanother life in the post-resurrection era in order toreceive the promise. Like most of the biblical pas-sages that have been cited to try to prove a rein-carnation theme this too has been read out of con-text.

See also Cayce, Edgar; Harrowing of hell;Luke, Gospel of; Old Testament and the soul;Possession; Psalms; Resurrection of Jesus; Xeno-glossy.

Acupuncture. This Chinese medical system in-volves the insertion of needles into specific pointson the skin called acupuncture points. The inser-tion of the needles is thought to stimulate the life-force (ch’i, WG). It is believed by some reincarna-tionists that certain acupuncture processes, as theyunblock the ch’i, can stimulate past life memories,otherwise blocked.

See also Chinese religion and reincarnation;Rebirth and cyclical time.

Adam. According to both the Old and New Testa-ments this was the first human being. There seemsto be some discrepancy in Genesis as to whetherAdam was at first a collective term for both gen-ders, or from the start exclusively a male being. Thefirst view seems likely from Genesis 1. The secondview is almost assured from Genesis 2. However,some esoteric interpretations of Genesis 2 suggestthat God split a hermaphroditic being into separatesexes. This interpretation is then easy to harmo-nize with the popular concept of soul mates.

Despite the mythical nature of Adam variousreincarnationists incorporate him into the reincar-

9

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA

nation issue as if he had once been a real person.This is usually done in relationship to the figuresMelchizedek, King David; and Jesus. For exam-ple, Edgar Cayce was convinced that Adam wasnot only the collective name for a primordial groupof souls undergoing physical embodiment for thefirst time, but also the personal name of the leaderof that group of souls. While the primordial Eve isalso assigned later reincarnation by some majorreincarnationist teachers, such as Cayce, consider-ing the patriarchal nature of most religious thinkersit ought to be of no surprise that she is mentionedmuch less than is Adam.

Under the influence of the Zohar, some Kab-balic teachers have believed that Adam reincarnatedas the biblical patriarch Jacob (Israel).

See also Christian atonement theories; Corinthi-ans, 1st and 2nd; Creationism, soul; Fall of thesouls; Jesus; Kabbalah; Original sin versus karma;Pneumatikoi; Predestination; Romans; Soul;Soul’s existence prior to embodiment.

Adhi-daivika duhkha. In one of the classificationsof duhkha (dissatisfaction) this is the form causedby past evil karma. The other two forms of duhkhaare adhi-bhautika duhkha, which is caused by ex-ternal things or beings, and adhyatmika duhkha,which is caused by one’s present actions.

Adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) see Memories,reasons for loss of past life.

Adrishta. This is an invisible, impersonal, cosmicmoral force that is another designation for karmicresults.

Advaita Vedanta see Brahman; Dualism; Indi-viduality and rebirth; Jiva; Prakriti; Monism;Pantheism and panentheism.

Aeneas of Gaza (died about 518 CE). This Christ-ian philosopher was a strong supporter of Platon-ist and Neoplatonist doctrines; nevertheless, he rejected the idea of a soul’s existence prior to em-bodiment, not to mention metempsychosis, infavor of the orthodox Christian belief in the resur-rection of the body after a single life time.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; ChurchCouncil of 553; New Testament and reincarna-tion.

Aetherius Society. One of the new religions thatcombine a belief in reincarnation, karma, andUFOism, it was founded in 1954 by George King(1919– 1997) shortly after contact with what he be-lieved to be extra-terrestrial beings. Among thesebeings was the Master Aetherius, hence the nameof the Society. According to the teachings revealedto King such teachers as the Buddha, Krishna, Lao

Tzu, and Jesus were, and still are, cosmic mastersor members of the (interplanetary) Great WhiteBrotherhood. In fact, both Jesus and Aetheriuswere born on Venus, while other masters originatedfrom Mars. All of these masters periodically meetat the Interplanetary Parliament on Saturn.

The Society teaches that hundreds of thousandsof years ago there was a planet called Maldek,which was located between Mars and Jupiter. De-stroyed by the misuse of nuclear weapons, nothingremains of it except an asteroid belt; however,refugee souls from Maldek reincarnated into hu-man bodies on Earth. This reincarnation first tookplace on the lost continent of Lemuria (Mu); thusit was here that the earliest civilization on thisplanet was established. Tragically, the Maldek-Lemurians repeated their earlier nuclear mistakeand destroyed Lemuria. The Lemurians thensought refuge on the other lost continent of At-lantis, but even here they had not learned from thepast, and in a third nuclear war they also destroyedthat continent.

According to King the cosmic masters decided tocontact humanity through the establishment of theAetherius Society in order to prevent still anotherdisaster, which this time would destroy the wholeplanet. Such destruction will not be tolerated by themasters because the Earth is a Goddess (later knownas the Gaia theory) and has already suffered enoughat the hands of mankind. Instead, to prevent thisfrom happening the masters, who are also known asthe Supreme Lords of Karma, will guide man-kind towards a “Millennium of Peace.” Unfortu-nately, however, not everyone will benefit from thispeace. Only those who have lived in accordance withthe “Cosmic Principle,” as taught by the society, willexperience the rewards of this Millennium. Thosewho have not accommodated themselves to the Prin-ciple will be reincarnated on some un-named, andpresently non-visible, extremely primitive planet tofurther their spiritual development.

The main purpose of the Aetherius Society,therefore, is to prepare the way for the arrival ofthe next “Avatar” who will be one of the Lords ofKarma, and who will usher in the Millennium.

The Society has adopted a mixture of Christian,Hindu, and Buddhist practices, which include yogaand prana (breathing) exercises; the use of sacredchants (mantras), believed to give magical powerto the one who recites them; a set of dietary rules,which encourage vegetarianism; and making pil-grimages to certain spiritually charged mountains.

See also Ascended masters; Channeling; Planets,other; Ramtha; Unarius Academy of Science.

Affect bridge. In psychological regressive therapythis is the return to the earliest memory of a trau-

Adhi-daivika 10

matic situation or event that seriously affects thepresent mental health of the patient. In a numberof cases the patient will locate that situation orevent in what seems to be a past life. This happenseven though neither the patient nor the therapist hasany interest in reincarnation. The therapist with-out such interest will usually regard this as an ex-ample of a screen memory.

See also Birth trauma; Blocked regression;Netherton Method; Scientology.

A-field. Said to be the cosmic information field orthe record of everything that happens in the uni-verse. It is an updated (supposedly more scientific)version of the akashic record. According to Laszlo’sScience and the Akashic Field, as individuals we arenot immortal, but our individual experience is.When persons either are convinced that they arein communication with the dead, as in a typicalséance, or are experiencing what they believe is apast life, they are really obtaining their informa-tion from the A-field.

Africa. Although a number of authorities havestated that the idea of reincarnation is found amongvarious Sub-Saharan African peoples this statementhas to be carefully qualified. What we would nor-mally label as reincarnation is the passing of thecomplete vital essence of a person from one bodyinto another, without any residue vital essencebeing left in some sort of afterlife world. This kindof reincarnation is not found in most traditionalAfrican societies. Instead, most African peoples ac-cept a kind of partial reincarnation. Partial rein-carnation occurs when only some of the character-istics of a deceased ancestor are reborn into one ormore descendents. The main part of the deceased,however, retains a separate existence in the worldof the ancestors, at least until the memory of thatancestor fades away among his or her descendents;and at which point the deceased goes through asecond and final death. This idea of partial rein-carnation also applies temporally. The usual beliefis that an ancestor may be a part of a receiving de-scendent only for the first few years of the child’slife, after which it withdraws and may reincarnatein another newborn descendent. This is obviouslya very different concept from what we normallythink of as reincarnation, and for this reason anumber of scholars on African religion have beenopposed to labeling this process as reincarnation. Inthis case, the process might actually be better labeledas a kind of highly benevolent ancestral possessionrather than reincarnation. This is one reason whya tribal African is not likely to ever refer to havinglived a previous life.

Among some African peoples partial reincarna-tion can also include ancestral spirits assuming the

form of a visiting animal. However, full animal re-birth of an ancestor (transmigration) is extremelyrare among Africans.

Among the African cultural groups that believein some form of partial reincarnation are the Ga ofGhana, the Benin, the Igbo, the Urhobo, and theNupe of Nigeria, the Beng of the Ivory Coast, theNandi of East Africa, the Ovimbundu (Umbunduspeakers) of Angola, the Ndembu of Zambia, andthe Zulu of South Africa. For more on this subjectsee works by Heijke, Mbiti, and Oneywuenyi,listed in the “Sources Consulted” at the end of thiswork.

Among the West African Akan–speaking peo-ples, especially the Ashanti of Ghana and neigh-boring areas; and the Yoruba of Nigeria a morecomplete reincarnation view appears to be held.

See also Ancestor worship; Animals and re-birth, Western view; Birthmarks; Karma andjustice; Proximity burial; Rastafarians; Rebirth,cross-species; Rebirth, proximity; Repeater chil-dren (Ogbanje); Second death.

Afro-American religions. This term covers non–Christian folk religions that have developed mainlyin the Caribbean region and in Brazil. The mostwell known of these religions is the Voodoo (Vou-dou) in Haiti, Santeria in Cuba, Obeah in Jamaica,Shango in Trinidad and Grenada, and Candomble,Catimbo, Macumba, and Umbanda in Brazilian.The religious practice of the Rastafarians falls intoa separate Afro-American category in that there isan extensive use of the Bible as a source of thatgroup’s beliefs. Of the various Afro-American re-ligions Santeria and Umbanda have been highlyinfluenced by the reincarnation teachings of Karde-cismo. This is especially true for Umbanda whichhas adopted the Kardecismo doctrines of both rein-carnation and karma.

See also New Testament and Reincarnation;Possession.

Afterlife (survival) by default see Logic andpseudo-logic and the afterlife.

Agasha Temple of Wisdom. This body of teach-ings was founded by Richard Zenor in 1943. Zenorbelieved that he was a medium (channeler) of amaster teacher called Agasha, as well as a mediumof the souls of the more ordinary deceased. Thetemple teachings include a belief in the universalconsciousness of God, pyramidology, reincarna-tion, and karma. According to these temple teach-ings most people reincarnate 800– 1200 times, withthe interim period being about 150–300 years. Asthe soul, which in its early development state isshaped like an egg, spiritually grows throughoutthe reincarnation and interim periods it expands

11 Agasha

and unfolds like a lotus flower to eventually takeits most perfect shape as a pillar of light.

The name Agasha is the Russian version of agathawhich comes from old Greek meaning Good.

See also Ascended masters; Channeling;Lazaris; Ramtha; Seth.

Age factor and rebirth. One question regardingreincarnation that has been asked in the West atleast since the time of Tertullian is, “Why is a per-son who has died as an adult not reborn with adultmemories; indeed, in most cases with no memo-ries at all?” This has lead to the idea that there is adistinction between the soul and the personality, ormetaphysical soul and the empirical soul. It is thelatter that in theory would hold the age-relatedmemory and this, in accordance with body-brain(mind) dependency, would die with the body.The true or metaphysical soul, on the other hand,would experience no normal aging process. Sincethis soul would have no personal memories at-tached to itself, it would be more or less identicalto every other such soul. This lack of individualitywould be very similar to that of the Hindu atman.

A major problem with this solution is that itshould totally negate the idea that some persons do remember past lives either, spontaneously orthrough hypnotic age regression. A particularlyBuddhist problem with the age factor and rebirthis that Buddhism, at least in theory, can not acceptany kind of metaphysical soul due to its anatmandoctrine.

See also Akashic Record; Individuality and re-birth; Karma and justice; Mental plane; Mem-ories, reasons for Loss of past life; Resurrectionindividual age discrepancy issue.

Age regression see Hypnotic age regression.

Agent detection factor see Soul, psychology of.

Agra-sandhani (Assessors or Recorders). This termrefers to either the record of the judgment of a per-son’s most recent past life or to the supernaturalrecorders of the judgment of deeds of a person’smost recent past life. In the latter case they are al-most the same as the lipika.

See also Chintra-Gupta; Lords of Karma;Yama.

Ahankara. This term literally means “I [Ahan]-maker [kara]” and it refers to the little false egothat each of us is said to repeatedly create lifetimeafter lifetime, and which denies us the realizationthat the only true I is the universal one, Brahman.

See also Atman; Ego; Hinduism.

Ahimsa. In Hinduism, Buddhism, and especiallyJainism the religious act of reframing (A-) from

killing (-himsa) not only refers to killing humanbeings, but also animals. It is part of the belief ofthese religions that deliberately killing other sentientbeings will, for the most part, keep one trapped inthe cycle of birth and death. In the case of Hin-duism intentional killing, to the degree that it ispart of one’s social (caste) duty, as in the case of asoldier or policeman, does not have the same dis-astrous karmic repercussions as killing outside ofsuch duty, at least according to the Bhagavad-Gita. In Buddhism intentional killing of any kindcan not be justified. In Jainism even the most un-intentional killing is regarded as having seriouskarmic results.

See also Caste system; Return and serve argu-ment for rebirth; Vegetarianism.

Ahmadiyya. In a generic sense this designates anumber of orthodox Sufi groups. In the morespecific sense it refers to the messianic sect foundedin 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiyani (1835–1908) in the Punjab. Raised as a Moslem, Qadiyanisought to counter the criticism from British Protes-tantism as well as the threat of the revitalizingHindu movement. He not only came to regardhimself as an avatar of the Hindu god Krishna(Vishnu), as well as the Madhi, or the future Mes-siah of Islam, but he and his followers regarded himas the reincarnation of Isa or Issa (Arabic for Jesus)the prophet. This latter identification was facili-tated by Ahmed belief that the tomb of one Yuz-Assaf in the Kasmiri city of Srinagar was really thetomb of Jesus. This, at least, followed the standardIslamic belief that Jesus in some way escaped deathon the cross. According to Ahmad, unbeknownst tohis disciples Jesus fled to Kashmir where, at the ageof 120, he died and was buried.

Despite the Ahmadiyya being declared hereticalby Islamic authorities, both of the two branches ofthis sect, the Qadianis and Lahorites, has been verysuccessful in their missionary activities.

See also Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ;Church Universal and Triumphant; Judgmentof the dead; Muhammad Ahmad; Notovitch,Nicholas; Nusayris (Nursaris); Resurrection ofJesus; Scheintod hypothesis.

Ahriman. In Zoroastrianism this is the name for theevil cosmic principle who opposes the good cos-mic principle (Mazda) or God. Some 19th centuryEuro-American theosophical and occult groupsadopted this name for various demon-like agents.For example, in Jocelyn’s Citizens of the Cosmos Ah-riman is the name for the entity that tries to alien-ate the human soul from the spirit, which whensuccessful, enslaves the soul to matter. Further, thisentity encourages the soul during the interim pe-riod to strive for rebirth as soon as possible instead

Age 12

of using its full allotted time to purify itself of ma-terialism.

See also Lucifer.

Ahtun Re see Channeling; Egypt; Ryerson,Kevin.

Ajivikas (Way of life[-Jiva-]). This is the name ofan ancient Indian religious sect that associatedkarma and rebirth with such a rigid determinismas to be fatalistic. This fatalism was highly criti-cized by early Buddhism and Jainism and it waspartially this criticism that lead to the Buddhistdoctrine of anatman (denial of an unchangingsoul).

Akan. This ethnolinguistic group of West Africa isknown for a fuller reincarnational belief than foundamong other African peoples. In their belief sys-tem human beings, but not animals, have an indi-vidual and immortal soul (kra) that represents apart of God. Each time the kra (soul) is sent intothe world it is given a specific destiny (nkrabea) byGod. If it fulfills this destiny it returns to God andbecomes an un-embodied ancestor. If it does notfulfill its destiny it will have to return to embodi-ment as a child of the family of which it previouslywas a part (consanguineous rebirth).

See also Benin; Rebirth, consanguineous;Yoruba; Zulu.

Akashic or Akashik Record. This term comes fromthe Sanskrit akasha meaning ether, the all prevail-ing invisible medium that was once thought to existbetween the planets in place of empty space. Alter-natively, as the akashic record it is said to be a universal medium upon which is imprinted allthoughts, words, and deeds that ever existed. It isbelieved that certain psychically sensitive personscan read this record. It is believed by many of itssupporters that this is the real source of past lifememories rather than any re-embodiment of asoul. The advantages of this akashic theory overany rebirth are (1) there is no necessary immaterialbodily existence; (2) it is not in conflict with a res-urrection view; (3) it does not have to deal withthe karma and the memory problem; and (4) itdoes not have to deal with the population increaseissue. In other words, these supporters of theakashic record claim that this record is better thanrebirth by itself or even rebirth in conjunction withthe akashic record because that record obeys theLaw of Parsimony. This law says that the simplestexplanation for any phenomenon is the best expla-nation.

According to reincarnationists, however, a majorproblem with the akashic record, or for any relatedretrocognition theory, as the exclusive source forpast memories is that while such a record could ac-

count for memories, it could not account for thedispositions, habits, skills, and personality quirksthat are thought also to be shared by a past andpresent individual.

Also, reincarnation believers point out that anakashic record or retrocognitive ability as the solesource for recall of past life memories would resultin frozen memories rather than the normal con-stantly edited ones that occur in living minds, andthat are essential for updating of any personality. Instead of such normal “constructive recall” theakashic record would record both the unedited andthe edited versions of memory. This would make fora very confused memory bank from which to draw.In response to this criticism the akashic record pro-ponents argue that the record is really liken to acollective mind or over-soul which presumablycould edit its memories.

According to the channeled material from theGrace-Loehr Life Readings the akashic record ex-ists beyond the astral plane, but is mirrored bythat plane and thus is available for reading.

One of the more intriguing books that deal withreading the akashic record is Past Lives of FamousPeople: Journeys of the Soul by David Bengtson. Ac-cording to this book the author, having read ex-tensive parts of the akashic record, has been able totrace the reincarnation links of about 140 individ-uals from the present as far back as ancient Egypt.For example, in one reincarnational line mentionedin the book the soul of the Pharaoh Psalmtic (c.700 BCE) was reincarnated as the Roman EmperorOctavian (63 BCE–14 CE) which was then reincar-nated as Oliver Cromwell (1599– 1658 CE) whichwas reincarnated as Mohammed Anwar Sadat(1918–1981). Bengton believes that many souls rein-carnate in accordance with the repetition compul-sion.

According to Beredene Jocelyn (Citizens of theCosmos) the akashic record or Cosmic Memory isheld by the Saturn beings in the astrological Sphereof Saturn through which all souls must pass in theirplanetary ascent and descent between earthly em-bodiments.

The akashic record was initially introduced to the West by the Theosophy of Madame HelenaBlavatsky, and has become a very widely acceptedconcept in reincarnationist circles. Some of the morepro–Christian reincarnationists, such as Levi H.Dowling, the author of the Aquarian Gospel, andEdgar Cayce, identify the akashic record with the“Book or Record of Remembrance” as mentioned atPsalms 56:8, 69:28, 87:6; Isaiah 4:3, 65:6; Daniel12:1; Malachi 3:16, Philippians 4:3; and Revelationof John 20:12– 15, 21:27 (or even 3:5).

The akashic record is also called the cosmic pic-ture gallery.

13 Akashic

See also Aetherius Society; Age factor and rebirth; Alzheimer’s Disease; Angels and rebirth;Astrology and reincarnation; Book of Life; Disease; Bhavanga; Casey, Edgar; Causal body; Karma and justice; Lords of Karma;Michael (2); Objective immortality; Rebirth, al-ternative explanations to; Retrocognition;Steiner, Rudolf.

Akh see Egypt.

Alayavijnana. Alaya means womb or storehouse,while vijnana means consciousness and in the Vi-jnanavada (Way of Consciousness) School of Bud-dhist philosophy it is the eighth and highest levelof consciousness. It is not consciousness in any or-dinary sense as are the other seven. Rather it is thenon-reflected or non-self-aware consciousness thatunderlines the other seven consciousnesses, andrefers to where the seeds (bija) of good and badkarma reside or are stored.

Alayavijnana is also said to be the state of aware-ness which is beyond the idea of existence and non-existence; and in which one, in theory, can per-ceive ultimate reality.

See also Anatman; Karmic seeds; Manas;Mind; Zen.

Albigenses Crusade see Cathars.

Alevism see Cult of Angels; Nusayris (Nursaris).

Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) see Greeksand reincarnation; Home, Daniel Douglas; Ju-lian, Flavius Claudius, or Julian, The Apostate;Napoleon Bonaparte.

Alexandria, Egypt. For Christians who favor the idea that Jesus taught reincarnation, yet find“The Young Jesus in India Theory” unaccept-able, Indian influence via Alexandria has been sug-gested.

Located on the Mediterranean Sea in the Niledelta, for centuries this city was the trade link be-tween the Greco-Roman world and India. Due tothe wealth this trade brought the city Alexandriaalso became the most important intellectual cen-ter of Greco-Roman society. There is no doubt thatideas that were similar to Hinduism and Bud-dhism were familiar to religious and philosophicalthinkers in the city in the pre–Christian era; how-ever, the degree to which these ideas could havehad an effect on a Jewish peasant prophet ( Jesus) inGalilee is very difficult to judge.

See also Ahmadiyya; Ammonius Saccas;Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ; Ashoka, King;Church Universal and Triumphant; Egypt;Jesus; Notovitch, Nicholas; Resurrection ofJesus; Scheintod hypothesis.

Altered states of consciousness (ASC). While afew psychologists deny that there are what is com-monly thought of as altered states of consciousness,most psychologists accept the term and the con-cept. The deniers base their opinion on the ideathat there is nothing a person can do in the so-called ASC that he can not do in a completely normal (unaltered) state of consciousness. On theother hand, for those who accept such altered states,one definition for them is that an ASC manifests it-self when there is a significant interference withnormal monitoring and control of the person’s en-vironment. Another way of saying this is an ASCis where there is a dramatic departure from normalmental functioning.

The most common and obvious ASC is, natu-rally, sleep with or without dreaming. Other ASCswould be hallucinations; out-of-the-body andnear-death experiences; hypnotic and other kindsof trances, especially any in which past lives are re-membered; and certain mystical states.

See also Automatic writing; Channeling; Hyp-nosis; Hypnotic age regression; Medium.

Altruism and rebirth. One of the arguments for re-birth is that since the average person is inherentlyquite selfish there must be an uncommon reasonthat a small minority of persons seem to be natu-rally possessed of extraordinary altruism. This ar-gument says that these individuals can only haveevolved this characteristic over many increasinglybenevolent life-times.

See also Rebirth and moral perfection.

Alzheimer’s disease and reincarnation. The exis-tence of this and related memory loss diseases havebeen used to criticize the idea that memory can sur-vive the death of the brain. It has been pointed outthat Alzheimer’s patients lose memories as theirbrain cells disintegrate. This can leave a person with a near total loss of their former self. If this istrue while the brain is still alive, how much truermust it be when the brain completely dies. In otherwords, even if there were a surviving soul it couldnot carry any memory once separated from thebody; or in the reverse if a soul could carry mem-ory, then Alzheimer’s disease ought not to exist. Aresponse to this is that while the mind (soul) is de-pendent on the brain for expressing memories italso acts as a storage back-up for memories. There-fore, while the disease effects the expression ofmemories, it does not affect the back-up storage.When the body dies, these stored memories willremain inactive until reborn into a new body-braincomplex. A problem with this response is that as thedisease progresses the brain is still functioning andstoring new “if confused” memories that would alsobe inherited by the brain of a reborn person. Even

Akh 14

in the absence of any kind of dementia the averageperson’s memory deteriorates with age and thisshould be reflected in any remembrances of a for-mer life.

Besides Alzheimer’s, other diseases, drugs, andeven malnutrition can cause dramatic personalitychanges which ought to effect the rebirth factor. Italso needs to be mentioned that all of these ele-ments offer potential problems for a belief in theresurrection of the dead.

See also Akashic record; Body-brain (mind)dependency; Mind; Resurrection, bodily.

Ambedkar, Bhim Rao (1891– 1956). Born into theuntouchable caste, this charismatic Indian leaderconverted from Hinduism to Buddhism, and fol-lowing his example, so did thousands of other untouchables. This was done to challenge the in-justice of the caste system, with its entire basis de-pendent on the concept of karma, which Ambed-kar denied although still affirming belief in rebirth.

See also Weber, Max.

Ambrose of Milan (339–397). This Christianbishop was known for his literary works that areconsidered masterpieces of Latin eloquence, butalso for his intolerance of non–Christians (pagans,Jews, etc.). In his work Belief in the Resurrection(about 380) he specifically denounced the belief inreincarnation. With this in mind, it must have beenwith great satisfaction that he was able to convertAugustine, later bishop of Hippo, and eventuallya saint, from Manichaeism, which had as a centraltenet a belief in reincarnation.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion.

American Indians and reincarnation. A largenumber of native North American tribal religionsinclude a belief in rebirth. This belief is especiallywide spread among Arctic Inuit (Eskimo), Sub-arctic (Aleut, Beaver, Dene-Tha, Dakelhnes orCarriers, Kutchin, etc), and the Northwest PacificCoast (Kwakiutl, Tlingit, etc.) tribes. Indeed, suchbelief reaches an intense level among the Tlingit ofthe Alaskan panhandle. A belief in rebirth was lessconcentrated among California and Southwesttribes. With some exceptions such as the Lenapesof Delaware, a belief in reincarnation was even rarer among the Eastern and Southeastern Wood-land, the Great Plains, and the Plateau tribes. Itwas almost non-existent among the Great Basintribes.

A number of North American Indians believedin multiple souls; the most common being a beliefin dual souls. The first of these was the “free soul,”which might leave the body in a state of sleep ortrance, and which was regarded as the source of

consciousness. The second soul was the life-soul,which accounted for physical aspects of the self. In typical shamanic manner such phenomena asaging, sickness, and death were often believed tobe the result of the loss or theft of the free soul. Atdeath it was the free soul that abandoned the bodyfirst, followed by the life-soul. It was thought thatone of these might travel to the afterworld, while theother might reincarnate.

The presence of a belief in rebirth among SouthAmerican Indians is less well documented; none-theless, a full rebirth belief appears to be presentamong the Sanema-Yanoama of Brazil, the Ava-Ciripa and Guayaki (Ache) of Paraguay, the Para-macca Maroons of Surinam, and the Yanomamoof Venezuela.

Partial reincarnation concepts are found amongother tribes. Among the Amazonian Jivaro there isthe belief that at least some of the dead are rebornas animals. For example, a great warrior is likely tobe reborn as a jaguar. This is a form of restricted re-birth. Also, the Lengua people of the ParaguayanChaco are said to have a belief that some souls seekto return to life by trying to push out the originalsoul of an infant and to take its place. This, how-ever, is more related to possession than to authen-tic rebirth. Among the Tukano (Barasana Indians)of Colombian (Northwest Amazon) there seems tobe a belief in some sort of reincarnation of patrilin-eal soul-matter.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Aztecs;Cannibalistic reincarnation; Christian mission-ary influence and reincarnation; Deaths, violentand premature; Gender issue of the soul; Hunt-ing cultures and reincarnation; Inca; Kwakiutl;Mayan; Proximity rebirth; Rebirth, restricted;Rebirth, simultaneous; Souls, fixed and free;Souls, multiple.

American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR).Founded in 1884, this organization strives to usescientific methods to study paranormal phenom-ena, including reincarnation. It publishes the Jour-nal of the American Society for Psychical Research.

See also Associations and organizations; So-ciety for Psychical Research.

American Transcendentalists. This name refersto the American literary and mystical movementthat was centered in New England and that was es-pecially prominent in the 1840’s to 1860’s. It washighly influenced by Upanishadic (pantheistic) lit-erature and many of its members also acceptedreincarnation. Among those members were writersBronson Alcott (1799– 1888), Ralph Waldo Emer-son (1803– 1882), Charles Emerson (1808– 1836),David Henry Thoreau (1817– 1862), and Louisa

15 American

May Alcott (1832– 1888). Walt Whitman (1819–1992) is sometimes included in this group.

See also Ex Oriente Lux; Upanishads.

Amitabha Buddha. This is one of the five mytho-logical celestial Buddhas in Mahayana Buddhism.Because of his great surplus of merit this Buddha isbelieved to be able to neutralize much of the illkarma his worshippers have accumulated. In Va-jrayana Buddhism the Panchen Lama is regardedas the tulku (divine incarnation) of this Buddha.

See also Avalokiteshvara; Avatar; Christian-ity and reincarnation; Dalai Lama; Incarnationversus Reincarnation; Merit, transference of ;Nine doors; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism.

Ammonius Saccas (175–242 CE) This Alexandrianphilosopher was originally a Christian, but con-verted to paganism. He was the teacher of Originand Plotinus, and hence he can be considered as thefounder of Neoplatonism with its doctrine of rein-carnation.

See also Alexandria, Egypt; Priesthood, lackof an organized.

Amnesia see Birth trauma; Body-brain (mind)dependency; Cryptomnesia; Déjà Vu; Hypno-amnesia; Karma and justice.

Amrita/Amata (S/P). This literally means thedeathlessness (a-mrita). In a Buddhist context it isclosely associated with the idea of nirvana, the endof rebirth. Although it might be thought of inWestern languages as the equivalent of the wordimmortality as derived from im- (not)-mortal(dying), it does not have this same connotation inBuddhism in that no soul is involved with thisdeathlessness.

The term amrita is also the name of the nectarthat the Hindu gods drink to insure their immor-tality and is the equivalent of the ancient Greekambrosia.

See also Eternalism; Immortality.

Anabios (Greek: to return to life). Plato used thisterm to mean reincarnation. It is perhaps for thispagan use that Paul of Tarsus and some other NewTestament writers avoided the term. Instead, theyused anastasis (rising up) or egersis (waking up).Anabios, however, was used in the Greek translationof 2 Maccabees 7:9, to mean resurrection.

Anagamin see Buddhist stages of liberation.

Anamnesis (Greek: to remember or recollect).Plato, in his Phaedo and Memo, was one of the ear-liest recorded authors to suggest that metempsy-chosis (reincarnation) was clearly indicated by theunusual ability of some persons, especially young

persons, to easily understand or quickly compre-hend complex concepts or to demonstrate excep-tional talent in areas in which they had little education or training. According to Plato, and in-numerable persons after him, such precociousnesscould best be explained as a residue of a past life inwhich the individual had spent much time learn-ing and practicing what in the succeeding life ap-peared to be an innate understanding and ability;in other words, to some degree all learning is rec-ollection.

The Roman philosopher and statesman Ciceroalso believed that the speed at which children learnis proof that they have lived before.

It must be noted that this kind of recollectionsupposes that the soul survives death without anymemories of personal experiences. All that is re-membered is impersonal universal truths. Thiscomes closer to the Indian belief in the survival ofan impersonal memory-less soul (atman) than itdoes to the usual Western belief that the soul mustretain personal memories to qualify as survivingdeath.

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency;Child prodigies; Karma and justice; Karma, vo-cational; Pythagoras; Reincarnation in the West;Soul mates.

Anastasis (Greek: Rising up or Resurrection).From the earliest Christian period this term ap-plied both to Christ as the first to experience res-urrection and to all his followers who hoped in thefuture to be resurrected.

See also Anabios; Resurrection, bodily.

Anatman/Anatta (S/P). Literally meaning no (an-)self or soul (-atman), this Buddhist term applies tothe denial of a metaphysically changeless, eternaland autonomous soul or self. To understand thisdenial a number of factors must be examined.

In India, during the Buddha’s time, the tradi-tional term soul or self (atman or jiva) automati-cally meant a metaphysically permanent or un-changing; indeed, eternal autonomous entity thatwas on some level independent of the body. It wasthis soul or self, and indeed the very concept ofeternalism (S: shashvata-vada), that Buddhismcame to deny.

In arguing for the absence of a soul, early Bud-dhism first pointed out that all of our senses aredependent on our physical sense organs. We seethrough eyes, hear through ears, we taste througha tongue, smell through a nose and feel throughskin. Take any of these organs away and the senseassociated with them disappears. For example, ifthe so-called soul could see without physical eyes,than those eyes ought not only to be superfluous,but blindness ought to be impossible. The same

Amitabha 16

ought to equally apply in the case of deafness,muteness, etc. Early Buddhism further argued thatit was just such sensibilities as sight, hearing, tac-tility, etc. which were an essential part of personalidentify, as in the very act of thinking “I am” or“this is me.”

This early Buddhist view was in diametric oppo-sition to those who believed that the soul, not thesense organs, gave us our ability to experience thelight, odor, sounds, flavors and tactility of theworld. This, of course, meant that consciousnessitself was centered in a non-material entity. Yet,Buddhists held that if this were the case than noone ought ever to experience a loss of consciousnessas when a blow to the head occurred.

From the early Buddhist perspective all thesenses were dependent on the body and not a so-called soul. If there was a soul it would have to bedevoid of all of these sensibilities, with the resultthat such a soul would have nothing to identify as“I” or “me.”

Early Buddhism’s second argument against a soulwas based on the impossibility of the soul being anautonomous entity. If an autonomous soul reallyexisted it should be able to command itself never toget sick, never to age, and never to die. Buddhismlikened this lack of autonomy to a king, who com-manded his forces to do something only to havethem ignore him. Thus, the Buddhists said thatjust as such a king was a king in name only; like-wise a soul was such in name only.

The third early Buddhist anti-soul argument wasthat there was absolutely nothing in the world thatcould be shown to be unchanging, so to postulatethat there was a thing called the soul that was un-changing was little more than unsubstantiatedwishful thing.

None of the above arguments could absolutelydisprove the existence of a soul, but they certainlyforced the intelligentsia of the time to have gravedoubts about it.

Reinforcing the three above anti-soul arguments,a fourth one was a deep suspicion in early Bud-dhism about the value of extreme asceticism. Infact, this suspicion as much as the more intellec-tual arguments may be credited with the early Bud-dhist conviction that it was spiritually morebeneficial to deny a soul than to either affirm it orremain cowardly indecisive about it.

To understand this suspicion requires an under-standing of the two main religious competitors ofearly Buddhism. These were the now extinctAjivika and the still existing sect of Jainism. Bothof these sects taught a mortal body–eternal souldualism. The theory behind this dualism was thatthe soul, which was believed to be eternal, wastrapped in a mortal body. Through various extreme

forms of asceticism it was thought that one couldbecome the absolute master of one’s self or soul,and upon being released from its imprisoning bodyat death, the soul could gain freedom from all suf-fering, and dwell in an eternal state of blissful, iso-lated (kaivalya) consciousness. This dualism in it-self may not have been so abhorrent to earlyBuddhism had it not been that the asceticism re-quired for the soul to be eternally liberated fromthe body included starving oneself to death(sallekhana). It seems that for the early Buddhists theproblem with this body-soul dualism and the as-cetic practice that went with it meant that libera-tion was considered possible only after death. Thisbrought up such crucial questions as, “How cananyone know the soul is released after death? Hasany released soul come back and told us this is true?Once the so-called soul is no longer a part of thebody it has no mouth to speak to us.” Indeed, ac-cording to the “release of the soul from the bodytheory,” once released the soul could have no con-tact with or interest in the world it left behind. Inlight of the suicidal practices associated with theeternalist teachings the next natural question was,“What if after all such excruciatingly painful sui-cidal asceticism the soul turned out to be a myth?”In other words, “How could one be sure that lib-eration was obtained or even obtainable, if it werenot done so in this very life?”

The earliest Buddhist canon suggests that fromits beginning Buddhism taught that assurance ofliberation could and should come while the seekerwas still alive, not after death; and that it had noth-ing to do necessarily with non-provable theoriesabout an eternal soul. In fact, from the Buddhistview point the very idea of an eternal soul came tobe seen as encouraging a sense of clinging to self-hood that was detrimental to liberation which wasthe end of all self-centeredness.

It should be noted that early Buddhism did notoppose religiously oriented suicide altogether.There are incidences recorded in the canon ofmonks “taking to the knife” after attaining enlight-enment. What it did seem to reject was pre-ma-ture suicide. That is suicide before one had an absolute assurance of one’s enlightenment and lib-eration.

If, as seems likely, one of the primary reasons forthe no-soul (self ) doctrine can be traced to a Bud-dhist criticism of Ajivika and Jain teachings, it ispossible that this doctrine did not reach its finaldevelopment until the rise of the Upanishadicteachings of the Brahmans (priestly caste). Not onlydid the Upanishads teach about a permanent soul(self ) or atman, but they also began to identify thisatman with the belief in Brahman as the creatorGod. Since concurrent with the Buddhist denial

17 Anatman/Anatta

of an eternal self went a morality based denial of acreator God, any possible residue of a belief in asoul (self ) associated with that God would havebeen eliminated This would have been a fifth rea-son for a preference for an anatman teaching.

Still a sixth likely factor that would have in-fluenced a Buddhist no-soul (self ) teaching wasthat once Buddhism committed itself to the ideaof the all prevailing unsatisfactory nature of life theconcept of no-soul (self ) must have been seen asweakening attachment to that life. This non-at-tachment would serve to alleviate some of the ex-istential pessimism and anxiety caused by the be-lief in an unsatisfactory (duhkha) existence.

Yet a seventh source for the Buddhist teaching ofno-soul (self ) must surely have been those pro-foundly blissful meditative states in which the senseof self was so often lost. This, in turn, would haveeven reinforced the concept of the world in nor-mal consciousness as primarily one of dissatisfaction(duhkha). In fact, that experience of meditative noselfhood would have encouraged the belief that in-dividuality or personal uniqueness was a majorsource of suffering.

Of course, an experience which entails a senseof loss of self during meditation can just as easily beinterpreted as being united with or absorbed intoa universal self as it can of experiencing no self atall. In fact, most religions that validate such a mys-tical experience encourage the former interpreta-tion, especially if the universal self is allowed atleast a slight degree of personhood. Early Buddhismdid not allow any degree of that.

The early canonical Buddhist view of nirvanasometimes suggests a kind of extinction-like(kataleptic) state that automatically encourages ametaphysical no-soul (self ). Early Buddhism, bybelieving in the non-existence of a soul-self, wasparadoxically able to acknowledge that in reallythere was nothing to be extinguished and, there-fore, there was no reason for any anxiety concern-ing such extinction.

Closely related to a meditative weakening of at-tachment, an eighth soul denying reason wouldhave been the element of religious humility. In anyideology where human nature is seen as impure,due either to karma (in Indian religions) or sin (inChristianity) the only true solution to liberation,salvation or freedom is through some form of ex-tremely humbling self-denial. This may take theform of humbling the desires of one’s own bodyand will (asceticism) and/or of the equally hum-bling denial of metaphysical selfhood altogether.

One aspect of the early Buddhist denial of a soul(self ) that is often overlooked is that the Buddha’steachings at times actually seemed more interestedin denying the “my,” and “mine” more than the “I”

or “me.” This is especially noticeable in that theBuddha’s teachings never denied what can be calledthe “heroic I.” This is the “I” that, realizing thatnothing permanent belongs to or can be a posses-sion of the self (including the body), strives for lib-eration from the delusion of “my” and “mine.”

The above possible reasons for denying a soul(self ) would seem to logically deny continuationof any aspect of personhood after physical death;and yet the early Buddhist canon tells us that deathwas sooner or later followed by some kind of min-imal karmicaly charged factor passing from one lifeto another. For this reason, Buddhism has alwayspreferred to use the more general and ambiguousterm rebirth for whatever it is that is transferredfrom life to life rather than such terms as reincar-nation, transmigration, and metempsychosiswhich commonly connote a soul, or something verymuch like a soul, continuing on. However, evenusing the less specific term rebirth still does nothelp to explain how there could be any kind of reallink from one embodied life and another.

To try to explain soulless rebirth Buddhists haveused a number of analogies. The most common ofthese is the flame analogy. If, just before you blowout the flame (life) from candle A, you transfer theflame of A to candle B are the two flames (lives)the same or different? A second analogy is that thekarmic consciousness of the dying person acts likea stamp that impresses itself on the newly arisingconsciousness of a fetus and then the stamp dis-solves. A third view calls for a temporary interme-diate being or consciousness (antara-bhava); inthis case the dying consciousness somehow givesrise to an intermediate consciousness that transfersits karma to a newly conceived being before thatintermediate consciousness dissolves. A modernanalogy that has been suggested is that of billiardballs. If one ball (life) is in motion until it hits an-other ball (life) which then picks up the motion, isthe motion of the first ball the same or differentfrom that of the second ball?

As imaginative as each of these analogies hasbeen there still are major problems with each ofthem. In fact, the continuing problem of rebirthwithout a soul was a major reason for the develop-ment of several later schools of Buddhist thoughtsuch as the Personalists and the VijnanavadaSchool, both of which, to uphold the doctrine ofkarmic continuation, developed their own com-promises between no-soul and soul.

See also Ajivikas; Alayavijnana; Annihilation-ism, Biblical; Atman; Body-brain (mind) de-pendency; Buddhism, folk; Eternalism; Gand-harva; Heaven, hell, and Buddhist no-self ;Individuality and rebirth; Interim period; Psy-chophysical aggregates; Rebirth factor; Rebirth

Anatman/Anatta 18

in Buddhism; Reincarnation in the West; Re-birth and suicide; Shunya; Soul.

Ancestor worship. This is the belief that the de-ceased continue to participate in and influence thelives of their descendents. This is one of the ele-ments that have given rise in a number of culturesto a belief in reincarnation.

See also Ethicalized or karmic rebirth;Heaven; Hell; Hotoke; Rebirth, origin of; Uran-tia Book.

Ancestral or genetic memories see Memories,ancestral or genetic.

Ancestral or original sin see Original or ances-tral sin and reincarnation; Original sin, Chris-tianity, and reincarnation; Original sin versuskarma.

Andaman Islanders. These indigenous inhabitantsof islands in the Bay of Bengal are racially classifiedas Nigritos (Pygmy Negroes). These people do notbelieve in general reincarnation; instead they be-lieve that if an infant dies it will be reborn as thenext child of the same parents.

See also Rebirth, selective.

Andrade, Hernani Guimarães. This Brazilianparapsychologist has made several studies of Brazil-ian children who spontaneously recalled past lives.He has written at least three books on the subjectamong which are A Case Suggestive of Reincarna-tion: Jacira and Ronaldo (1980); Morte, Renasci-mento, Evolucão (1983); and Reencarnacão no Brasil(1988).

See also Children remembering past lives; TenDam, Hans.

Angels and reincarnation. The term angeloi, fromwhich we get angel, was originally the Greek trans-lation for the Hebrew malak, and although in Gen-esis 6:1, 4 malaks are called the Sons of God (He-brew: Beni ha-Elohim), the term usually meantsimply a messenger.

In certain modern Western esoteric traditionsangeloi, having the moon as their domain, arethought to be responsible for guiding individualsouls through to their next rebirth. Though ide-ally such angeloi are inherently genderless, they aresaid to assume the gender opposite of the gender ofthe soul of which they are guardians.

See also Akashic record; Aquarian Foundation;Astrology and rebirth; Celestial gates; Chakras;Channeling; Cult of Angels; Daniel, Book of;Eighth sphere; Ephesians; Gender of souls; Her-mes; Kiramu’l katibin; Layela (Laila[h]); Lordsof Karma; Lucifer; Moon; Morganwg, Iolo;Mormonism; Oahspe; Sephiroth; Silent watch-

ers; UFOism; Unarius Academy of Science;Urantia Book; Yazidis; Zoroastrianism.

Anima (Latin: Soul). Among classical Latin schol-ars and philosophers there were different levels ofthe soul. One view was that these were the animamateria (the soul of non-living mineral being); theanima herba (the soul of plants); the anima bruta(the soul of animals); the anima humana (the mor-tal human soul); the anima ratione praedita (the ra-tional and immortal human soul); and anima div-ina (the divine soul or over-soul, also called theanima mundi). Another view was that every humanbeing had all the three lower souls as well as thespecific human soul. Some classifications includedother names such as the anima illuminata (the il-luminated soul) and the anima immortalis (the im-mortal soul). Whatever name is applied to thehigher soul it was only this that would reincarnateaccording to classical thinking.

See also Archetypes; Over-soul, Universal;Soul, tripartite.

Animals see Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Ani-mals, domesticated; Bhavachakra; Transmigra-tion, alternating lives; Transmigration, lateral;Transmigration, progressive; Transmigration,regressive.

Animals and rebirth, non–Western view. In Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and some othernon–Western rebirth systems it is considered quitepossible for a present human being to be reborn as an animal (regressive transmigration) and viceversa (progressive transmigration). Among thosefew Westerners who accept human to animal re-birth it is often assumed that any belief in the possibility of cross-species rebirth would lead to agreat deal more compassion to animals than wouldotherwise be the case. This in fact, does happen, but only in a minority of situations. The reason forthis minority situation is that since such animal re-births are considered to be the result of the formerhuman being violating some very strongly heldtaboos, the animal deserves whatever treatment itreceives as part of its karmic punishment and toshow it undue compassion might be to interferewith its rightful punishment. This, of course, couldalso be a form of blaming the victim for its suffer-ing.

In the Buddhist bhavachakra scheme of things,for example, among the reasons for being reborninto the animal (S: tiryak) realm is excessive sexualdesire (S: kama or raga: lust). Among most Hindusthere is no particular reason for being kind to an-imals other than to the cow, as a sacred animal, orto some temple monkeys. Nothing demonstrates

19 Animals

this more than the decidedly cruel animal sacrificesin many Hindu temples. In fact, in India real careand consideration towards animals is essentiallyconfined to the Jains.

While it is true that dropping down to an animal life and violating some taboo are closely as-sociated, there are exceptions. Among these excep-tions is obligatory cross-special rebirth. For exam-ple, among the Kwakiutl Indians of the AmericanNorthwest the human soul must be reborn as ananimal for as long as it takes for its former humanbody to totally decompose. After this it may be re-born into human form.

The belief in animal rebirth, while widespreadamong Asian people and North American Indians,is rarely, if ever, found among peoples in Africa.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Animals, domesticated; Arguments supportiveof rebirth; Aristotle; Aztecs; Dayaks; Karma,developmental; Kwakiutl; Mind, theory of; Ori-gin of souls; Soul, collective; Time and con-sciousness; Transmigration, alternating lives;Transmigration, lateral; Transmigration, pro-gressive; Transmigration, regressive; Vegetari-anism.

Animals and rebirth, Western view. While manyreligious traditions accept the idea that a personcould be reborn as an animal (regressive transmi-gration) most modern Western advocates of rebirthargue against this cross-species idea. The first argu-ment against such rebirth is part of the Westernpreference for understanding rebirth as exclusivelypart of an evolutionary spiritual process; therefore,rebirth or transmigration into a lower life form isregarded as an impossible form of devolution. Aslogical as this first argument is, it must not be for-gotten that for those who have been raised in aJudeo-Christian environment the biblical doctrinethat mankind has been made in the image of Godcan not be easily abandoned and this first argumentagainst cross-species rebirth certainly reflects thisbiblical doctrine.

A second Western argument against human toanimal transmigration is that animals do not under-stand right from wrong and, therefore, can not beheld karmicaly responsible for their actions. Suchresponsibility only comes with being able to makemoral, hence karmic, decisions. If this is the case,then a spider, for example, could never improve onits karma to ever be reborn as anything other than aspider or its equivalent. This argument is especiallysignificant when it comes to the population increaseissue. In fact, a major reason for supporting animalto human rebirth is to try to solve that issue; but itdoes not work for most Western reincarnationistsbecause of the moral neutrality of animals.

A third argument against a human to animal rebirth is that if, for example, a person’s soulwere to be reborn as say a pig, that soul would not recognize itself as having been born into thatstate due to moral violations. In fact, as a pig itwould not have any questions about rebirth. Thismeans that life as an animal could hardly be per-ceived as a punishment by that animal; therefore,such cross-species rebirth is a waste of time andenergy.

A fourth argument for questioning transmigra-tion from man to animal is that there would besuch a loss of anything that could possibly beidentified as formerly being a human being, muchless a particular human personality, that this trans-migration could be considered the equivalent ofextinction of the former human soul. This fourth,as well as the third argument, were major pointsused by the Church Father Tertullian in his attackagainst metempsychosis.

A fifth reason for rejecting cross-species rebirthis that during hypnotically induced past life trancestates no subject has yet to claim a past animal life.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals, domesticated; Aristotle; Chris-tianity and reincarnation; Day-aks; Karma, de-velopmental; Mind, theory of; Ontological leapor ontological discontinuity; Origin or OrigenesAdamanthus; Origin of souls; Rebirth, East andWest; Rebirth and the scientific theory of biolog-ical evolution; Soul, collective; Soul Darwin-ism; Time and consciousness; Transmigration,alternating lives; Transmigration, lateral; Trans-migration, progressive; Transmigration, regres-sive; Vegetarianism.

Animals, domesticated. Some people have triedto answer the population increase issue througha modified transmigration process. Rather thansuggesting that any kind of animal (i.e. a serpent orrat) soul could be reborn into a human body, theysuggest that those higher animals such as dogs, cats,horses, etc., having been partially humanized bythousands of years of intimate association with us,are not only a natural bridge between humans andanimals, but themselves the most likely to makethe ontological leap from non-human to human(progressive transmigration).

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Mind, theory of.

Ankh or Crux Ansata. This is a cross with a circleabove the horizontal bar. It was an ancient Egypt-ian symbol of life and resurrection. It is used bythe modern Rosicrucians group called the Ancientand Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC) tosymbolize reincarnation.

Animals 20

Annihilationism, Biblical view. Annihilationismis any general belief that holds that there is eitherno aspect of selfhood that continues on after thedeath of the body, or any more specific belief thatif there is such a continuation it is only temporaryfor some or all souls. While the belief that in a mi-nority of cases some souls might face annihilation(selective annihilation) is compatible with a beliefin reincarnation, a general annihilationism is obvi-ously incompatible with reincarnation. For mostbelievers in reincarnation the issue of annihilationcan simply be ignored, but for those Western rein-carnationists who are determined to find support forreincarnation in the Old and/or the New Testa-ment any casual dismissal of the issue is dishonestin that there is clear evidence for annihilationism inboth Testaments.

The issue of annihilationism in the Bible is com-plicated by the fact that the Old Testament andNew Testament, for the most part, deal with thepost-mortem condition in very different ways. Inthe case of the Old Testament, there is very littlehope about anything positive that might followdeath until the very late composition of that text.With the New Testament just the opposite is true.However, most people in the Christian world are soaccustomed to hearing about the main theme ofthis work, the bodily resurrection of the dead, thatthey are unaware that there are also clear annihila-tionist passages in the New Testament. Most ofthese passages imply that on the Day of JudgmentGod will grant eternal life to the good souls, whilethe evil souls will experience a second death, inwhich their souls will face obliteration. In fact,there have even been some Christian groups thathave felt that such annihilation is more in keepingwith a loving and just God than is eternal torturein hell.

The New Testament passages that suggest suchannihilationism are John 5:29; 10:28; 17:3; Ro-mans 2:7, 6:22–23; 1st Corinthians 15:53–54;Galatians 6:8; 1st Timothy 1:17, 6:16; and 2nd Tim-othy 1:10. Annihilation may or may not be impliedin Matthew 7:13, 10:28; John 3:16; Romans6:22–23, and James 5:20. The fact that 1st Timo-thy 6:15– 16 states that God alone possesses immor-tality have been further used to defend annihila-tionism.

On the other hand, as a main argument againstannihilationism, there are innumerable words inMatthew, Mark, and Luke attributed to Jesus thatplainly speaks of a continued existence in a suffer-ing hell. There is also a place of post-mortem suf-fering mentioned in James, 2nd Peter, and theRevelation of John.

See also Annihilationism, Buddhist view;Christianity and reincarnation; Christian view

of the afterlife; Conditional immortality; Eccle-siastes; Eighth sphere; Hell; James 3:6; New Testament and reincarnation; Old Testament and the afterlife; Psalms; Psychopannychy; Resurrection, bodily; Second death; Universal-ism.

Annihilationism, Buddhist view. Annihilation-ism (S/P: ucheda-vada), or the belief that nothingabout human existence continues on after death,is in Buddhism regarded as one of the two hereti-cal philosophical extremes that Buddhism rejects.The other extreme is eternalism (shashvata-vada/sassata-vada). In contrast, Buddhism advocates the Middle Way (Madhyama-pratipad/Majjhima-patipada) view of anatman. In Buddhism annihi-lationism has been criticized, much as it has beenin Western religion, on a moral basis. This criti-cism says that if people do not believe in a “lifeafter death,” and the punishment and reward thattends to go with this belief, people will have noreason to live moral lives. However, annihilation-ism by itself need not be lacking in moral princi-ples. Many people over the millennia have believedthat there is nothing after death, yet they have lived very moral lives. This may not have been the case for annihilationism in India during early Buddhist times. In India it seems that it was a forgone conclusion that hedonism (S: kama-sukkha-allikanu-yoga) would be associated with anannihilationist view. The pessimistic attitude aboutlife created by the 6th century BCE Indian asceticmovement left for the advocates of annihilation-ism the choices of stoically accepting worldly suf-fering, indulging in pain numbing hedonism, orsuicide.

See also Accidentalism; Anatman; Annihila-tionism, Biblical view; Book of the Dead (Egypt-ian); Buddha’s Necklace; Determinism; Karmawith minimal rebirth; Personalists; Rebirth,buddhist; Rebirth and suicide; Rebirth in Zen.

Anniversary recall phenomenon. This is said to bethe experiencing of a feeling of illness or depres-sion in the present life on the same day or date thatsome tragic event occurred in a past life.

See also Spontaneous recall.

Antara-bhava (S/P) see Anatman; Bardo; In-terim period.

Anthropopathism. This term means the ascrip-tion of human (anthrop-) feelings (-path-) to non-human entities or even inanimate objects. The as-sumption that the universe, as a whole, feels love orcompassion to humanity is anthropopathic and isbasic to the belief that the universe would not be socruel as to “not” offer an afterlife such as rebirth or

21 Anthropopathism

resurrection to humanity. Anthropopathism alsoaccounts for the belief that the universe caresenough about human morality to punish and/orreward it.

See also Karma and God.

Anthroposophy see Rudolf Steiner.

Antimimon Pneuma. (Greek: Counterfeit spirit).In some forms of Gnosticism this was consideredto be a spiritual entity that was an intermediary be-tween the body and the soul. It was this entity thatwas responsible for the soul’s reincarnation.

Antinomianism (Greek: Opposed to the law). Thelaw in this case originally meant the laws mandatedin the Old Testament, especially the Torah. Oncethe writings of Paul of Tarsus came to be regardedas foundational to the meaning of the coming ofChrist, opposition in his letters to keeping all theLaw of Moses was interpreted by some extremistsas meaning that even the moderate morality sup-ported by that Law was no longer necessary for sal-vation, and in some cases following such Old Tes-tament morality was counter to salvation. EvenPaul, at times, found it necessary to warn againstmisinterpreting his teachings and using them tojustify antinomian or hedonistic extremes (1stCorinthian 6:9– 10; Galatians 5:19).

A number of sects of Gnosticism advocated an-tinomianism of one kind or another, often based onthe belief that the Old Testament laws were thoseof the demiurge (lesser or inferior God) as opposedto the greater or real God of Jesus.

One of the main criticisms of reincarnation bythe early Christian Fathers was that the doctrine ofmultiple lives encouraged antinomianism, as ex-emplified by the heretical Caropocrates.

See also Charvakas; New Testament; Tantrism;Vegetarianism.

Apocatastasis, Apokatastasis. This Greek derivedword means re-establishment. In Christian theol-ogy it refers to the belief that there will eventuallybe a re-establishment of the state of sinlessness thatexisted before the fall of humanity due to Adam’sdisobedience. In other words, it means universalsalvation. This form of universalism was con-demned as a heresy by the Church Council in 543CE (Constantinople) and even later by most Protes-tant sects. Although some Christian pro-univer-salists, including most Christian reincarnationists,believe that Romans 11:25–32, and even Romans14:9–12, may imply universal salvation. The onlyexplicit reference to universalism in the New Tes-tament is found in 1st Timothy 2:1–7 where, in thecontext of offering prayers, it says, “Such prayer isright, and approved by God our Savior, whose willit is that all men should find salvation and come to

know the truth.... Christ Jesus, himself man, whosacrificed himself to win freedom for all mankind,so providing, at the fitting time, proof of the divinepurpose.” It is important to notice that these wordsin 1st Timothy counter the more often expressedpredestination passages in the New Testament thatclearly state that far from universal salvation, Godhas predetermined that only a spiritual elite is des-tined for salvation with the rest of humanity to bedamned.

Even if the passages in Romans are ignored, anddespite the extreme minority biblical position foruniversalism, some Christian reincarnationists stilladamantly point to 1st Timothy in their argumentthat such universal salvation is not only valid, butindirectly supports reincarnation as the only logi-cal way such salvation could occur.

See also Christianity and reincarnation; Hell;Origin.

Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius was a famousNeoplatonic and Neopythagorean philosopher ofthe 1st century CE, who supported the teaching ofreincarnation. According to Life of Apollonius ofTyana, his biography by his students, Apolloniustraveled extensively from Spain to India and, in thelatter, came into contact with Brahmanic reincar-national views. In some forms of Theosophy it isbelieved that the soul of Jesus attained ascendedmastership by incarnating as Apollonius.

See also Ascended masters; Neoplatonism;Priesthood, lack of an organized; Pythagoras.

Aquarian Foundation. This Foundation wasfounded in 1955 by the Rev. Keith Milton Rhine-hart. It combines aspects of Spiritualism, Theos-ophy, and an assortment of Eastern religious ideas.Unlike Spiritualism, and more like Theosophy, theFoundation focuses less on contacting the souls ofthe deceased, and more on making and keepingcontact with what it calls the masters of the GreatWhite Brotherhood of Cosmic Light. These mas-ters not only include some of those from standardTheosophy but also the non-apocalyptic UFO be-ings called Ashtar and Clarion and the angel Mo-roni. This last figure is presumably the same angelthat is said to have appeared to Joseph Smith, thefounder of Mormonism. The doctrine of reincar-nation is an important part of the Foundation’s be-lief system.

See also UFOism.

Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ (1908). Thisbook, by Levi H. Dowling (1844– 1911), was statedto have been transcribed from the akashic recordby the author via automatic (type) writing in 1907with the help of a great being called Visel, the god-dess of Wisdom. It purports to tell the story of the

Anthroposophy 22

18 years of Jesus’ life before his time in Judea, as re-ported in the New Testament. According to thisbook Jesus spent a number of these pre–Judeanyears traveling in India, Tibet, Persia, Egypt, andGreece. Also, the book also says that as a result ofthese travels Jesus came to accept and teach thedoctrine of reincarnation. Obviously, this Aquar-ian Jesus is not the divine member of the Christ-ian trinity; instead he is a man who attained theseventh or the highest, degree of initiation into thegnostic mysteries.

See also Ahmadiyya; Alexandria, Egypt;Cayce, Edgar; Channeling; Christianity, eso-teric; Church Universal and Triumphant; No-tovitch, Nicholas; Oahspe; Universal Church ofthe Master; Urantia Book.

Aquinas, Thomas (1224– 1274). This prominentCatholic philosopher and theologian, addressed theissue of metempsychosis, which he also called rein-corporation, in a variety of his writings, includingSuper Evangelium S. Matthaei, Aristotelis LibrumDe Anima Commentarium, Scriptum Super Senten-tiis, and most extensively in Summa Contra Gentiles.Aquinas, like Plato, believed that the human soulhad three levels to it. The first of these was the vegetative level having the faculties of nutrition,growth, and reproduction. This soul level wasshared by all life forms from plants to human be-ings. The second level was the sensitive one havingthe faculties of sight, hearing smell, taste, andtouch. Only animals and human beings shared thissoul level. Finally, there was the rational level,which gave to human beings alone intellect andwill. Despite this original Platonic view of the soul,Aquinas was extremely critical of a belief in multi-ple lives.

Aquinas’s first critique of the metempsychosisissue revolved around Plato’s analogies of the bodyas a mere garment of the soul or the body beinglike a ship on which the soul, like a sailor, embarksand disembarks. Aquinas pointed out that theseare very false analogies because when a soul is saidto remove itself from the body that body decays,but clothes removed and a ship left behind remaincompletely whole because they have an existencetotally independent of the body or the sailor.Aquinas further argued that since the rationalityor thinking process has developed and is sustainedthrough the soul’s interaction with the objectiveworld via the body, without that body the interac-tion, and hence the rationality, of the soul wouldcease. Aquinas also challenged the possibility of ahuman soul entering an animal or plant and, onthe same basis, the possibility of an adult soul en-tering an infant’s body. Aquinas’s argument goeson to the problem of not being able to remember

a past life. One example he offers is that of a per-son born blind in the present life ought to be ableto at least remember and understand colors fromsome past life on the presumption that in all ofthem he was not blind. Aquinas summed up theseparts of his critique by saying that without questionwhat makes a person a particular individual is asmuch the absolute uniqueness of his body, his ex-periences in life, and his memories. Without thesethe soul is so impersonal as to be no one.

Aquinas’s second set of arguments concerned thejustice and mercy of God with regards to the issueof metempsychosis. He noted that it is not in ac-cord with the logic of justice or a just God to pun-ish or reward a person in a future life for deeds thatperson can not remember having done in a previ-ous life.

While some of Aquinas’ views unrelated tometempsychosis were challenged by other intellec-tual elements in the church, his anti-metempsy-chosis arguments remained unchallenged. Also,once he was declared a saint in 1323 any challengesto his views were more or less suppressed. Finally,in 1950 Pope Pius XII declared the philosophicalviews of Aquinas as superior to all others and soconstituted church doctrine.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Church Council of 553; Corinthians, 1stand 2nd; Individuality and rebirth; Karma andjustice; Memories, reasons for loss of past life;Psalms.

Arcane School see Bailey, Alice A.

Archetypes. This term refers to primeval contentsof the collective unconscious that are said to haveoriginated in pre-logical or mythical thought, andto consist of ideas and predispositions that havebeen genetically encoded in human ancestry, andwhich have been passed on to all succeeding gen-erations. The similarity of many myths and reli-gious ideas found among very diverse and unre-lated cultures is said to be a manifestation of sucharchetypes. Among these archetypes are the anima(femininity), animus (masculinity), the persona(outer or public personality), the shadow (a col-lection of all the traits the conscious mind does notwish to acknowledge, especially the unconsciousanimal nature), birth, rebirth, death, magic, power,the self (striver for unity), the hero, the child, God,the devil (externalized shadow), the old wise man,the earth mother, the flood, and the cross. It hasbeen suggested that at least some of the presumedpast life memories are built up and around sucharchetypes. The most familiar name connectedwith this archetype concept is Carl Jung.

See also Tarot.

23 Archetypes

Archons (Greek: leaders, rulers). This term coverstwo distinct set of entities. First, there are thebenevolent supernatural powers (ex. angels) thatserve as mediators between God and mankind. Sec-ond, there are the demonic or hostile powers thatwere created by the demiurge and which are oftenidentified with the seven visibly moving celestialbodies (the five originally known planets plus thesun and the moon) or with the twelve demons thatare said to represent the zodiac signs. Either set ofthese entities may be in control of the destiny ofthe human soul, both embodied and disembod-ied. It was believed by gnostic Christians that themission of Christ was to enable the soul of the believer, on its way back to God, to pass safelythrough the demonic archons, as mentioned inEphesians 2:1–3 and Colossians 1:13– 17, and thusnever again to undergo metempsychosis.

See also Gnosticism; Planetary descent and as-cent of the soul.

Archy and Mehitabel. Between 1916 and 1936there appeared in the New York Evening Sun and itssuccessor a column by the humorist Don Marquisabout a cockroach named Archy and a cat namedMehitabel who are able to talk to one another sinceboth were reincarnated human souls. Archy in hislast life was a free verse poet (vers libra bard) who,by nature, was a world-weary skeptical and cynicalphilosopher. Mehitabel was a homeless self-cen-tered lady-like bon vivant who lived in New York’sShinbone alley and claimed to be Cleopatra in oneof her past lives. The popularity of this pair led toa stage play (1954) that was turned into a chamberopera (1954), an album Archy and Mehitabel: ABack-Alley Opera (1955), and an animated film Sin-bone Alley (1971).

See also Cleopatra Syndrome.

Archytas of Tarentum (about 400 BCE). Archytas,a friend of Plato, was a Pythagorean philosopher,a geometrician (mathematician), a physicist, a Tar-entum military commander, and has been creditedwith inventing the screw and the pulley. Like bothPythagoras and Plato he was a well known cham-pion of metempsychosis.

Arcturus (Greek). This is the name of one of thefive brightest stars in the night sky. It is also calledAlpha Bootes because it is in the northern constel-lation Bootes. Arcturus is located in an almost di-rect line with the tail of Ursa Major (Great Bear)which accounts for its name, which is Greek forbear guard.

Arcturus, according to Violet M. Shelley, in herReincarnation Unnecessary, has been described inthe Edgar Cayce readings as the center of this uni-verse and through which individuals souls pass as

they choose whether they will return to the plane-tary system of our sun or pass on to other planetarysystems. Shelley further states that Cayce, in oneof his life readings, was once told that he had beenoffered the chance of leaving this solar system viaArcturus but he chose to return to earth. Shelleysays that each of us will eventually have such achoice and that, despite what might be thought, areturn to earth does not always mean attachment tomateriality. We may choose to return in order to beof help to others; although we do so at the risk ofonce again being caught in the cycle of return en-gagements.

See also Celestial gates; Fortune, Dion.

Arguments against human to animal rebirth seeAnimals and rebirth, Western view; Transmi-gration.

Arguments pro and con on an afterlife in gen-eral.

(1) Pro: Phenomena such as Spiritualism, rein-carnation memories, out-of-the-body experiencesand near-death-experiences imply survival afterdeath. Con: For almost all of these phenomena,many scientists believe that there are non-psychicor non-supernatural explanations that do not re-quire any disembodied factor.

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency; Re-birth, alternative explanations to.

(2) Pro: A belief in an afterlife can reduce or eveneliminate the fear of dying. Con: such a belief canalso make death more fearful if one believes in hell.

(3) Pro: The self must survive to make life per-sonally meaningful. Con: A number of cultureshave existed in which no desirable afterlife is foundand yet people in those cultures have led meaning-ful lives. Also, in our own culture many very ordi-nary people have no belief in an afterlife and alsolive meaningful lives.

See also Greek afterlife, the ancient; Old Tes-tament and the afterlife.

(4) Pro: Faith in an afterlife allows people to be-lieve that they will be rejoined with loved ones. Ofcourse, this is only true if one thinks everyone goesto the same peaceful place such as heaven. Con:Perhaps fewer people would choose to believe inan afterlife if they were told that while they wouldgo to heaven their loved one would go to hell.

(5) Pro: A belief in an afterlife is supportive of so-cial morality especially when that belief includes abelief that God, the gods, the dead, particularly an-cestors, monitor the behavior of the living and pun-ish or reward as is appropriate. Con: This beliefcan also make for a very repressed society, espe-cially if the religious authority is backed by the sec-ular authority. Also, disputes on the nature of an af-terlife it has been used to justify persecution and

Archons 24

killing of heretics, witches, homosexuals, and anyother non-conformists. It also has justified holywar.

See also Ancestor worship; Greek afterlife, theancient; Old Testament and the afterlife; Pas-cal’s wager; Shinto.

(6) Pro: If there is a belief in a post-mortem pun-ishment and reward the injustices in life are easierto tolerate, especially if there is the hope that a per-son’s oppressors or enemies will be punished. Con:The belief that injustice experienced by self andothers in this life will be remedied in a future lifeallows people to tolerate injustices in this life ratherthan opposing them; in short it encourages injus-tice to thrive.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Caste; Heaven; Hell; Soul.

(7) Pro: If there is a personal and loving God hewould not have wasted his effort on creating be-ings as complex as humans only to allow them toexist for the short span that life provides. Con: Thisargument depends entirely on there being such aGod and it is a very weak logic to try to argue forthe truth or reality of one thing (an afterlife) onthe basis of the truth or reality of another thing(God) which itself is not provable. This is espe-cially the case, if it is thought that the belief in sucha God is largely a hope that the universe caresenough about people to grant life after death sim-ply because so many people fear death.

(8) Pro: If we share with God the characteristicof being rational (we are made in His image), whywould we not share his characteristic of being im-mortal. Con: First, as just noted in (7) this dependsentirely on there being such a God. Second, a num-ber of religions, while accepting a belief in ahuman-divine shared rationality, have not auto-matically presumed a shared immortality.

See also Old Testament and the afterlife.(9) Pro: The very fact that human beings have

conceptualized an afterlife for thousands of yearssuggests that there is one. Con: People have concep-tualized many things that do not exist. Also, thevast array of different afterlife concepts suggeststhat such conceptions are unreliable. It has beensuggested that the eons-old belief in an afterlife isnot only due to a strong fear of death, but to anequally strong fascination with death. The lattercan be demonstrated by elaborate scenarios of heav-ens, hells, purgatories, limbos, reincarnated lives,etc.

(10) Pro: God and, life after death in general,should be accepted on the basis of Pascal’s wager.Con: There are so many different versions of lifeafter death that even if Pascal’s wager was acceptedpeople would have to choose one of these over theothers. What if a person chooses the wrong ver-

sion? For Pascal’s wager to be practical there shouldonly be one version of an afterlife on which every-one agrees. Pascal assumed that there was just sucha single true afterlife and that it was the RomanCatholic version. If this, or any other single trueafterlife, did exist humanity should have by nowdiscovered it. The fact that it has not been discov-ered greatly weakens Pascal’s wager.

See also Logic and pseudo-logic and rebirth;Rebirth and the preponderance of evidence;Soul.

Arguments specifically against rebirth. Beyondthe above arguments pro and con on an afterlife ingeneral the following more specific argumentsagainst rebirth have been offered.

(1) Rebirth destroys the hope of recognizingloved ones and friends in the afterlife. This argu-ment has been countered by the argument that un-less there is immediate rebirth, versus one with aninterim period, loved ones and friends can meetand interact in the afterlife until it is time for eachsoul to start on its journey back to life.

(2) Rebirth confuses relationships. For example,an individual soul might have had the role ofmother of another soul in one life, but in still another life the roll of a wife or daughter. Thecounter-argument to this is that as people maturein this life their relationships to one another changefor the better or worse and this does not lead tochaos so it should not be any different in the after-life.

(3) From an orthodox Christian position thegreatest weakness in the theory of reincarnation isthat it is impossible to separate that theory frompossession.

See also Arguments that challenge rebirth ona logical basis; Child as its own reborn father ormother; Incest and reincarnation; Karma, fam-ily

Arguments supportive of rebirth. Besides the ar-guments pro and con on an afterlife in generalthere have been many Western arguments of vari-ous degrees of sophistication and/or naiveté givenin support of the concept of rebirth. These are des-ignated as Western because most Eastern religionsdo not feel a need to intellectually explain, muchless justify, rebirth. Part of the reason for this is be-cause those Eastern religions do not view rebirthin any especially optimistic fashion as do mostWesterners. It is this very Western optimistic ap-proach which, more often than not, requires an in-tellectual explanation. A fairly exhaustive numberof these explanations are briefly listed below fol-lowed by the title of the encyclopedia’s entry thatdeals with each more thoroughly. It should benoted that some of these arguments are in conflict

25 Arguments

with one another. For example, some are only per-tinent to a belief in God, while others are a challengeto such a belief. Because of such incompatibilitiesno one person can adopt all or even most of thesearguments. It will also be noted that some of thesearguments are only a shade different from someothers, but these subtle variations seem to be im-portant to different people.

(1) Since many famous people have believedin rebirth this ought to at least suggest the possibil-ity of rebirth.

See Rebirth and famous supporters.(2) Extraordinary religious and philosophical

teachers have taught rebirth. Among two of themost prominent are the Buddha and Jesus.

See Buddha and rebirth; Christianity andreincarnation; Christianity, esoteric; ChurchCouncil of 553; Clement of Alexandria; Essenes;False claims of support for reincarnation; Jesus;Karma; New Testament and reincarnation; OldTestament and the afterlife; Origin; Predestina-tion; Purgatory; Rebirth and famous supporters;Resurrection, bodily.

(3) Rebirth is suggested by the periodic birthof a group of extraordinary men and women ataround the same time in the same area.

See Collective birth of extraordinary men andwomen.

(4) Major scientific studies have suggested thelikelihood of rebirth.

See Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth; Stevenson, Ian;Wambach, Helen.

(5) There has been a number of highly re-spected Psychics supportive of rebirth.

(6) The ancient Egyptians and Greek believedin rebirth.

See Egypt; Greek afterlife, the ancient; Karma;Pythagoras; Plato; Priesthood, lack of an organ-ized.

(7) Child prodigies or geniuses can be ex-plained by rebirth.

See Anamnesis; Soul mates.(8) Those persons naturally possessed of extraor-

dinary altruism can best be explained by rebirth.See Altruism and rebirth.

(9) Rebirth answers why seemingly innocentpeople suffer.

See Blaming the victim vs. illusion of inno-cence; Karma.

(10) Karma and rebirth are more logically con-sistent with a truly just God than the arbitrary na-ture of the Western theistic doctrine of justice.

See Arguments pro and con on an afterlife in general (7) and (8); Creationism, soul; Karma and justice; Karma versus grace; Theod-icy.

(11) Karma and rebirth alone are consistent with

a loving God. Whereas (9) only speaks of the jus-tice of God, this tenth argument is directly relatedto the idea that God is the personification of di-vine love.

See Arguments pro and con on an afterlife ingeneral (7) and (8); Karma and justice; Cre-ationism, soul; Karma versus grace.

(12) Karma and rebirth make it unnecessary topostulate a supreme God.

See Christianity and reincarnation; Karmaand God; Karma and justice; Theodicy; Rebirth,Karma, and Atheism.

(13) For those who do not believe that a non-cor-poreal heaven and/or hell are possible a comfortingalternative is a belief in a corporeal rebirth.

See Corporeal versus non-corporeal afterlife.(14) People can be freed from the oppressive be-

lief in the Christian concept of Original Sin by a be-lief in rebirth.

See Original sin, Christianity, and reincarna-tion; Original sin versus karma.

(15) Rebirth explains Original Sin better thanthe standard or orthodox Christian doctrine ex-plains it.

See Original or ancestral sin and reincarnation.(16) General morality is encouraged by a belief

in rebirth.See Rebirth and general morality.(17) Rebirth discourages prejudice towards oth-

ers.See Blaming the victim vs. illusion of inno-

cence; Rebirth and general morality.(18) There has always been a more tolerant reli-

gious environment among those who believe in re-birth than there has among the Western single lifebelievers.

See Rebirth and religious tolerance.(19) Karma and rebirth are a more mature belief

than the Western belief in the resurrection of thedead.

See Karma; Rebirth and maturity; Resurrec-tion, bodily.

(20) Rebirth avoids the Resurrection individ-ual age discrepancy issue.

See Age factor and rebirth.(21) Rebirth avoids the Resurrection cultural

and technological age discrepancy issue.(22) Rebirth avoids the logical problems of “very

own present bodies” resurrection that have tradi-tionally been favored by orthodox Christianity.

See Resurrection of Jesus; Resurrection, bod-ily.

(23) For human beings to perfect themselvesthey need more than a single life time. If there is an afterlife following just a single life time, the soul would drag all its negative propensities intoheaven.

Arguments 26

See Rebirth and moral perfection; Resurrec-tion or reincarnation; Theosis.

(24) Rebirth gives an optimistic view of life.See Blaming the victim vs. illusion of inno-

cence; Neo-pagan religions; Rebirth and cycli-cal time; Rebirth in the West; Rebirth, compen-sation and life fulfillment.

(25) We can only be fairly compensated for ourpersonal sacrifices by rebirth.

See Rebirth, compensation and life fulfill-ment.

(26) Rebirth means that in the end no one willever be cheated of opportunities to gain what theybelieve is their due. This differs from (25) in thatthere is no claim to not having gained somethingdue to personal sacrifice.

See Rebirth, compensation and life fulfillment.(27) Rebirth allows for unfinished karmic busi-

ness. For example, it gives a person or a couple thatdied childless another chance at parenthood.

See Karma as unfinished business.(28) Closely related to (27), but different enough

to be a separate argument is the Return and serveargument for reincarnation.

(29) Dying in peace is facilitated by a belief inrebirth.

(30) We are made more compassionate to animalsbecause of rebirth (transmigration).

See Animals and rebirth, non–Western view.(31) Analogies from nature clearly demonstrate

the truth of rebirth.See Rebirth, analogies from nature.(32) The Scientific theory of biological evo-

lution strongly suggests rebirth.See Body-brain (mind) dependency; Rebirth

and science; Rebirth and the scientific theory ofbiological evolution.

(33) The natural order of all living things sug-gests rebirth.

See Rebirth as the natural order of all livingthings.

(34) Karma and rebirth are the spiritual parallelsof the natural law of cause and effect.

See Karma as natural law.(35) Logical symmetry requires rebirth.See also Rebirth and logical symmetry.(36) Spontaneous past life memories of children

and some adults prove rebirth.See Spontaneous recall.(37) Past life memories recalled under hypnosis

demonstrates the reality of rebirth.See Artificial (past life) recall.(38) Déjà vu experiences can be explained by

rebirth.(39) The ability of people to speak languages

that they have not learned in the present life canbe explained by rebirth.

See Glottologues; Language inconsistency;Xenoglossy.

(40) Rebirth is an explanation for reoccurringdreams.

(41) Out-of-the-body experiences and near-death-experiences suggest rebirth.

(42) Many of the recently channeled beings teachrebirth.

See Channeling.(43) The existence of many reincarnated lamas

or “tulku” in Tibet should count for proof of re-birth.

See Dalai Lama.(44) Homosexuality and transsexuality can be

explained by rebirth.(45) Widespread and multi-cultural belief ar-

gument supports rebirth.(46) Rebirth may be indicated by certain birth-

marks.(47) Certain types of psychosomatic illness are

pointers to rebirth.(48) Long term strongly held and seemingly ir-

rational fears can suggest rebirth.(49) Reoccurring patterns of behavior may

suggest rebirth.(50) The personality of each human being, even

at an early age, is too complex to be explained with-out rebirth.

See Human personality complexity.(51) Identical, and especially conjoined (Sia-

mese), twins are a strong argument for rebirth.See Twins, identical.(52) Rebirth is necessary to distinguish saintly

from the diabolical persons.See Saintly versus diabolical persons argument.(53) The tragedy of very early childhood deaths

can be explained by rebirth.See Child’s Epitaph.(54) There seems to be evidence that the pro-

portion of male births after wars is often greaterthan at other times which suggests rebirth.

See Male births, greater proportion of.(55) The disproportionate past life reports of vi-

olent and premature deaths would seem to makesense of the rebirth concept.

See Deaths, violent and premature(56) The law of cause and effect should logically

require that what is physically caused should havephysical effects.

See Logic of physical cause and effect.(57) The rise and decline of nations can be ex-

plained by rebirth.See Nations, their rise and decline argument.(58) National character reappearances suggests

rebirth.(59) Rebirth should be accepted on the basis of

Pascal’s wager.

27 Arguments

(60) The sense of immortality possessed by theego is due to its vague memory of having lived inthe past.

(61) While no one of the above arguments maybe sufficient to prove rebirth, a combination of sev-eral compatible arguments is strong enough tomake rebirth highly probable.

See Cumulative argument; Rebirth and thepreponderance of evidence.

Arguments that challenge rebirth on a logicalbasis. The basic argument against any reincarnationbelief is as follows. If I no longer have the samebody, memories of the past, any recognition of myformer environment, that would include familymembers, friends, and maybe even enemies, howcan it be said that I continue to exist? Moreover,whereas I died as an adult, if this so-called contin-uation starts with a new-born infant, parented byparents other than the ones that I formerly had,how can this be a continuation of me? Would itnot be just as logical, or even more logical, to saythat upon my death any person or persons whocontinues to be alive somewhere in this world whohappen/happens to be of the same age as I am at mydeath age, is/are of the same ethnicity, gender, re-ligion, occupation, and political persuasion that Iwas, is/are more me than some baby with a blankslate? The fact that any of those contemporaryadults do not have the same memories as I did is in-consequential since neither does some “I” as a new-born infant.

One major rejoinder to this argument againstreincarnation has been that none of the above per-sonal characteristics, including personal memories,is the true self. In fact, no individuality is the au-thentic self. Instead, the real self is a non-individ-ualized, impersonal something that is reborn intoan infant, similar to the Hindu atman.

A counter question to this rejoinder has been,“what in this ‘non-individualized, impersonalsomething’ is there that only a particular deceasedperson and a particular newly born person have incommon?” If there is nothing unique that bothshare, then could not the newborn be consideredthe equivalent of any person who died before himor her? Individualized karma has generally beenproposed to answer the first question. As for thesecond question, reincarnationist must fall back onthe non-individualized atman as the answer.

Another major reason for challenging the rebirthconcept, especially if it is tied to the concept ofkarma, is that no single life seems ideal enough toeliminate all negative karma, and since each futurelife would likely add to that life new negativekarma, it is not likely that there would be a possi-bility of ever ridding oneself of such karma and,

therefore, no liberation from it and from rebirth.This becomes an even greater problem if it isthought, as it is in most Eastern religions, that allpositive karma must also be gotten rid of if libera-tion is to be achieved. If the issue of karma isdropped then at least that would eliminate anychallenge to reincarnation because of karma.

Finally, while of all the Eastern religions, it isBuddhism that has had the greatest appeal in theWest; it is Buddhism that has the greatest problemwith the rebirth issue because of its belief in soul-lessness (anatman).

See also Age factor and rebirth; Alzheimer’sDisease; Artificial (past life) recall; Blaming thevictim vs. illusion of innocence; Body-brain(mind) dependency; Blocked regression; Chil-dren remembering past lives; Christianity andreincarnation; Consciousness continuity, sleepversus death; Determinism; Dissociation; Di-vided consciousness; False claims of support forreincarnation; Honest lying; Human personal-ity complexity; Hypermnesia; Hypnoamnesia;Hypnosis; Karma as natural law; Karma in theancient and modern west; Language inconsis-tency; Leading question; Mind; Multiple per-sonalities; Ontological leap or ontological dis-continuity; Out-of-the-body experiences andnear-death-experiences; Population increaseissue; Rebirth and cultural conditioning; Re-birth, alternative explanations to; Rebirth inBuddhism; Rebirth, criteria for proof of; Resur-rection cultural and technological age discrep-ancy issue; Resurrection individual age discrep-ancy issue.

Arhat/Arahat, also spelled Arhant/Arahant. TheseSanskrit and Pali terms can be translated as eitherworthy one or noble one and refer to the male orfemale practitioner who has attained freedom fromfurther rebirth. The term is sometimes simplytranslated as saint.

See also Buddhist stages of liberation; Fetters,the Ten; Jataka Tales.

Aries see Astrology and rebirth.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE). This student of Plato isregarded as one of the half-dozen most influentialphilosophers of Western thought. Up to the pres-ent time there continues to be debate as to whetheror not Aristotle accepted the possibility of an im-mortal soul. This is one of the reasons that Aristo-tle’s Physics and Metaphysics were condemned bythe Catholic Church in 1210. Nonetheless, somemedieval theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas,claimed that Aristotle accepted such immortality,and sought to integrate his philosophy into Chris-tian thought. However, the later Italian Renais-

Arguments 28

sance philosophers, known as the Alexandrists,once more denied Aristotle favored an immortalsoul.

In specific regards to the platonic concept ofmetempsychosis Aristotle criticized the idea thata human soul could be reborn as an animal (trans-migration). In fact, despite Aristotle’s ambiguity onthe soul’s personal immortality, it was his criticismof metempsychosis that allowed some of Aristotle’sviews to find more acceptance in the late medievalChurch than were the views of Plato.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Gnosticism; Neoplatonism; Origin; Soul, tri-partite.

Arnobius the Elder (4th century). Although borna pagan, Arnobius converted to Christianity nolater than 300. He is most famous for his defenseof his new faith which he recorded in his seven vol-ume Adversus nationes (Against the Pagans) about303. In particular, Arnobius criticized the Neopla-tonic teaching of metempsychosis. Firmianus Lac-tantius was his student.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Neoplatonism.

Ars Moriendi (Latin: the Art of Dying) seeBardo; Conscious dying

Artificial (past life) recall. This is the assumptionof the identity of someone else while under hypno-sis. Its legitimacy has been highly criticized. Thisis because the moment the hypnotist tells the en-tranced person to go back to an life before the pres-ent one that person may subconsciously create animaginary past life to satisfy the hypnotist’s com-mand.

Also, for whatever seemingly past life memoriesare retrieved under hypnosis, there are alternativeexplanations for these that can be attributed to the“living person” and not a deceased entity. Amongthese alternatives are the akashic record, cryptom-nesia, psychometry, retrocognition, screen mem-ories, and telepathy. Each of these seriously under-mines the reliability of hypnosis for genuine recallof past lives.

The term artificial recall is often used in contrastto spontaneous recall of a past life.

See also Artificial rebirth; Déjà vu; Leadingquestion; Rebirth, alternative explanations to;Reverie recall.

Artificial rebirth. This term has two separatemeanings. (1) It is a less accurate term for whatshould be called artificial (past life) recall. (2) Itrefers to a process, probably pioneered in Russiaduring Soviet times by the researcher VladimirRaikov, who tried to enhance the art work of a

group of students by hypnotizing them and tellingthem that they were such famous artists as Raphaeland Michelangelo. As a result of this the artistictalents of the students improved. The same methodwas used with music students with like results. It hasbeen suggested that a similar process can accountfor the art and music talents of persons who be-lieve that they are the reincarnations of famousartists. The persons, once leaving the hypnotized orpassive trance state, appear to be in a fully func-tioning normal state of consciousness; however,they are actually still in what can be called an ac-tive or dynamic trance state.

See also Leading question.Artificial insemination see Rebirth and arti-

ficial insemination

Ascended masters. A number of late 19th and 20thcentury new religions claimed to have been in contact with, and received inspiration from, vari-ous secret brotherhoods located in the HimalayaMountains, or on a celestial plane of some sort, oreven from extraterrestrials locations. Actually, theearliest group to propose such a brotherhood seemsto have been the original seventeenth century Rosi-crucians. In their literature there was the men-tion of such an illuminated brotherhood that wassaid to reside in a mystical city in Arabia calledDamcar. While this early literature does not men-tion reincarnation, some modern Rosicruciangroups believe that that brotherhood of illuminatedmasters does encourage the teaching of reincarna-tion.

Without question, one of the earliest of themodern versions of the brotherhood of Masterscame from the French Kabbalist occultist EliphasLevi (1810– 1875) whose main interests were cere-monial magic and the tarot.

Another source for the concept of ascended mas-ters may have come from the Hermetic Brotherhoodof Luxor, an obscure occult organization firstfounded in London in 1870 under the guidance ofMax Theon (Louis Bimstein). Since Helena Blav-atsky, the founder of Theosophy, seems to havebeen associated with this Hermetic Brotherhoodfor a short while, it is possible that it was from it thatshe borrowed what became her version of the as-cended masters. This is made even more likely inthat there is a great similarity in parts of the teach-ings of Blavatsky and Theon, especially regardingthe series of planes and seven sub-planes of the soul.

For Blavatsky, the Brotherhood was a collectiveterm for spiritual adepts who were also called Ma-hatmas (Great Souls), or dhyani chohans. Thesemasters had liberated themselves from the cycle ofreincarnation and ascended to a spiritual plane thatstill allows them to assist in the liberation of oth-

29 Ascended

ers. It was Blavatsky that located the masters first inthe Punjab and Kashmir areas and later in Tibet.

Another name for this secret brotherhood, ac-cording to the theosophist William Q. Judge, in hisOcean of Theosophy (1893), is the Elder Brothers ofMankind, and they reside on the planet Venus.

The concept of extraterrestrial beings benevo-lently guiding or watching out for humanity wouldeventually be adopted by some modern UFO groups.

After the Theosophists the concept of the Broth-erhood continued to be popularized by a numberof other individuals and groups such as AleisterCrowley who, as a member of the Hermetic Orderof the Golden Dawn, called them the Secret orInner Chiefs.

Still another often cited name for these secretadepts is the Great White Brotherhood, and aseither former terrestrial inhabitants or extraterres-trials many of the believers in these Masters orBrotherhoods consider them to be a kind of secretworld government, which will fully reveal itself inthe future.

See also Aetherius Society; Apollonius ofTyana; Channeling; Church Universal and Tri-umphant; Dark Brotherhood; Eckankar; Egypt;Gnostic Order of Christ; Jesus; Mark-Age, Inc.;Planets, other; Saint Germain; Silent watchers;Sinnett, A.P.; Steiner, Rudolf; UFOism; Uran-tia Book; Zoroastrianism.

Asceticism. Unlike in Hinduism and Jainism, inBuddhism the indulgence of extreme asceticism orself-mortification (attakilamathaanu-yoga) is re-garded as an impediment to liberation from thedissatisfaction (duhkha) of life or the round of re-birth and re-death.

See also Accidentalism; Annihilationism, Bud-dhist view; Determinism; Eternalism; Hedo-nism; Middle Way; Rebirth and suicide.

Ashoka, King. This third century BCE monarchruled most of what is now modern India, as well asPakistan, and Afghanistan. Early Indian recordsstate that after converting to Buddhism he sent“Dharma” ambassadors to the courts of Syria,Egypt, and Greece. Although the term Dharma hasseveral meanings, it is most widely used to mean theteachings of the Buddha; however, there are no his-torical records from those courts of the presence of any such ambassadors. Despite the absence ofWestern historical records, the Indian recordsthemselves have been used to justify the belief thatBuddhist ideas, including that of rebirth, pene-trated Greek, Egyptian and even Jewish thoughtvia those ambassadors. Furthermore, some NewAge groups have suggested that indirectly throughthese same ambassadors Buddhism influenced laterChristianity.

Since the concept of rebirth was known to theGreek world at least two centuries before the timeof Ashoka there is little reason to credit Buddhistinfluence for this concept in the West. This fact,however, is unacceptable to many of the New Ageforms of esoteric Christianity; so, one way or an-other they are determined to find a more direct linkbetween the Buddha and Christ since this wouldbetter justify some of their eclectic teachings.

See also Alexandria, Egypt; Christianity, eso-teric; Greeks and reincarnation; Jesus; Orphism;Manichaeanism; New Age religions.

Asia. Without question the primary source formost Asiatic beliefs in reincarnation is India. Withthe spread of Buddhism and, to a lesser extent,Hinduism throughout the rest of southern andeastern Asia a belief in rebirth and reincarnationbecame the dominant ideology in these areas. Thishas made it difficult to ascertain which Asian cul-tures may have developed rebirth concepts inde-pendent of Indian roots.

See also Indonesia.

Asmi-mana (S. Pride or conceit of “I”). This is re-lated to the Buddhist view of anatman or no soul(self ). Asmi-mana is a false evaluation of the pre-sumed self in relationship to others and can be foundin three forms. These are a prideful thinking of one-self as better than another; an unjustified humblingor deprecating of oneself in relationship to another;and an arrogantly motivated attitude of being theequal of another. Asmi-mana is seen as especially un-fortunate in that it reinforces the other fetters thatkeep the cycle of rebirth and re-death spinning.

See also Buddhist stages of liberation.

Assassins. This was the name of a renegade NizariIsmaili sect of Islam in the 12th– 13th century CE

that controlled a set of fortresses in Syria and Iran, the most famous of which was named Ala-mut (eagle’s nest). The name Assassins is believedto have been derived from the Arabic word hashish(Cannabis sativa), the drug said to be heavily usedby this sect as an aid in attaining mystical con-sciousness. The name Assassin came to mean amurderer for political reasons because the leaders ofthis sect often sent their followers to murder aleader of any state that was dangerously hostile tothe sect. Because of the secrecy in which the sectheld their teachings, not a lot is unquestionablyknown about those teachings, other than the factthat they were a blending of Neoplatonism andIslam. It appears that, like some other Ismaili sects,the Assassins believed in transmigration.

The doctrine of the Assassins, minus the hashishand political murder elements, seems to have beenclosely related to the doctrine of the modern Druzes.

Asceticism 30

Association for Past Life Research and Thera-pies. This is former name of the International As-sociation for Regression Research and Therapy.

See also Associations and organizations

Association for the Alignment of Past Life Expe-rience see Associations and organizations;Netherton Method.

Association for the Study of Karma. An Okla-homa based organization, it published The Inner I.Its present status is unknown.

See also Associations and organizations.

Associations and organizations. This is a list ofvarious associations and organizations dealing withpast lives that have existed at some point. Manysuch associations and organizations do not have ahistory of lasting very long; and some have onlycontinued after a name change: American Societyfor Psychical Research (ASPR); Association forthe Alignment of Past Life Experience; Associ-ation for Past Life Research and Therapies; As-sociation for the Study of Karma; Atlantic Guildfor Past Life Awareness; Awareness ResearchFoundation; Foundation for Reincarnation andSpiritual Research; Independent Spiritualist As-sociation of the United States of America; In-ternational Association for Regression Researchand Therapy; International Board for Regres-sion Therapy; Last Word: Therapies, Inc.;Phoenix Rising; Psychical Research Foundation;Society for Psychical Research Society for Spir-itual Regression.

Assyria see Mesopotamia.

Astara. This group was formed in 1951 by formerSpiritualists Robert and Earlyne Chaney. WhileRobert became interested in Theosophy and inreincarnation, Earlyne had discovered that she hadbeen chosen by one of the Theosophical ascendedmasters, Koot Hoomi, to reveal the ancient wis-dom for a new age. Astara’s teachings are very eclec-tic in that they include elements of Spiritualism,Theosophy, Lama Yoga (chanting of the holy nameOm) and Christianity. All of these are united underthe umbrella of the occult teachings of HermesTrismegistus (Thrice Great Hermes), the ancientGreco-Egyptian deified sage Hermes-Thoth. Thename of the group comes from the Greek goddessof divine justice, Astraea, and was chosen to rep-resent the renewal of the past Golden Age. In 1976the headquarters of Astara were moved from LosAngeles to Upland, California. Both Chaneys havewritten a number of books about Astara’s teach-ings.

See also Egypt.

Astral body. The astral body is said to be a dupli-cate of the normal physical body only composedof much finer invisible matter. According to someof its advocates it is identical to the soul, while forothers it is a temporary sheath surrounding the souluntil the soul takes rebirth. The astral body issometimes called the dream body since it is believedthat during sleep it can leave the physical body andtravel to wherever it chooses. The astral body hasalso been called the desire body (S: kama rupa) oremotional body and even a wraith that manifests it-self near or at the time of death. This body is oftensaid to be connected to the physical body, either atthe head or navel, by a kind of astral umbilical cordcalled the silver chord which, if severed, will resultin death. In fact, upon physical death this cord issaid to dissolve.

The concept of the astral body seems to havebeen adopted into Western esoteric thought in thelate 19th century from the Indo-Tibetan religiousworld through such figures as Helena Blavatsky,the founder of Theosophy; however, once it was itintroduced its exact nature was disputed by its var-ious Western advocates. In fact, the Russian mys-tic G. I. Gurdieff is said to have taught that every-one does not have an astral body because is onlydevelops as a result of hard spiritual work andstruggle.

The book Reincarnation: A Critical Examination(1996) by Paul Edwards provides a rather thoroughcritique of the astral body concept on pages 127– 131.

See also Astral plane; Cabales or Caballi;Causal body; Death; Etheric body; Linga; Men-tal plane; Out-of-the-body experiences andnear-death-experiences; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical; Vampires.

Astral light. The astral light is a not a well definedesoteric and occult term. In fact, it has a numberof different meanings which are: (1) the light fromthe astral body or an aura; (2) the same as the lingasharia; (3) the universal animating element and/or power, hence equivalent to the anima mundi(world soul); (4) the universe’s storehouse of mem-ory or akashic record, which can be re-embodiedand reincarnated; (5) the medium through whichthought can be transmitted, as in the ability to psy-chically read another person’s mind; (6) the ethericenergy or medium used by practitioners of mag-ick and (7) the sidereal light in Hermetic philoso-phy.

Astral plane (1). In Theosophy and related sys-tems this plane is said to be the invisible plane ofexistence in which the astral body travels during thedream state or the trance state called astral projec-tion, and between death and rebirth from and backto the physical plane of existence.

31 Astral

When the astral plane is called the plane or realmof desire as in Theosophy, it is not to be confusedwith the Hindu-Buddhist kama dhatu (realm ofdesire) or kama loka (world of desire). In the Indiancase the desire realm covers the six sub-realms men-tioned in the bhavachakra which are the worldsof humans, animals, hungry ghosts, hell realm,asura realm, and deva realm.

The Theosophical meaning of astral plane is notonly much narrower than the Hindu-Buddhistmeaning, but essentially relates only to the third ofthe seven aspects of the human soul. According toTheosophy, after the physical body dies and leavesthe etheric body behind, the soul will then expe-rience existence in the astral plane in its astral body.In this plane the soul will re-experience all the ha-tred and love, the sorrow and joy that it has beenresponsible for while in the physical realm. If theperson in life did not live much more than a grosslymaterial and unloving existence it will be trappedfor a long time in the lowest, or seventh, subdivi-sion of the astral plane. While in this subdivisionit will experience the results of only the grossestand most unpleasant of its life actions and will doso as long as it takes for these negative results to bethoroughly purged from the soul. This is whatTheosophy regards as hell, or more correctly pur-gatory.

No soul, however, can remain indefinitely in theseventh, or any other, astral subdivision. In fact,every soul must past through the entire astral plane,although the soul may not be conscious of all thesubdivisions through which it passes. The differenceis that those who have little, if any good karma,after leaving the lowest subdivision, will quicklypass through the others experiencing few, if any, ofthe rewards of these subdivisions. Those who dohave good karma will pass slowly through each ofthe subdivisions so that they can experience all ofthe progressively greater joys each higher subdivi-sion offers. It is for this reason that the astral plane,for most souls, is one of considerable happiness.This happiness is especially prominent in the high-est three astral subdivisions, which are sometimescalled Summerland.

One important aspect of the astral plane is saidto be that each soul will experience the plane in ac-cordance with its religious expectations. Thismeans that a Christian will experience the astralplane in accordance with Christian beliefs, while aHindu will experience the same plane as a Hinduafter-life. It is because of this sectarian perceptionthat certain of the highly developed beings in theastral plane will appear as angels to some and asdevas (gods) to others.

When the soul has passed through all the levelsof the astral plane and is ready to enter the mental

plane it must abandon its astral body and with itthe last remaining emotional attachment to a senseof self. This is experienced as a second death. Thisnew death, however, is different from the first orphysical death in that the astral body, now the as-tral corpse, retains just enough vitality and linger-ing memories so that as a shadow or shade it canbe summoned forth by a medium during a séance.Eventually even these lingering memories will fadeaway, but the then remaining empty shell-like as-tral corpse may still be taken over temporarily byone of the exclusively astral dwelling, playful ormalicious spirits, who may then masquerade as theformer owner during a séance. When identifiedwith the kama rupa this malicious spirit is said toeven become a kind of spirit or ghost vampire feed-ing on the vital life-force of those in the world ofthe living who overly desire its return to life.

This description is based on A Textbook of Theos-ophy, The Theosophical Publishing House (1954,originally 1912) by C. W. Leadbeater. It differs insome minor ways from the version offered by He-lena Blavatsky in that it incorporates the views ofAnnie Besant.

See also Astral plane (2); Attached entity;Etheric plane; Omega; Planes of existence,names of ; Scientology; Sciomancy; Soul andspirit levels, Theosophical.

Astral plane (2). In the Afro-Brazilian tradition ofUmbanda this is the spiritual realm beyond thematerial world in which higher beings reside.

See also Astral plane (1).

Astral soul. In Theosophy this is the lower manas,the higher manas being the ego. This is not to beconfused with the astral body.

Astral travel. This is the more technical term for soul travel and usually means the act of travel-ing to distant places, either in the physical world or the astral world, while the physical body remainsin one place in a dream, trance, or comatose state.

See also Astral body; Eckankar; Kubler-Ross,Elizabeth; Silver Chord; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical.

Astrology and rebirth. Astrology is the belief thatthe positions and movements of the planets andthe moon in relationship to the sun and each othercan significantly influence the lives of individualpersons and groups of people. This definition moreprecisely refers to what is called judicial or mundaneastrology as opposed to natural astrology whicheventually gave rise to, and thus has been super-seded by, the science of astronomy.

Mundane astrology can be divided into the twocategories of exoteric astrology and esoteric astrol-

Astral 32

ogy. The exoteric form is concerned first with char-acter analysis, and second with predicting or di-vining important future events. As a system of divination the exoteric form is sometimes called as-tromancy.

Esoteric astrology involves the study of morespiritual aspects, such as the development of thesoul. There is a belief among some reincarnation-ists that esoteric astrological readings can aid one indiscovering a past life, in which case this aspect ofastrology may be called karmic astrology. For suchpast life reading purposes some karmic astrologersregard it as essential to study not only the commonnatal (birth moment) chart, but the conceptionchart and the soul chart. The last of these threecharts is said to deal with the time the soul first at-taches itself to the mother who would bear thesoul’s next body. This attachment might take placenot only before birth, but even prior to concep-tion.

According to Joan Hodgson in her Reincarna-tion through the Zodiac (1978), the time at which thesoul will incarnate is chosen by the spirit (soul) sothat the planetary and zodiacal conditions are suchas to ensure that the raw materials for building thevarious (bodily) vehicles are supplied by the devasor angels.

According to Edgar Cayce the planets, ratherthan being just physical celestial bodies, really rep-resent the other dimension of consciousness towhich the soul goes after death; and it is those statesof consciousness that are reflected in the natal chartupon its return to physical re-embodiment.

In the view of some astrologers the planet Sat-urn is connected to past karma and, therefore,called the ruler of karma, ruler of destiny, or eventhe lord(s) of karma. Saturn is also the dominantplanet for the zodiacal sign of Capricorn in whichone of the two celestial gates is located.

According to Beredene Jocelyn’s Citizens of theCosmos (1981) it is in the interim period, while thesoul is sojourning in the zodiacal sphere, that thephysical characteristics of our next body are deter-mined. While in Aries the nature of our future headwill be determined, in Taurus it will be our larynx;in Gemini it will be our lungs, arms, hands, andbodily symmetry; in Cancer it will be our rib cage,breast, and stomach; in Leo, our heart; in Virgo,our lower metabolic organs; in Libra, our kidneys;in Scorpio, our genitals; in Sagittarius, our hipsand thighs, in Capricorn, our knees; in Aquarius,our calves and ankles; and in Pisces, our feet.

The astrologer Martin Schulman, in his KarmicAstrolog y: Retrogrades and Reincarnation (1977),states that the retrograde motion of inner planetspoint to previous lives.

It is to be noted that in the West the application

of astrological principles to rebirth and karma onlydates back to the late 19th century rise of Theo-sophy and related movements. As such Westernkarmic astrology is still very much in the process ofdevelopment and many karmic astrologers are indisagreement as to the best way to approach rebirthand karma astrologically. This is in contrast to In-dian astrology which, although partly derived fromHellenistic (Greek) astrology, very quickly inte-grated rebirth and karmic principles into its astro-logical system. Moreover, the Indian system adds to its seven moving celestial bodies (sun, moon,Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) the south-ern and northern nodes of the moon which givesthe Indian system nine bodies with which to work.That the Indian system has only seven celestial bod-ies is because, unlike Western astrology, Indian as-trology has not made a concerted effort to integrateinto its system the more recently discovered trans-saturnian planets.

In the integration of the trans-saturnian planetsinto Western astrology it has been suggested that theearlier known seven moving celestial bodies havethe same effect today as they have always had,which is mainly to influence individual lives. Themore recently recognized planets (Uranus, Nep-tune, and Pluto) are regarded as collectively effect-ing long term economic, social, and political eventsof mankind. The reason for this is that the morepersonal planets have a sidereal period of from 2.9months with Mercury to 29.46 years with Saturn.Thus, even Saturn has at least two sidereal cyclesduring an average person’s life time. In contrast,the last three planets with sidereal periods of 84earth years for Uranus, 164 years for Neptune, and248 years for Pluto, take so long to revolve aroundthe sun that their cycles can have little effect on anaverage life span, and so as far as karmic astrologyis concerned, these three planets could have little orno effect upon an individual’s rebirth.

A major issue that karmic astrology must dealwith is that astrology in any prediction of destinyhas long been considered to be at odds with vari-ous religious views of free-will. In fact, one of theearliest Western theologians to deal with this con-flict was the Syrian, possibly Gnostic-Christian,scholar Bardesanes (154–222 CE). He proposed thatthe motion of the stars governs only the elemental(material) world, leaving the soul free to choice be-tween good and evil. Priscillian (died 385 CE), an-other Christian theologian, and/or some of his fol-lowers believed that the heavenly bodies merelymanifested the will of God to those who wereskilled in astrological interpretations.

Some of the more pessimistic believers of theGreco-Roman period, and in particular those whowere involved in Gnosticism, were convinced that

33 Astrology

much of what was in the heavens, especially as rep-resented in the zodiac, was considered a represen-tation of the “Wheel of Fate.” Moreover, becausethe constellations reside six months below the hori-zon and six above it they represented the cycle ofbirth and death (metempsychosis). At its mostominous it was thought that each heavenly bodywas the domain of a powerful spiritual force which,in general, was detrimental to higher human spir-itual attainment, particularly during the ascentphase of the planetary descent and ascent of thesoul. In other words, the seven celestial bodies wereresponsible for keeping the soul trapped in the em-bodied cycle of birth and death. This meant that thespiritual goal was to escape from the astrologicallydominated world.

The concept of karmic astrology has not beenuniversally accepted by reincarnationists. In fact,some reincarnationists are extremely opposed tothe concept. They point out that the ancient beliefthat found a relationship between the planets andrebirth is entirely understandable given the world’slimited understanding at that time of the true na-ture of the various heavenly bodies. That limitedunderstanding, however, is in the past, and if thereis too close an association of astrology with rebirththen any criticism made against the former couldbe easily applied to the latter.

Finally, as in the past, karmic astrology has beenmorally criticized as leading to a belief in deter-minism, if not fatalism.

For more details on astrology and rebirth see alsoReincarnation and Freedom (1987) by Lauritsen;Reincarnation Unnecessary by Violet M. Shelley;The Divine Plot (1986), The Eternal Return (1993),and The Elements of Reincarnation (1995) by A. T.Mann; The Forces of Destiny by Penny Thornton;and Zolar’s Book of Reincarnation (1996). Thorn-ton’s book is particularly informative on the subject.There is also a chapter on Astrology and Reincar-nation in Bjorling’s Reincarnation: A Bibliography(1996).

See also Angels and reincarnation; Arcturus;Celestial gates; Collin, Rodney; Eighth sphere;Dweller on the Threshold; Embodiment, mo-ment of; Lords of Karma; Mann, Tad; Moon;Pluto, the planet; Pyramidology; Sephiroth;Scrying; Steiner, Rudolf; Tarot; Yeasts, WilliamButler; Zodiac.

Asuras (S/P). This term signifies a-(not) and -sura(benevolent lesser deities), in other words the asurasare anti-gods, since they are constantly fightingagainst the gods (devas). In the West these are usu-ally equated with the Greek Titans.

According to Buddhism the world of the asurasis one of the six realms of samsara into which a

sentient being may be reborn, especially due to anexaggerated amount of envy in the preceding life.As with all other samsaric realms, inhabiting theasura realm is not a permanent condition. Oncesufficient unskillful karma has been used up anasura leaves that realm and is reborn into one ofthe other realms.

In Jainism the asuras delight in torturing thedeceased in hell. It is also their function to insurethat a soul’s sins are sufficiently purged to allow itto reincarnate.

See also Astral plane Bhavachakra; Heaven,Hell, and Buddhist No-Self; Mara.

Atheism see Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism;God and rebirth in the West; Karma and freewill; Karma and God; Karma and the moralstructure of the universe; Population increaseissue and a theistic solution.

Atlantic Guild for Past Life Awareness. ThisAmerican organization was founded by KarlSchlotterbeck with the purpose of dispensing infor-mation about reincarnation and past life therapy.Schlotterbeck has written Living Your Past Lives:the Psychology of Past Life Regression. New York: Bal-lantine Books, 1987

See also Associations and organizations; Pastlife therapist, finding a.

Atlantis see Aetherius Society; Cayce, Edgar:Current knowledge discrepancy; Fortune, Dion;Franklin, Benjamin (2); Grace-Loehr life read-ings; Himmler, Heinrich; Jesus; Karmic ro-mances; Lost Continent(s); Phylos the Tibetan;Ramtha; Score, John; Seth; Timaeus; UnariusAcademy of Science.

Atma see Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical.

Atman. Originally derived from the Sanskrit wordfor breath, atman it is presently the standard wordin Hinduism for soul. More specifically it is theHindu metaphysical term for a changeless or eter-nal self. In place of any kind of personality or in-dividuality, atman is characterized as having thenature of being (sat), consciousness (chit), and bliss(ananda). These same characteristics are, naturally,also assigned to Brahman as sachidananda.

While atman is usually translated into Europeanlanguages as soul, it must be realized that it canalso mean God. This is because atman is just Brah-man as understood through the deluded humanmind, while Brahman is atman understood by theliberated or awakened mind.

Atman is not influenced by either wholesome orunwholesome karma. Instead, what is affected by karma is kosha, the set of sheath-like bodies(sharias) surrounding the atman. These bodily

Asuras 34

sheaths exist due to the delusion of individualityor belief in separation from Brahman (God). Aslong as these bodily sheaths remain reincarnationcontinues. It is only through profoundly liberatingoneself of any thought that atman (self ) is separatefrom Brahman that the end of rebirth is possible.

See also Age factor and rebirth; Anatman;Brahman; Body-brain (mind) dependency;Guenon, Rene; Individuality and rebirth; Karmaand justice; Kshetrajna; Linga Sharia; Memo-ries, reasons for loss of past life; Monism; Pan-theism and panentheism; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical; Sutratman; Vedanta Society; Yo-gananda, Paramahansa.

Atmic see Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical.

Attached entity. This phrase refers to a soul that,for whatever reason, has not transitioned properlythrough the interim period between lives. Instead,knowingly or unknowingly, it attaches itself to thesoul of a living person until it makes the transition.Four degrees of such attachment have been pro-posed. The first and mildest, called shadowing, iswhere the alien entity has a very limited and occa-sional influence on its host. The second, called op-pression is where the entity’s influence is more no-ticeable and obviously annoying to the host. Thethird degree, called obsession, is a blending of thepersonality of the entity and the host, which causesgreat confusion and distress to the latter. The sever-est case of attachment, called possession, is wherethe entity tries to completely take control of thehost’s body and mind. This is thought to be therarest of the four degrees of attachment.

Many anti-reincarnationists hold the view thatmost, if not all, experiences of a past life are relatedto one or more attached entity conditions.

See also Ahankara; Automatic writing; Chan-neling; Diakka; Etheric body; Kabbalah; Karmaand rebirth; Kama-Rupa; Multiple personali-ties; Vampire; Walk-ins.

Augustine, Saint Aurelius (354–430). Augustinewas for nine years a follower of Manichaeanism.However, by 387 he converted to the Christian re-ligion of his mother and soon became, not only theBishop of the North African city of Hippo, but oneof the most influential theologians in Western(Catholic) Christianity. Although he freely usedideas from Platonism in his defense of Christian-ity, by the time he wrote his most famous work,De Civitate Dei (The City of God), he had rejectedthe belief in metempsychosis. According to Au-gustine’s argument the Neoplatonists taught thatwhile some souls could attain the supreme happi-ness of intellectual comradeship with God, thecompelling nature of reincarnation would eventu-

ally draw even them back into earthly rebirths.Christianity, on the other hand, offered a one wayjourney to heaven for eternity.

Despite Augustine’s clear-cut rejection of mul-tiple lives some authors still try to claim him as abeliever in metempsychosis (reincarnation) by tak-ing out of context a single passage from his Confes-sions. The fact is that not only is The City of God amajor defense of the view of the resurrection of thedead as taught by Paul of Tarsus, but Augustineeventually also wrote some thirteen anti–Mani-chean tracts, which included a critique of theManichaean view of rebirth. Indeed, it is in theCity of God that one of his attacks on the belief inreincarnation is the argument that it might be pos-sible for a mother to return as a maiden and marryher own son.

Augustine was also a strong supporter of thePauline belief in predestination.

See also Ambrose of Milan; Christian fatherscritical of reincarnation; Christianity and rein-carnation; Incest and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation; Resurrection, bod-ily.

Aum Shinrikyo ( Japanese: Supreme Truth Sect).This is a Japanese version of a New Age religionwhich was almost unknown outside of Japan untilMarch 20th, 1995. This is when the sect launchedan attack on a crowded Tokyo subway with sarinnerve gas. The leader of the group, MatsumotoChizuo, more well-known by his adopted name ofShoko Asahara, began his career as a yoga teacherin 1984. After traveling to the Himalayas in 1986 heestablished Aum Shinrikyo. Taking teachings fromHinduism, Vajrayana Buddhism, Christianity,and the prophecies of Nostradamus Asaharaclaimed that he had been charged by the Hindudeity Shiva to create a utopian society. The fail-ure of the Japanese political establishment to em-brace his messianic teachings caused him to redi-rect his teachings to a belief in an Armageddon-likedestruction of the world. It was when his views ofsuch a destruction changed from a passive watch-ing of it to an active assisting it to happen that hecrossed into a criminal mentality. Asahara justifiedthe actions of his sect by the fiendish claim that tomurder people was an act of mercy since it savedthem from building up the kind of bad karma thatwould lead them to a miserable rebirth.

See also Belgi Dorje.

Aum Temple of Universal Truth. This temple wasfounded by Elizabeth Delvine King (1858– 1932) asthe Church Truth Universal-Aum in 1925 in LosAngeles. The Aum Temple taught Esoteric Chris-tianity as given by the Great White Brotherhood,of which Jesus Christ is the active head. Truth is the

35 Aum

light and wisdom divine that has been given to as-sist mankind reach the kingdom of God. To enterthe kingdom the self must be cleansed and purifiedthrough scientific prayer, renunciation of carnalbeliefs and meditation. According to Aum Templeit is by cleansing, not bodily death, that one es-capes the cycle of rebirth in the dense materialworld and the karmic law of cause and effect. Inthe early 1980’s, the Temple was disbanded.

Aumism of Mandarom. Aumism is a syncretism ofWestern and Eastern religions founded in France in1969 by Gilbert Bourdin (1923– 1998) who, underthe name of his Holiness Lord Hamsah Manarah,claimed in 1990 to be the Cosmoplanetary Mes-siah (the Messiah for whom all traditions are wait-ing). Bourdin had a number of problems with theauthorities due to sexual abuse and tax issues;nonetheless, his followers believe he will be reincar-nated or again incarnated in the near future. Au-mism is in no way related to the Japanese AumShinrikyo Cult.

See also Incarnation versus reincarnation.

Australian Aborigines. Among many of the Aus-tralian tribal people reincarnation is believed tooccur either for all persons or at least for childrenwho die at a young age. In some cases there is a be-lief in dual or double souls. One of these is thepre-existent eternal-dreamtime soul which mayreincarnate and the free soul which may become amalevolent ghost. Protective measures are requiredagainst the latter.

Among some aborigines it is believed that chil-dren are not just born of parental sexual union, butby one or both prospective parents entering thedreamtime (trance) and contacting the soul thatwishes to be reborn as their child. This has some ofthe quality of announcing dreams. In other cases,the soul of the child to be enters the mother whenshe is in the immediate area of a local totem center,where the soul of a deceased ancestor is waiting tobe reborn. For example, among the Western Waripiripeople, souls accumulate in certain trees where theywait for an unsuspecting woman to pass by so theycan jump out and enter their future mothers.

It is said that many Aborigines believe that theywill be reborn as White Australians if they arelucky. This is a sad comment on the way the firstpeople of the continent have been treated by Euro-pean settlers.

See also Dreams, announcing; Reincarnation,origins of; Soul, Fixed and Free; Oceania.

Automatic speech. This is the phenomenon ofsomeone speaking seemingly without such speechbeing under the person’s control. It is a commonoccurrence in mediumship and channeling.

Automatic writing (also called psychography anddirect writing). True automatic writing occurswhen the conscious mind and the unconsciousmind are temporarily in a state of dissociation fromone another. This can happen spontaneously or, asis more common, under self-suggestion or the sug-gestion of a hypnotist. In any case, sitting quietlywith a writing-implement (pen, pencil, typewriter,or computer) and a piece of blank paper, the handof the person will seem to write or type independ-ently of the will of that person. Most products ofautomatic writing (psychographs) are incoherentor of superficial quality, however, some of themcan be very sophisticated. Psychologists point outthat this kind of writing is not as mysterious as itmay sound. They note that a great many very or-dinary activities, such as driving a car, is in factlargely a subconscious activity.

A variation on automatic writing is the use of analphabet Ouija board with a planchette or pendu-lum substituting for the paper or the handheld penin producing the psychograph. Works related tothe reincarnation issue that have had their source inautomatic writing include the Aquarian Gospelof Jesus Christ; the Course in Miracles; Oahspe;Phylos the Tibetan; and some works by WilliamButler Yeats.

See also Channeling; Hypnosis.

Avadana/Apadana (S/P). Meaning “a note worthydeed” this term refers to an ancient Buddhist col-lection of stories about the previous lives of saintlyfigures, both monastics and lay persons. The pur-pose of the stories is to show the working of karma,in that skillful deeds bring good results (vipaka)and unskillful deeds bad results. The stories avoiddetailed doctrinal matters, thus suggesting that theywere intended to be told to lay persons rather thanmonks. Although some of the stories involve thepast lives of the Buddha Gautama most of the sto-ries about his lives are found in the Jataka Tales.

Avalokiteshvara (S. Looking-down Lord). This isthe name of the most popular celestial bodhisattva(wisdom being) in Mahayana Buddhism. In Ti-betan or Vajrayana Buddhism, however, Aval-okiteshvara is considered to be much more than acelestial being; he is believed to be the divine en-tity which repeatedly incarnate or take possessionof the person who will become the Dalai Lama.In other words, the Dalai Lama is an avatar of thisbodhisattva.

See also Amitabha Buddha; Incarnation versusreincarnation.

Avatar (divine descent [into flesh] or an incarna-tion). This refers to any celestial being that incar-nates into human or animal form. In Hinduism, it

Aumism 36

is the high god Vishnu that has manifested himselfas various avatars, the most popular of which areRama and Krishna. In Tibetan Buddhism it is var-ious bodhisattvas who incarnate as various highlamas.

See also Avalokiteshvara; Dalai Lama; Pan-chen Lama; Incarnation versus reincarnation.

Avichi. This is the name for the lowest of the eighthot hells and the most terrifying of the 136 hells inthe folk Buddhist cosmology. A being may remainhere for millions of years before release and a newrebirth.

See also Bhavachakra; Buddhism, folk; Papa-purusha.

Awagaun (Sanskrit or Punjabi ?). In Sikhism this isthe name for the cycle of death and rebirth and sois the equivalent of the Hindu-Buddhist samsara.

Awareness Research Foundation. This Brasstown,North Carolina, organization has published Tech-niques of Past Lives Recall.

See also Associations and organizations.

Awareness techniques. This is a method to visu-alize past reincarnations while fully conscious orig-inally developed by William Swygard in the 1960s.The technique is fully explained in Swygard’sAwareness Technique. Lakemont, GA: CSA press,1970.

Aztecs. There seems to be some evidence that theAztecs had a “restricted” belief in reincarnation.They believed that the souls of warriors who had ei-ther died in battle or had become sacrificial victimswould first ascend to the eastern paradise or “Houseof the Sun.” Here they would stay for four yearsafter which they would return to earth as exoticbirds, especially hummingbirds (huitzilin), whichwere sacred to the sun and war god, Huitzil-opochtli. In contrast, the souls of those who diedas babies and those of men waiting to be rebornupon the destruction of the present world went tothe high heaven of the original creator god andgoddess.

There are two reasons that the Aztec belief inreincarnation must be considered “restricted.” First,in the case of the warrior-hummingbird reincar-nations, the Aztec did not speculate on what hap-pened after this initial rebirth to those souls; there-fore, it can not even be considered an alternatinglives form of transmigration. Second, many othersouls did not necessarily reincarnate, as for exam-ple, women who died in childbirth. Their soulsfirst went to the Western paradise or “House ofCorn,” and from there they too would eventuallyreturn to earth, but only as phantoms of bad omenscalled Cihuateteo.

Of the dead who died by drowning, lightning,or mash fever, all of which were associated withwater, they simply went to the southern pleasantrealm of the rain god Tlaloc. All the remaining deadwent on a four year journey to the unpleasantnorthern realm called Mictlan. None of those ineither the southern or northern realms returned toearth.

See also Dogs; Kulkulcan; Maya; Psycho-pomps; Rebirth, restricted; Transmigration, al-ternating lives.

Babbitt, Elwood (1922–2000). A well knownchanneler who, while in a trance state, stated thathe channeled not only such human entities asChrist, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, SigmundFreud, Abraham Lincoln, and William Words-worth, but also the Archangel Michael, the Hindugod Vishnu and that gods avatar, Krishna. Bab-bitt further stated that while not in a trance, butquite conscious, he can read past lives.

See also Channeling; Hinduism.

Babism and Bahaism. Babism was founded in Per-sia in 1844 by Mirza Ali Muhammad (1819–1850).A native of Shiraz, Iran, Mirza Ali Muhammad be-came a follower of Shaykh Ahmad Ahsai, who wasstrongly influenced by the cult of angels, which inturn had a strong influence on Mirza Ali Muham-mad. In fact, it was thought that after the death ofthe Shaykh’s son Ali, his soul was reincarnated asMirza Ali Muhammad, especially since Mirza wasborn very soon afterwards. The term Bab means“gate” (to the Divine) and is the title the cult ofangels uses to refer to the major incarnations(avatars) of the Haq, or the Universal Spirit. Afterthe martyrdom of Mirza (1850) his Babist move-ment split into two groups, those that continuedto follow the exclusive teachings of Mirza Ali as theBab, and those that became the followers of MirzaAli Muhammad’s disciple, Mirza Husayn Ali or Ba-haullah (the Glory of God). It was the latter whofounded Bahaism after much effort to divorce itselffrom the militancy of Babism, and to shed itself of the influences of both Shiite Islam and the cultof angels. This divorce involved dropping any ref-erence to teachings about reincarnation. There stillare Babists in Iran, but their numbers are un-known.

See also Yazidis.

Bailey, Alice A. (1880– 1949). Bailey is the founderof the Arcane School, tenets of which included thebelief in reincarnation and karma. Bailey was atfirst a member of the Theosophical Society, butafter Helena Blavatsky’s sympathizers failed tosupport Bailey’s claim that like Blavatsky she too re-ceived secret communications via mediumship

37 Bailey

trance from hidden ascended masters, Bailey leftTheosophy and established her own order in 1923.

See also Church Universal and Triumphant;Lord(s) of Karma; Mental retardation; Psychol-ogy, abnormal.

Banerjee, H. N. (1939–?). Banerjee, a well knownresearcher into reincarnation, was the director ofthe Indian Institute of Parapsychology in NewDelhi, as well as a professor of Humanistic Stud-ies at Columbia Pacific University in California.He started studying the subject of reincarnation in1962. He is the author of Lives Unlimited: Reincar-nation East and West. Garden City, N.Y: Double-day & Company, Inc., 1974; The Once and FutureLife: An Astonishing Twenty-five-year Study on Rein-carnation. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1979;and Americans Who Have Been Reincarnated. NewYork: Macmillan and Co., 1980.

See also Extra cerebral memory.

Baptism and reincarnation. In orthodox Chris-tianity baptism is regarded as both a cleansing ofOriginal Sin and the incorporation of the baptizedindividual into the death and resurrection of JesusChrist. In the most rigid form of such orthodoxy,no un-baptized individual has any chance of avoid-ing hell or of sharing in eternal (heavenly) life. Thisview is in keeping with Romans 6:1– 11; John 11:17–27, 14:18–21; 1 John 3:14. In theory, even thoseChristians who accept reincarnation prior to and/orup to the final judgment would require baptism.

See also Augustine, Saint Aurelius; Christianview of the afterlife; Judgment of the Dead;Limbo; Mark, Gospel of; Millennialism; NewTestament and reincarnation; Original sin,Christianity, and reincarnation; Peter, 1st and2nd ; Rebirth and moral perfection; Resurrectionor reincarnation; Star of David or Sign ofSolomon.

Bardo [Tibetan: Bar-do, S: Antarabhava or Anub-hava]. Among both Buddhists and Bon-pa follow-ers in Tibet the bardo is considered to be, not aplace, but the interim state of being between thedeath and rebirth of the conscious principle (rnam-shes).

According to the text called the Bardo Thodol[Bar-do Tosgrol], (Liberation by Hearing in the In-terim State), more commonly translated as the Ti-betan Book of the Dead, this interim state, whichcan last up to forty-nine days, is divided into threestates of consciousness. These are the Chikhai [Ti-betan: Hchi-khai] Bar-do (Transitional State of theMoment of Death), the Chonyid [Chos-nyid] Bar-do (Transitional State of the Experiencing of Real-ity) or death consciousness, and the Sidpa [Sidpai]Bar-do (Transitional State of Seeking Rebirth).

In the first of these states a cleric, by readingfrom the Bardo Thodol, guides the dying and the de-ceased through the death and after death process.This guidance is said to be necessary because thedying or dead consciousness does not at first under-stand that death is occurring or has occurred. If thedying and newly deceased consciousness is attentivethe consciousness experiences as a clear light theintuition of the highest reality. Those individualswho, while embodied, sufficiently prepared them-selves for this light will be able to use that prepa-ration to liberate themselves from any further rebirths. The clerical reader, therefore, calmly en-courages the deceased not to waste that prepara-tion and instead to take this opportunity for liber-ation rather than seeking another rebirth. Theoverwhelming majority of the deceased, being un-prepared, will allow ignorance and fear to possesthem. In their confused state they will forego theopportunity for liberation and become desperateto return to bodily life. So, after three and a half tofour days they pass into the second bardo level.Here the deceased will confront their past karma,first as something divinely pleasurable, but then as something demonically terrifying. Trying des-perately to escape from their own karmic-causeddemons they will pass into the third and last bardostage, which is the rebirth consciousness state. Inthis state the deceased will usually make a hurriedor not too thoughtful choice of a new body inwhich to be reborn, and so will not only return tosamsara to begin the cycle all over again, but to doso in a less than optimum way.

There is no doubt here that the Bardo Thodolconsiders the rebirth factor (rnam-shes) of the de-ceased to have full consciousness, despite the orig-inal Buddhist anatman denial of this possibility. Infact, what the book describes is not the rebirth fac-tor as just a minimal karmic factor of official Bud-dhist doctrine, but that of an astral body type ofconscious principle that apparently can see and hearwithout the necessary physical sense organs to doso. In fact, this is how the bardo rebirth entity is ableto see and hear the mourning of those it left be-hind, thus encouraging that entity to seek rebirth.To prepare the living to deal with the bardo stateswell before death, depictions of those states arepainted on cloth (tankas) and exhibited during theperformances of popular public ritual dances.

It should be noted that the Bardo Thodol textwas unknown until the 14th century, when it wassaid to be magically uncovered as part of a largerlong buried terma [Tibetan: gTer-ma, mother-treas-ure], which actually means spiritual treasures or re-vealed teachings. According to the Nyingma-pa[rNying-ma-pa] and Kagyurpa (bka’brg yud-pa)Schools of Vajrayana Buddhism termas are secret

Banerjee 38

books that were hidden in various wild, out of theway, difficult to reach places by the great IndianTantric teacher Guru Padmasambhava (8th cen-tury) before leaving Tibet and by his disciple andconsort Yeshe Tsogyal (757–817 CE) during the Ti-betan persecution of Buddhism. Through variouspsychic methods certain holy individuals were ableto locate and then publicize these texts. These in-dividual are called treasure revealers or tertons [Ti-betan: gTer-ston]. The concept of such hiddenworks was borrowed from the general Indian Ma-hayana Buddhist School, where such texts wereknown by their Sanskrit name “nidhi.”

The Bardo Thodol is actually just part of a largerwork the full name of which is the Zabchos zhi-khro dgongs-pa rang-grol (The Profound Teaching ofSelf-liberation in the Primordial State of the Gentleand Fierce Deities). This title is often abbreviated tothe more manageable Kargling Zhikhro. It is some-times considered the most complete of all the zhi-khro (a synonym for bardo) teachings. Besides theBardo Thodol, this larger text contains the Rig-pango-sprod gcermthong rang-grol (Liberation throughSeeing with Naked Awareness, Being a Direct Intro-duction to the State of Intrinsic Awareness). This sec-ond text is an introduction to Dzogchen thought,the most advanced teaching of certain TibetanBuddhist Schools.

The uncoverer of the Kargling Zhikhro was theterton Karma Lingpa of the Kagyupa (bka’brgyud-pa) School of Vajrayana Buddhism, and even todaythe text is most closely associated with that BuddhistSchool, as well as with the older Nyingmapa Bud-dhist School, and the even older non–BuddhistBon-pa School.

Under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead,the Bardo Thodol was first published in English, in1927, by its translator W. Y. Evans-Wentz.

See also Belgi-Dorje; Conscious dying; De-vachan; Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth;Interim period.

Basil (Basilus) of Caesarea or Basil the Great(about 330–379). Basil, a Christian Church Fa-ther, bishop, and saint, was the brother of Gregoryof Nyssa and a major critic of metempsychosis(transmigration).

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation.

Basilides. This is the name of an important Egypt-ian gnostic teacher (died about 140 CE) whoseteachings included the doctrine of transmigrationor cross-species reincarnation. The orthodox Chris-tian authorities had a particular dislike for histeaching because he taught that the God of the OldTestament was one of the brasher of angels, and

hence he was even of lesser status than a demiurge.The Jesus in the account of Basilides had a doceticnature, and so never really suffered crucifixion.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Doceticism; Gnosticism; Valentinus.

Beans. These was a forbidden food among thePythagoreans and followers of Orphism and thereason seemed to be that beans were used in theworship of the dead. Since beans were among theearliest crops to appear in spring they were regardedas the first gifts from the underworld. For thosewho believed in reincarnation this could mean thatbeans held the souls of the departed. To eat themwould be the equivalent of cannibalism.

See also Cannibalistic reincarnation; Eggs;Pythagoras.

Behavioral memory. This kind of memory in-cludes phobias and philias that are carried overfrom a past life.

Belgi Dorje [Tibetan: dpal-gyi-rdo-rje] (803–842CE). Belgi Dorje is the name of one of the greathero monks of Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhism hadbeen introduced into Tibet from India by the mid-dle of the 8th century, and with support from thekings of that country it began to flourish. This sit-uation changed dramatically when, in 836, KingLang Darma [Tibetan: Glang-dar-ma] took thethrone. This king preferred to support the nativeshamanic religion, or Bon-pa, whose clergy feltvery threatened by the foreign religion. Accordingto pro–Buddhist records, Glang-dar-ma closed allthe Buddhist monasteries and ordered all themonks to either return to lay life or leave the coun-try. Those monks who resisted were executed. In841–842 Belgi Dorje assassinated the king and es-caped into the mountains. With the king’s death,Buddhism once again began to flourish. Since thevery first vow that every Buddhist monk takes isnever to kill, this very un–Buddhist act requiredsome justification before the monk could be re-garded as a great Buddhist and Tibetan hero. Thejustification was that since the king was buildingup great ill karma by persecuting Buddhism, inkilling the king the monk was saving the king fromadding to that store of ill karma. This would atleast shorten the king’s stay in the hell in which hehad already earned a place. Because of this act of“compassion” towards the king, and even though itmight cause the monk himself some time in hell,Belgi Dorje is regarded as a Bodhisattva in Tibet.

See also Aum Shinrikyo; Rebirth and religioustolerance.

Benin. The Benin are a people of West Africa whobelieve that everyone is consanguineously reborn

39 Benin

fourteen times, but no one can be sure in which ofthese life-times a person is at any one time.

See also Rebirth, consanguineous.

Beruchim, Abraham. Beruchim was a sixteenthcentury North African Jewish Kabbalist who wassuch a severe advocate of repentance that manyKabbalists believe him to be the reincarnation ofthe biblical prophet Jeremiah (698–642 BCE).

Besant, Annie (1847– 1933). Besant, early in hercareer, was a very active feminist, socialist, andatheist. Upon her reading of the Secret Doctrine byHelena Blavatsky, she became a devoted Theoso-phist in 1888. Along with Charles Leadbeater shebecame the head of the Theosophical Society uponBlavatsky’s death in 1891. Residing in India in thelast years of her life, she was a major activist in theIndian independence movement. This earned herthe reputation of being a saint and even an avatar(earthly manifestation of the divine). Besant wasone of the main supporters of Jiddu Krishnamurti(1895– 1986), as not only the reincarnation of theHindu god Krishna and Christ, but as the proph-esized future Buddha, Maitreya, and even as the( Judeo-Christian) Messiah.

Besant published over thirty of works support-ing the doctrine of reincarnation.

See also Steiner, Rudolf; Theosophy.

Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord). This work is abook size poem, probably composed around 300 CE

that has been inserted as chapter six into the stillgreater epic Hindu poem the Mahabharata. Theimportance of the Bhagavad Gita is that it teachesthat liberation from reincarnation is possible evenfor the non-priestly (Brahman) caste, and non-as-cetic (monk) devotees. What is required to be lib-erated from the cycle of birth and death is first, toperform one’s caste duty faithfully (karma yoga);second, to have no concern for personal materialbenefits from this performance; and third, to haveabsolute faith (bhakti yoga) that, as a result of thefirst and second conditions, the grace of God (Krishna) will then liberate the performer. It is es-pecially in chapter two, at verse thirteen, and chap-ter six, at verse forty-one, of this text that reincar-nation is affirmed. For the above reasons, theBhagavad Gita is the most revered text in Hin-duism.

See also Ahimsa; Caste system; India; Inter-national Society for Krishna; Jesus; Karma ver-sus grace; Return and serve argument for rein-carnation; Upanishads.

Bhaishajyaraja-guru (Medicine king teacher).This name is translated into Chinese Yaoshi fo(WG) and in Japanese as Yakushi Nyorai. Both of

these mean the Medicine Buddha. Actually, the full designation in Sanskrit is Bhaishajyaguru Vai-duryaprabha Tathagata (Radiant Lapis-Lazuli Mas-ter of Healing Buddha). This Buddha is prayed to for various cures from illnesses and deformi-ties, and to provide food for the hungry and clothesfor the poor. He is also popular among womendevotees because he is said to have the power toensure that in their next life they will be reborn asmen.

See also Bodhisattva; Gender issue of the soul;Pure-Land or Blissful Land Buddhism.

Bhakti Yoga (Devotional yoga). This is the prac-tice of devotional worship of God in Hinduism.It is one of the four major practices that are be-lieved to liberate the soul from rebirth. The majorsignificance of this yoga is that it is regarded as the main vehicle for neutralizing bad karma and,thereby, avoiding one or more otherwise karmicalydeserved unpleasant reincarnations. This is possi-ble because in Hinduism the grace of the gods isconsidered to be superior to the law of karma (kar-maniyama).

See also Bhagavad Gita; Karma versus grace;Karma yoga; Vaikuntha.

Bhava (Being or becoming). This is the standardBuddhist and Hindu word for rebirth or reincarna-tion. The term punar-janma/puna-bhava (S/P)meaning “again birth” is also used.

Bhavachakra (Wheel of Becoming). According toBuddhism there are five or six realms into which asentient being may be reborn. These realms aregraphically depicted as a circle (wheel) with five orsix spokes that divide the ordinary world of desire(rupa-loka) into lower and higher realms. In thecase of six sub-sections the lower realms are ani-mals (tiryak), hungry ghost (pretas), and purga-tory (naraka). The three higher realms are those ofthe human beings (manusa), anti-gods (asura), andgods (devas). In the case of the five sub-sections theasura and deva are grouped together.

In some Buddhist Schools these six realms areassociated with particular negative mental states orpoisons. The gods represent pride, the asuras arejealousy, animals are ignorance or delusion, hungryghosts are greed and miserliness, hell is anger andhatred, and the human realm is desire or lust.

Since the Bhavachakra concept involves trans-migration rather than just reincarnation manyWestern groups, that are otherwise pro–Buddhist,do not accept this cross-species wheel of becom-ing.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Astral plane; Buddhist stages of liberation; De-valoka; Jataka Tales; Kyklos Genesion; Peta-

Beruchim 40

vatthu; Pritiloka; Privilege of a human birth;Pure-Land or Blissful Land Buddhism; Rebirth,instantaneous; Swastika; Vimanavatthu.

Bhavanga or Bhava-anga (P). This term is used inearly Buddhism in the sense of the foundation orcondition of existence (bhava) and is sometimesstated to be the subliminal consciousness that carries karma from one life (embodiment) to an-other.

See also Abhijna; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Bible and rebirth. Among many Western, andsome Eastern, proponents of rebirth there has beena concerted effort to find in both the Old and theNew Testament covert evidence for the teaching ofreincarnation. In fact, R. F. Goudy, in his Reincar-nation, A Universal Truth (1928), states that thereare over fifty bona-fide [his italicization] quotationsteaching reincarnation in the Bible. Actually, morethan seventy quotations have been listed in this en-cyclopedia, but a close examination of each of thesedemonstrates a total lack of anything bona-fideabout them. Of course, this brings up the questionwhy would there be a number that large if therewas no validity to them? The answer is simple. TheBible is not a single book, but a collection of sixty-six books of which thirty-nine comprise the OldTestament (Tanach) and twenty-seven the NewTestament. Often added between these two testa-ments are the fifteen Apocrypha. Altogether thesetexts were written over approximately 1500 yearsby some 40 authors in three languages. As a resultof this complexity the Bible is full of inconsisten-cies and contradictions. Over the centuries this haslead to people interpreting, or more correctly read-ing into, the Bible whatever teachings they have fa-vored. This process of finding evidence for what-ever one may want is almost always achieved bylifting passages out of their immediate contextwhich automatically distorts them, and makes themavailable for any number of favorable, if not fanci-ful, interpretations.

See also Jesus; Karma in the Bible?; New Tes-tament and reincarnation; Old Testament andthe afterlife; Peter, 1st and 2nd.

Biblical deluge and reincarnation. One of theolder arguments in favor of there being rebirthteachings subtly implied in the Bible is that beforethe flood that destroyed all of mankind, except forNoah and his family, the human life-span was verylong which gave people sufficient time to repent oftheir sins. But, with the greatly shortened life-spanof post-deluge individuals, there is not sufficienttime for repentance, and since God is entirely just,He has made available the alternative of more thanone life for repentance purposes.

Biblical references see Acts 2:39; Adam; Angelsand reincarnation; Akashic Record; Annihila-tionism, Biblical view; Apocatastasis; Baptism;Bible and rebirth; Biblical deluge and reincar-nation; Born again; Carpocrates; Cayce, Edgar;Christianity and reincarnation; 1st and 2ndCorinthians; Crowley, Edward Aleister; Daniel,Book of ; Deuteronomy 5:2–3; Ecclesiastes; Ecclesiasticus 41:8–9; Ephesians; “every kneeshould bend ... every tongue confess”; Exodus;Gabriel; Galatians; Genesis; Harrowing of Hell; Heaven’s Gate; Hell; James 3:6; Jesus; Job; John, Gospel of ; John the Baptist; I Am Movement; Kabbalah; Karma in the Bible?;Karma versus grace; Kingsford, Anna Bonus;Lazarus; Limbo; Lucifer; Luke, Gospel of ;Mark, Gospel of ; Matthew, Gospel; Melchiz-edek; Millennialism; New Testament and rein-carnation; New Testament sacrificial concept;Numbers; Old Testament and the afterlife; Old Testament and the soul; Original sin, Chris-tianity, and reincarnation; Palingenesis; Peter,1st and 2nd; Pistis Sophia; Pleiades; Possession;Predestination; Proof text; Proverbs; Psalms;Psychopannychism; Purgatory; Rebirth andmoral perfection; Resurrection, bodily; Resur-rection of Jesus; Resurrection or reincarnation;Revelation of John; Romans; Sciomancy; Second death; Seven Veils, Dance of ; SilverChord; Simon Magus; Star of David or Sign ofSolomon; Theosis; Universalism; Wisdom ofSolomon 8:19–20; Xenoglossy; Yogananda,Paramahansa.

Bija (S: Seed). This is the name for karmic seedsin the Vijnanavada (Consciousness only) Schoolof Buddhism.

Biological evolution and the soul see Ontolog-ical leap or ontological discontinuity; Populationincrease issue; Rebirth and the scientific theoryof biological evolution; Soul, collective.

Birds, soul. Although rejected by orthodox Chris-tianity there was, at least up to the late 19th century,a long standing fishermen’s folk belief that certainbirds harbor former human souls. Such birds arealways viewed as ominous. Among the British Is-landers the storm petrel (Hydobates pelagicus) andseagulls (Laridae) was believed to have the souls ofthe dead, especially drowned, sailors and this is whythey were helpful as signs of approaching storms.This belief meant that it was very unlucky to killone of these birds. Western European land-basedbeliefs held that the crow or raven (Corvus) heldhuman souls of un-baptized persons and wickedpriests. Among the Muslims in the Mediterraneanthe shearwaters (Puffinus) were thought to be inhab-

41 Birds

ited by the souls of the damned. Of course, all theseare example of restricted rebirth rather than full re-birth.

See also Hell; Rebirth, restricted.

Birth trauma. One of the major suggestions as towhy people do not remember their past life is thatthe trauma of being forced to leave a secure andcomfortable womb for the insecure and discom-forting world outside is sufficient to obliterate anyformer memories. Indeed, it is seen as the equiva-lent of the amnesia some people experience afteran extreme traumatic injury to the body and ormind.

See also Affect bridge; Blocked regression;Memories, reasons for loss of past life.

Birthmarks. In some folk societies birthmarks aresignificant as indicators that a particular familymember has been reborn. One example of this isamong the Igbo of West Africa. However, it ismainly modern researchers, such as Ian Stevenson,who have been interested in using birthmarks intheir reincarnation studies. These researchers havecompared birthmarks on living persons with woundsor scars of a deceased person and have suggestedthat these marks are physical manifestations thatconnect to the two lives. There are three major prob-lems encountered with birthmarks. First, if a childis born with a particular birthmark reminiscent insome way of a birthmark of a deceased personmight not this be sufficient for the adults around thechild to suggest to the child an identity with the de-ceased? This could encourage the child to pick upon enough related information from the adults toform a supposed past life memory. The second,though rarer, possibility is that pseudo-birthmarksmay arise on the child under the influence of strongadult expectations. The psychosomatic ability toproduce such birthmarks must be taken seriouslyin the light of the far greater ability of some indi-viduals to psychosomatically manifest bleedingwounds, as in some stigmata cases. Also, related tothis second possibility is the theory of maternalimpressions (or maternal pychokinesis). Still athird possibility is that the birthmarks are due tosome kind of possession. With regard to this pos-sibility it is to be noted that Stevenson has focusedheavily on birthmarks because he believes that suchmarks are a firm method of distinguishing genuinerebirth from possession by an alien spiritual entity.However, there is no real reason for any assurancethat an entity that took pre-natal possession couldnot be responsible for such marks.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Fa-cial architectural consistency; Maternal impres-sions; Natal defects; Rebirth, consanguineous;Rebirth, criteria for proof of.

Bjorkhem, John. Bjorkhem is a Swedish parapsy-chologist who, after hypnotically regressing hun-dreds of individuals, concluded that all of their pastlife experiences could be explained by obsession(obsessing entities).

Black hole. This is a karmic dark area which tendsto draw a person into necessary challenging situa-tions similar to those which the person, over sev-eral past lives, has refused to accept.

Blaming the victim vs. illusion of innocence.One major criticism of the concept of karmic re-birth is that without any proof that karma and re-birth are true the claim that most human sufferingis due to past life sins is equivalent to unfairly blam-ing the victim for his suffering. The supporters ofkarma and rebirth try to counter this by saying thatnot accepting past life guilt merely leads to an il-lusion of innocence.

This karmic justification may have been accept-able prior to the development of modern biologi-cal science, but this is no longer true. All too oftenone hears things like that child was born with a ge-netic or birth defect because of some past life sin.Unless it is proposed that a soul seeking rebirth hascontrol over the genetic material in a fertilized eggand chooses to sabotage its coming life by pur-posely deforming that material it is difficult to seea relationship between karma and genetic defects.An alternative argument has been that the badkarma of the soul attracts it to embryos or fetusesthat are already genetically deformed. In this case,however, that bad karma had nothing to do withthe conception of the child so the child remains in-nocent.

Unfortunately, there can be little doubt that formany centuries in South and East Asia the karmicconcept of blaming the victim has, in fact, allowedfor the status quo, in which the rich and powerfulremain rich and powerful while the poor and pow-erless remain poor and powerless. One of the resultsof this is that South and East Asian societies histor-ically have found very little reason to amelioratephysical or social suffering. Nothing demonstratesthis better than the social injustice of the Hinducaste system.

Despite the unfairness of blaming the victim aparadoxical defense of that unfairness has been of-fered. It argues that if such blame allows the victimto be more peacefully resigned to a situation that heor she has no real power to change the blame is tothe victim’s advantage. For example, when a childis born with a terrible deformity someone mightaccount for that deformity by saying that the childin a past life did something evil which is in thepresent life manifesting itself as the deformity. Inthis way the child is lead to believe that the world

Birth 42

is always a just place because karmic influences onlybring misfortune on the guilty as punishment. Inmany situations if we have to suffer, we generallyprefer that it is for a meaningful reason, rather thana matter of meaningless chance, even if that rea-son is false and means blaming ourselves for it. Thismakes the belief in karma a convenient fiction and/or a noble lie.

One major danger of blaming the victim is itspotential racism. The fact that most affluent coun-tries are Western European in origin and Caucasianin race, while most poor countries are populatedby darker skinned Africans, South Asians, and LatinAmericans, could suggest to some that light col-ored skin (Aryan) is karmicaly better than dark col-ored skin.

The concept of karma seems to have even moreblaming the victim potential when it is applied to collectives, as it often is. Did the millions ofAfricans that where kidnapped and sold into slav-ery in the Americas deserve that condition? Whatcollective wrong did they do? The very suggestionthat they did anything, without real supportingproof, is karmicaly supported racism. Again, didsix million Jews deserve the death camps; couldkarma be used to justify anti–Semitism? Did theAmerican Indian deserve ethnic cleansing andgenocide?

It is most interesting is that among many pre-sumably educated Buddhists, as long as misfortuneis meted out collectively to non–Buddhists, karmais freely acknowledged, but when it comes to Bud-dhists collectively there is a reluctance to applykarma. If Buddhism teaches that by becoming aBuddhist you gain certain karmic advantages,which even Buddhist ordination ceremonies spec-ify, then why should such things as the Cambo-dian killing fields have happened? What collectivewrong did those people do? Also, ignoring thequestionable dehiscent or seed-pod principle,what did the Tibetan people do to suffer such bru-tal oppression at the hands of the Chinese?

The blaming the victim issue has been suffi-ciently condemned by orthodox Western religionsthat it has challenged Western reincarnationists tofind something more than a punitive meaning inkarmic rebirth. This has lead to the idea that somesouls during the interim period voluntarily acceptnew embodiments in which adversity or somehandicap will predominate. This is done not inorder to atone for any past wrong doings, but as anact of service and/or as a way to accelerate spiri-tual growth. This very altruistic explanation thenhelps to counter the disrepute otherwise associatedwith the adversity implied in various types of hand-icaps. This is a very Western approach, which isclearly influenced by the Judeo-Christian concept

of the suffering savior, but it also has a quality ofthe Eastern bodhisattva ideal to it.

In defense of the doctrine of karma by some inthe East it has been pointed out that until the riseof more scientific thinking in the 18th centuryWestern Christianity had its own version of keep-ing the status quo through blaming the victim.Those defenders argue that for centuries it wastaught in the West that misfortune came upon peo-ple as the just punishment by God for individualand collective sin, especially original sin. In otherwords, these biblically based concepts were no lessa blaming of the victim than is the concept ofkarma. The karma defenders go on to say that itwas a biblical teaching that the secular ruler (kingor emperor) was given his authority to rule, or mis-rule, by the will of God. This too supported thestatus quo. In some ways, the major offender alongthese lines was conservative Protestantism. TheProtestant belief in predestination, for example,encouraged pride among the rich, powerful, andhealthy, while encouraging shame among the poor,powerless, and sick.

Whether the Eastern karma concept is betterthan the Western God concept or vice versa, thebottom line is that it has only been the more mod-ern one-life only view of Western secularism thathas been at the forefront of progressive social actionand human rights.

Finally, it must be remembered that “blamingthe victim” is not a criticism of rebirth, but ofkarmic rebirth. Rebirth by itself is independent ofany particular theodicy.

See also Caste system; Christianity and rein-carnation; Congenital retardation; Dehiscent orSeed-pod Principle; Individuality and rebirth;Karma and justice; Karma as natural law;Karmic diseases; Karma in the ancient and mod-ern west; Limitation lifetime; Mental retarda-tion; Moksha; Natal defects; Nightmare of east-ern philosophy; Nirvana and Parinirvana;Original sin, Christianity, and reincarnation;Original sin versus karma; Rebirth and cyclicaltime.

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna (1831– 1891). ThisRussian born self-proclaimed esotericist is most fa-mous as having been one of the main founders ofthe Theosophical Society in 1875. Blavatsky was atfirst opposed to the whole idea of reincarnation; infact, there is no mention of it in her first book, IsisUnveiled (1877). By the time she published her sec-ond book, The Secret Doctrine (1888), she had be-come a firm believer in multiple lives. Embarrassedby her earlier rejection of such lives, all later edi-tions of Isis had an appendix claiming that therewas no discrepancy between her earlier and later

43 Blavatsky

views. With this change of mind it can be said thatit was she, more than any other single individual,who encouraged late 19th century Europe andAmerica to take an interest in Eastern (Hindu andBuddhist) esotericism in general, and rebirth andkarma in particular.

Blavatsky’s most controversial claim was thatthere was a secret brotherhood of mystical Hi-malayan adapts, or Mahatmas (S: Great Souls), whohad decided that it was time to teach humanity thehighest level of spiritual truth and that they hadchosen her as their agent for this purpose. The Ma-hatmas’ teachings were said to have been passed onto Blavatsky through both mysteriously deliveredphysical letters and through psychic, or mental,transmissions. Eventually, one or more of her earlysupporters stated that at least some, if not all, ofthe letters were actually written by Blavatsky her-self.

Blavatsky’s conversion to a belief in reincarna-tion had a major impact on her earlier belief inSpiritualism. Not only did she accuse spiritualistmediums as being, for the most part, frauds, but sheclaimed that they were miserable instruments ofundeveloped souls of the lower world (Hades)whose practice caused some souls to be enticed back(reborn) into the material world when they wouldotherwise have been free of it. In appraising thiscondemnation it must not be overlooked thatBlavatsky was herself claiming to be a medium(channeler) of what she considered exclusivelyhigher “embodied” Mahatmas. It has, therefore,been proposed that her real objection to Spiritual-ism was its unwelcome competition.

There has been much debate on the possiblesources for Blavatsky’s teachings. Among the the-orized sources has been Ismaili (Muslim) gnosis;the occult organization called the Hermetic Broth-erhood of Luxor; the Kabbalah; and without ques-tion, Buddhism and Hinduism.

Blavatsky, whose contemporaries regarded her aseither a genuine charismatic teacher or as an ex-posed-convicted fraud, was a prolific author, andbesides her many books on reincarnation and re-lated subjects she published her own journal, Lu-cifer.

Rather paradoxically, the spiritualist Carl Au-gust Wickland later claimed that Blavatsky’s spiritrecanted her belief in reincarnation through themediumship of Wickland’s wife.

See also Arcane School; Ascended masters; As-tral body; Astral plane; Channeling; ChurchUniversal and Triumphant; Diakka; Esotericismversus Occultism; Etheric body; Higgins, God-frey; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Leek, Sybil; Lordsof Karma; Lost continents and reincarnation;Mental plane; New Testament and reincarna-

tion; Race and rebirth; Rosicrucians; Sinnett,Alfred Percy; Soul and spirit levels, Theosoph-ical; Steiner, Rudolf ; Theosophy; Vampires;Vegetarianism.

Bleed-over. This is believed to be a non-karmicsituation that happens in one life which stronglyaffects a future life. For example, if in a past lifeone died due to drowning this may bleed-over toan otherwise seemingly irrational fear of anythingrelated to deeper bodies of water.

See also Philias and phobias.

Bleed-through of lives. It is believed that a notuncommon situation is that current the life mem-ories bleed into the past life recall, which can makesuch recall less reliable or even seem inauthentic.

Blocked regression. This is said to describe thesituation where the age-regressed person can notgo back in time any farther than the beginning ofthe present life. There are several different explana-tions given for this. (1) The age-regressed person istruly blocked from experiencing his or her past lifebecause of a major traumatic experience in that life,which most commonly is related to the way theperson died. (2) The personal beliefs of the re-gressed person are consciously or subconsciouslyresistant to accept the idea of a past life. (3) The in-ability to experience a past life is because the per-son’s soul has not been previously embodied. Thiscould mean that it is a soul from a large pool ofsouls that have been waiting for their first chance atearthy embodiment or that it is a newly createdsoul that has just entered the reincarnation process.(4) The inability to experience a past life is becauseno one has ever been previously embodied and thesub-conscience of this particular person is not will-ing to create a past life fantasy to satisfy the hyp-notist.

See also Affect bridge; Birth trauma; Cum-mins, Geraldine; Deaths, violent and prema-ture; Fantasy versus past life regression; Fixednumber or variable number of souls; Memory,suppressed; Population increase issue.

Blood and the soul see Genesis; New Testamentsacrificial concept; Old Testament and the soul;Soul; Steiner, Rudolf.

Blue Sisters see Great White Brotherhood.

Bodhisattva. A spiritual being who either is on hisor her way to becoming a Buddha, or who has onefoot in nirvana and parinirvana and the otherfoot still in samsara (the world of birth and death).It is due to the latter case that the bodhisattva isable to assist others in attaining liberation. In fact,as a savior figure, the self-sacrificing bodhisattvas

Bleed-over 44

of Mahayana Buddhism and Vajrayana Bud-dhism, by their very willingness to continue deal-ing with the impure world of suffering, and theirfreely sharing their enormous amounts of surplusmerit, are believed to be able to negate much ofthe evil karma of a devotee and so insure a betterrebirth for that devotee. In this saving regard thebodhisattva functions in some of the same ways thatChrist does in Christianity.

In a number of New Age religions some of theteaching functions of the bodhisattva have beentransferred to various groups of ascended masters.

See also Amitabha Buddha; Bhaishajyaraja-guru; Chinese religion and reincarnation; Chris-tianity and reincarnation; Dalai Lama; Heav-ens, Buddhist; Kshitigarbha; Lords of Karma;Merit, transfer of; Rebirth and maturity; Re-turn and serve argument for reincarnation;Tulku.

Body as a mere garment of the soul. In somereincarnationist circles it is said that the physicalbody is to the soul no more than clothing is to abody. Just as a person periodically changes worn-out clothes so the soul changes worn-out bodies.The problem with this simile is that first we do notchange bodies on a daily basis like we do clothing;also, in the case of clothing we generally do notwear an outfit only once and discard it. Instead, wesave it to wear again. The body would be far morelike a garment of the soul if we could, with little ef-fort, periodically change in radical ways our phys-ical appearance, race, gender, nationality, etc.Moreover, a human being rarely holds the kind ofidentity-attachment to clothes that a soul wouldpresumably holds to it body. This, in fact, is rep-resented by the belief of some reincarnationists thatthe soul often remains near its deceased body be-cause it so identifies with it.

Despite the logical weakness of this clothes equalbody metaphor it retains strong appeal becausePsalm 102 mentions the phrase, although not inany reincarnational way.

See also Aquinas, Thomas; Bardo; Corinthi-ans, 1st and 2nd; Psalms; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical.

Body-brain (mind) dependency. All current sci-entific understanding of the human organism sug-gests that both consciousness and the identity ofan individual depend on memories, which in turnare dependent on the complex neurological struc-ture that is the physical brain. In fact, probes placedat various locations on the brain can stimulate suchfeelings as fear, guilt, loneliness, and disgust. Evensuch a fundamentally desirable emotions as love isclearly dependent on the relationship between thedrugs dopamine and serotonin in the brain. Also,

it has been discovered that drugs such as ketamine,lysergic acid diethylaminde (LSD), mescaline, andmethylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) can stimulatewhat at least appears to be both out-of-the-bodyexperiences and near-death-experiences and pastlife memories under certain conditions. MDA, inparticular, stimulates the feeling of age regressionso that long forgotten things are recaptured by thememory. The very fact that various psychoactivedrugs such as mescaline, and even such a commondrug as alcohol, can radically affect the human per-sonality strongly suggests a body-brain depend-ency. Perhaps more surprising is that even an over-dose of certain vitamins can interfere with theself-identity factor.

If these drug effects were not enough to demon-strate that the mind (human personality) is de-pendent upon the physical brain then certainly thefact that when the brain is damaged sufficientlymemories and even the whole identity of a personcan be lost proves such dependency. Moreover, thiscan happen irreversibly, within three minutes orless if the brain is deprived of oxygen.

In the case of damage to the rhinal cortex of bothhemispheres of the brain there is such a severe lossof memory (amnesia) that all memories since thedamage (retrograde amnesia) fail to be retained andthe person may do such things as read the samenewspaper over and over again. In short, the per-son exists only in the momentary present. Damageto the occipital lobes, instead, can result in proso-pagnosia which means that a person can not recog-nize familiar faces, including his own, in a mirror.

Another example of the mind’s dependency onthe physical body is seen when we understand thatthe question “Who am I?” is co-dependent on abodily question of “Where am I?” When proprio-ception, the mainly unconscious sense of whereone’s body parts are in space, is severely damagedthere is a loss of body-ego (proprioceptive self );and as a result, the person feels disembodied.

If, while alive, the sense of identity is so depend-ent on the proper functioning of the brain thiswould give strong support for concluding that thedeath of the brain ought to mean death of any in-dividuality that a soul might have. If someone ar-gues for an independent-of-the-brain soul that alsocarries memory or identity, then the counter to thishas been “why in that case would the brain needto store memories.” Such a duplication of func-tions would seem to be existentially uneconomi-cal. Also, science would suggest that even if therewere such a thing as post-mortem existing entity itwould be so totally different, if not alien, to nor-mal physical existence that we could never reallyknow about it until after death. This would cer-tainly account for the failure to prove genuine con-

45 Body-brain

tact between the living and the dead, despite theoften intense emotional bond that the living and,presumably, the dead still have for one another. Infact, if there was some sort of disembodied survivalthe entity would have no sense of space (bound-aries) to define itself as a separate self. It wouldprobably be a phenomenon that would not qualifyas a real person in the opinion of science.

On the other hand, if it is proposed that the realsoul has nothing to do with individual memories orany individuality, such as in the Hindu atman,then a soul independent of the body could be valid.However, then one person’s impersonal soul wouldbe absolutely no different from someone else’s im-personal soul. Again, this is the case with atman.There does not seem to be any popular objectionto every soul being identical in Hindu culture, butthe same can not be said of Western culture. Weconsider it a right to retain our individuality indeath as much as in life. It is for this reason thatsome Western reincarnationists have suggested thatthe brain is more like a radio or television receiv-ing station for the broadcastings of the soul. Just asthose broadcastings continue on, even if the radio-television breaks down, so the soul continues onafter the body-brain breaks down.

The body-brain (mind) dependency, while amajor problem for reincarnationists, is actually lessa problem for the Judeo-Christian-Islamic idea ofbodily resurrection of the person, “provided” it isof the pre-resurrection sleeping in the grave kind(psychopannychism). The reason is that such a “hi-bernating” soul is not required to retain any per-sonal identity before becoming body and brain res-urrected, when presumably God will somehow alsoresurrect the individual’s personal memories alongwith its new physical condition.

The materialist view that the brain alone can ac-count for full consciousness will probably not beprovable until a self-conscious machine can be cre-ated. However, even then there may be those thatwill argue that such consciousness, not being God-made, is soulless; therefore, it can not continue toexistence after death.

See also Age factor and rebirth; Alzheimer’sDisease; Anatman; Body-soul dualism; Char-vakas; Drugs; Ghost; Hypnotic age regression;Memories, reasons for loss of past life; Mind;Out-of-the-body experiences and near-death-experiences; Rebirth and science; Resurrection,bodily; Resurrection or reincarnation.

Body is the hell of the soul. This was a dualistexpression used by the Platonists to describe thebody. In the Cratylus of Plato there is also the men-tion of an Orphic view of the body as the prison(phroura) and the tomb of the soul, or in short

“Soma (the body) [is] sema (the tomb).” Derivedfrom this Platonic view are the similar versions ofbody-soul dualism found in some forms of Gnos-ticism.

See also Orphism; Phaedo.

Body-soul dualism. This is the concept that inevery way the physical body is ontologically (in itsvery being or essence) the opposite of the soul.Such dualism means that the body and soul havenothing in common, have no positive way of re-lating to one another or, in extreme cases, not evena negative way of relating to one another. Also, thisdualism usually implies that human suffering is a re-sult of the soul being trapped or held prisoner in thebody. As a result, the only hope a person has ofbeing free of suffering is for the soul to become lib-erate from the body. Body-soul dualism can be di-vided into two forms, the amoral and the moral.In the first, the body is not viewed as evil, but onlyas an insentient prison. In the second, the body isa major source of evil, usually due to it having beencreated by some evil force. Most forms of Gnosti-cism were based on body-soul dualism, and moreoften than not, of the moral variety. This is be-cause they viewed the material world as the cre-ation, not of the supreme God (Spirit), but of alower, either less wise or deliberately evil being ordemigod called the demiurge. This view, therefore,has lead to body-soul dualism also being calledmatter-spirit dualism.

Modern versions of body-soul dualism are foundin Jainism, Samkhya Yoga, and so some degree,Theravada Buddhism. All three of these may beconsidered forms of amoral body-soul dualismsince they do not accept a creator God of any kind,good or evil.

Christianity has sometimes been accused ofbeing a form of body-soul dualism because of itsoften puritanical or anti-body, especially anti-sex-ual, attitude. No matter how puritanical it may be,however, Christianity can “not” be considered aform of body-soul dualism because it acknowledgesonly a creator that is supremely good, and it teachesthat the souls of the dead will eventually be re-em-bodied in some form at the time of the resurrection.

See also Body is the hell of the soul; Body-brain (mind) dependency; Bogomils; Cathars;Paulicians; Phaedo; Plato; Resurrection, bod-ily; Resurrection or reincarnation.

Bogomils. This was originally a ninth centuryanti–Christian, pro-ascetic gnostic group found inBulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, and later Italy, whichtaught a body-soul dualism and held to a belief inmetempsychosis. The Bogomils seemed to havehad their origin in a blending of native ThracianOrphism, the Christianity of Paul of Tarsus, and

Body 46

influence from the Paulicians. The Bogomils werebrutally persecuted by both Eastern (Byzantine Orthodox) Church and the Western (RomanCatholic) Church. As a result, in the 16th centurythe remnants of the Bogomils allied themselveswith the Ottoman Turkish conquerors of theBalkans and eventually converted to Islam. It wasprobably from the Bogomils that the French andItalian Cathars arose. Because of the Bogomils,Pope Urban V (1362–70) referred to Bosnia as “thecesspool of the world’s heresy.”

An interesting sideline to the Bogomils is that,according to Slayers and their Vampires by BruceMcClelland (2006), the earliest vampire legend islinked to this Bulgarian sect, not to the Romani-ans. The legend appears to have had its origin inpart from the Orthodox Church’s condemnationof the Bogomils for their rejection of any belief inthe crucifixion of Christ and hence their lack of su-perstitious respect for the sign of the cross. The19th century association of the vampire with theRomanian prince, Vlad III, the Impaler (Dracula),is entirely due to Bram Stoker.

See also Demiurge; Greeks and reincarnation.

Bone, sacred see Sacred bone.

Bon-pa [po] religion. This is the non–Buddhist re-ligion practiced in Tibet. It is descended from asynchronism of an ancient pre–Buddhist shaman-ism and Tantric Buddhism. With the introductionof Buddhism into Tibet in the eighth century CE thepre–Bon-pa shamanic tradition absorbed a greatnumber of Buddhist traits, but Buddhism also ab-sorbed a number of traits from Bon-pa. One traitborrowed from Buddhism was the belief in rein-carnation. From the 13th century, with the assump-tion of secular power by the Buddhist hierarchy,up to more modern times, the Bon-pa followerswere periodically persecuted by that hierarchy.

See also Bardo; Belgi Dorje; Swastika.

Book of Life (Hebrew: Sefer ha’Hayim). Accord-ing to Jewish (Kabbalic) mysticism this is a book inheaven which has recorded every human thought,word, and deed. Sometimes it is claimed that thereactually are three such books: one for the righteousperson (tzaddik), one for the completely evil per-son (rasha), and one for the person who is neitherwholly righteous nor unrighteous (benoni). An-other universal record book called the Book ofMemory (Safer ha Zicharon), which may or may notbe the same as the Book of Life, is mentioned insome Kabbalic works. An Islamic version of such abook is the al-Kitab al-A‘mal (Book of Human Ac-tions) as mentioned in the Quran at Sura 69:19–27and possibly the al-Kitabu l-Mubin of Sura 6:59.Such books could be thought of as the equivalent

of the akashic record and, therefore, the real sourceof past life memories.

See also Chintra-Gupta; Kabbalah; Lords ofKarma.

Book of Remembrance see Akashic Record.

Book of the Dead (Egyptian). This is a collectionof ancient Egyptian tomb inscriptions that datefrom 2500 BCE to 200 CE. The actual Egyptian titleis the Reu nu per em hru (Chapters of the ComingForth by Day). Although there is no single extant pa-pyrus that is all inclusive, there were originallyabout 190 independent chapters to the final com-pilation. The purpose of these inscriptions was tosafely guide the soul to the underworld (tuat, duat)of the god Osiris, and to assist in convincing thejudges of the dead that the soul was of pure heartand free of sin. In other words, the book’s purposewas “sakhu,” which meant “to enable a person tobe become akh (ritually transfigured), and hencean akhu (ritually transfigured spirit).” If the spiri-tual heart (soul) of the deceased failed to prove wor-thy of eternal life, then that heart would be con-sumed by the terrifying underworld beast Amemait(the Devourer of hearts/Eater of the dead). Thisresulted in eternal extinction.

Despite concerted attempts to read the conceptof reincarnation into this text, such a reading canonly be done by taking certain passages in it out ofcontext and distorting their meaning.

See also Egypt; Hermetic philosophy; NewTestament and reincarnation; Proof text.

Book of the Dead (Tibetan) see Bardo.

Boomerang karma see Karmic boomerang ef-fect; Karma in the Bible?; Karma, organic or or-ganismic; Karma, symbolic.

Borderline state. This is the mental state in whichobjective consciousness merges into subjective con-sciousness. This state may be self-induced or in-duced by hypnosis. It is thought by some that thisstate is also characteristic of the consciousness pres-ent in the initial transitional stage from physicalembodiment to disembodiment of the soul. A re-turn to this consciousness under hypnosis is be-lieved to encourage past life recall.

See also Out-of-the-body experiences andnear-death-experiences (NDEs).

“Born again.” This phase from John 3:3–4 and 1stPeter 1:23 have been repeatedly used to argue thata “secret or not so secret” reincarnation doctrine isto be found in the New Testament. However, thisis only possible if the passages are read entirely in-dependent of their greater context. The Christian“born again” experience follows the Christian ex-

47 Born

perience of identifying with the dying of Christand is an experience very much of this life time(Romans 6:3, Galatians 2:19–20).

See also John, Gospel of ; John the Baptist;New Testament and reincarnation; Palingene-sis.

Boulder Fellowship Foundation. This Coloradobased group was initially inspired by the BrideyMurphy case. It produced the book Many Won-derful Things (Los Angeles, 1957) by Robert W.Huffman and Irene Specht.

Boullan, Joseph-Antoine (1824– 1893). This de-frocked French Catholic priest, and later magician(occultist), announced in 1875 that he was the rein-carnation of John the Baptist. Boullan also be-lieved that spiritual salvation could be attainedthrough sexual intercourse with archangels andother celestial beings (spectrophilia). It was claimedthat his eventual death was due to magical murderby some rival magicians.

See also Stygian sexuality; Work of Mercy.

Bowman, Carol (1950–). Bowman is an author ofseveral books on the past lives of children throughspontaneous recall and she maintains of a websitedealing with such past lives. While Bowman addsto the work of Ian Stevenson she does not back thiswork up with the same kind of detailed documen-tation that Stevenson tries to supply.

Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism. Whereas inHinduism Brahma is considered to be at the top ofthe heavenly hierarchy, in Buddhism this deity, ofwhich there are said to be three forms, is consideredto have only a mid-level heavenly status. The high-est of these three Brahmas is of particular signi-ficance as far as the coming into existence of theuniverse is concerned. Buddhist cosmology saysthat ultimately, rather than there being a beginningand end to the universe, there is a beginninglessand endless cycle of rebirths and re-deaths of uni-verses. At the beginning of a newly arising universe,the very first being to arise is a Maha-Brahma. Fol-lowing him the rest of the universe comes intobeing. This Maha-Brahma, failing to understandthat the universe is actually self creating, mistakenlyassumes that it is he that has caused of the rest ofthe universe to arise. This mistaken assumption hasbeen passed on to lesser beings, including humanbeings and this is why people believe in a supremecreator as found in religions like Hinduism, Chris-tianity, etc.

Unlike these theistic religions, Buddhism teachesthat Maha-Brahma, like all other beings that havemerely attained high rebirth because of goodkarma, especially the kind that results from the

deepest form of meditation, will still have to be re-born into the samsaric world of duhkha (dissatis-faction) at the end of the current universe. In fact,as soon as all the beneficial karma of that Brahmaand other high beings is used up they will againdiscover themselves reborn in a lesser state whereonce more they will have to strive for liberation andthe complete ending of the rebirth cycle. In thissense then, it is better to understand Brahma, lessas a being than as a temporary occupant of partic-ular heavenly office in which different occupantstake their place, serve their allotted time, and thenleave office.

Devotionally-wise this has meant that whileprayers for material blessings could be offered tothe samsaric trapped occupants in the Brahmaoffice, these occupants were incapable of supply-ing any spiritual blessings that would facilitate salvation from samsara. In order to attain suchspiritual blessing the devotee had to turn to theBuddhas and Bodhisattvas.

See also Heaven, Buddhist; Karma and freewill; Karma and the moral structure of the uni-verse.

Brahmacharya see Brahman; Ojas.

Brahman. In Hinduism this refers to the Univer-sal or World Soul (anima mundi), Over-soul, orGod. In the Upanishads and in Advaita VedantaBrahman is ultimately identical to the atman asParaatman or Parabrahma (Beyond Brahma). Theterm Brahman is derived literally from the Sanskritfor “prayer.” Brahman or Brahmin also refers to theHindu priestly caste (one who prays). This is es-pecially true when pluralized to Brahmans, or evenBrahmins. This term as spelled Brahmana(s) alsocan mean a priest, but is more often used to referto certain priestly literature composed shortly before the Upanishads. The term Brahmanism,therefore, refers to that stage in the developmentof Hinduism, in which both the Brahmanas andUpanishads were written.

Brahman the deity is said to be envisioned in ei-ther of two forms which are Brahman withoutqualities (Nirguna Brahman) and Brahman withqualities (Saguna Brahman). The first is the totallythe impersonal deity, while the second is wor-shipped as one of the three major high gods(Trimurti) or more personal Lords (Ishwara, Ish-vara) of Hinduism—Brahma, the Creator of theuniverse; Vishnu, the Sustainer of it; and Shiva,the Destroyer of it. Any one of the many sub-man-ifestations of these high gods, such as Krishna, isconsidered Saguna Brahman as well. The Trimurtiis also considered a metaphor for the round of ex-istence: birth (rebirth), life activities, and death(re-death).

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When compounded with another word such as inBrahma-charya, the Brahma part is to be translatedas “the highest” or as “the holy”; thus brahmacharyameans the highest or holiest conduct, which is tosay the ascetic or celibate life, so a brahmachari is anascetic or monk. That this, in fact, is the highestway of conducting one’s life is demonstrated by thebelief that this is the only way to escape from re-birth according to Jainism, most forms of Bud-dhism, and at least a large minority in Hinduism.

See also International Society for KrishnaConsciousness; Karma versus grace; Monism;Mula; Old Brahmin moonshine; Pantheism andpanentheism; Incarnation versus reincarnation;Vaikuntha.

Bridey Murphy case. This is perhaps the most wellknown past life regression story. In 1952 an ama-teur hypnotist, Morey Bernstein, tried past lifehypnotic age regression on a Mrs. Virginia Tighe(1923–1995), a twenty-three-year-old housewife(alias Mrs. Ruth Simmons). This resulted in themanifestation of an Irish woman who claimed hername was Bridey Murphy, and that she had livedbetween the years 1798– 1864.

The tape recordings of these hypnotic sessionswere published by Bernstein as the book The Searchfor Bridey Murphy (1956); and were made into apopular movie by the same name (1956).

The Chicago American newspaper investigationof the case claimed to debunk the Bridey Murphystory as a case of cryptomnesia rather than an au-thentic case of reincarnation. Since the newspaperwas later found to have had a partial ulterior mo-tivation for such a debunking claim, the questionof the authenticity of the Bridey Murphy story isstill being debated. Danelek, in his Mystery of Rein-carnation (2005), and Ducasse, in his A CriticalExamenation of the Belief in a Life After Death(1961), cover aspects of this debunking and offersome counters to it. On the other hand, in order todistance hypnosis from what was regarded as thebad publicity associated with past life regression, anattempt to analyze the material in Bernstein’s bookproduced A Scientific Report on “The Search forBridey Murphy” (1956).

The Bridey Murphy case led to a number ofother attempts at pre-natal regression. One of themore well known was by Robert Huffman, whohypnotized a group of people in his Boulder, Col-orado, home in 1954. A woman named IreneSpecht proved to be the best subject. The story ofthe group’s experiments and Irene’s channeling werepublished three years later (1957) as Many Wonder-ful Things, by Robert W. Huffman and Irene Spechtthrough the Boulder Fellowship Foundation, Inc.

See also Multiple personalities.

Bridges. In some cultures it is believed that thesouls of the dead at some point in the afterlife mustcross one or more bridges that separate the goodfrom evil doers. In the simplest Chinese versionthere are only two such bridges. The one for thegood is wide and easy to cross, while the one for thebad is very narrow and difficult to cross. In themore complex version there are six bridges—a goldone, a silver one, a jade one, a stone one, a smoothwooden one, and a rough wooden one. In this case,the bridge over which the souls pass will determineinto what circumstances they will be reborn. Onceacross these bridges all souls will partake of thedrink of forgetfulness and then be thrust into thestream of red which flows under the Bitter BambooBridge on to rebirth.

Some Western reincarnationists also refer to “Re-birth” bridges. There is the Bridge of Sighs, whichspans the gap between animals and humans, and theRainbow Bridge, which spans the gap between hu-mans and trans-human beings.

See also Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Hell,the Chinese.

Brotherhood of the White Temple. This Sedalia,Colorado, based brotherhood was founded in Den-ver in 1930 by M. Doreal, who claimed to havebeen in contact with the Great White Lodge or theElder Brothers of man. The Brotherhood, in itsemphasis on the “Original Gnostic Teachings ofJesus,” also goes under the name of the WhiteTemple Church. The Brotherhood’s core teachingsare from the Kabbalic tradition and regard man-kind as having in it a spark of the divine. The soulis said to reincarnate in order to change dark anddisorderly characteristics into light and orderlyones. The Brotherhood’s teachings also include abelief in the occult lost continents (Atlantis andLemuria), pyramidology, and a very allegoricalreading of the Bible. Doreal has written a numberof books on the subject of the Brotherhood’s teach-ings.

See also Ascended masters.

Bruno, Giordano (1548– 1600). Bruno, originallyan Italian Dominican priest, abandoned the orderin 1576 after being accused of heresy. A Renais-sance believer in the hermetic philosophy, Brunoadvocated a renewed study of the magical aspectsof this ancient philosophy. Also, Bruno not onlysupported openly the Copernican heliocentric cos-mology but went further in proposing that therewere other inhabited worlds beyond our own. Thiswas in keeping with his belief in the unity of alllife and all worlds through the concept of the worldsoul (anima mundi). Although he did not goes asfar as equating this unity with God, which wouldhave made him a pantheist; nonetheless, he in-

49 Bruno

curred the wrath of the Church. It did not help hiscase that in both his 1584 Spaccio de la bestia trion-fante (Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast) and his1592 testament before the Roman Inquisition, heacknowledged a belief in the metempsychosis ofthe world soul that while very different from themetempsychosis of individual souls was enough toconvict him of a so-called Pythagorean heresy.Bruno spent the last seven or eight years of his lifein an inquisitional prison, after which he wasburned alive at the stake.

For a detailed understanding of Bruno’s philos-ophy see Giordano Bruno edited by Hilary Gatti.Aldershot Hants, England: Ashgate, 2002.

Brunton, Paul (1898–1981). Brunton, the authorof Hermit in the Himalayas (1927), was one of thefirst Westerners to write about specific techniquesto access one’s past lives as he claimed EasternerYogis were able to do.

Buchan, Sir John (1875– 1940). Buchan, a Scottishauthor and former Governor General of Canada, inhis autobiography, Pilgrim’s Way (1940) refers towhat he believed to be his previous life.

Buddha. The word Buddha comes from the San-skrit buddhi, which means “Awakened One.” Thetitle generally refers to the north Indian ascetic Sid-dhartha Gautama (6th to 5th centuries BCE) afterhis enlightenment. Gautama’s teachings arose par-tially out of dissatisfaction with both anachronismsin the Vedic religion and with the arrogant pre-tensions of its priests, the Brahmans, who claimeda monopoly on spiritual truth.

Since the teachings attributed to Gautama werenot written down until over two centuries after hisdeath there has been considerable debate as to howmuch of what was written down can be unques-tionably traced back to him. However, the maincharacteristic of the written record, which morethan likely did originate with Gautama, is what iscalled the Middle Way or Middle Path. Theunique aspect of this middle designation is the de-nial of a soul (self ) or atman and the repercussionsit had on the concepts of rebirth and karma.

As Gautama’s teachings (Buddhism) became apopular religion a belief arose that there had beena whole series of other enlightened beings in theeons well before that of Gautama. Moreover, intime, to these past Buddhas were added still othermythological and even celestial (totally supernat-ural) Buddhas such as Amitabha Buddha andBhaishajyaraja-guru.

See also Abhijna; Anatman; Heroic ‘I’; Jainism;Jataka Tales; Lucifer; Rebirth in Buddhism;Shotoku Taishi; Sutras; Tulku; Women.

Buddha and rebirth see Buddhism, folk; Gand-harva; Interim period; Karma with minimal re-birth; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Buddha’s necklace. This is a name sometimesgiven to the string of 108 beads that make up aBuddhist meditation rosary. It is more commonlycalled a mala (garland). There are a number of in-terpretations for the number 108, but perhaps themost interesting is a Western esoteric one that statesthat this is the normal number of rebirths allottedto a human being for his or her spiritual evolution.If this number is exhausted prior to spiritual self-realization or enlightenment then devolution andan annihilating second death will follow.

See also Finite or infinite number of rebirths;Jataka Tales.

Buddhi (Enlightened or awakened mind) seeBuddha; Causal body; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical.

Buddhism. From the second to the sixth centuryCE the teachings of the Buddha (Buddhism) wereintroduced, along with the doctrine of rebirth, toChina, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. By theninth century, Buddhism had spread to Tibet, andfrom the fourteenth through to the sixteenth cen-tury to Mongolia, Manchuria and parts of Siberia.Since the late nineteenth century it has beenspreading into Europe and the Americas. Finally, inthe late twentieth century it began to spread intoparts of Africa.

Buddhism is divided into the three main schoolsof Theravada Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism,and Vajrayana Buddhism. The first of these is theoldest and most conservative, especially when itcomes to the working of karma. The second andthe third are more flexible in their views of karmabecause of the Bodhisattva teachings.

The issue of rebirth and karma in Buddhism isvery complex and also can be quite controversial asthe number of related entries listed below mightimply.

See also Abhijna; Age factor and rebirth;Ahimsa; Ajivikas; Alayavijnana; Amitabha Buddha; Amrita; Anatman; Animals and re-birth, non–Western view; Annihilationism,Buddhist view; Arguments that challenge re-birth on a logical basis; Ashoka, King; Asuras;Atheism; Aum Shinrikyo; Avalokiteshvara;Avichi; Bardo; Belgi Dorje; Besant, Annie;Bhaishajyaraja-guru; Bhava; Bhavachakra; Bha-vanga; Blaming the victim vs. illusion of inno-cence; Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna; Body-souldualism; Bon-pa [po] religion; Brahman;Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism; Buddha’snecklace; Buddhism, esoteric; Buddhism, folk;

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Buddhist stages of liberation; Cao Dai; Chakras;Chen-Dao; Chinese religion and reincarnation;Chitta; Christianity and reincarnation; ChurchUniversal and Triumphant; Dalai Lama; Deter-minism; Devachan; Deva-loka; Dualism; Emma-o; Empire of Jade; Esotericism versus Occultism;Eternalism; Finite or infinite number of re-births; Gandharva; Gender issue of the soul;Heavens, Buddhist; Heaven, Hell, and BuddhistNo-Self; Hell; Hell, the Chinese; Heroic ‘I’; Ho-toke; Hungry ghosts; Ichantika; Incarnation ver-sus reincarnation; Individuality and rebirth; In-donesia; Interim period; Jataka Tales; Jainism;Jigoku; Jiva; Kama-dhatu; Kama-rupa; Karma;Karma and God; Karma and justice; Karma andrebirth; Karma and the moral structure of theuniverse; Karma, classifications of; Karma ver-sus grace; Karma with minimal rebirth; Kar-mic diseases; Karmic seeds; Kshitigarbha; Lead-beater, Charles Webster; Lenz, Frederick;Limbo; Lords of Karma; Mahayana Buddhistrebirth texts; Malaysia; Mana; Manas; Mani-chaeism; Mara; Metempsychosis; Middle Wayor Middle Path; Milinda Panha; Mind; Moksha,Mukta or Mukti; Monism; Mula; Naraka or Ni-raya; Nine doors; Nirvana and Parinirvana;Ouroboros; Panchen Lama; Personalists; Peta-vatthu; Pilgrimage; Plants; Population increaseissue; Pratitya-samutpada; Prayers for the dead;Predestination; Pretas; Privilege of a humanbirth; Psychophysical aggregates; Purvani-vasanusmrti; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism; Questions of King Milinda; Rebirth orrebecoming; Rebirth and cyclical time; Rebirthand logical symmetry; Rebirth and maturity;Rebirth and religious tolerance; Rebirth andsuicide; Rebirth, East and West; Rebirth factor;Rebirth in Buddhism; Rebirth, instantaneous;Rebirth in Zen Buddhism; Rebirth, non-back-sliding; Rebirth, proof of (Western Buddhist);Rebirth, qualifications for; Reincarnation, ori-gins of; Return and serve argument for reincar-nation; Russia, reincarnation in; Samsara;Schopenhauer, Arthur; Shinto; Shotoku Taishi;Shunya; Sinnett, Alfred Percy; Skandha; Rebirthfactor; Soul mates; Souls, origin of the; Sutras;Swastika; Tantrism; Daoism; Theodicy; Theos-ophy; Three refuges and five Buddhist lay pre-cepts; Tulku; Vedic Religion; Vegetarianism; Vi-jnanavada (Consciousness only) School;Vimanavatthu; Women; Yama.

Buddhism and Rebirth see Rebirth in Bud-dhism.

Buddhism, esoteric. One must be very carefulwith this term since it can have two very differentmeanings. In modern scholarly works on Bud-

dhism it refers to Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism.In the late 19th and early 20th century it more oftenreferred to the Hindu-Buddhist synthesis of Theos-ophy, as evidenced by the book Esoteric Buddhism(1973) by the theosophist A.P. Sinnett.

See also Tantrism.

Buddhism, folk. This is the form of Buddhismthat is believed in and practiced by almost the en-tire Buddhist world. Folk Buddhism ignores mostof the specific philosophical technicalities of or-thodox Buddhism. For example, whereas orthodoxBuddhism subscribes to the anatman (no soul)doctrine, it would be very difficult to distinguish theFolk Buddhist view of rebirth from the soul-belief(atman) of Hinduism or Jainism.

One important aspect of folk Buddhism to noteis that, as in Hinduism and Jainism, karma is notregarded as the sole factor in anyone’s personal destiny; quite separate from it there is also theinfluence of the benevolent and malevolent spirits,the influence of the stars (astrology), and even thepossibility of witchcraft by hostile neighbors.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Avichi; Gen-der issue of the soul; Rebirth in Buddhism; Re-birth in the West; Rebirth in Zen Buddhism.

Buddhist stages of liberation. In the early Bud-dhist canon there are described four stages on theway to liberation from rebirth. In each stage onemust eliminate, or at least weaken, a certain num-ber of the ten fetters that keep a being trapped insamsara.

The person who has attained one or more ofthese four stages is called in Sanskrit an arya-pudgala or in Pali an ariya-puggala (noble person).The first stage of liberation is that of a stream en-terer (shrotapanna/sotapanna) and designates anyman or woman, whether lay person or cleric, whohas destroyed the first three fetters (S/P: Samyo-jana) a belief in a real self (satkaya-dristi/sakka-ya-dithi); doubt (vichikitsa/vicikicha) about theBuddhist teaching (dharma/dhamma); and any at-tachment to rites and rituals (shilavrata-paramar-sha). Each of these fetters is actually a belief, prac-tice, or mainstay of Brahmanic or Vedic religion,a major competitor of Early Buddhism. In the caseof the first fetter the belief in a real self was the be-lief in atman and Brahman. In the second case,one was expected to have at least an initial respectfor, if not absolute confidence in, the Buddha andhis teachings as being in no way inferior to those ofthe Brahmanic priests. As for the third fetter, at-tachment to rites and rituals, this meant abandon-ing any trust in the blood sacrificial rites and ritu-als of the Brahmanic priests.

Early Buddhism taught that anyone who at-tained to this stream enterer stage was not only

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guaranteed never again to be reborn into a less thanhuman rebirth, but, also was guaranteed that fullliberation would be attained within a maximum ofseven lifetimes. The irreversible power tradition-ally assigned to this first stage can be appreciated bythe fact that one of the individuals who is said tohave attained it is also said to have later died an al-coholic. [Tipitaka. Suttapitaka. Sanyuttanikaya(SN). V, 323–324].

The second stage of liberation is called that ofthe once returnee (sakrdagamin/sakadagami), andrefers to one who has greatly weakened the nexttwo fetters of sensuality (kama or raga) and hatred(dvesa/dosa) or ill-will (vyapada). This is mainly astage for a monk or a nun, and it is believed, thatfrom this practitioner will be reborn into this suf-fering world only one more time before attainingliberation.

The third staged is that of a never returnee(anagamin), which is the practitioner who has com-pletely destroyed the above first five fetters, and sowill attain liberation in a formless or heavenlyworld, rather than in this human world.

The last stage is that of a fully liberated saint(Arhat), which is the practitioner who has also de-stroyed the last five fetters, which are those of crav-ing for material existence (rupa-dhatu); craving forimmaterial (higher spiritual) existence (arupa-dhatu); pride or conceit of I (asmi-mana); restless-ness (uddhatya/uddhacha); and ignorance (avidya/avijja). As a result he or she will never again expe-rience the world of rebirth (punarbhava/punab-hava) and re-death (S: punarmrtyu), but will at-tain nirvana (liberation) in this very life.

See also Bhavachakra; Mana; Mulas; Rebirthin Buddhism; Return and serve argument forreincarnation.

Butterfly. A number of cultures have associatedthe butterfly with the souls of the dead. The Greekword psyche means both soul and butterfly. InChina, Japan, and Java the butterfly sometimesmay carry the soul of a deceased or even of a sleep-ing person. The latter instant is the reason oneshould never kill a butterfly since it would meanthat the body would lose its soul and die. The but-terfly may also be considered the soul of an oldfriend visiting someone or trying to deliver a mes-sage to the living. Among the Aztecs the butterflyas the symbol of the soul was called Itzpapalotl (Ob-sidian Butterfly).

The butterfly in Christianity usually symbolizesresurrection instead of rebirth, especially when de-picted iconographically on the finger of Jesus as ababy.

Cabales or Caballi. This is the name given to theastral bodies of those who have died by violence

(external or self-inflicted). They are said by some towander the earth until their originally destined timeof life has been reached.

See also Astral body.

Cabbalah (Cabala) see Kabbalah.

Cancer (the Crab). This is the fourth sign of thezodiac and it is associated with one of the two ce-lestial gates.

Candia Debate. This was an important debate be-tween Jewish scholars on the Kabbalic doctrine ofmetempsychosis and transmigration held in thecity of Candia on the island of Crete in 1460. Thiscity was probably chosen because it was on theroute from Europe to the Holy Land.

See also Kabbalah.

Cannibalistic reincarnation. Among some tribalpeople it is believed that eating certain body partsof a deceased person will allow the soul of the de-ceased to reincarnate through the eater. For exam-ple, among the South American Ache (Guayaki) peo-ple, if a woman eats the penis of the deceased per-son the ove (soul) of that person will reincarnate asthe woman’s child. The whole intent of this ritual-ized cannibalism is to ensure that the woman givesbirth to a boy, but sometimes a girl is born instead.This example might be considered a specific form ofmortuary or burial cannibalism which is an attemptto preserve the valuable spiritual essence of peoplefrom being lost. In most cases, burial cannibalisminvolves eating only the deceased within one’s ownfamily or tribe (endo-cannibalism), rather thanfrom outside of one’s own group (exo-cannibal-ism). In ancient times, and even more recently, can-nibalistic reincarnation was probably more com-mon than present day documentation suggests.

See also American Indians; Beans; Christianmissionary influence and reincarnation; Re-birth, consanguineous.

Cannon, Alexander (1896– 1963). This Englishpsychiatrist, and later occultist, regressed hypnot-ically some 1400 volunteers according to his worksThe Power of Karma in Relation to Destiny, Rider,London (1936) and The Power Within, E.P. Dut-ton, New York (1953), he collected 500 cases ofspontaneous past life recalls.

See also Garden of Waiting.

Cao Dai. This religion was established in Vietnamin1926. It worships Tien-ong, His Excellency theGrandfather Immortal, also called the ThirdAmnesty of God. Cao Dai is a syncretism of Bud-dhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, andthe Spiritism of Allan Kardec; as such it includesa belief in rebirth and karma.

Butterfly 52

Capricorn (the Goat horn). This is the tenth signof the zodiac and is associated with one of the twocelestial gates.

See also Astrology and rebirth.

Carpocrates. This gnostic Christian sect of the2nd–3rd century CE taught that the soul, whichwas an incorruptible element of life, was trapped ina bodily form created by an evil demiurge. Sincethis demiurge had also created all the moral laws inorder to keep souls captive, the only way to gainliberation was to defy these laws by experiencingeverything that a body could experience. After thisthe soul would be released from the misery of fur-ther rebirths and be able to return to the true God.To accelerate the process the individual was ex-pected to live as hedonistically as possible. Accord-ing to the critics of the Carpocrates this includedorgiastic activities and spousal swapping. This he-donic aspect distinguished the Carpocrates frommost other dualist sects, which were usually morepuritanical and ascetic. The fact that the Car-pocrates related their belief in reincarnation to theirantinomian hedonism only further served to dis-credit that belief among the far more conservativeorthodox Christians.

Also, according to the Christian father Tertullianit seems that the Carpocrates were among the first touse the biblical passages Matthew 11:13–14; 17:12–13;Mark 9:13; and Luke 1:17 in which John the Bap-tist is said to have the spirit of Elijah as proof thatthe New Testament acknowledged reincarnation.

See also Antinomianism; Dualism; Gnosti-cism; Irenaeus, New Testament; New Testamentand reincarnation.

Cartomancy (divination by cards) see PhoenixCards; Tarot.

Caste system. This is the Indian system of rigidsocial ranking of people according to their birth.

Most Westerners have never seen the subhumanconditions in which some lower castes, and worse,the untouchables, are forced to live. Not only do theoften very well off highest castes feel no responsi-bility to improve the lives of those beneath them,but look down contemptuously on the lower castes,and oppress them. They justify this by the claimthat lower caste birth is a result of sinful karma,and so they deserve what they get. In other words,reincarnation not only justifies the economic andpolitical status quo, it encourages a process ofkarmicaly blaming the victim.

See also Ambedkar, Bhim Rao; Karma; Karmaand faith; Karma and justice; Noble lie; Rebirthand cyclical time; Return and serve argument forreincarnation; Roy, Raja Ram Mohan; Weber,Max; Women.

Cathars or Cathari (Greek: Pure). This was thename applied to a 12th and 13th century anti–Catholic, pro-ascetic, gnostic Christian group inNorthern Italy, Southern France, and parts of Ger-many that almost certainly was an offshoot of theBogomils.

The Cathars actually called themselves EcclesiaDei (Church of God), and while acknowledgingJesus Christ as a divinely sent angel, they rejectedthe Old Testament as being the record of an infe-rior, even evil, deity or demiurge. They also re-jected the Catholic sacraments of baptism, mar-riage, and Holy Communion. The main reason forthese rejections was that the Cathars believedstrongly in a body-soul dualism, which regardedmarriage and sexual reproduction as a further trap-ping of souls into bodies.

Cathar society was divided into the ordinary be-liever and the celibate clergy or “Pure Ones”; hencethe name given to them by outsiders. It was heldthat those members who sincerely took and kepttheir ascetic vow, the consolamentum, could gainliberation from the misery of metempsychosis.This vow was of such importance to the Catharsthat it was thought better to choose deliberate sui-cide (endure) than to break it. This act of takingone’s own life might be done by starving oneself todeath or opening a vein and bleeding to death whilelying in a hot bath. The Cathars did not regardsuch suicide as cowardly, because they believed thatby choosing their own time of death they weresnatching this choice away from Satan, the evil ma-terial creator.

The threat of the Cathars to the Church ofRome can be measured by the fact that the firstknown mention of the Cathars is in 1140, yet by1179, during the third Lateran Council, the Churchwas already condemning the Cathars as hereticsand in 1209 Pope Innocent III called for a crusadeagainst them. This crusade came to be called the Al-bigensian crusade because the main Cathar centerwas in and around the city of Albi in Languedoc,southern France.

The anti–Cathar crusade was just the start of theattempt to exterminate these people and it was in order to finish their extermination that theCatholic Inquisition was originally established.This was initiated by Pope Lucius III in 1184 whenhe ordered bishops to make inquisition for heresyin their diocese and hand over to the secular au-thorities for punishment those who did not recant.This order was strengthen in1232 by Pope Greg-ory IX who appointed full-time inquisitors, at firstmainly from the Dominican (the domini canes:hounds of the Lord), but then from the Franciscanorders.

Finally, in 1252, Pope Innocent IV authorized

53 Cathars

the use of torture against the most recalcitrant of theheretics.

The last Cathar to be burnt in Languedoc was aslate as 1330, some 100 years after the start of thepersecution.

See also Church Council of 553; Fortune,Dion; Guirdham, Arthur; Kabbalah; Rebirthand suicide; Rebirth, group; Resurrection, bod-ily; Soul groups.

Cats. Besides the general reputation of cats as crea-tures with easy access to the occult world, one kab-balic legend says that the soul of a person who mis-uses the Divine Name is reborn into the body of acat.

Causal body. In Theosophy, along with the astralbody, etheric body, and mental body surround-ing the soul sheath-like is the causal body. Themain purpose of this body is to store or carry thepast life karma of an individual. Also, in someTheosophical systems the causal body is what theego (individuality) takes on once it no longer in-habits the mental body. Still others associate thisbody with the spiritual soul or buddhi. This is notto say that buddhi alone is the causal body, but it be-comes that in alliance with the manas (mind). Thecausal body is, therefore, considered to be what ismost commonly called the reincarnating soul. Thecausal body is also sometimes identified with theakashic record. In Sanskrit this causal body iscalled the karana sharira or linga sharia.

See also Kosha; Mental plane; Soul and spiritlevels, Theosophical.

Cave. In many ancient cultures a cave representedeither the entrance to the underworld, the under-world itself, or the tomb. Among some gnosticgroups the cave also represented the womb intowhich the soul was reborn. While it is mere coin-cidence that tomb and womb rhyme in English,even without such rhyme, the ancient Greeks usedthe cave metaphor in a tomb to womb manner todescribe reincarnation.

See also Gnosticism; Orphism.

Cayce, Edgar (1877– 1945). Born on a farm nearHopkinsville, Kentucky, as a youth Cayce was knownto believe that he could speak to angels and receivevisions of his deceased grandfather. At about 20years old he is said to have experienced a gradualparalysis of his vocal center which no doctor couldexplain, much less cure. This led Cayce to enter aself-induced trance in which he discovered a cure.In 1901 Cayce began to give thousands of what werethought to be clairvoyant medical diagnoses whilein a similar self-induced trance state and as a resulthe became a specialist in what is called trance ther-apy. Then, starting in 1923, these diagnoses were

expanded to include akashic record past life read-ings, of which there were some 2,500 by his death.Through some of these readings he came to believethat he himself had lived many lives before. Amongthese was a celestial life prior to Adam and Eve, alife on the lost continent of Atlantis, a priest inEgypt of the 11th millennium BCE, a Trojan soldier,a life as a disciple of Jesus, etc. According to Cayceit was not the apostle Luke (Lucus) who wrote theActs of the Apostles; it was he (Cayce) as Lucius,the Bishop of Laodicea who wrote it.

Cayce, along with some new age groups, wentso far as to propose that Jesus himself had severalreincarnations prior to being the figure mentionedin the New Testament. The first of these was as thepre-embodied first expression of Divine Mind (theLogos) named Amilius. This being lived on the lostcontinent of Atlantis and was responsible for creat-ing the present human physical form as a replace-ment for the ape-like human form in which theearliest fallen intelligent souls had entangled them-selves. The second reincarnation of the historicalJesus to be was as Adam. This belief probably comesfrom an extremely liberal reading of those New Testament letters of Paul that connect the birth of sin through the old Adam with the death of sin through the New Adam (Christ), as in 1stCorinthians 15:22, 45.

According to Cayce, the biblical Enoch, the OldTestament patriarch who journeyed to heaven toreceive mysteries, was also a previous embodimentof Jesus. The fact that, according to Genesis 5:3–22, the lives of Adam and Enoch overlapped byhalf a century seems to have been overlooked byCayce. Then there followed incarnations as Hermes(the Egyptian Thoth), who was said to be the ar-chitect of the Great Pyramid, as well as the sagewho began the Hermetic philosophy tradition;Melchizedek, the mystical high priest and king of Salem (ancient Jerusalem); Joseph, son of Jacob(Israel); Joshua, the leader of Hebrews into thePromised Land; Asaph, who was the music direc-tor and seer who served under King David andKing Solomon; Jeshua, who was the high priestwho helped organize the return from exile and therebuilding of the temple, according to the biblicalbooks of Ezra and Nehemiah, and who Cayce be-lieved to have compiled the books of the Old Tes-tament; and the last of the pre–Jesus embodimentswas Zend, the man who Cayce claimed to havecompiled and translated the books of the Zoroas-trians. This last name was presumably taken fromthe name of the holy scripture of Zoroastrianism,which is the Zend Avesta. Cayce further believedthat there will be one more reincarnation of theLogos-Jesus who will usher the world into in thekingdom of heaven on Earth.

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Although Cayce continued to regard himself asa full Christian, it was not only his acceptance ofreincarnation, but especially concepts such as Jesushaving had former lives that allowed Cayce’s ideasto be thoroughly criticized by orthodox Christiangroups. Lynn Elwell Sparrow, however, in her EdgarCayce and the Born Again Christian attempts to de-fend Cayce’s Christian orthodoxy. Certainly, somedegree of Christian orthodoxy ought to acknowl-edged Cayce, if for no other reason than he ac-cepted uncritically the Old Testament mythologyof the Garden of Eden, Babel, and the Flood suf-ficiently to claim that the children of Adam andNoah have even reincarnated as more recent per-sons.

Critics of Cayce’s teachings were certainly notconfined to Christian groups. Non-Christian skep-tics readily criticized the fact that Cayce’s past lifereadings included far too many lives of high statusto be statistically valid. This, of course, is in con-trast to more recent past life readings which in-volved a far greater number of low status indi-viduals in every society in every historical period.There has also been some questioning why Cayce’spast life readings are so overwhelmingly Western.Very few of these readings include past lives in Sub-Sahara Africa, China, Russia, or Latin America.

In response to this criticism it has been pointedout that few of his clients had ancestral roots inthese areas; and with the exceptions of Atlantis andancient Egypt, the past life ethnicity of his clientstended to closely match that of their present life.

Cayce was further criticized as sometimes assign-ing the same past life to more than one living in-dividual. It has also been noticed that Cayce’s Es-sene material seems to have diverted little from theviews of the 1911 Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christby Levi H. Dowling and the work by H. SpencerLewis, The Mystical Life of Jesus (1926).

Cayce’s conviction that human souls were re-born on the non-physical planes of all the otherplanets in between earthly rebirths was thought toconsiderably stretch his credibility, and some of hismany future predictions, such as the 1998 destruc-tion of California and New York, which clearlyproved to be wrong, did not help matters.

Despite these questionable issues, Cayce’s writ-ings probably have done more to promote past lifereadings and later past life therapy among the gen-eral population than any other author’s writingsand he continues to have many faithful followers.

Cayce’s work is promoted by the Association forResearch and Enlightenment which was found in1931 and is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Recently there has been the claim that Cayce hasbeen reborn as a certain David Wilcock.

See also Akashic Record; Astrology and re-

birth; Egypt; Essenes; Fellowship of the InnerLight; Hermes; Mayans; Melchizedek; Rosicru-cians; Social status in past lives; Swarm of beestheory.

Celestial gates. These are two mythical heavenlygates, one of which is in the constellation of Can-cer, and the other in Capricorn. The earliest refer-ence to these two gates comes from Homer’s Odyssey(book 13) in which Cancer is considered the gatethrough which men are born, and Capricorn thegate through which the gods are born. By the timeof the philosopher Porphyry (234–305 CE), in a re-vised view of the gates, it was through Cancer thatthe souls passed to rest in a peaceful state andthrough Capricorn that the souls returned to earthto be reborn. The first, and most obvious, signi-ficance to these signs is that their arrival in the eve-ning sky mark the summer and winter solstices.Secondly, the concept of these as gates of death andbirth came from the belief that the planet Saturn,the most distant of the visible planets in pre-tele-scopic astronomy, was the ruler over Capricorn;while the moon, the closest to the earth, ruled overCancer. Thirdly, the Cancer-Capricorn axis wasused to determine the antiscion of a planet in astrology. In other words, as far as the ancients were concerned, these two planets and their signsmarked the boundaries of time; and this was themain reason for their religious importance, espe-cially for the followers of Mithraism, and, later,Christianity. December 22nd (the winter solstice)was regarded as the birthday of the Sun God Mithraand, until the Gregorian calendar reform movedthis to the 25th of December, it was also the orig-inal date chosen for the birth of Christ.

A more modern, modified version of the celestialgate concept is mentioned in Jocelyn’s Citizens of theCosmos (1981), where it is stated that it is only dur-ing the three months ruled by the Archangel of themoon, Gabriel, that is from the end of December tothe beginning of Spring, that the souls can re-enterthe sphere of the earth to eventually be reborn.

There are two problems with these traditionalastrologically related associations with reincarna-tion. First, because of the advance of the signs east-ward the winter and summer solstices no longer as-tronomically occur under Capricorn or Cancer, butunder Sagittarius and Gemini. Second, it must beunderstood that both the Capricorn and Cancerconstellations are only visible in the northern hemi-sphere, so it would be unknown as to what thesouls in the southern hemisphere did at death andrebirth. Perhaps it is just assumed that they simplyreversed the process, exiting December–February(southern summer) and returning in June–August(southern winter).

55 Celestial

See also Arcturus; Astrology and rebirth;Gnosticism; Interim period; Planetary descentand ascent of the soul; Planets, other; Pluto, thePlane; Zodiac.

Celestine Prophecy (1992). This best-selling bookwas said to have been channeled through JamesRedfield. Although it avoids words like karma andreincarnation, it apparently accepts both beliefs.The book mentions soul groups which are beingswho, in the afterlife, offer support to others in ob-taining a rebirth vision or what those souls wish toaccomplish in their next life.

Celibacy and Reincarnation see Chinese reli-gion and reincarnation; Esoteric Fraternity; FiatLux; Jainism; Manichaeism; Ojas; Orphism;Priscillian.

Celts see Druids.

Chakras (wheels). In kundalini (Hindu) yoga thereare believed to be seven main psychic centers in the human body, the constructive and systematic cultivation of which are believed to lead to a bet-ter reincarnation or even enlightenment. This isachieved by having a psychic or spiritually invigor-ating energy called kundalini (serpent energy) flowupwards through these chakras. While none of thesecenters or chakras corresponds literally to any phys-ical organ, attempts have been made to symbolicallyassociate the chakras with such organs. The mostcommonly accepted locations for these are as fol-lows. The first, or the lowest, chakra is believed tobe located near the coccyx or anus; the second islocated at either the level of the genitals or, in somecase, perhaps because of prudery, it is located at thespleen; the third is at the navel (stomach or solarplexus) level; the fourth is at the heart level; thefifth is at the throat (larynx) level; and the sixth isjust above the brow, an area which is sometimescalled the psychic or third eye and is associatedwith the pineal gland. It may be coincidental, butit was the pineal gland that the Western philosopherRene Descartes (1596– 1650) thought was the lo-cation of the soul.

The seventh, or highest, of these psychic centersis located at or just above the crown of the skull, andis technically not considered a chakra. This is be-cause it is less a staging center on the journey tospiritual liberation or enlightenment than it is thepoint of liberation or enlightenment itself. None-theless, if a chakra is only thought of as a level ofspiritual attainment then the seventh level couldbe considered a chakra. Despite the separation be-tween the crown chakra and the pituitary gland,which is just in the back center of the brain, thetwo are sometimes thought to be associated withone another.

Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism also acknowledgesa set of four or five chakras. These are the same asthe above, only with the two lowest generally ig-nored or deleted.

The relationship between the chakras and rebirthcan be complex, but in general it is thought thatupon death if the adept can release the soul or re-birth factor through the crown chakra then this willlead to the end of rebirth. In this sense there is asimilarity to the nine doors in Vajrayana Bud-dhism.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Astrologyand rebirth; Kabbalah; Planetary descent andascent of the soul; Nirvikalpa Samadhi; Ojas.

Chalice of Oblivion (Latin: Oblivionis Poculum)see Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Lethe.

Chan-ch’a sha-o yeh-pao ching, WG (Book of Di-vining the Requital of Good and Evil Actions). Thisis a Chinese Buddhist apocrypha that explains how,through spinning a set of wooden tops, based on thereligious euphemism “turning the wheel of theDharma,” one can learn about one’s previous life,and even whether the immediate future life is goingto be fortunate or unfortunate.

See also Mahayana Buddhist rebirth texts.

Channeling. This is the process whereby deceasedpersons’ spirits, celestial beings (angels, God, as-cended masters), extraterrestrial beings, or evenintelligent animals (porpoises, whales) are said tocommunicate to mankind important informationby a telepathic process or through the temporarily“invitational” possession of a living person’s body,mind, or voice.

Channelers can be grouped into two basic cate-gories, conscious channelers and trance channelers.In consciousness channeling, the channeler willleave aside his or her judgmental mind to let thechanneled entity communicate its message, but thechanneler’s normal voice and body language willat most undergo only slight modification. In trancechanneling, the personality, voice, and body lan-guage of the channeler appears more or less to betemporarily displaced by the channeled entity.

Channeling is really as old as religion itself, es-pecially of the trance kind under the name ofshamanism; in classical times channeling was prac-ticed under the title of theurgy (Greek, divine ac-tion). After being suppressed by the Christianchurches for over a thousand years, channeling wasrevived in the last part of the 19th and early 20thcentury as the spiritualist movement. Most recentlychanneling, as an independent movement, arose inthe 1960s and has tended to disassociate itself fromall earlier aspects of the movement. Part of this dis-association is reflected by the fact that the most re-

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cent channeling has usually replaced the earlier spir-its of the deceased or even angels, with those of in-terplanetary minds. As in the older theurgical sense,however, most of the latest channelers seek the helponly of benevolent spiritual sources, which distin-guishes them from occult or black magic practi-tioners. An example of the latter is the case of Aleis-ter Crowley who is said to have channeled a moreor less amoral Egyptian spirit name Aiwass, whoin 1904 dictated the text Liber Al vel Legis (The Bookof the Law) through Crowley.

If channeling is viewed as a continuation of theearlier 19th century Spiritualist movement then thelarge number of extraterrestrial communications inthis late 20th century movement may be under-stood as just keeping up with the times in that it wasnot until the more recent century that people beganto seriously accept the possibility intelligent extra-terrestrial life.

According to Robin Western in 1988, at the timeof the publication of his Channelers: a New Age Di-rectory, there were at least 235 individuals or or-ganization doing channeling; however, by the 1990schanneling seemed to have lost some of its popu-larity.

Some of the prominent channeled entities thathave supported the idea of reincarnation are AhtunRe; Equinox; Benjamin Franklin (2); Hilarion;Lazaris; Mafu; Michael (2); Phylos the Tibetan;Ra; Ramtha; Satya; Seth; and Torah. One factorthat has made the subject of channeling very con-fusing is that some of the above channelers haveborrowed or stolen other channeler’s entities and/orthose entities periodically decide to change chan-nelers.

It has been argued that since a great number ofthe entities being channeled at this time agree on thereality of rebirth and, for the most part, karma, thisagreement should be added to any other validat-ing evidence for rebirth. The first problem withthis argument is that the authenticity of the chan-neled entities would need to be unquestionably es-tablished before their views on rebirth would bevalid. The second problem is that there has beensome channeling in which the beings deny the truthof rebirth and karma.

It can be no surprise that most orthodox reli-gions regard channeling, at best, as examples of amultiple personality or fraud; and at worst someform of sciomancy or possession.

See also Aetherius Society; Agasha Temple ofWisdom; Aquarian Gospel; Automatic writing;Babbitt, Elwood; Church Universal and Tri-umphant; Dissociative Disorder; Egypt; Eso-tericism versus Occultism; Grace-Loehr lifereadings; Maclaine, Shirley; Multiple personal-ities; Oahspe; Ouija Board; Phantasmata; Plan-

ets, other; Ryerson, Kevin; Sutphen, Richard(Dick); UFOism; Unarius Academy of Science;Urantia Book; Wilcock, David.

Chari, Dr. C.T.K. (1909–1993). Chari was a well-known Indian parapsychologist who has written a number of significant works critical of reincar-nation. Among these are Regression Beyond Birth(1956) in which he offers a critical estimate of hyp-notic regression to uncover past lives; Paramnesiaand Reincarnation (1962); Paranormal Cognition,Survival and Reincarnation (1962); and his articlesin the Signet Handbook of Parapsycholog y (1978).In these publications Chari prefers to explain datainterpreted as proof of reincarnation as, at best, dueto various extrasensory perceptions of living minds.

Charvakas (S. Followers of the philosopher Char-vaka). This is the collective name for the earlyschools of Indian materialists (S: Lokayatas). Asdeniers of God and the immortality of the soul,they were major critics of the concepts of transmi-gration and karma. However, contrary to whatsome of their critics claimed, all Charvakas schoolsdid not teach antinomian hedonism (a lawless cultof pleasure) any more than do most modern daymaterialists. A number of Charvaka teachers, likemany materialists of all eras, were perfectly awareof the need for both moral and sensual restraintsin order for the individual to live a satisfying lifewithin society. The Charvakas were early advocatesof a thorough body (mind) brain dependency.

See also Antinomianism.

Chen-Tao see Zhendao.

Child as its own reborn father or mother. Withregards to rebirth, one very interesting question hasbeen asked: Could a child ever be his or her fatheror mother reborn? This should technically be pos-sible if either there is no necessary interim periodbetween death and rebirth or such a period is nogreater than the time between physical conceptionand the soul’s entrance into the body of the infant.For example, in the most extreme case, if the soulenters into an embryo at physical conception andthe father died immediately after ejaculation intothe mother’s womb, then the father’s soul couldenter into the embryo it had just fathered. Indeed,in the case where a soul does not take on re-embod-iment until hours or even days after physical birth,as some people believe, the new born could have itsown mother’s soul if she had died in or immediatelyafter childbirth. Most believers in reincarnation,perhaps embarrassed by these possibilities, tend toignore them; however, those possibilities are be-coming more difficult to ignore due to modernartificial insemination. Since it is now possible fora baby to be conceived from the sperm stored in a

57 Child

sperm-bank after the death of the donor, techni-cally, the soul that at some point enters the wombcould be that of the donor, which means the in-fant has his or her father’s soul. The Electra/Oedi-pus Complex aspect of rebirth would be a logical so-lution to this problem.

See also Electra/Oedipus Complex and re-birth; Incest and Rebirth; Mother, mule, andson; Rebirth and artificial insemination; Re-birth, instantaneous.

Child prodigies or geniuses. Young children thatexhibit extraordinary ability or talents far beyondwhat their age might otherwise expect of them havebeen repeatedly claimed as proof of reincarnation.Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756– 1791), who, atthe age of five, wrote a piano concerto that was toodifficult for anyone else to play, is the most oftennoted example of a child prodigy. But even moreimpressive was Jean-Louis Cardiac (1719– 1726)who could recite the alphabet at age 3 months; readLatin and translated it into French and English at4 years; was proficient in Greek, Hebrew, arith-metic, history, geography, and genealogy at 6. Un-fortunately, like a number of such children, he diedvery early, in his case, at the age of 7.

That rebirth could account for the talents of suchextraordinary children is not an unreasonable idea.There are, however, two main questions that ariseif rebirth is used to account for such geniuses. First,if everyone, or at least the overwhelming majorityof persons, has lived many previous lives why aresuch prodigies so rare? They ought to be quite com-mon. Second, if a child can remember the complexdetails of playing a musical instrument, and evenmore so of reading and writing music, why canthose same children not remember more personaldetails concerning a past life? The answer to thequestion has been that a person has to have a seriesof lives that involve the same skill before it can im-print sufficiently and manifest as a child genius;and the ability to have such a series might be verydifficult to come by. The answer given to the sec-ond question has been that most personal memo-ries are unique to each life and are not going to beimprinted repeatedly in the subconscious like a tal-ent or skill might be able to imprint.

On the other hand, using reincarnation to ex-plain child prodigies has been challenged as a su-pernatural-in-the-gap process, which is where anon-scientific explanation is inserted in a present-day gap in scientific knowledge. The progress thatis being made in genetics studies is occurring sofast that it may soon give us a more scientific answerto such prodigies.

See also Anamnesis; Arguments supportive ofrebirth; Karma, vocational; Soul mates.

Children remembering past lives. Far more chil-dren than adults are said to have spontaneous re-call when it comes to remembering past lives. Sev-eral hypotheses have been offered for this.

First, children are closer in time to their formerlife than are adults; therefore, it is easier for themto remember what older people gradually forget.Second, some children who are not old enough tohave developed a full and secure sense of presentselfhood seek security by trying to hold on to theirpast selfhood until it can safely be replaced by apresent version. Third, as children acquire memo-ries in the present life, which are necessary for everyday functioning, the past life memories must besuppressed so as not to interfere with the presentlife. Fourth, children, especially very young ones,are more psychically gifted than are adults, but aschildren grow older they gradually lose this gift.Of course in this fourth case the children may beexperiencing the past through retrocognitionrather than being a reincarnate soul. Fifth, recentlydeceased souls, unaware that the body they inhab-ited has died or are resistant to that death, take pos-session of a child as an easy target to try to continuein an embodied state. As the child gets older and as-serts his own personality and/or as the possessingentity gradually accommodates to the idea that itsoriginal body died, the possession fades away. Ob-viously in this fifth case, reincarnation is being mis-taken for possession.

The phenomenon whereby the memories of pastlives held by young children fade as they get olderis called retroactive inhibition. This fading beginsas the child approaches school age, which is about4–6 years old. By the age of 10 years most childrendo not even remember having had such memories.

Besides the above explanations offered for thisretroactive inhibition phenomena there are threeothers, all of which are critical of rebirth. The firstis that the child’s memories were never authentic,but part of a game the child was unintentionallycreating to gain attention. Once the children begangoing to school and/or taking on more responsi-bility for their lives they no longer find the gamemeaningful, and so it is abandoned. The fact thatmost of the cases of spontaneous recall occur in cul-tures that doctrinally accept rebirth, such as inIndia and among the Druzes of Lebanon, has madesuch an attention getting game seem quite possible.

In particular, credence has been given to this“game” explanation for the cases examined by IanStevenson in the northern Indian State of UttarPradesh. This is one of India’s poorest states, yet atleast 60 percent of the children he investigatedclaim to have formerly been of a higher caste thanin their present life. Since lower castes form theoverwhelming percentage of the population it

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would be statistically expected that the childrenwould remember past lives mostly in lower castes.The children’s claim to a former higher caste tendsto elicit more adult attention towards them than ifthe same or a lower caste were involved.

The second critical explanation for some chil-dren, both to claim a past life and for their futureretroactive inhibition, deals with temporary “neg-ative déjà vu.” This is where familiar people, placesand things start to feel strange. This can lead to achild regarding his or her family as strangers and,in their place, regarding a strange family as his orher real one. In fact, a number of cases have beenreported in which just such rejection of the presentfamily and attachment to a strange family has oc-curred both in India and Lebanon.

The third critical explanation for the retroactiveinhibition phenomena has to do with cultures thatdo not doctrinally accept rebirth. In these culturesthe few children who do claim to remember pastlives usually give far fewer details about the pastlives then do children in pro-rebirth cultures. Thissuggests that in cultures that are supportive of re-birth the adults around the children may be inten-tionally or unintentionally adding to the children’smemories.

Whether or not there is adult involvement inpast life recall by these children it does tend to bethe case that the more details the children giveabout the past lives the more the number of errorsthere are in the children’s recall.

The major problem with accepting the memo-ries of very young children is that it has been repeat-edly documented that they unintentionally mix factwith fantasy. For example, a number of childrenwhen asked under pressure about possible sexualabuse have created false scenarios about being in-volved with abusively satanic sexual rituals. Also, inone experiment, a Finnish psychiatrist, Dr. ReimaKampman, had the opportunity to hypnotize anumber of children and suggest to them that theyhad lived before the present life. The children cameforth with some very elaborate and consistent pastlife scenarios. On a follow-up investigation, how-ever, Dr, Kampman was able to uncover cryptom-nesia sources for many of these scenarios. This im-plied to the doctor that the children were exhibitingthe equivalence of hypnotically induced multiplepersonalities.

In fact, one of the critiques leveled at Steven-son’s cases is that he has not allowed for the possi-bility that some of his subjects may be exhibitingmultiple personality syndromes.

Finally, the question has been asked, “How muchof past life memory is need to qualify as proof of re-birth?” None of the children have demonstratedmore than a very limited partial memory of the pre-

sumed past life. Does the mere ability to recognizesome previous family members and/or the way theprevious person died constitute enough memoryto qualify as the previous person reborn? It has beenargued that every human being far more than thisminimal memory?

See also Child prodigies or geniuses; Deaths,violent and premature; Extrasensory percep-tion; Fantasy versus past life regression; Honestlying; Katsugoro case; Leading question; Men-tal plane; Multiple personalities; Rebirth andcultural conditioning; Rebirth, proximity; Re-birth, qualifications for; Retrocognition; ShantiDevi case; Stevenson, Ian.

Child’s Epitaph. “If so soon I must be done for,/What on earth was I begun for?” This rhymingcouplet is sometimes used to exemplify some ar-guments for rebirth. One argument says that somesouls only need to return to life for a very shorttime before leaving the cycle of rebirth and re-death. Another argument is that soon after birth asoul realizes that it either was embodied in thewrong body or it made a mistake in the parents it chose. In either case, the soul seeks to escapethrough some self-generated early death.

Chimeras see Embryonic fusion.

Chinese religion and reincarnation. In earliestfolk Chinese religion there was no clearly delin-eated orthodox belief system about the soul sincethere was no formal religious authority to dictatesuch orthodoxy. However, the general consensus,which goes back to pre–Buddhist times was, and tosome degree still is, that each person has two souls.These are the yin, the feminine, earth or blood soulcalled p’o (WG); and the yang, the masculine, heav-enly, or breath soul called hun. The p’o is associ-ated with the emotions and senses, and so it is thesentient or animal soul. The hun is associated withintelligence and reason, and so it is the human soul.While the p’o is a part of the body from concep-tion, the hun does not enter the body until eitherthe first breath of the infant or, according to somesources, not until a month after birth.

At death these two souls are said to leave thebody, each by a different aperture; the hun leavesfirst by way of the upper part, especially the top ofthe skull (fontanelle), and then the p’o leaves fromthe lower part of the body. On rare occasions, suchas avenging its murder or some other serious wrongto the deceased, the two souls may stay togetherand possess another body. Normally, however, thep’o is thought to survive in or near the grave untilits former body decays, which may take up to threeyears; but if the disembodied p’o becomes offended,as in the case of an improper burial of its former

59 Chinese

body, then it survives for a long time as a mali-ciously haunting and hungry ghost (kuei/gui).After this the p’o goes to the Yellow Spring (pur-gatorial hell). A proper burial, and hence release ofthe p’o from the body is one way to ensure that thebody, with only the p’o animating it, does not be-come a flesh eating vampire. On the other hand, forwhatever reason, the one way of keeping the p’ofrom leaving the corpse is to stop up each of theorifices of the body with jade. In older times, amongthe rich and powerful, the corpse was completelyclad in a suit of jade pieces sewn together with goldwire.

The hun, after proper burial rites, ascends toheaven to become an ancestral spirit (shen), whereit survives only up to five generations or up to thetime that no living family members feels any moreconnection to it. At this point it merges into a kindof impersonal collective ancestral element.

It should be clear that nothing in this traditionalChinese view of the afterlife had anything to dowith reincarnation. It was not until the introduc-tion of Buddhism into China around the 2nd cen-tury CE, that the Chinese were exposed to the con-cept of reincarnation and even though Daoismeventually adopt a reincarnation doctrine, it tookseveral centuries to do so. The Confucianists, onthe other hand, not only didn’t adopt such a be-lief, they did every thing in their power to opposeit. The reason for this opposition was that the Con-fucian ethos was, in most cases, the exact oppositeof the Indian Buddhist one.

Confucius’s teachings have always been almostexclusively concerned with the establishment ofproper economic, social, and political conditions,and hence are mostly this-world oriented. Not onlywere his teachings not based on the supernatural,he considered much of the religion of his time to be sheer superstition. Confucius is said to havesummed up his religious views with the statements“If you are not able to serve men (in this world),how can you serve the spirits (in the next world),”and “If you do not understand life, how can youunderstand death.” Even later on, when his teach-ings became the state ideology, there never devel-oped any priesthood around an otherwise consid-erable cult of the man Confucius.

One result of the Confucianist this-worldly at-titude was that the Chinese, as a whole, believedthat there could be no greater good than a long lifein this body involved in productive labor as a so-cial obligation to one’s family and the state.

Buddhism, in contrast, viewed life as full of suf-fering and its pleasures as deceptive; moreover, theBuddhist ideal was one of leaving one’s family fora homelessness and mendicant lifestyle. From theConfucianist view this was seen as a show of in-

gratitude to, and disrespect for, the parents, whohad given one life and, who in return, were entitledto support in old age. Indeed, the Buddhist ideal ofmonastic celibacy was in violent opposition to theChinese imperative to have children to keep thetreasured family line going and the ancestors for-ever worshiped. In fact, as mentioned above, theChinese believed that as long as the name andmemory of one’s ancestors was memorialized theirspirit would continue to exist, but if ignored thoseancestors would experience a kind of secondary andpermanent death. However, even without this an-cestral obligation, just the idea of suppressing nor-mal human sexual desires was looked upon by theConfucianists as rather ridiculous, if not unhealthy.

If celibacy was judged as unhealthy, even more sowas the repulsive Buddhist encouragement toachieve this suppression of normal human desiresby such activities as cemetery or charnel groundmeditation.

There were, also the more extreme bodhisattvavows, one of which was the altruistic (from a Bud-dhist perspective) willingness to sacrificing pieces ofone’s own flesh for the sake of saving others. TheConfucianists considered this a violation of the filialrule not to deliberately harm the body that one’sparents gave to you.

Equally shocking was the Buddhist rebirth story,as told in the Jataka Tales, of the bodhisattva, as asign of his spiritual unattachment, giving away, notonly all his family possessions, but even his wifeand children.

Also, there was the Buddhist teaching that one’sparents could end up in a hell or be reborn as an-imals, due to their bad karma. Even the suggestionthat this could happen, violated the Chinese senseof filial piety and ancestor veneration.

Perhaps most horrifying of all, was the possibil-ity, no matter how remote, that one’s mother or fa-ther, brother or sister in an earlier life could be-come one’s wife or husband in a later life due tokarmic ties. From the Confucianist view point, withits extreme filial piety, such role reversals amount tothe hideous crime of incest. In short, the entireBuddhist doctrine of rebirth was insulting to Con-fucian sensibilities.

Despite the anti-rebirth theory, and indeed, attimes the virulent anti–Buddhist attitude of theupper class Confucianists, Buddhism and its re-birth doctrine did have a great appeal to the Chi-nese lower classes. Considering that the lives of thelower classes were mostly drudgery and there waslittle hope of changing this, the Buddhist teach-ings about the rewards of a better future life (re-birth) for the poor and the powerless offered some-thing that none of the native traditions could offer.Furthermore, the teaching that the rich, the pow-

Chinese 60

erful, and the oppressive landlords and tax collec-tors were likely headed for hell doubled Buddhismappeal. As if this were not enough, within a veryshort time the teachings about the Pure-Land,with it promise of rebirth in the heavenly paradiseof Amitabha Buddha, gained enormous popular-ity not only among the lower classes but evenamong some of the upper classes, especially women.

See also Bhaishajyaraja-guru; Child as its ownreborn father or mother; Deaths, violent and pre-mature; Empire of Jade; Hell, the Chinese; In-cest and reincarnation; Karma, family; Mu-lian,The Story of; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism; Rebirth in Zen; Second death; Souls,multiple; T’ai-Yueh-Ta-Ti.

Chintra-Gupta (Manifold-Secret). In Hinduismthis is the name of the scribe in the realm of thedead who records in the registry called the AgraSandhani the virtues and vices of human beings forYama, the god of the dead. This record will then beused to help decide reincarnational destinies.

See also Book of Life; Lords of Karma.

Chiromancy. This is divination by reading the linesin the palms and fingers of the hands. It was believedby some Kabbalists that clues to a person’s past lifecould be read in these lines. Although Jewish sourcesbefore the Sefer ha-Zohar mention the practice, itseems that it was only its inclusion in that text thatintroduced it into Kabbalic thought. Chiromancyis not to be confused with palmistry, which must in-clude chirognomy or chirology, the study of theshape of the hand; nor with chirosophy, which is thestudy of the comparative value of hand forms.

See also Kabbalah.

Chit (Consciousness). This term is not to be con-fused with chitta (mind).

See also Atman.

Chitta (Mind). In early Buddhism chitta was moreor less synonymous with manas (mind) or vijnana(consciousness), but in later Buddhist schools Chittawas distinguished from vijnana as it came to be as-sociated with rebirth (linking) consciousness (P:patisandhi vinnana).

This term is not to be confused with chit (con-sciousness).

See also Original sin, Christianity, and reincar-nation; Psychophysical aggregates; Rebirth inBuddhism.

Chnoumis, Chnouphis. In Theosophy this Greekname is said to refer to the creative force or un-made and eternal deity in ancient Egyptian reli-gion which, as the dual Chnoumis-Kneph, is thepre-eminent god of reincarnation.

See also Egypt; Khepra.

Christ see Adam; Aetherius Society; Ah-madiyya; Apocatastasis; Aquarian Gospel ofJesus Christ; Baptism; Cayce, Edgar; Christianatonement theories; Christian view of the after-life; Christianity and reincarnation; Jesus; John,Gospel of; New Testament and reincarnation;Resurrection of Jesus; Zhendao.

Christian atonement theories. One of the reasonsstandard Christian doctrine gives for rejecting rein-carnation is that the multiple-lives concept is in-compatible with the concept of the atonement ofChrist. Actually there has not been just one, butthree main theological views as to why Christ, ei-ther as man or God, had to suffer and die on thecross as atonement for mankind’s sins.

The earliest of these atonement theories is the“Ransom to the Devil and Death Theory.” In this,the fall of Adam (mankind) automatically gave thedevil the legal right to man’s soul. God, as the up-holder of cosmic legality, was forced to pay thedevil a price if he wanted to liberate man from hislegal masters. The crucifixion and resurrection of aninnocent or sinless being alone was that price. SuchChurch Fathers as Augustine accepted this view.

The second atonement concept was the “Sub-jective (Abelardian) Theory.” According to PeterAbelard (1079– 1144) the contemplation of a sin-less being on the cross causes the believer to appre-ciate how sinful he really is and to recognize thepower of sacrificial-love needed to overcome sin.This would cause the believer to be morally trans-formed and motivated to follow Christ’s example asbest he can. This view found only minority supportin the Middle Ages; but it has been revived and en-joyed greater support in modern times.

The third atonement concept was the “Objec-tive (Anselmic) theory.” Saint Anselm (1033– 1109)modified the earlier Ransom Theory, in his CurDeus Homo? (Why the God-man?). In this work theprice that had to be paid for human sinfulness andmortality did not need to be offered to the devilbut to God. For God’s own justice to be satisfied Hecould not freely forgive mankind since no amountof mere human suffering could repay Him for theindignation He had suffered from human will-fulness. Therefore, it was up to God himself to payfor the redemption of humanity. This was donethrough the suffering and death of Christ (the di-vine Son). This third atonement view partially re-placed the earlier “Ransom” view, and was adoptedas orthodox by the Western Churches from theMiddle Ages up to the present. This last theory ismore closely related to the New Testament sacri-ficial concept.

Of these three atonement theories, the first mayor may not be incompatible with reincarnation;

61 Christiam

the second does not seem to offer any incompati-bility; but the third and most orthodox, definitelywould seem to be incompatible with reincarna-tion.

See also Christianity and reincarnation; Em-anationism; Karma and forgiveness; Originalsin, Christianity, and reincarnation; Originalsin versus karma.

Christian fathers critical of reincarnation. Thefirst few centuries of Christian history witnessed amajor battle between what became the more or-thodox view that rejected any belief in reincarna-tion and what came to be regarded as the hereticalview that supported reincarnation in some man-ner.

See also Aeneas of Gaza; Ambrose of Milan;Aquinas, Thomas; Arnobius the Elder; Augus-tine, Saint Aurelius; Basil of Caesarea; Clementof Alexandria; Gregory of Nyssa; Irenaeus;Jerome; Justin Martyr; Lactantius; Nemesius;Origin; Tertullian; Theophilus.

Christian missionary influence and reincarna-tion. Christian missionary activities among tribalpeoples in medieval Europe resulted in a major de-mise of the belief in reincarnation among these peo-ple, and a similar demise has occurred in otherplaces more recently dominated by such mission-ary activities.

See also American Indians; Cannibalistic rein-carnation; Lapps (Saami).

Christian view of the afterlife. Other than to saythat the Christian view of the post-mortem statedoes not include reincarnation it is difficult tospecifically say what that state is. On the one hand,a belief in Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection is saidto offer the believer eternal life. This would seemto imply that the non-believer experiences annihi-lation, to which some, but not most, of the bibli-cal letters of Paul of Tarsus allude. In fact, thedominant biblical view is that those who do notaccept Christ will suffer eternal damnation. Theeternity of such damnation would then imply thatbelieving in Christ was not originally necessary foreternal life “in hell,” only for it in heaven. Thiswould be supported by the Christian teaching thatChrist, upon his death, entered hell, purgatory, orlimbo to preach to and presumably liberate theOld Testament prophets and saints from which everof those places their souls dwelled. The confusionas to which of these afterlife realms Christ entereddepends on whether one is Roman Catholic, East-ern Orthodox, or Protestant.

Finally, there is the issue of whether the soul en-ters heaven or hell immediately upon death of thebody or enters into a dreamless sleep-like condi-

tion until awakened at the future general resurrec-tion, in which the old body will be recreated.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view;Aquinas, Thomas; Baptism; Christianity andreincarnation; John, Gospel of; Judgment of theDead; Millennialism; New Testament and rein-carnation; New Testament sacrificial concept;Psychopannychism; Resurrection, bodily; Res-urrection of Jesus.

Christianity and reincarnation. Despite effortsby Christian reincarnationists standard Christian-ity can not easily accept a belief in reincarnation.By standard I refer to those religious traditions thathold three main beliefs. First, they regard the figureof Jesus of Nazareth as the anointed Messiah, or Christ, and the son of God. This means he isregarded as the most complete revealer of sacredtruth ever to have lived or who will live. It shouldbe noted that this does not automatically mean thatJesus must be accepted as fully divine. A number ofsmaller, but still standard, Christian groups do notaccept his full divinity. Second, standard Chris-tianity regards the crucifixion and death of Jesus asessential to the salvation of mankind. Third, it re-gards both the Old Testament and New Testamenttogether as the only authentic sacred canon.

Standard Christianity rejects reincarnation andkarma for a multiplicity of reasons. (1) Traditionalreadings of both the Old and the New Testamentbooks offers no irrefutable evidence that the doc-trine of reincarnation was part of the teachings ofthe prophets or of Jesus. (2) The New Testamentclearly teaches that there is an eternal hell. In fact,in several passages it is Jesus who is credited withteaching it. Among these passages is Matthew 8:12,13:42, 25:30, and especially 25:41 and 25:46; also,Mark 9:45–48; Luke 16:22–29. (3) A multiple lifeconcept is clearly denied by the author of Hebrews9:27–28, “And as it is the lot of men to die once,and after death comes judgment, so Christ was of-fered once to bear the burden of men’s sin.” (4) Ex-cluding the element of original sin, which is a col-lective guilt, not an individual one, Romans 9:12declares that children, before they are born, are in-nocent of both good and evil. (5) The doctrine ofmetempsychosis was clearly opposed by the earlychurch fathers. (6) It is thought that reincarnationwould weaken, or even make unnecessary, the suf-fering, dying, and resurrection of Jesus as atone-ment for humanity’s sins. (7) For some ChristianChurches reincarnation would call into questionboth the Old Testament and New Testamentsacrificial concept, including the theophagic Eu-charist as an absolutely necessary means to salva-tion. (8) Reincarnation distracts from the urgencyof salvation that is implied with a single life and

Christian 62

encourages procrastination as far as salvation is con-cerned. (9) Reincarnation is in competition withthe general resurrection of the dead. (10) Both rein-carnation and karma imply that salvation can begained, either mainly or exclusively, through goodworks rather than through the Christian belief inthe unearned grace of God. (11) Christianity teachesthat God has the power to forgive even the mostheinous of sins, provided that the sinner sincerelyrepents. With karma, technically, there is no suchforgiveness or escape from the consequences of anyill-performed actions. This is especially true for thenon-theistic karma-acknowledging religions. Themajor exception is Pure-Land Buddhism. (12) Theimpersonality of karma is vastly inferior to the per-sonal and loving concern of God. (13) When cross-special (animal-human) reincarnations is accepted,the ennobling fact that mankind was made in theimage of God is denied. (14) It is possible to dis-pense altogether with a belief in God through a be-lief in reincarnation and karma. (15) Reincarnationand karma offer no satisfactory “ultimate explana-tion” for evil in the world. (16) Reincarnation andkarma discourage working towards a more econom-ically and politically just society and thus lessensthe dignity of every person; instead it contributesto a blaming of the victim for his own sufferingwithout proof of guilt. (17) Karma is another namefor a fatalistic determinism which denigrates hu-manity. (18) Reincarnation is far too compatiblewith the hubris idea that mankind can become like,is identical to, or eventually is reabsorbed back intoGod. (19) Because of the lack of any remembranceof any past life, reincarnation and karma can not beconsidered morally valid, much less just. (20) Thepopulation increase issue makes nonsense of rein-carnation, especially if cross-special reincarnationis denied. (21) Reincarnation claims to be basedupon natural laws, but unlike all other natural lawsreincarnation can not be scientifically proven.

It should be noted that of these arguments, 1– 18are specifically religious arguments, while 19–21 arenon-sectarian arguments. As such the non–Chris-tian can more or less ignore the first eighteen, butmust take into account the last three.

Although the above reasons for the Christian re-jection of reincarnation, both sectarian and non-sectarian, are sufficient to convince the majority ofChristians that reincarnation is incompatible withChristianity, a minority of Christians believe thatthe two are compatible. For these pro-reincarna-tion Christians one of the most popular argumentsis that all souls reincarnate until “every knee shouldbend ... [and] ... every tongue confess” (Philippi-ans 2:9– 11) and so make Christ as their personalsavior. Those souls that have already acceptedChrist leave the cycle of rebirth for a heavenly ex-

istence. Of course, the conservative Christian re-sponse to this is that considering that a majority ofthe world’s population has been Christian for sev-eral centuries and that a goodly percentage of themhave over those centuries accepted Christ as theirpersonal savior, the population of souls in the worldshould be dramatically decreasing, not increasing.

See also Aeneas of Gaza; Animals and rebirth,Western view; Apocatastasis; Aquinas, Thomas;Arguments that challenge rebirth on a logicalbasis; Aristotle; Augustine, Saint Aurelius; Baptism; Basil of Caesarea; Bogomils; Cathars;Christian atonement theories; Christian fatherscritical of reincarnation; Christian missionaryinfluence and reincarnation; Christian view of the afterlife; Christianity, esoteric; Christian-ity, lost chord of ; Church Council of 553;Church Council of Lyons and Council of Florence; Clement of Alexandria; Elijah (Elias);Emanationism; False claims of support for reincarnation; Gnosticism; Gregory of Nyssa;Hell; Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van; Irenaeus; Islam; John, Gospel of; John the Bap-tist; Judgment of the Dead; Justin Martyr;Karma and forgiveness; Karma and God; Karmaand justice; Karma as natural law; Karma versus grace; Lactantius; Limbo; Millennialism;New Testament and reincarnation; Old Testa-ment and the afterlife; Original sin, Christian-ity, and reincarnation; Original sin versus karma;Predestination; Population increase issue and a theistic solution; Psychopannychism; Purga-tory; Rebirth and cyclical time; Rebirth andgeneral morality; Rebirth and moral perfection;Rebirth in the West; Resurrection, bodily; Res-urrection or reincarnation; Sacred Bone; Seven-teenth century renewed interest in rebirth; Synesius of Cyrene; Tertullian; Theodicy;Theophilus.

Christianity, esoteric. This is any one of a varietyof teachings that consider the standard doctrinesof both Catholicism and Protestantism as exoteric(outer) teachings and, therefore, as either inferiorto or a conscious distortion of the true teachingsof Jesus. The esotericists further believe that thosetrue teachings had been concealed, suppressed, lost,or only much later revealed. This description of es-oteric Christianity, in its broadest sense, includesboth ancient and modern sects; for example, theancient and medieval gnostic Christians, the Mor-mons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses,and various New Age Christian groups. A majordifference separating these esoteric Christian is thatsome continue to reject reincarnation; while othersaccept it.

See also Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ;

63 Christianity

Ashoka, King; Cathars; Christianity and reincar-nation; Christianity, lost chord of; Church Coun-cil of 553; Church Universal and Triumphant;Eckankar; Esotericism versus Occultism; Hell;Mormonism; New Age religions; New Testamentand reincarnation; Rosicrucians; Scientology;Steiner, Rudolf.

Christianity, lost chord of. This term, coined byWilliam Q. Judge (1851– 1896), is used by manypeople who are convinced that the Bible, or at leastthe New Testament, originally taught the doctrineof reincarnation, and that this doctrine was then“lost.” Since the word lost usually implies a non-deliberate action, and since the advocates of thelost chord really believe that the doctrine of rebirthwas deliberately suppressed by the early church, itwould probably make more sense to speak of the“suppressed chord of Christianity” rather than thelost chord.

One of the weaknesses of this view is that if thechurch had gone to such effort to erase from theBible compromising passages about reincarnation(metempsychosis), why did they keep those thatare so often used to prove the Bible taught reincar-nation?

See also New Testament and reincarnation;Old Testament and the afterlife.

Christos (anointing) technique. This is one methodthat is said to stimulate the remembering of eventsin a former life. It requires at least two individuals—the anointer and the anointed. In the first stage ofthe process the person who seeks to remember hispast life lies down and tries to enter into a relaxedmeditative state. The anointer then massages an oilor balm into the forehead (third eye area) and thenon the ankles of the anointed person. A strongmentholated ointment is thought to work best. Inthe second stage, the anointer verbally encouragesthe anointed person to visualize a progressivelydeeper state of relaxation. Soon the anointedreaches a point where he or she is ready for the sug-gestion to mentally travel back in time to child-hood and then further back to before the start of thepresent life. The mind traveler is then instructedto tell what he or she is experiencing.

It seems that no one is absolutely sure who firstdeveloped this Christos technique, but the namemost closely associated with it is G. M. Glaskin.He wrote Windows of the Mind (1974); WorldsWithin (1978); and A Door to Eternity (1979).

See also Past life regression and suggestibil-ity.

Christward Ministry. This group was founded byFlower A. Newhouse (1909– 1994), a self-pro-claimed Christian mystic and clairvoyant. Its teach-

ings are a blend of Christianity, Jungian psychol-ogy, meditation, astrology, angelology, and theconcept of reincarnation and karma. The head-quarters of the sect is a retreat called Questhaven,which is near Escondido, California.

Chronoportation. This is an elegant word for“time travel,” either physically or mentally. An abil-ity of the mind to break through the time barrierand experience the past as a passive viewer has beensuggested as an alternate explanation for past lifememories.

See also Rebirth, alternative explanations to;Retrocognition.

Chuan-lun wang (WG). In Chinese mythologythis is the tenth king of hell. He is not responsiblefor any kind of punishment like the other kings,but for preparing the souls leaving hell for their re-birth. It is he that decrees the form into which onewill be reborn in accordance to the soul’s karma.

See also Hell, the Chinese; Yen-lo.

Church Council of 553. This was also called theFifth Ecumenical Council and the Second Coun-cil of Constantinople. Many reincarnationist advo-cates point to this Council as being the first Chris-tian Council to condemn reincarnation or metem-psychosis as a heresy. At this Council, however,the doctrine of metempsychosis was not directlymentioned. Instead, it was the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls that was declared heretical, espe-cially as that doctrine was taught by Origin. More-over, pre-existence was condemned in the contextof universal salvation, not in the context of anymultiple life theory. The mistaken belief that thiscouncil condemned metempsychosis comes fromthe fact that, while a pre-existence does not auto-matically equate with metempsychosis, metempsy-chosis does depend on the pre-existence of souls. Sofor all practical purposes the doctrine of metempsy-chosis was “indirectly” declared heretical.

The doctrine of metempsychosis was not explic-itly condemned until the Church Council of Lyons(1274) at which time the Papacy’s condemnationwas specifically directed against the teachings of theCathars. This Papal condemnation was then re-peated at the Council of Florence (1439– 1441).

The reason for the very late official condemna-tion of metempsychosis was that the Church, upto that time, took it so much for granted that any multiple-life teaching was incompatible withChristianity that there was no reason for condemn-ing the obvious. After all, some of the most impor-tant early Christian Fathers such as Augustine,Gregory of Nyssa, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Ter-tullian, Theophilus, and even Origin had, in nouncertain terms, attacked metempsychosis.

Christianity 64

See also Apocatastasis; Christianity and rein-carnation; Christianity, esoteric; False claims ofsupport for reincarnation; Neoplatonism; Soul’sexistence prior to embodiment; Universalism.

Church Council of Laodicea. This Christiancouncil met in 364 CE in the western Asia Minorcity of Laodicea, which today is called Denizli, inTurkey. It was here that the decision was made asto which books to include in, and excluded from,the Christian Bible. With the one exception of theRevelation of John, all the books presently foundin the Bible were accepted at this time. Revelation,while rejected for inclusion at this council, wasshortly afterwards also accepted. There were ap-proximately forty other texts that were rejected forone reason or another.

While none of the accepted books were support-ive of metempsychosis, there is no “concrete” ev-idence that reincarnation was a concern with re-gards to the rejection of the other books; however,considering the possible gnostic influence on someof those excluded texts, positive attitudes towardsmetempsychosis may have been a factor in their re-jection.

See also New Testament and reincarnation.

Church Council of Lyons (1274 CE) and Coun-cil of Florence (1439). These were the two churchcouncils at which the Papacy specifically con-demned a belief in metempsychosis. It was also atthese Councils that the concept of psychopanny-chism was rejected in favor of immediate trans-portation of the soul to heaven or hell

See also Cathars; Church Council of 553.

Church of the Divine Man. This religious sectwas founded in 1973 by Lewis S. Bostwick(1918– 1995) as a spiritual healing church based onthe idea that one must have faith in oneself as God.Bostwick was originally associated with Scientol-ogy, but in the late 1970’s he broke with that or-ganization and established his own church. Thechurch includes in its teachings a belief in reincar-nation, karma, spirit guides, chakras, psychome-try, telekinesis, and auras. Bostwick is also thefounder of the Berkeley Psychic Institute (1975).

Church Universal and Triumphant. This is a con-troversial New Age religion. It was found by MarkProphet (1918– 1973) in 1958 under the originalname of Summit Lighthouse. Following Prophet’sdeath in 1973 his wife, Elizabeth Clare Prophet(1939–2009) announced that Mark had left thisworld to become one of the ascended masters(Great White Brotherhood). Mrs. Prophet, thenhaving been secretly anointed by the ascended mas-ter Saint Germain, took over the leadership of thechurch. The Church’s teachings were modeled on

one of the splinter groups of the I Am Movement,of which Mark Prophet was at once a member. TheChurch’s beliefs are a syncretism of Esoteric Chris-tianity, Theosophy, Buddhism, Western alchemy,catastrophic millenarianism, and channeling. TheChurch teaches that ascended masters such asJesus, the Buddha, Mahatma Morya, MasterDjwal Khul, and Master Koot Hoomi (Kuthumi)all taught the doctrine of reincarnation. It will benoted that the last three names were also associ-ated with Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey.

Elizabeth Prophet is a supporter of “The YoungJesus in India (and Tibet) Theory” as originally es-poused by Nicholas Notovitch.

See also Ahmadiyya; Aquarian Gospel of JesusChrist; Christianity and reincarnation; Chris-tianity, esoteric; New Testament and reincarna-tion; Psychology, abnormal; Sinnett, AlfredPercy; White Lodge.

Chukchi. These native people of the far northeastcorner of Siberia, like their neighbors the Koryaks,traditionally believe in some form of reincarnation.

See also Hunting cultures and reincarnation;Lapps (Saami); Yukagir.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BCE). As sug-gested by some of his writings, this Roman states-man, orator, and philosopher, relying mainly onearlier Greek works, seemed to have acceptedmetempsychosis as a real possibility.

See also Anamnesis; Greek afterlife, the an-cient; Planetary descent and ascent of the soul.

Circle of Necessity (Greek: Kuklos Anagkes). Thisis another term for the duration between death andrebirth. Anagke or Ananke was the name for thegoddess of Necessity, who, according to one myth,was the mother of the three Fates (Moirai).

See also Ouroboros; Plato.

Clairaudience. This is the psychic ability to discernsounds that are far beyond the normal range ofhearing. It is thought to be one of the possible psy-chic alternative explanations for experiencing a pastlife recall.

See also Abhijna; Rebirth, alternative expla-nations to.

Clairvoyance. This is the psychic ability to visu-ally discern what is far beyond the normal range ofsight. It is thought to be one of the possible psychicalternative explanations for experiencing a past liferecall.

See also Abhijna; Rebirth, alternative expla-nations to.

Clement of Alexandria (About 155–220 CE). ThisChristian church father, and teacher of Origin, is

65 Clement

another figure that some reincarnationists have mis-takenly tried to make one of their own. Thisidentification has apparently been made on the veryslim basis of a passage in the first chapter of hiswork Exhortation [Protrepiticus] to the Heathenwhich, while making no reference to metempsy-chosis, seems to support the pre-existence of thesoul. The passage reads, “But before the foundationof the world were we, who, because destined to bein Him, pre-existed in the eye of God before,——we the rational creatures of the Word of God, onwhose account we date from the beginning; for “inthe beginning was the word.” This passage dealswith two issues. First, there are the pre-existenthuman souls, not as already created, but only as athought [in the “eye”] of God. Second, there is thevery substantial pre-existence of the Word [Logos]of God as stated in Gospel of John 1:1.

There is little doubt that Clement’s Neoplatonicapproach to Christian doctrines brought his ortho-doxy under some suspicion, but only as a possiblepre-existiani, not as a believer in metensomatosis.Those who would use this meager example ofClement’s writing to claim him as a reincarnation-ist forget that if there were even the slightest sus-picion of Clement as a supporter of metempsy-chosis he would never have been considered achurch father in the first place.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; ChurchCouncil of 553; New Testament and reincarna-tion; Origin; Soul’s existence prior to embodi-ment.

Cleopatra Syndrome. The question might beasked: Why have so many people at one time oranother claimed to be figures like Cleopatra orMarie-Antoinette, as opposed to Zenobia ofPalmyra, Elizabeth I, Katherine the Great, etc? Theanswer would seem to be that the first two diedtragically, while the rest died naturally of old age.A tragic premature death seems to call out for com-pensation that a more normal death does not, andthis encourages identification with such tragicfigures more than with the others.

Cloning see Rebirth and artificial insemination.

Coffin to cradle. Like death to breath and tombto womb, this is a metaphor for reincarnation.

See also Crypt.

Collective birth of extraordinary men andwomen. This is one of the arguments supportive ofreincarnation. This argument states that through-out most of human history there has been only avery few, if any, extraordinary men and womenborn in any one period. However, in a few peri-ods, such as 6th and 5th century Greece and in the

15th and 16th century Renaissance there were adisproportionate number of intellectually excep-tional persons born. This, it is claimed, can best beaccounted for by a group of like-minded soulschoosing to be reborn very close to one another intime and space. The fact of the matter is that thereare other reasons that can just as easily account forsuch phenomena. For one thing, 6th and 5th cen-tury Greece did not have a monopoly on extraor-dinary persons. There were more or less as manygreat minds all the way up to the end of the RomanEmpire. The following European Dark Ages wasas much an anomaly as anything else, but duringthat time the neighboring Islamic civilization wasproducing an equal number of great intellects. TheRenaissance, which was partially stimulated by thatIslamic influence, was simply a recovery of Euro-pean greatness and has continued to produce greatminds up to the present.

Collective guilt see Blaming the victim vs. il-lusion of innocence; Christianity and reincar-nation; Exodus; Original sin versus karma; Res-urrection of Jesus.

Collective karma see Karma; Karma, group.

Collective soul issue see Soul, collective.

Collective Unconscious. This is said to be a partof the unconscious which contains memories com-mon to humanity. It is distinctive from the per-sonal unconscious, which develops from the uniqueexperiences of the individual.

See also Ancestral Memories.

Collin, Robert (1956– 1956). This British as-trologer was a follower of P. D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff. In Collin’s best known work, TheTheory of Celestial Influence (London: Vincent Stu-art, 1954) he attempts to unite the sciences andworld history by way of the planetary influences. OfCollin’s other works his The Theory of Eternal Life,(London: Vincent Stuart, 1956) uses some of theideas of The Theory of Celestial Influence to formu-late a theory of the cycles of rebirth and re-death.Collin attempted to demonstrate through a loga-rithmic time scale that an astrological mechanismexists for understanding the reincarnation process.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Mann, Tedd.

Colton, Ann Ree (1898– 1984). Along with herhusband Jonathan Murro (1927– 1991), Colton wasthe co-founder of The Ann Ree Colton Foundationof Nescience, a non-profit religious and educationalfoundation located in Glendale, California (1953).Colton is the author of Draughts of Remembrance:Memories of Past Lives, The Seven-Year Etheric Cy-cles of the Soul (1959).

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency.

Cleopatra 66

Come-as-you-were parties. These are modifiedcostume parties in which everyone comes dressedin the manner of one of their past lives. They weremarginally popular in the late 20th century.

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of theParanormal (CSIOP). This organization, espe-cially through its journal Skeptical Enquirer, hasbeen a major critic of reincarnation claims.

Compensatory justice see Karma and justice.

Conception and the soul see Creationism, soul;Embodiment, moment of; Generationism andTraducianism; Infusionism; Rebirth and abor-tion; Rebirth and artificial insemination; Soul’sexistence prior to embodiment.

Conditional immortality. This is the belief that thesoul is not inherently immortal, but must earn im-mortality or at death it will be annihilated. Theways of earning such immortality have been thoughtto include pious or holy living, heroic actions, mag-ical rituals, and favoritism from a deity.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view.

Confucianism versus Buddhism see Chinese re-ligion and reincarnation.

Congenital retardation. Reincarnationists havesuggested two separate, yet closely related, reasonsfor this condition. The first is that a person is bornthis way because he or she is finishing some pastlife unfinished karma business that does not requireanything more than a minimal mental capacity tocomplete. In fact, more than this minimum capac-ity would interfere with the completion of suchbusiness. The second reason offered is that the soulof that person in a past life committed some unskill-ful act that in this life requires the soul to learn tocope with a mentally retarded brain. A criticism ofboth these theories is that they involve blamingthe victim.

See also Deaths, violent and premature; Karmaas unfinished business.

Conscious dying. This is the process whereby atrained guide encourages the dying person to remainin a relaxed, but conscious, state as long as possi-ble so that the transition from life to death is freeof all anxiety and confusion. This way the deceasedwill be fully aware of his or her new disembodiedstate and will be able to either choose the best routeto rebirth or even attain final liberation from thecycle of birth and death. In the West this practicewas modeled on the Tibetan Bardo procedure.

Conscious dying is not to be confused with “sub-missive death,” which is when a person has given upany hope of having their desired quality of life, andso “passively” wills themselves to death.

See also Ars Moriendi; Pure-Land or BlissfulLand Buddhism.

Consciousness continuity, sleep versus death.This is the belief that rebirth of the consciousnessof self after death is analogous to going into a deepdreamless sleep and awakening from it with fullconsciousness of being a self as before. This is avery naïve analogue. When a person awakes fromeven the deepest sleep he or she has the same bodyas before, is only a few hours older, is in the samelocation as before, is in the society as before, has thesame relatives, friends, and enemies as before, etc.In other words, consciousness of self is very muchrelated to all of its external elements. After death anyso-called awakening of a consciousness through arebirth is not going to have any of the above fac-tors for that re-embodied consciousness to be ableto regard itself as a continuation of a former self.This is especially true in that the re-embodied con-sciousness is usually that of an infant.

See also Altered states of consciousness.

Consciousness or awareness see Mind.

Convenient fiction see Noble lie.

Cooke, Grace (1892– 1979). A well known BritishSpiritualist who, in her later years, claimed thatwith the aid of the akashic record and her spiritguide (control), the Amerindian White Eagle, shewas able to recall past lives as a Mayan, and as anEgyptian priestess and queen. The story of theselives is found in Cooke’s book The Illumined Ones,White Eagle Publication Trust, Liss (Hants.) 1966.Cooke’s (White Eagle’s) teachings are continuedthrough the Church of the White Eagle Lodgefounded in 1934 in England.

See also Egypt; Grant, Joan; White Lodge.

Coptic Fellowship of America. Founded in 1937in Los Angeles, California, by the Egyptian bornHamid Bey (?– 1976), the Fellowship acknowledgesthe existence of hidden masters who teach esotericChristianity that includes the concepts of reincar-nation and karma.

See also Ascended masters; Egypt.

Cordovero, Moses. This sixteenth century Kab-balic teacher of Isaac Luria is believed by someKabbalists to have been the reincarnation of thebiblical Eliezer, the servant of Abraham. On theother hand, in a different kabbalic legend it saysthat this same Eliezer is one of nine persons who en-tered paradise without first having to die.

See also Kabbalah.

Corelli, Marie (1855– 1924). Along with H. RiderHaggard, Corelli was one of the two most widelyread Victorian novelists to bring the concept of

67 Corelli

reincarnation and karma to popular British aware-ness. Corelli’s works with these themes include ARomance of Two Worlds (1886), Ardath (1889), Ziska(1897), and The Life Everlasting (1911).

See also Karmic romances

Corinthians, 1st and 2nd. It is in 1st of these twoNew Testament letters by Paul of Tarsus that theearliest extent mention of the resurrection of Jesusis found; assuming that part of this letter, 1stCorinthians 15:3–7 is not a later interpolation. 1stCorinthians also mentions Jesus as a kind of secondAdam who died to overcome the death that thefirst Adam’s sin brought into the world (1stCorinthians 15:22, 45). 1st Corinthians 3:1–2, alongwith Mark 4:10– 12, are often used to imply thatthere was an early Christian secret teaching thatmight have included the doctrine of metempsy-chosis. Trying to justify the presence of either areincarnational or karmic view in this letter wouldseem to require a major revision of the meaning ofPaul’s words. Whatever so-called secret teachingPaul may have implied by these verses could onlyhave included metempsychosis if one disregards allthe numerous passages in which he repeatedly fo-cuses on the resurrection of the dead.

2nd Corinthians 5:2–4 uses the metaphor of thebody as clothes (of the soul or spiritual person) tobe put on and taken off. This wording of the bodyas a mere garment of the soul has encouragedsome people to read into these passages a suggestionof reincarnation.

See also Annihilationism; Aquinas, Thomas;Christian atonement theories; Cayce, Edgar;Ephesians; Jesus; Karma in the Bible?; New Testament sacrificial concept; Old Testamentand the soul; Patton, George S; Psalms; Resurrection, bodily; Resurrection of Jesus; Ro-mans.

Corporeal versus non-corporeal afterlife. Mostpeople want to believe that death is not the end oftheir existence, yet find the whole idea of a non-cor-poreal state of being, where souls are presumably re-warded or punished, to be an unreasonable con-cept. For some of these people the idea that death,with or without a non-corporeal interim period be-tween death and rebirth, is an acceptable alternative.

In fact, many who favor such a re-embodimentprocess also believe that it offers a less supernatu-ral explanation of an afterlife than does any eternalnon-corporeal existence. Since there is still theproblem of how to account for the transference ofconsciousness from a deceased body to a newly con-ceived or newly born body it is questionablewhether such rebirth is any less supernatural thana non-corporeal alternative.

See also Rebirth, instantaneous.

Cosmic memory see Akashic Records.

Cosmic picture gallery see Akashic Records.

Course in Miracles. In 1965 a university professorand psychologist, Helen Schucman (1909– 1981),began to have visions and hear the voice of an en-tity that called itself Jesus. This entity told Schuc-man to write down what he was to teach her. It wasthis automatic writing that eventually was pub-lished in 1975 as the three volume book titled ACourse in Miracles, (Foundation for Inner Peace,Glen Ellen, CA.) While the book quotes pas-sages from the Bible, its over all teachings are amixture of Christian Science–like mental or faithhealing and a New Age version of Hindu-Buddhistbeliefs.

When it came to the issues of reincarnation andkarma, Schucman apparently had a very ambigu-ous view of them. On the one hand, according toher biography, Absence from Felicity (1991) by Ken-neth Wapnick, she appears to have believed thatshe had experienced a number of often traumaticpast lives, including one involving the crucifixionof Jesus; but on the other hand, Jesus is quoted astelling Schucman that most theories of reincarna-tion and karma are essentially magical and thewhole question is not really necessary to religion atall. Absence from Felicity goes on to say that al-though the concept of reincarnation is inherentlyillusory it can serve a helpful purpose of helpingpeople to counter the idea of hell, a belief that ishard for the ego to relinquish. In the end, however,beliefs in reincarnation and karma must be dis-carded, as they are still linked to a linear view oftime, which is one of the ego’s magic tricks to ob-scure the reality of eternity.

Schucman goes on to speak of the “genetic fal-lacy,” a belief the ego eagerly holds on to and whichreduces all current behavior and feelings to the past,whether these are attributable to former lives, ge-netic make-up, or early developmental experiences.The truth is that everything we do, think, or feelcomes only from a decision made in the here andnow.

It should be obvious that the Jesus channeledthrough Schucman is not considered to be the di-vine incarnation of orthodox Christianity; insteadhe is a man who attained Christ-consciousness.

See also Noble lie.

Creationism, soul. This is the belief that each soulis individually created by God at the moment ofconception. Creationism denies any kind of soul’sexistence prior to embodiment. It is also in op-position to infusionism, emanationism, and gen-erationism and traducianism.

For many reincarnationists there is a moral prob-

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lem with soul creationism. They question the ideathat a morally perfect and all loving God wouldautomatically create a new soul to implant into awomb regardless of the conditions under whichconception occurred. It is acceptable to them thatGod should create and implant a new soul in anewly conceived fetus, if such conception were inthe context of the sexual intercourse of a marriedcouple or, at least, a mutually desiring unmarriedcouple, but should God do the same in the case ofa rape victim? This leads to the question can anembryo develop into a fully formed and function-ing infant without the implantation of a soul byGod? If no; then God is a criminal party to anyconception due to a rape.

There is also a problem for those soul creation-ists who also accept the standard Christian beliefthat all human beings are punished for the sin ofAdam and Eve. If new souls are created by Godevery time embryos are produced by human be-ings, why should these sinless souls suffer, whentechnically only the bodies in which God puts themwould share anything with Adam and Eve as thephysical ancestors of humanity? Does this not makeGod morally a sadist? To save God’s moral reputa-tion it could be proposed that God is some howforced to create a new soul for every body humanbeings conceive, in which case, God is partly con-trolled by the actions of mankind. This of course,reduces the omnipotence of God.

Rebirth avoids this creationist moral problem byplacing the ultimate responsibility for a soul’swomb implantation on the soul itself or its karma.Christian traducianism also offers a more logical,though not necessarily more just, explanation forthe inheritance of original sin.

In all fairness to the Christian creationist per-spective, however, the Christian response shouldbe noted. According to this, since all human con-ceptions are a continuation of original sin there isonly a matter of degrees of sinfulness between thelust of a mutually consenting couple and that of anon-mutually consenting couple. Furthermore, itmight be argued that since sexual intercourse is apart of the human freedom to do good or evil, forGod to interfere by granting or withholding soulswould be to interfere with this freedom.

It is to overcome the problem of the transmissionof original sin that some Christian traditions havefavored generationism or traducianism, in contrastwith creationism alone as orthodox.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Em-anationism; Gender issue of the soul; Genera-tionism and Traducianism; God and rebirth inthe West; Karma and justice; Ontological leapor ontological discontinuity; Original sin,Christianity, and reincarnation; Original sin

versus karma; Population increase issue and atheistic solution; Soul, origin of the.

Cremation and rebirth. In Eastern religions it isbelieved that cremation of the deceased body aidsthe rebirth factor in detaching itself from beingearth-bound so it can more easily and quicklyachieve whatever it needs to prior to its next re-birth. The opposite is thought to occur with anykind of elaborate embalming.

See also Critical time periods; Egypt; GangesRiver.

Criteria for sincere claims to rebirth see Re-birth, criteria for proof of.

Critical time periods. Some religious traditionsbelieve that the deceased follow, or should follow,a fairly rigid schedule between the moment of deathand whatever comes after that. In the first Bardo (ofthe Tibetan Book of the Dead) the deceased has onlythree and a half to four days to pass from the firstlevel of the interim period into the second level.Moreover, the entire process from death to rebirthis said to be forty-nine days, which is seven weeksof seven days.

According to one Hindu view the journey of thesoul to the underworld takes 4 hours and 40 min-utes, so the body of the deceased must not be cre-mated before this time.

See also Cremation and rebirth; Interim period.

Cross-species rebirth see Animals and rebirth,Western view; Christianity and reincarnation;Rebirth, cross-species; Transmigration, progress;Transmigration, regressive.

Crowley, Aleister, originally Edward Alexander(1875– 1947). Crowley was a notorious English oc-cultist who practiced sexual magick and founded areligious cult called Thelema after the Greek wordfor “will.” This represented his axiom “Do as youwill, shall be the whole of the Law.” Crowley beganhis occult interests after reading The Book of BlackMagic and of Packs (1898) by Arthur EdwardWaite (1857– 1942), which led to Crowley’s join-ing the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in1898, with the magical name of Perdurado. After arapid rise in the order he came into conflict with itsleader W. B. Yeats and was either pressured to leaveor was expelled, which soon lead to his decision toseek his mystical fortune independently. It was in1904 that Crowley had his major magic(k)al break-through. While visiting Cairo, Egypt, Crowley’swife entered into a trance and channeled an entitycalled Aiwass, who was said to be a representativeof the ancient Egyptian god Horus. Crowley, whoafter this took the new magic(k) name The MasterTherion (Greek: Beast), identified himself with the

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Great Beast 666 or Anti-Christ in the biblical Rev-elation of John. It was also during this time thatCrowley became convinced that he was the reincar-nation of Ankh-fn-khonsu, an Egyptian priest ofthe XXVI dynasty (663–525 BCE). Later he identi-fied his other former lives as the Ko Hsuen, a dis-ciple of Lao Tzu; the Borgia Pope Alexander VI(1492– 1503), who was infamous for his indulgencefor physical pleasures; as the scryer Edward Kelley,who was the assistant to the Elizabethan occultistJohn Dee; as the charlatan alchemical occultist(Count) Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743– 1795); andfinally as the famous French occultist Eliphas Levi(1810– 1875).

Crowley’s new inflated image of himself led in1906 or 1907 to his forming his own occult andsexual magick order, the Argenteum Astrum (Sil-ver Star, i.e. Sirius), which functioned only until1914. In the mean time, in 1912, he also joined theBritish section, the Mysteria Mystica Maxima, ofthe German sexual occult and magick group OrdoTempli Orientis (Order of the Oriental Templars).By 1922 he became the head of the British section.

Much of Crowley’s extreme magical interests andpractices can be partly explained by his long desireto somehow become a member of the Great WhiteBrotherhood.

In later years Crowley’s continuing reputationas a self-declared Beast 666 black magician gradu-ally isolated him from society and by the time hedied he was not only addicted to alcohol and drugs,but, according to some accounts, he had come tothe belief that he was a vampire.

It is in Crowley’s book Magick in Theory andPractice, chapter VI, The Magical Memory (1929)that the author affirms his belief in reincarnation.In fact, the opening line of that chapter states,“There is no more important task than the explo-ration of one’s previous incarnations.” Also, inCrowley’s The Equinox, the official organ of the Ar-genteum Astrum, Liber Thisarb, CMXIII p. 105,Crowley gives a procedure for remembering one’spast embodiment.

Although not considered a Neo-Pagan, Crowley’sBook of the Law (Liber Al vel Legis) initiallyinfluenced the Book of Shadows (unpublished text)of Gerald Gardner, a major founder of the modernWicca movement. This Neo-Pagan movement,however, later expunged most of Crowley’s satanicviews and practices from Wiccan literature. Anumber of modern Satanist groups, on the otherhand, regard Crowley as a prophetic ancestor. Fi-nally, Crowley’s teachings appear to have had aninfluence on L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Sci-entology.

See also Ascended masters; Channeling; Eso-tericism versus Occultism; Fortune, Dion; Neo-

pagan religions; Solar Temple, Order of; Spare,Austin Osman; Steiner, Rudolph; Templars.

Crux Ansata see Ankh.

Crypt. Into one crypt, out of another. This is ametaphor for entering the first, or burial, crypt andexiting from the second (the womb). It’s a varia-tion on tomb to womb, coffin to cradle; anddeath to breath.

Cryptesthesia. This is an alternative term for psy-chic or extrasensory perception. It was coined byDr. Charles Richet (1850– 1935), a Nobel prize-winning physiologist and prominent researcher ofpsychic phenomena.

See also Rebirth, alternative explanations to.

Cryptomnesia. This is the sudden rememberingof something long forgotten in one’s life. The hu-man subconscious accumulates an enormous amountof information to which the conscious mind hasforgotten that it was ever exposed. Since innumer-able cases of past life memories, including the fa-mous Bridey Murphy case, have been shown tobe entirely the result of cryptomnesia most criticsof the rebirth concept point to this form of amne-sia to account for all sincere past life memory cases.

In the opinion of some past life recall support-ers some aspects of cryptomnesia can actually beused in support of genuine past life recall. The the-ory behind this is that if a person’s present-lifememory has gone to the trouble of abducting apresent-life memory and applied it to a past life itmay be because there was something about the ab-ducted memory that was of real significance to thepast life.

See also Hypermnesia; Past life memory re-call; Rebirth, alternative explanations to.

Crystal gazing see Scrying.

Cult of Angels. A majority of non–Muslim Kurdspractice one of several indigenous Kurdish pre–Muslim faiths that can loosely be labeled the “Cultof Angels” (Yazdanism), from yazdani (angel) inKurdish. There are three extant branches of theCult, namely Yarsanism, Yezidism, and Alevism.The latter are also known as Aliullahi or Ahl-iHaqq meaning “deifiers of Ali” who was the cousinand son-in-law of Mohammed, and became thefourth Caliph.

All forms of the Cult, past and present, hold afundamental belief in luminous, angelic beings ofether, numbering seven, which protect the universefrom an equal number of balancing dark forces ofmatter. Another shared belief, and a cornerstoneof the Cult, is the belief in the reincarnation ofsouls along with incarnations of the deity constitut-ing major and minor avatars.

Crux 70

Several now extinct religious movements mayhave their origin in some early version of the Cultof Angels. Among these could be one or more formsof Gnosticism; Manichaeism; and even Mithra-ism. Somewhat later it may have given rise toKhurramiyya and Druzism, and in still moremodern times to Babism. In its present form theCult shows many accommodations to Islam, withwhich over the past 1,400 years it has often had anantagonistic relationship. It is thought that perhaps30–35 percent of all present-day Kurds follow var-ious forms of the Cult.

See also Babism and Bahaism; Druzes; Nusay-ris; Yazidis.

Cummins, Geraldine Dorothy (1890– 1969). Thisrenowned Irish automatist medium had as her spiritcontrol E.W.H. Myers, the co-founder of the(British) Society for Psychical Research. Accord-ing to her control a new soul is born within agroup, and has to take an earth pattern (karma) al-ready laid down by the thoughts and actions of thesoul’s group predecessor.

Cummins claimed that people do not reincar-nate hundreds of times or more; in fact, the major-ity reincarnate only a very few times. Cumminswrote The Scripts of Cleophas, Rider and Company,London (1928), Road to Immortality, The PsychicBook Club, London (1947, originally 1932); Be-yond Human Personality, Ivor Nicholson & Wat-son, London (1935), They Survive, Rider and Com-pany, London (1946), Mind in Life and Death,Aquarian Press, London (1956); and Swan on aBlack Sea: A Study of Automatic Writing: The Cum-mins-Willet Transcripts, Routledge & K. Paul, Lon-don (1965).

Cummins was very interested in practicing psy-chic archaeology. In particular she sought to ob-tain unknown or lost information regarding theearly history of Christianity, especially of the timeof the Apostles.

See also Blocked regression; Finite or infinitenumber of rebirths; Group soul.

Cumulative argument. This argument in supportof rebirth states that while any single isolated argu-ment used to justify the doctrine of rebirth mayseem without convincing weight by itself, addingtogether a number of compatible individual argu-ments increases the probability of the truth of re-birth. This method of proof has been used timeand time again because on the surface it seems log-ical and so has a certain popular appeal. However,despite its popularity the cumulative argument isnot necessarily any stronger than any of the indi-vidual arguments of which it is made.

See also Rebirth and the preponderance of ev-idence.

Current knowledge discrepancy. This is a well-documented factor in many presumed past lifememories. It is when a person describing a life inthe past uses data that is commonly or currentlyassumed to be correct, but which an expert knowsis incorrect or which a later discovery proves it tobe incorrect. Examples of this are to describe camelsin Old Kingdom Egypt, when they were not in-troduced until centuries later; to give a date such as100 BCE for a past life when this Christian datingsystem did not exist until the early Medieval pe-riod; to state one had a life in the lost continent ofAtlantis when modern science has shown its exis-tence as a near impossibility; to remember a life asan intelligent being on a planet that could not pos-sibly have evolved such a being.

See also Past life memory recall; Planets,other; Rebirth and science; Rosemary case; Su-pernatural-in-the-gap process.

Cycle mates. According to the Grace-Loehr lifereadings these are two or more souls that, moreoften than not, re-embody at the same time to in-teract with one another for certain cycles of thosesouls’ development. Cycle mates are not as stronglybound as are soul mates, instead they are more likesoul twins; in fact, soul twins are often cycle mates.

Cyclical time see Rebirth and cyclical time.

Dabistan. In this Persian Sufi manual of mysticallore, various forms of tanasukh (reincarnation) arementioned, such as rebirth as a human being(naskh), as an animal (maskh), as a plant (raskh), oreven as a mineral (faskh).

See also Yarsanism.

Daimones. This Greek derived term in Homerictimes (12th century BCE) meant a supernaturalpower in its anonymous, unpredictable, and fright-ening form. By the time of the Greek philosopher,biographer, and priest of Apollo at Delphi, Plu-tarch (1st–2nd century CE) the term daimones re-ferred to highly developed, blessed human soulswhich existed to guide recently deceased virtuoussouls to heaven. The souls of the non-virtuous sim-ply refused to accept the daimones assistance andso once again fell into repeated earthly rebirths.

As early as the Septuagint, the 2nd century BCE

Greek translation of the Old Testament , the termcame to mean, not a benevolent or deified spirit(eudaimon), but only an evil one (kakodaimon).This greatly altered meaning for daimon was con-tinued by Christian authors.

The Septuagint-Christian meaning of daimonesshould not be confused with the later 16th centurylist of seven daimones associated with the then sevenknown celestial bodies.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Lucifer.

71 Daimones

Dalai Lama. This title (Mongol: oceanic lama) wasfirst given to Snam Gyatsho [Tibetan: bsod-namsrgya-mtsho] (1543– 1588) the third supreme leaderof the Gelug-pa [Tibetan: dGe-lugs-pa] School ofTibetan Buddhism by the Mongol ruler AltanKhan. It was then applied retrospectively to thetwo previous Gelug-pa leaders. It was also AltanKhan who originally installed the Dalai Lamas asthe supreme temporal rulers of Tibet, a positionwhich they held until the Chinese Communistseizure of Tibet in the 1950s.

The Dalai Lama is actually not considered a re-born soul in the sense that an ordinary person isthought to be. Rather he is considered by his fol-lowers to be the Tulku (incarnation) of Aval-okiteshvara (Tibetan: Chenrezi) the bodhisattvaof compassion. In other words, the Dalai Lama isan avatar, an incarnation of a being that has anexclusively celestial or divine origin, rather thanany ordinary earthly origin.

When a Dalai Lama dies his successor must bediscovered through a number of ritually requiredprocesses. First, before the old Dalai Lama dies heis expected to tell approximately where he willchoose to be incarnated again. Second, the namesof all children born in Tibet immediately after thedeath of the Dalai Lama are obtained by the ab-bots of the great monasteries throughout Tibet.Third, the college of lamas examines the astrolog-ical signs, consult the Shamanic Lhamoi Latso Or-acle, and check other auspicious signs and omensfor clues as to the place and family of the next DalaiLama. Fourth, the names of three prospective chil-dren are drawn from the abbot’s lists. Fifth, lots aredrawn, more signs and omens checked and the cho-sen child is put to a test which consists of pickingout the rosary, drinking cup, shawl, and other pos-sessions of the late Dalai Lama from among simi-lar objects never belonging to him. Finally, the suc-cessful candidate must have one or more auspiciousmarks on his body.

The Dalai Lama is not alone in the claim to bean incarnation of Chenrezi. The Gyalwa KarmapaLama of Kagyu-pa [bKa’brgyud-pa] School of Va-jrayana Buddhism is also so identified.

See also Panchen Lama; Possession; Incarna-tion versus reincarnation; Russia, reincarnationin.

Dali, Salvador (1904– 1989). This famous Spanishpainter apparently attributed his interest and abil-ity to paint mystically luminous works to his hav-ing been in a past life the Spanish mystic Saint Johnof the Cross (1542– 1591).

Damanhur. This is a spiritual community innorthern Italy founded by Oberto Airaudi in 1977.The members of this community believe that there

are certain lines of energy (synchronic lines) foundall over the world which represent the nervous sys-tem of the earth. These lines converge in two significant places. One is in Tibet and the other isin the Piedmont valley just north of the city ofTurin where Damanhur is located. Damanhurteachings include the belief that human beingsshare a divine nature and that through both rein-carnation and an understanding of the Damanhurphilosophy the realization of that divine nature canbe fully gained.

Daniel, Book of. This last book of the Old Testa-ment claims to have been written in the 6th cen-tury BCE, but was really a product of the 2nd cen-tury BCE. The book is theologically most significantfor its unequivocal acknowledgement of a physicalresurrection at the apocalyptic end of time. As suchit is a direct challenge to any attempt to claim thatthe Old Testament clandestinely supports the con-cept of reincarnation.

See also Akashic Record; Angels and reincar-nation; Church Council of Lyons and Council ofFlorence; Hussein, Saddam; Old Testament andthe afterlife; Psychopannychism; Resurrection ofJesus; Revelation of John.

Daoism/Taoism. This native Chinese religious tra-dition did not originally include any concept ofreincarnation; however, with the introduction ofBuddhism into China, some forms of folk Daoismeventually adopted this belief.

See also Chinese religion and reincarnation;Empire of Jade; Lingbao [Numinous Treasure]Scripture; Rebirth and cyclical time.

Dark Brotherhood. This is said to be the oppositeof the Great White Brotherhood. The DarkBrotherhood, according to the Dhyani Chohan’sHilarion, is not specifically evil since they are re-sponsible for assisting the less spiritually developedpersons for whom the Great White Brotherhoodhave no time; but they do have the adversary roleof testing those who might may be candidates forthe attention of the Great White Brotherhood. Insome Theosophical groups this brotherhood iscalled the Black Brotherhood or the Brothers of theShadow.

See also Ascended masters.

David, the Biblical King see Adam; Frank,Jacob; Kabbalah; Koresh, David.

David, Star of see Star of David or Sign ofSolomon.

Davis, Andrew Jackson (1826– 1910). This famousAmerican spiritualist trance medium believed thathe was channeling Emanuel Swedenborg, and

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claimed that he had received several spirit commu-nications that stated that “reincarnation was non-sense” and at best was “a magnificent mansion builton sand.”

See also Diakka; Home, Daniel Douglas;Morse, J.J.; Spiritualism; Wickland, Carl.

Dayaks. A native people of Sarawak (Western Bor-neo), some of whom believed that ancestors arereincarnated as serpents, therefore, serpents oughtnot to be killed.

See also Indonesia; Rebirth, restricted.

Dead Sea Scrolls see Essenes.

Death. Technically, this is the condition in whichan organism can no longer be considered alive. Be-fore modern medical technology was able to keepa human being’s heart and circulatory system func-tioning despite irreversible damage to the person’sbrain, death was simply defined as the cessation ofcoronary functioning. Today brain death is con-sidered a more practical indicator of death. Nomatter what the criterion for death is, it must beregarded as an irreversible process. This is the mainreason why a so-called near-death experience cannot be considered a case where the person’s brain hasdied, and his consciousness left his body (thecorpse), but then returned to the body and to life.This applies regardless of how short the period be-tween the so-called death and return was; there-fore, what are called near-death experience can notbe used to prove that a soul or state of conscious-ness can exist independent of the body, which is anessential for any kind of reincarnation.

See also Alzheimer’s Disease; Astral body;Body-brain (mind) dependency; Eighth sphere;Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth; Mind; Out-of-the-bodyexperiences and near-death-experiences; Seconddeath.

Death as punishment see Original sin, Chris-tianity, and reincarnation.

Death panorama. This is said to be the experienceof the recently deceased in which he or she views thewhole of his/her most recent life as a timelesspanorama rather than sequentially as would nor-mally be the case. Some theories of reincarnation in-clude this panoramic experience as part of the in-terim period.

Death posture see Spare, Austin Osman

Death, second see Annihilation; Eighth Planet;Second death.

Death to breath. Like coffin to cradle and tombto womb, this is a metaphor for reincarnation.

See also Crypt.

Death trauma see Birth trauma; Memories, rea-sons for loss of past life.

Deathlessness see Amrita.

Deaths, violent and premature. The research onpast life memories by Dr. Ian Stevenson has sug-gested that there are far more claims of rebirth forindividuals who died prematurely and/or violentlythan for those who died under more normal cir-cumstances. In general, 60–75 percent of his casesfit this category. In fact, some cultures that acceptreincarnation believe that rebirth only happens toindividuals who experience such deaths; all otherpeople are born with new souls. These cultures sug-gest two main reasons for such selective rebirths.The first is that suddenness of the death left the de-ceased so disoriented that he or she was desperateto return to a normal embodiment. The second isthat the suddenness left the deceased with“unfinished business” that required re-embodi-ment.

The fact that a claim to a violent death may elicitmore attention towards a child supposedly remem-bering a past life has added to the belief that thechild’s memories may be more an attention gettingmechanism than genuine memories. Also, the ideathat violent and premature deaths may soon lead to a rebirth is an emotionally soothing factor forthe average adult, especially one who has suffereda loss.

Stevenson, in fact, believed that people who diedviolently underwent quicker rebirths than thosewho died more naturally. He stated that he notedthat children who recall having died violently startto verbalize about their former lives at a slightlyyounger age than do other children.

A different statistic comes from the psychologistHelen Wambach (1978, 1979). Out of a sample of1,100 adult subjects she found 62 percent claimednatural deaths, 18 percent violent deaths, and 20percent were of unknown causes. This would prob-able match the historical situation rather closely.

Among the Inuit (Eskimo) and other native peo-ple of Alaska and Canada rebirths are said to be farmore common for individuals who died prema-turely and/or violently.

On the other hand, the Chinese have a far dif-ferent take on certain violent deaths. They believethat, at least, in the case of persons who have beenhanged or drowned, their souls can not be rebornuntil they have arranged for another person to behanged or drowned in the same place.

See also Blocked regression; Children remem-bering past lives; Deaths, violent and prema-ture; Karma as unfinished business; Old souls;Parents in the next life; Rebirth, selective; Res-cue circles; Social Status of Past Lives.

73 Deaths

Deciduous trees. A tree’s seasonal loss of leavesand seemingly winter death, followed by spring re-birth, is one of the analogies in nature that has sug-gested the concept of rebirth to ancient peoples seeRebirth, analogies from nature.

Deferred payment plan for the soul. This is an ir-reverent description of the Western belief in thegeneral resurrection by some reincarnationists. Thefaithful die, but then they must wait until somedistant future time to receive their reward. The ad-vertised selling point for this is that compared to thejoyful eternity with which those souls will be re-warded, even a relatively long, yet finite, wait isworth it.

See also Resurrection, bodily; Theodicy.

Dehiscent or Seed-pod Principle. This is the ideathat a plant has to die in order to release its seedsand live again in a new manifestation. It may seema great jump from the this seed-pod principle toTibetan politics; nonetheless, this principle hasbeen applied by some reincarnationists metaphor-ically to explain why a culture with such supposedlygreat spiritual adapts as Tibet could so easily beoverwhelmed militarily by a materialistic China.

According to those reincarnationists two factorswere at work here. First, the Tibetan Buddhist hi-erarchy was karmicaly punished for trying to holdon to their power by keeping Tibet an isolatedbackward feudal state. Second, compassionate cos-mic forces (perhaps anonymous bodhisattvas) hadfinally decided that it was time for the rest of theworld to be offered the profound teachings of Va-jrayana Buddhism, but in order to do this thoseforces had to pry the reluctant lamas and tulkusloose from their mountainous monasteries andshove them out into the rest of the world. Althoughthis meant great suffering for the possibly innocentTibetan people, their sacrifice would eventually berewarded in future-lives.

Actually this approach to the Tibetan tragedywas originally developed by Western theorists tocounter the blaming the victim criticism.

See also Ascended masters; Bardo; Blamingthe victim vs. illusion of innocence; Bon-pa [po]religion; Dalai Lama; Tulku.

Déjà vu (French for “already seen”). This is an im-pression of having seen or experienced somethingbefore. Advocates of rebirth regard certain déjà vuexperiences as proof of reincarnation. However,there are a number of non-paranormal explanationfor déjà vu that need to be examined before usingit as any kind of proof of a past life.

First, while there can be a genuine sense of famil-iarity about just part of some stimulant, the mindoften attributes this familiarity to the entire stim-

ulant. Second, the déjà vu experience can be dueto paramnesia, the subconscious combination oftwo or more authentic memories that suddenlyenter consciousness. This gives the false belief thatwhat should normally be experienced as somethingnew is experienced as something familiar. Third,there is experience of double exposure. In this, thedouble functioning of the two hemispheres of thebrain causes the subject to see something twice withonly a fraction of a second between the two sight-ings. The mind interprets this as having seen some-thing for a second time. Fourth, a trick of the mindcan occur when a blinking of the eyes causes a dis-torted sense of time, which the mind again inter-prets as seeing something for a second time. Fifth,the mind, when encountering an unfamiliar andpossibly threatening situation, reduces its level ofanxiety by causing the situation to seem familiarand unthreatening.

The terms paramnesia and pantomnesia are themore scientifically psychological names for déjà vu,but when applied specifically to past life recall déjàvu is referred to as “intuitive past life recall.”

When a déjà vu experience refers only to some-thing that one believes he or she has heard beforeit is technically called a déjà entendu (alreadyheard). An example of this would be when onetravels to a place with an unfamiliar language andone feels that the sounds of that language are some-how familiar. Also, there is déjà eprouve (alreadyexperienced), déjà senti (already felt), even déjà aime(already loved). This last word would fall under thecategory of Karmic romances.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Children remembering past lives; Cryptomnesia;Olfactory psychic experience.

Demiurge (Greek: craftsman). Originally used byPlato for the supreme creator, by the time of the riseof Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, it had come tomean an inferior, sometimes evil, deity that was re-sponsible for the creation of the material world ver-sus an all good, nearly unknowable higher deity whosought to liberate human souls from reincarnationinto the this-worldly domain of the demiurge.

See also Antinomianism; Archons; Basilides;Body-soul dualism; Bogomils; Carpocrates;Cathars; Gender issue of the soul; Manichae-ism; Paulicians; Valentinus.

Demonomancy. This is the practice of using de-mons for divinatory purposes. Conservative Chris-tian and other religious groups regard spiritual-ism, channeling, and sometimes even delving intopast lives as forms of demonomancy or demonicsciomancy.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Daimones;Old Testament and the afterlife.

Deciduous 74

Demonic possession see Possession.

Dependent causality see Pratitya-samutpada.

De Rochas, Colonel Albert (1837– 1914). ThisFrench psychical investigator seems to have beenthe first person to attempt age-regression underhypnosis. De Rochas describes his early work insuch regression by magnetic sleep (hypnosis) in hisLes Vies Successives (1911). De Rochas’ first experiencewith regression was an accidental event in 1893,but it was not until 11 years later (1904) that it oc-curred to him to continue such regressions. Onecriticism of Rochas’ regressions was that almost allof them claimed past lives as French men andwomen, which would be expected for his subjectswho, for the most part, were not too educated andhad little experience with travel abroad, and couldnot imagine lives elsewhere.

See also Hypnotic age regression; Rebirth,proximity.

Descartes, Rene (1596– 1650). Descartes, philoso-pher, scientist, and mathematician, after startingwith the premise “Doubt Everything” in order toarrive at an ultimate truth or reality, finally con-cluded that the only thing that could not bedoubted was the doubting mind. As a result he wasable to state “I think, therefore I am (Latin: Cog-ito, ergo sum).” From this basic premise Descartesclaimed that one could logically believe in Godand, by extension, the reality of the soul, which healso believed to be located in the human pinealgland.

The much earlier founders (4th–5th CE) of theYogachara School of Buddhism began with thesame basic premise “the questioning mind itself cannot be doubted” premise to, by extension, affirma-tion of the reality of rebirth and karma.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Chakras;Mind; Pineal and pituitary gland.

Descent into hell (Christian) see Harrowing ofHell; Limbo.

Destiny see Determinism; Karma and free will;Predestination.

Determinism. This is the general belief that, toone degree or another, forces or powers outside ofa person’s individual control determines that per-son’s life. Materialist determinism suggests thatphysical and historical events more or less deter-mine the lives of people as groups and even as in-dividuals. Added to this can be psycho-biologicaldeterminism that suggests that our behavior is farmore determined by individual genetic and bio-chemical forces than most people realize.

General determinism should be carefully distin-

guished from predestination, which is the form ofdeterminism that states that God has determinedthe ultimate destiny of people. A more extremeform of predestination is fatalism, which is the be-lief that all, or almost all, of the most importantevents in a person’s life are predetermined or pre-destined by the powers that be (gods, God, thestars, etc.). Related to the issue of determinism isthe issue of karma and free will. Some critics of thekarma theory accuse it of leading to fatalism. Whilesome ancient proponents of karma, such as theAjivikas, were fatalists, Hinduism, Jainism, andBuddhism have always support free will to one de-gree or another.

A rejection of determinism (ishvaranimmaana-vada) is essential to the Middle Path of Buddhismbecause without it one is incapable of escapingfrom the cycle of rebirth and re-death.

See also Accidentalism; Asceticism; Astrologyand rebirth; Eternalism; Hedonism.

Deuteronomy 5:2–3. This is one of the passagesthat are sometimes used to argue that reincarna-tion is implied in the Old Testament. In this pas-sage Moses is speaking to the Israelites. He says tothem, “The Lord our God made a covenant withus at Horeb. It was not with our forefathers thatthe Lord made this covenant, but with us, all of uswho are alive and here this day.” Horeb is anothername for Mount Sinai, and the covenant Moses isreferring to was actually made with the generationof grandparents of those to whom he is speaking.In fact, the complete text implies that of those fore-fathers only three individuals are still alive. Theusual and orthodox interpretation of this passage isthat in making the covenant with the forefathersGod was making it just as strongly with their de-scendants (grandchildren). The reincarnational in-terpretation of this passage is that the souls of theforefathers have been reincarnated into the bodiesof their descendants; therefore, Moses is simply re-minding those reincarnated forefathers of their earlier covenant. However, since, there must havebeen considerable generational overlap betweengrandparents and grandchildren this reincarnationinterpretation is illogical. Also, the Israelite popu-lation of the later period was greater than of theearlier period, and this interpretation, naturally, isproblematic in light of the population increaseissue.

See also Ecclesiastes; Exodus; Forty; Genesis;Kabbalah; Karma in the Bible? Old Testamentand the afterlife; Old Testament and the soul;Psalms; Torah.

Devachan (Dwelling of the gods). In Theosophythis is an interim period state between lives inwhich the ego, after leaving behind its lower sheaths

75 Devachan

(astral body, etc.) has time to peacefully or evenblissfully contemplate its past and future.

The prominent theosophist James S. Perkins, inhis book Experiencing Reincarnation (1977), statesthat spiritually advanced souls spend 1,000 to 2,000years in devachan; that the souls of cultured self-disciplined people and those who have professionalpursuits spend about 1,000 years there; that well-meaning and dutiful people spend 600– 1.000 yearsthere, and so forth, with the most primitive humanbeings spending only 30–40 years in devachan.

In Vajrayana Buddhism devachan can mean thePure-Land paradise of Amitabha Buddha.

See also Devaloka; Heaven; Kamaloka.

Devaloka (World of the gods [deva]). In Buddhismthis is one of the five or six worlds into which an or-dinary human being can be reborn as a reward forwholesome karma. Although an extremely blissfulstate, it is just as impermanent as in all the otherskama-rupa realms. Just as a rebirth factor is borninto this realm due to virtuous karma, as soon as allthat virtuous karma has been exhausted the rebirthfactor must be reborn into one of the other four orfive realms of samsara, and continue to be rebornand re-die until finally attaining nirvana. For thisreason heavenly rebirth is not the highest goal inBuddhism.

It needs to be noted that all the entities in thedeva realm are not benevolent beings. For exam-ple, the god Mara, the evil one, dwells in the devarealm.

Finally, among some Western reincarnationiststhe term devas is equated with the term angels.

See also Abhavya; Astral plane; Asuras; Bhava-chakra; Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism;Heaven; Nine doors; Pure-Land or Blissful LandBuddhism; Vimanavatthu.

Devas (S. Gods) see Devachan; Devaloka.

Devil see Lucifer (1).

Dharma Shastras (Law Commentaries). These areHindu texts which outline the various rules (dhar-mas) for the establishment of a harmonious soci-ety. It was mainly through these texts, compiledfrom about 200 BCE onwards, that a widespreadacceptance of reincarnation was established in Hin-duism.

Dhyani chohans. This is a Sanskrit-Tibetan com-pound name used in Theosophy to mean medita-tion lords, and it refers collectively to formerhuman beings who have become the ascendedmasters or Masters of the Great White Brother-hood (Lodge). These dhyani chohans are dividedinto three levels. The lowest consists of those whoare still incarnated in human form; the second are

those who, while disincarnated, are still accessibleto human beings; and the third are those far tooadvanced for human consciousness to completelycomprehend. Among these dhyani chohans are ElMorya, Hilarion, Jesus, Kuthumi, Saint Germain,Venetian, and Serapis (otherwise an Egyptian god).

See also Church Universal and Triumphant;Dark Brotherhood; Sinnett, Alfred Percy.

Diakka. In Spiritualism this is said to be a sizablegroup of morally unclean souls that reside in theirown part of Summerland and who deliberatelyseek to misguide poorly skilled mediums and oth-ers who try to investigate the afterlife. This wouldpresumably include the subject of reincarnation. Itmay have been just this group of malicious soulsthat Helena Blavatsky included in her rather ex-cessive condemnation of spiritualism after her veryshort interest in the subject. The name diakkacomes from the work of the famous Spiritualist An-drew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) who wrote TheDiakka and their Earthly Victims, (A. J. Davis Com-pany, New York, 1873).

See also Vampires.

Diathanatic (Greek: carried through death). Thisterm refers to whatever it might be that carries overfrom one life to another. For example, diathanticmemory would be whatever memory one had inthis life about a past life.

See also Psychophore.

Dibbuk, Dybbuk (Hebrew: to cling, cleave). Thisis a form of malevolent possession described in theKabbalah. Some sources state that a wicked soul(nefesh) becomes a dibbuk either because its sinsblock its journey into the afterworld and/or if thesoul has not reformed after three lives (embodiment).

See also Attached entity; Karet.

Dichotomy. In reference to reincarnation, thisrefers to a view of the human being as a two partentity of the body and the soul, as opposed to atrichotomy of the body, the soul, and the spirit.While a dichotomy seem to be justified by someNew Testament passages, a trichotomy is morecommonly implied. In either case, if reincarnationis accepted it is the soul that would reincarnate,not the spirit.

Diogenes Laertius (2nd century CE). In his workLives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 220CE) this classic author tells us that Pythagoras wasable to remember a series of past lives beginningwith Aethalides, the son of the god Hermes, whowhile denied god-like immortality, was granted theability any lives he would live.

Dionysus. This ancient Greek deity is most com-monly thought of simply as the god of wine and

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ecstasy; and this is exactly what he was, exceptwhen he is referred to as Dionysus Zagreus. In theZagreus form he was the patron god of Orphism,a reincarnation believing sect that actually advo-cated abstaining from wine. There is nothing un-usual about any Greek god having such oppositeassociations. The Greeks, like most pagan people,were not greatly concerned about keeping their the-ology neatly organized. Such organization is of con-cern only to a highly institutionalized priesthood,which the Greeks did not have. In accordance withany lack of consistency in most ancient mythol-ogy, in Orphism the mother of Dionysus Zagreusis the goddess Persephone, while outside of Or-phism the mother is the mortal Semele. However,even in the non–Orphic myth Dionysus had a con-nection to death and immortality due to the storythat he retrieved Semele from the underworld andguided her to the abode of the immortals.

See also Double torches; Greeks and reincar-nation; Priesthood, lack of an organized; Re-birth, analogies from nature; Theophilus.

Disincarnation. This is the same as disembodi-ment; and as such it is the opposite of reincarnation.

Dissociation. This is a psychological processwhereby there is a sudden, temporary alteration inthe usual integrative functions of consciousness,identity, or motor behavior. If this alteration im-pacts consciousness, significant personal situationsare not remembered. If this affects one’s personalidentity, either the individual’s normal identity istemporarily lost to a new identity, or one’s normalsense of reality gives way to a sense of unreality.This condition has been suggested as one way ofexplaining channeling.

See also Multiple personalities; Trance states.

Divided consciousness. This is the condition inwhich two streams of consciousness are present atthe same time. It is a frequent condition duringhypnotic age regression (past life regression). Theperson in this state is able to relive what is thoughtto be a past life while at the same time being com-pletely aware of the present time and their iden-tity. Divided consciousness is sometimes referred toas dual consciousness.

Divining past lives see Dreams, announcing;Lhamoi Latso Oracle; Sciomancy; Scrying;Tarot.

Doceticism. This term comes from the Greekmeaning “to seem” and refers to an early Christiangnostic concept that denied that Jesus was born,crucified, and died in a real physical body. This de-nial was necessary for most Christian gnostics inthat Jesus could not be trapped in matter and still

be expected to be able to liberate others from suchmatter. This left Jesus as a pure spirit who createda kind of phantasmal or illusory embodiment inorder to communicate his saving truth to embod-ied (entrapped) souls.

Some docetic Christians even used the gospelstory at Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21; and Luke23:26 to argue for their view. In those passagesJesus was too weak to carry his cross so the Romanspressed into service the bystander Simon of Cyreneto carry the cross for Jesus. The docetic believersthen argue that, through some clever, if not mirac-ulous exchange, it was Simon, not Jesus who wascrucified. This docetic down-playing of the resur-rection allowed some gnostic Christians to replacethe orthodox resurrection doctrine with a belief inreincarnation. To say the least, orthodox Christian-ity regarded doceticism as a damnable heresy.

The docetic view apparently was still strongenough in the late 6th century that it was able to influence Mohammed’s view of the fate of Jesus. In the Quran, at Sura 4:157– 158, it is stated,“They [the Jews] slew him not, nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; ... they slewhim not for certain, But Allah took him up untoHimself.”

The usual reason given for an original Moslempreference for a docetic view had nothing to dowith favoring reincarnation; instead, it is an ortho-dox Islamic belief that a true prophet of God,which Jesus is considered to be in Islam, is suffi-ciently under divine protection so that no humanaction can ultimately harm him.

See also Basilides; Emanationism; Gnosticism;Islam; Paulicians; Resurrection of Jesus.

Dor deah. This the Hebrew for “Generation ofKnowledge” and is a reference to the Kabbalic ideathat as a group the generation of the biblical floodreincarnated at the time of the Tower of Babel, andagain at the Exodus, and now or very soon at theAge of Aquarius.

See also Kabbalah; Rebirth, ethnic; Rebirth,group; Karma, racial.

Double, The see Shadow body.

Double torches. In some Greek pottery the godDionysus is flanked by two Maenads (frenzied fe-male devotees) each of which carries a torch, oneheld up and the other held down. These arethought to represent the ascent (anodos) and re-birth or descent (cathodes) of the soul.

See also Orphism.

Dpal-gyi-rdo-rje see Belgi Dorje.

Dreams. Some people believe it is possible to recap-ture past life memories from the subconscious dur-

77 Dreams

ing sleep because of the temporary disengagementfrom the more critical elements of the consciousmind. Having a re-occurring dream of parts of a lifein some past time has been interpreted as sponta-neous recall of past life memories. Consistent day-dreams are sometimes also thought to be related topast life memories.

The idea that dreams have deep psychologicalmeaning has been around for a very long time. Itwas given some scientific validity by early depthpsychologists, such as Freud and Jung. However,psychoanalysis, for the most part, eventually founddreams to be too unreliable for therapy in this life.This was reinforced by modern psychology whichhas done, and continues to do, a very good job ofshowing that most, if not all, of our dreams are re-lated to working out problems in our present-dayevery day life, not in some past one.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; As-tral body; Silver Chord; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical; Soul, psychology of; Souls, fixedand free.

Dreams, announcing. These are dreams had by aparent or a close relative of a yet to be born child,which suggest to the dreamer that the child will bea reborn family member or friend. Such dreams arenot uncommon among cultures that traditionallyaccept reincarnation. This foretelling of the futurethrough dreams (oneiromancy), however, compli-cates any scientific investigation of the case sincethe child, if recalling a past life, may have memo-ries influenced by the adult dreamer’s expectations.Most serious past life researchers, therefore, do notgive much credence to such dreams.

See also Australian Aborigines; ConsanguiousRebirth.

Dreams, lucid. This is the dream state in whichthe dreamer knows he is dreaming. It has been sug-gested that some past life scenarios experiencedwhile in a hypnotic state may be related to luciddreaming. Lucid, or even just ordinary, dreamingof deceased persons has been proposed as one ofthe sources for a belief in an afterlife.

See also Soul, psychology of.

Drink or fruit of forgetfulness. In a number ofmythologies the souls of the deceased, before beingreborn, travels to a place where they are told todrink or eat a substance which will cause all mem-ories of their former life to be lost. This is then saidto be the reason that people can not remember pastlives. In rare cases some individuals are believed tohave avoided such consumption which accountsfor their ability to remember parts of a past life.Some ancient Latin sources refer to this forgetful-ness as drinking from the Chalice of Oblivion(Latin: Oblivionis Poculum).

Kabbalic literature has a slightly different takeon this forgetfulness. It says that the night-angelLayela (Laila[h]) gives the about to reincarnate soula pinch on the nose and a light push on the upperlip of the astral face of the soul that causes it to for-get its past. The indentation on everyone’s upper lipis believed to be the proof of this angelic touch.

See also Hell, the Chinese; Kabbalah; Lethe;Mnemosyne; Nepenthean veil; Plato; Right-handpath and left-hand path.

Drugs see Body-brain (mind) dependency;Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Moore, Marcia.

Druids. The Druids were the priesthood of theCeltic speakers of Gaul (ancient France) and theBritish Isles. The majority of evidence points to abelief in transmigration among at least the Celticpeoples of Gaul. The earliest known mention ofthe Druids of Gaul was by the Greek historianTimaeus (mid 4th–mid 3rd century BCE). This wasfollowed by mention of them by the Greek Stoicphilosopher Posidonius (about 135–51 BCE). How-ever, neither of these men mentions anything aboutDruid beliefs. It was not until the Greek writerDiordus Silculus (60 BCE–30 CE) that there is amention that the Druids of Gaul believed that thesoul was immortal and passed from one body toanother.

Julius Caesar, who conquered Gaul between 58and 50 BCE, states in book VI of his De bello galico(of the Gallic War) that “They [the Druids] arechiefly anxious to have men believe the following:that souls do not suffer death, but after death passfrom one body to another: and they regard this asthe strongest incentive to valor, since the fear ofdeath is disregarded.”

No classical figure gives us any informationabout the beliefs of the Druids of the British Isles,therefore whether the belief on the continent also applied to the insular Druids is still under de-bate.

Under the modern name Druidry there was beena revival of what was thought was the ancient reli-gion of the Celtic Druids, of course, minus theoriginal Druid practice of human sacrifice andenemy head-hunting.

See also Higgins, Godfrey; Morgannwg, Iolo;Neo-pagan religions; New Age religions;Spiritism; Summerland; Wicca.

Druzes. This is a religious sect in Syria, Lebanonand Israel named after one of its founders, AlDarazi. It evolved out of a medieval heretical formof Shiite Islam which regarded one of the Fatimidcaliphs of Egypt, al Hakim Bi-Amr (985– 1021?), asan earthly manifestation or incarnation of God.Eventually abandoning the main requirements of

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Islam, including observing Ramadan and the pil-grimage to Mecca, orthodox Muslims consider theDruzes to be apostates. The sect also adopted thenon-orthodox Neoplatonic belief in the reincarna-tion (Arabic: tanasukh) of souls. The Druze com-munity is divided into the majority of uninitiatedlesser knowing believers and the minority of initi-ated sages.

The Druzes believe that everyone must undergoreincarnation into different life situations in orderto attain purification and perfection. It is for thisreason that everyone must experience a life of healthand sickness, of wealth and poverty, etc. They fur-ther believe that when one of their ordinary mem-bers dies he or she is always reborn as a Druzes andalways as the same sex, while when one of the per-fected sages dies he or she ascends to heaven to livewith God as a star. The Druzes do not have a be-lief in karma, since it is a personal God, not imper-sonal law that passes judgment. Therefore, for allthose in the world who have not gained such astralimmortality by the time of the Day of Judgmentthey will be sorted out and destined to either aneternity in heaven or in hell. For the Druzes thereis no interim period, there is only instantaneous re-birth.

The world’s highest percentage of past life recallis found among the Druzes. This gives rise to theissue of how much their religious belief itselfinfluences such recall.

See also Assassins; Children remembering pastlives; Judgment of the Dead; Neoplatonism;Nusayris (Nursaris); Rebirth, instantaneous; Re-birth, ethnic; Sufism; Yazidis.

Dual consciousness see Divided consciousness;Multiple personalities.

Dual or double souls see American Indians;Australian Aborigines; Hunting cultures andreincarnation; Rebirth, simultaneous.

Dual personality see Multiple personalities.

Dualism. This is the belief that reality comes intwo irreconcilable forms. Among the major formsof dualism the following are most common:

(1) There is the belief that there is a fundamen-tal opposition between the physical (bodily) realmand the spiritual (soul) realms. A large number of traditions that believe in reincarnation are dual-ist in this sense. Among these are Jainism andSamkhya Yoga practitioners; however, while bothof these are forms of body-soul dualism, they areontologically forms of pluralism because there isno attempt to find a single common ultimate sourcefor all souls.

(2) There is the belief that the individual souland God are separate and distinct from one an-

other and, therefore, the human soul can nevermerge into the being of God. All orthodox West-ern forms of monotheism, as well as certain dualforms of Hinduism, are in this group.

(3) There is the belief that there is a fundamen-tal or absolute opposition between good and evil.This absoluteness allows for no real moral compro-mising, hence any idea of the relativity of good andevil is regarded as heretical. Zoroastrianism, Chris-tianity, and to a lesser degree Judaism and Islamare examples of such moral dualism in that whatGod demands is good and everything else is evil.

In each of these three forms of dualism there areto be found some traditions that accept reincarna-tion and some that do not.

Platonism, some forms of Neoplatonism andGnosticism, Manichaeism, Bogomils, Cathars,Patarines; and Paulicians were generally of boththe first, third, and in even some cases the secondkind of dualism.

Reincarnational teaching traditions such asHindu Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhismtotally reject any kind of dualism for a non-dualor monistic ontological view of reality; nonethe-less, both of these accept reincarnation.

See also Brahman; Essenes; Fall of the Soul;Monism; Pantheism and panentheism; Plural-ism.

Ducasse, Curt John. Ducasse is the author of Is aLife After Death Possible? (1948); Nature, Mind, andDeath, (1951); and A Critical Examination of the Be-lief in a Life After Death (1961). In each of these hegives his arguments for rebirth.

Duhkha/Dukkha. This term means “dissatisfac-tion or worrying” in life. In Buddhism, Jainism,and Hinduism the reality of duhkha is the mainmotivation for wanting to eventually escape from re-birth. The term duhkha too often is translated intoEnglish as “suffering, pain, ill, unhappiness, an-guish,” etc, but this suggests something akin to theopposite of, or the lack of, physical and mentalcomfort. The original meaning of duhkha seems tohave been “a wheel with an off-center axle hole”hence “off kilter, always jolting or troublesome.”The early Buddhist canon describes duhkha in thefollowing context : Birth, sickness, old age anddeath are duhkha; union with persons we do notlove is duhkha; separation from ones we do love isduhkha; not to obtain what we want is duhkha; andthe psycho-physical aggregates that make up ourbeing are duhkha. In other words, duhkha clearlystands for everything displeasing to us from aminor annoyance to a catastrophic event. The pres-ence of duhkha does not deny the existence ofpleasure or happiness in life, rather it suggests thatno matter how much pleasure or how little pain

79 Duhkha/Dukkha

there is, we can never truly find life satisfying orfulfilling. Of course, a major reason for this duhkhais due to the very weariness and tedium of rebirthitself.

See also Adhi-daivika duhkha; Anatman; An-nihilationism, Buddhist view; Samsara; Shunya.

Dweller on the Threshold. This phrase refers tothe karmicaly produced astral remnants of a for-mer life of a hedonistic or materialistic person. It issaid that the Dweller, while residing on the astralplane, continues to influence physical re-embodi-ment in the next life as a kind of evil genius whoinspires a life of suspicion, fear, and a continuationof self-destructive indulgence.

It is unclear if the Dweller on the Threshold isto be considered the same as, or different from,what is called the Guardian of the Threshold.Under the latter name the definition incorporatesthe residue of all of the unresolved negative karma,which can take on the externalized form of a demonthat confronts a soul at the threshold to the higherspiritual world. This demonic form will prevententry into that world by forcing the soul back intothe round of reincarnation. When the karmic debtno longer blocks the way the soul will at last beable to enter into, and presumably remain in, thehigher spiritual world forever. The term Guardianof the Threshold, with little doubt, arose from thefrightening figures placed at the entrances of EastAsian temples and on the borders of mandalas.

The astrologer Liz Greene, in her book Saturn:A New Look at an Old Devil (New York: SamuelWeiser, 1976), refers to Saturn as the Dweller atthe Threshold, the keeper of the keys to the gatethrough which self-understanding is achieved andfreedom won.

Under still a third name, Watcher on theThreshold, there is what has been identified as theego’s fear of growth and change, which must befaced and conquered. In the English Hermeticmagical order, the Aurum Solis (Gold of the Sun),which was founded in1897, the Watcher is regardedas a misunderstood reflection of the higher self thathas been molded into a fearful figure by the lowerself ’s ignorance. In the view of Alice Bailey, theWatcher is the sum of all the distorted thoughts,feelings, and actions that a person has built up overpast lives, which matches the above definition ofthe Guardian of the Threshold.

The modern concept of the Dweller, Guardian,or Watcher is said to have been at least popular-ized by, if not originated with, the mystical novelZanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale, (Philadelphia: Wana-maker, 1842), by the occultist Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803– 1873). The protagonist in Zanoniwas loosely based upon the life of Comte de Saint

Germain. Lytton was a Patron of the Societas Rosi-cruciana in Anglia (Rosicrucian Society in En-gland), and was on friendly terms with the Frenchoccultist Eliphas Levi.

See also Etheric body; Saturn; Silent watch-ers.

Dying in peace. One argument in support of re-birth is that it allows a person to die peacefully. Ac-tually this is only true if the dying individual be-lieves he or she will attain a better, not a worse,rebirth. Peace can also come with the Western con-cept of the resurrection of the dead and of heaven.This suggests that, as far as a peace inducing belief,one after-life concept may be no more valid than theother.

See also Rebirth, compensation and life fulfill-ment; Resurrection, bodily.

Eady, Dorothy (1904– 1981). This English Egyp-tologist became well known through her claim thatshe remembered a past life in ancient Egypt, whereshe was a priestess named Bentreshyt, who servedat the temple of Abydos and was the lover of the19th dynasty Pharaoh Seti I (1306– 1290 BCE). In1933 the psychic connection of Eady with Egyptcaused her to move to Abydos and work for theEgyptian Antiquities Service. Eady co-authored,with Hanny El Zeini, Abydos: the Holy City of An-cient Egypt (1981). Eady’s life story was published byJonathan Cott under the title The Search for OmSety: A Story of Eternal Love (1987).

Earth-bound. This usually refers to the soul of arecently deceased person that is having great diffi-culty divorcing itself from either its former bodyand/or from those persons left behind to which ithas very strong emotional ties, positive and/or neg-ative. It is said in some religious traditions that ashow of excessive grief on the part of the living canencourage the earth-bound condition. In Theoso-phy earth-bound usually refers to a soul that is un-able or unwilling to pass from the etheric bodyinto the astral body.

See also Creationism, soul; Etheric body; Jain-ism.

East-West traveling. In some symbolic systemstraveling east to west (rising to setting sun) meansbirth to death, while traveling west to east is deathto rebirth.

See also Sheep.

Ecclesiastes. There are two passages from this OldTestament book that some reincarnationists believehelps prove that parts of the Bible clandestinelyteach rebirth. Two such passages are found at Ec-clesiastes 1:4 and 1:9– 11. The first of these reads,“Generations come and generations go, while the

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earth endures forever.” In this passage the word‘generations’ is taken to mean a series if life-timesfor each person, especially by some Kabbalists. Thesecond passage reads, “What has happened willhappen again, and what has been done will be doneagain, and there is nothing new under the sun.”Both passages, read in their proper context, showthat they refer to an attitude of pessimistic worldweariness. The earlier verse, 1:2–3, tells us, “Empti-ness, emptiness, says the Speaker, emptiness, all isempty. What does man gain from all his labor andhis toil here under the sun?” This is reinforced atverse 1:8a, “All things are wearisome: no man canspeak of them all.”

Like almost any passage in the Bible, if takenout of its greater context it can be distorted to meananything someone wants it to mean. Any belief thatreincarnation is implied in Ecclesiastes would cer-tainly have to explain away Ecclesiastes 9:5–6, and10, which are among the most explicit nearly anni-hilationist set of passages in the Old Testament. Infact, as a whole, Ecclesiastes is the most pessimistic,indeed, cynical, book in the Bible. Its main themeis the ultimate vanity and emptiness of life in theface of either near or full obliteration at death. Theonly other book that comes close to this cynicismis that of Job.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; NewTestament and reincarnation; Old Testamentand the afterlife; Peter, 1st and 2nd; SilverChord.

Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sir-ach. Verses 41:8–9 in this apocryphal book read,“Woe to you, godless men who have abandonedthe law of God Most High! When you are born,you are born to a curse, and when you die, a curseis your lot.” The reincarnational argument for thispassage is that the reason men would be born to acurse as stated in line 2 is because they had been thegodless men in line one. This should logically meanthat they had been godless before birth, hence, ina previous life. Furthermore, they would not intheir new life be able to overcome their godlessnesssufficiently to escape punishment in the future.However, the emphasis in the following passageson a person of good reputation out living a god-fearing person and the reputation of a bad personending in ruin would seem to negate any reincar-national meaning to the original passage.

See also Deuteronomy 5:2–3; Ecclesiastes; OldTestament and the afterlife.

Eckankar. The name Eckankar is derived from themodified spelling of the Hindi-Punjabi words forone (ek) and God (onkar). As the name of one of theNew Age religions it was founded in 1965 by PaulTwitchell (1908– 1971). In 1950 Twitchell joined

the Self Revelation Church of Absolute Monismunder Swami Premananda, but under controver-sial circumstances left to become the student of aHindu-Sikh teacher, Kirpal Singh, who taught theDivine Science of the Soul. Also, for a short timehe was a member of Scientology. Most of the Eck-ankar teachings seem to be derived from thesesources. However, according to the official Eck-ankar position Twitchell received the teachingsfrom a secret line of celestial masters or adepts, whoinitiated Twitchell into their order in 1956. Since1981, their spiritual leader has been Harold Klemp.

A major teaching of Twitchell was that the soulcan leave the body at will, especially during sleep,and travel to wherever it chooses. For this reason theEckankar movement at first designated itself as theteaching of “The Ancient Science of Soul Travel.”This was later replaced by the slogan “The Reli-gion of Light and Sound.”

Reflecting this new designation, Eckankar teachesthat after a series of reincarnations the ultimate goalis to realize God in his dual nature of light andsound and so to became a co-worker with God. Tofacilitate this goal one is to undertake the practiceof chanting the sacred Sufi word “Hu.”

See also Ascended masters; Astral travel;Sikhism.

Eclesia Catolica Cristiana. This is a religious or-ganization founded in Puerto Rico in 1956, origi-nally under the name Spiritualist Cristiana Church,by Delfin Roman Cardona. It changed to its pres-ent name in 1969. It is a mixture of Roman Cathol-icism and the Spiritist teachings of Allan Kardec,which include a belief in reincarnation.

Edwards, Paul. Edwards is the author of Reincar-nation: A Critical Examination (1996). While theargument of the book is very thorough, the sar-casm of the author towards genuine believers is ex-treme. It is no wonder that this book has made hima primary antagonist to believers in reincarnation.A major critique of this book can be found in ACritique of Arguments Offered Against Reincarna-tion (1997) by Robert Almeder.

See also Astral body; Minimalist Reincarna-tion Hypothesis; Ransom Report.

Eggs. In Orphism eggs were a symbol of rebirthand since the goal was to escape rebirth any asso-ciation with eggs, including eating them, was to beavoided. In contrast to this eggs are a Christiansymbol of resurrection, which is one justificationfor their use at Easter.

See also Beans.

Ego (Latin: I). In common speech this is the senseof I-ness or selfhood. The word is most closely as-

81 Ego

sociated with the depth psychologies of SigmundFreud and Carl Jung; however, in the context oftheories of reincarnation ego means something verydifferent from those of depth psychology.

In Western philosophy and religion the ego isthought of as the fundamental aspect of personal or individual reality. In fact, there is usually thought to be very little, if any, difference between theego and the soul. This positive view is followed byTheosophy. Among some Theosophists the termego may be used to mean the permanent elementof personhood, in which case it is similar to theHindu atman. However, in other cases the termego is used as the collective name for the immortalmental, intuitional and spiritual bodies. In stillother cases, the ego is the storage place for all pos-itive memories from one or more past embodimentsand experiences all the rewarding thoughts fromone or more past lives after the dissolving of theastral body and any negativity in it.

In theosophical views it is generally agreed thatif the ego in its previous life has not developed thenecessary virtues and wisdom to avoid reincarna-tion, which is the case for the overwhelming ma-jority of egos, then once it has sufficiently reflectedon its past merits it will form around itself a newastral body and etheric body and so be drawnback to a new embodiment.

On the other hand, if the ego has developedsufficient wisdom and virtue then it too will dis-solve, like the previous non-corporeal bodies,which makes it part of the “mortal” soul. Thisleaves only the “immortal spirit,” with its threeupper levels (manas, buddhi, atma), of which nopart ever enters into the materiality of the physicalbody but remains forever uncontaminated in theworld of pure spirit.

In Hinduism the ego in the sense of a personalself is ahankara (the I-maker) and is consideredto be an inferior or false aspect of one’s true or ul-timate impersonal self (atman). In Buddhism thisahankara is considered little more than insubstan-tial mental delusion (anatman).

See also Causal body; Devachan; Id, Ego,Superego; Individuality and rebirth; Mentalplane; Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical.

Egypt. Since the Egyptian civilization is the secondoldest in the world it has seemed very importantto some reincarnation advocates to prove that theancient Egyptians not only believed in reincarna-tion but exported that belief to the rest of the an-cient world. However, despite the many attemptsof ancient, medieval and modern reincarnationists,as well as of Hollywood popular entertainment,there is no indication that ancient Egyptian reli-gion included the concept of reincarnation. This

fact should be obvious. Since reincarnation mini-mizes attachment to or identity with one’s currentbody there would have been no reason for theEgyptian obsession in preserving the corpse (khat)as properly prepared (tut), especially a properly rit-ualized or sanctified mummy (sah). Even more tothe point, the costly building of pyramids to pro-tect the deceased body would have made no senseif the Egyptians believed in reincarnation. A bettercorollary between a belief in reincarnation and anattitude towards a deceased body is found in theIndo-Buddhist world were cremation is the stan-dard practice.

References to the surviving elements of a personare not consistent in Egyptian literature; nonethe-less, the following concepts about those elementsseem fairly common. The Egyptians believed in akind of spiritually entombed “resurrection,” whichinvolved the existence of up to eight factors beyondthe body. The precise meaning of some of thenames of these factors is still in doubt, but the cur-rent consensus is as follows. The physical body(khat or kha) was subject to death and decay, un-less preserved by mummification. The vital force(the ka) upon leaving the body brought aboutdeath. That which made an individual a uniquepersonality (the ba), like the ka, would live afterthe body died. Priestly ceremonies were conductedto allow the ba to be united with the ka, creatingan entity known as an akh (effective one). This akh(akhu, khu, or ikhu) lived on in the intellect andmoral intentions of the person (the sahu), and itwas this sahu which lived in the heavens with thegods or the permanent stars. However, sahu onlycame into being after the “judgment of the dead”was successfully passed. There was also the incor-poreal personification of the life force of a person(the sekhem) which also lived in heaven with theakh.

A person’s shadow (khaibit, haibit, or sheut) wasalso always part of the soul. It was believed a per-son could not exist without this in this life or thenext. For this reason statues of people and evendeities were sometimes referred to as their shad-ows.

There was also the true name (ren), as a part ofthe soul; a deceased person could continue on inthe afterlife only as long as his or her ren was spo-ken, and so to avoid obliteration after death effortswere made to sustain it by placing it in numerouswritings.

Finally, there was the heart (ab or ib) which wasthought to be the most important part of the soulbecause after death it would give evidence for, oragainst, its formerly alive self when the gods con-ducted “the weighing of the heart” (psychostasis)ceremony.

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If the care taken to preserve the material bodythrough mummification was not enough to counterany belief that the ancient Egyptians believed inreincarnation then certainly that soul weighing cer-emony should make it clear; because standing nextto the balance that weighed the ab to determine itsvirtues versus its vices was the monster goddessAmmut (Ammit or Amemait) which meant the de-vouress [of souls]. If the ab weighed more than thefeather of Maat (goddess of truth), the ab wouldbe immediately consumed by the demon, thusceasing to exist, rather than dwelling in the houseof eternity (hut en neheh or per-djet).

That the Egyptians had no belief in reincarna-tion can also be demonstrated by one of their cre-ation myths. In this it was believed that the cre-ator god Khnum or Path, after creating the essenceof a person inserted it into women’s womb. Inshort, there was no place here for reincarnation.

Perhaps no modern esoteric tradition has mademore of an effort to assign a reincarnationist beliefto pre–Hellenistic Egypt than has Theosophy. Inthat tradition it has been claimed that of the fifteengates of the Egyptian underworld of Osiris(Amenti) there were two chief ones. These were theentrance gate of death (rustu) and the exit gate ofreincarnation (amh). Furthermore, it has beenclaimed that the Egyptian scarab god, Khepra, wasthe presiding deity over reincarnation. In fact, thatgod symbolized resurrection, not reincarnation.

When the historical records are carefully checkedthey show without any ambiguity that the conceptof reincarnation did not enter Egypt until the laterHellenistic (Greek) period (2nd century BCE to 3rdcentury CE) when elements of Greek Orphism be-came popular in Egyptian gnostic circles.

The tendency to try to associate rebirth withpre–Hellenistic Egypt is partially a carry over fromthe 17th– 18th century heliocentric theory. This wasthe belief that if the Egyptian civilization was ear-lier than any other ancient civilization it must havebeen the ultimate source of all spiritual wisdom.Actually, the ancient Greeks seem to have been aneven earlier proponent of this theory. They and thelater Romans did not realize that the ancient Egyp-tians never thought of their own religion as partic-ularly mysterious. Instead it was always outsiderswho mistook as esoteric what was to the Egyptiansjust a strong attachment to their own gods.

A more modern form of heliocentrism arose inthe early19th century and influenced a number ofWestern religious and quasi-religious movements.This heliocentrism was boosted by the attempt toconnect Mesoamerican (Toltec, Aztec, and Mayan)pyramid building cultures with their Egyptiancounterpart.

The heliocentric theory continued to be popu-

lar in some esoteric quarters even throughout the20th century despite the fact that Western arche-ologists had clearly acknowledged that even olderthan the Egyptian civilizations was the Sumeriancivilization.

Also, during the late 19th and early 20th cen-tury those Western occultists who wished to try toharmonize their occultism to some degree withChristianity tended to favor Egyptian esotericteachings over oriental ones because they believedthat Egyptian esotericism was more compatiblewith Christianity. For example, the oriental em-phasis on karma seemed to interfere with the West-ern occult emphasis on spiritual perfection throughalchemy. Nonetheless, most of these pro–Egypt-ian occultists still favored the idea of reincarnationwhich, of course, meant that they would have togo out of their way to impose that belief on the an-cient Egyptians. This association of reincarnationwith ancient Egypt for the past century and a halfhas only been strengthened by the large number ofindividuals who have claimed past Egyptian lives.

The real issue concerning claims of having hada past Egyptian life is not necessarily the large num-ber of people that have made the claims. The fer-tility given to Egypt by the Nile River has for thou-sands of years allowed for that country to sustain avastly greater population than many other parts of the world. In fact, ancient Egypt may have hada greater population than all of Europe before therise of Greek civilization.

The Egyptian civilization also covered a periodof nearly three thousand years. This alone couldaccount for the number of claimed past Egyp-tian lives. The real issue is that most of the claimedEgyptian lives are of rulers, priests, temple dancers,and other high status or exotic professions. In par-ticular, many past life recallers have claimed to havehad a past life in some relationship to the hereticPharaoh Akhenaton, the female pharaoh Hapshep-sut, and at least one of the Pharaohs mentioned inthe Old Testament. Yet, since 90 percent of theEgyptian population would likely have been peas-ants and/or slaves it seems strange that these socialclasses are missing in most past life claims.

Another weakness of these claims is often dem-onstrated by the current knowledge discrepancyfactor. This means that those individuals often usenames or terms to describe the Egyptian scene thatwould not have been used by an ancient Egyptian.For example, numbering pharaohs as in Ramses I,Seti II, Amenhotep III, etc. are designations onlyapplied to Egyptian rulers by 19th century Egyp-tologists. Also, an ancient Egyptian would neverrefer to the great religious center of Egypt as“Thebes” since this is a much later Greek name forthe Egyptian “Weset or Newt.”

83 Egypt

Most recently, the ancient Egyptian connectionis notable among channeled beings. The majorityof them seem to have either Egyptian or Egyptiansounding names; for example, one is named Rawho was also the Egyptian supreme sun god, an-other is named Seth who was the dark brother ofthe god Osiris, and there are the Egyptian sound-ing names of Ahtun Re, Mafu and Ramtha.

See also Alexandria, Egypt; Arguments sup-portive of rebirth; Book of the Dead (Egyptian);Channeling; Chnoumis; Crowley, Aleister; Dhy-ani Chohans; Eady, Dorothy; Esotericism versusOccultism; Essenes; False claims of support forreincarnation; Fluorite; Gnosticism; Grant, JoanMarshall; Greeks and reincarnation; Hawkman;Hermetic philosophy; Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn; Herodotus; Hollywood and rein-carnation; Kubitschek, Juscelino; Mormonism;Mummy, The; Phoenix; Rosemary case; Seconddeath; Social status in past lives; Solar Temple,Order of ; Soul; Steiner, Rudolf ; Tarot cards;Theophilus; Thoth, Book of.

Eighth sphere. In Hermetic works the eighthsphere is identified as the Milky Way, a reaching ofwhich was the ultimate goal of the soul.

In Theosophy, however, the eighth sphere is alsocalled the planet of death. As such it is the place orstate of being where lost souls pass into non-exis-tence. This is due to their evil having made themso unredeemable that they can not be reborn eveninto the worst of conditions. When it is thoughtnecessary to assign a physical site to this state it isusually the moon that is chosen and which is thengiven the name the dark satellite.

This eighth planetary aspect is not to be con-fused with the eighth zodiacal house in astrologywhich is also associated with death.

See also Abhavya; Angels and reincarnation;Annihilationism, Biblical view; Astrology andrebirth; Gabriel; Ichantika; Planetary descentand ascent of the soul; Second death.

Elect or chosen of God. This is a concept foundin the New Testament that only a select few menand women will eventually be chosen by God tobe saved and share in the messianic kingdom. It isspecifically mentioned at Matthew 24:22, Romans8:33, and Titus 1:1. Since such a concept is at oddswith most ideas about the reason for reincarna-tion those who try to impose a reincarnationistteaching on the Bible find it convenient to ignorethis election concept.

See also Karma and free will; Karma versusgrace; Predestination.

Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth. Accord-ing to a number of rebirth schema a soul that is to

be reborn in a female body will, upon being at-tracted to a copulating couple, experience a greatlust for her father to be, while the souls of a futureson will lust for his future mother. This does notseem to give much credit to the sperm and egg inthe fertilization process. One question that needs tobe asked is what happens if the soul of a perspec-tive female embodiment finds only that a geneticmale embryo have formed in the womb, or viceversa for a male oriented soul faced with a femaleembryo? Is this what causes homosexuality andtranssexuality? If so one would expect a muchlarger homosexual percentage in the general pop-ulation. Perhaps the assumption is that these minor-ity or atypical orientations develop sometime afterconception.

Another question is what happens if the male isusing a condom, if the woman is using a birth con-trol pill, or if one of the copulating pair is sterile.Does the soul enter the womb only to need to exitit? Also, if copulation is oral or anal does the soulever get confused and try to enter the wrong orifice?It would seem far simpler just to assume that thesoul becomes embodied only after the embryo has been conceived. Unfortunately, however, suchpost-conception embodiment creates its own set ofproblems with regard to karma and rebirth.

See also Child as its own reborn father ormother; Embodiment, moment of; Gandharva;Gender issue of the soul.

Elementary see Kama-rupa.

Elijah/Elias. One of the main arguments given forthe claim that the earliest Christian community be-lieved in metempsychosis is that there are passagesin the New Testament that “supposedly state” thatthe 9th century BCE Old Testament prophet Elijahwas reborn as John the Baptist. According to biblical legend Elijah was one of the very few indi-viduals said to have been assumed into heaven inbody as well as soul. This saved him from a dis-mal ghostly existence in Sheol. The reason for thismiraculous event apparently was so that when it isthe time for the Messiah to arrive, Elijah will besent ahead to herald this arrival. This being thecase, it might be wondered how Elijah could rein-carnate if he had not first physically died.

Among the passages cited by reincarnationists insupport of their view of Elijah’s reincarnation isMark 9:13; Matthew 11:13– 14; 17:12– 13; and Luke1:17. Mark reads, “However, I tell you Elijah hasalready come and they have worked their will uponhim [persecuted and killed him], as the scripturessay of him.” Matthew, borrowing from Mark,reads, “For all the prophets and the Law [Torah]foretold things to come until John [the Baptist] ap-peared, and John is the destined Elijah, if you will

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but accept it.” “I tell you Elijah has already comeand they failed to recognize him, and they workedtheir will upon him, in the same way the Son ofMan [Jesus] is to suffer at their hands.” Luke, alsoborrowing from Mark, reads, “He [John] will gobefore him [the Messiah] as a forerunner, possessedof the spirit and the power of Elijah, to reconcile,father and child, to convert the rebellious to theways of the righteous, to prepare a people that shallbe fit for the Lord.” To further add support to thisclaim of John as a reincarnated Elijah some havecited Malachi 4:4–5, “Look, I will send you theprophet Elijah before the great and terrible day ofthe Lord comes.”

If taken out of context, these passages, especiallyLuke, do sound as if Elijah was reborn as John, butwhen they are examined in context it becomes clearthat John is being spoken of only metaphorically asa prophet “in spirit and power” like Elijah. In fact,in the Gospel of John 1:21 the personal (reincarna-tional) identity between Elijah and John is clearlydenied. The passage reads, “‘Are you [John] Eli-jah?’ ‘No,’ he replied.”

That reincarnation is not implied in the Gospelsis further shown by Mark 8:27–28, and the corre-sponding passages in Matthew (16:13– 14) and Luke(9:18– 19). In these Jesus asks his disciples who thepeople think he [or he as the Son of Man] is? Theyanswer, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets [come backto life].”

It can be argued that by saying that Jesus wasthought of as possibly the returned Elijah, Jere-miah, or another prophet that the people are pos-sibly acknowledging the doctrine of reincarnationwhich was at that time known from the Greeks;but since John the Baptist had only been executedshortly before Jesus’ question, to have an authen-tic reincarnationist implication one would have toeliminate John the Baptist from this list. With Johnincluded, some sort of possession would be morelikely implied. Such a possible possession is reiter-ated when King Herod, having murdered John, wasalso afraid that Jesus was possessed of John’s spiritas in Mark 6:14– 16, Matthew 14:1–2, and Luke9:7–8.

Also, any idea that either Mark or Matthew im-plies a reincarnational connection between Eli-jah and John the Baptist should be negated by the accounts of the “Transfiguration” given byMark (9:2–5), Matthew (17:1–4), and Luke 9:30.In these, Jesus has gone up to a high mountain inthe company of three disciples, Peter, James, and thedisciple John. There they see a transfigured Jesusconversing with Elijah and Moses. If the discipleshad believed that Elijah had reincarnated as theBaptist, then considering that John had been exe-

cuted by that time, it can be argued that it wouldbe more natural for the two figures conversing with Jesus to have been a recognizable John andMoses.

Obviously none of these arguments against abiblical interpretation of an Elijah to John reincar-nation have convinced major supporters of a pro-reincarnationist view; in fact, such a major figureas Rudolf Steiner continued to support the “outof context view” of Elijah as the Baptist. Indeed,Steiner even added to the issue by claiming thatthe Elijah as the Baptist was later reborn as the Re-naissance painter Raphael (1483– 1520), and stilllater the German poet Novalis, the pseudonym ofFredrich Leopold Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772–1801). This all seems rather strange if Elijah is sup-posed to wait in heaven to herald the Messiah.

Leaving Christian views aside, kabbalic Jewishsources have their own view of Elijah and reincar-nation. According to one of these, before becom-ing Elijah, his soul had multiple lives, the most fa-mous of which was Pinehas, the grandson of thepriest Aaron, brother of Moses.

See also Carpocrates; Kabbalah; New Testa-ment and reincarnation; Origin; Son of Man;Vintras, Eugene.

Elysium Fields see Grant, Joan Marshall; Greekafterlife, the ancient; Moon; Right-hand pathand left-hand path; Soul, tripartite; Virgil; Y.

Emanationism. This term refers to the Neopla-tonic explanation of the origin of the universe ingeneral, and of the human soul in particular. Ittaught that in the primordial past, from the One(God) emanated divine nous (pure intelligence)from which, in turn, emanated the world soul(anima mundi). It was from this single divine soul that all individual souls emanated and they,either mistakenly or foolishly, produced the matterthat made up the physical bodies into which thosesouls became trapped. In the Neoplatonic-gnosticschema of salvation it was, therefore, the goal of allthose individual souls to try to regain their free-dom from this entrapping matter and to mergeback into the world soul, and eventually even backinto the One. This concept of the soul’s origin wasrejected early on by orthodox Christianity on thebasis that it both destroyed the separation betweenperfect God and imperfect humanity and that itwas generally associated with gnostic doceticism,that denied that Jesus was born into, suffered, anddied in a physical body.

See also Creationism, soul; Gnosticism; Infu-sionism; Neoplatonism; Traducianism.

Embalmment of the dead see Cremation andrebirth; Egypt.

85 Embalmment

Embodiment, moment of. A major argumentamong reincarnationists concerns at what point intime the deceased entity (soul) takes on a newbody. There are those that argue for an entranceinto the womb some time before conception, orfertilization of the egg cell; others argue for en-trance into the womb at the exact moment of suchfertilization. Still others argue for a post-conception,but a pre-birth entrance. Lastly, a very few rein-carnationists argue for a post-birth, or extra uter-ine, rather than any intrauterine re-embodiment.

Considering that between two-thirds and three-fourth of all embryos that are naturally conceivedspontaneously abort it would seem more efficient forsouls to become embodied at later point in a preg-nancy than an earlier one.

According to the teachings in Earthly Cycles(1994) by the channeled entity Alexander as chan-neled through Ramon Stevens, no soul fuses withthe embryo within the first three months of its in-trauterine life, except in the case where a mother-child relationship was established before the mother’sbirth due to some karmic link. The reason for thewait is avoid as much as possible the chance ofspontaneous abortion.

Wagner Alegretti, in his Retrocognitions (2004),states that the reincarnating entity aligns itself forthe first time to its new body as soon as the infanttakes its first breath and the umbilical chord is cut,normally about nine months or 36 weeks, unless itis prematurely born. However, this is initially a ten-uous alignment that will have to grow stronger asthe child matures into an adult; and will not becompleted in most cases until around the age of26, when the body stops growing.

One medically determined suggestion is that therebirth occurs about the time that a fetus couldsurvive outside the womb with proper medical care,which is about 175 days (25 weeks) after concep-tion; although in rare cases the fetus might be ableto survive and develop outside the womb as earlyas 20 weeks. The 20 week stage is the earliest thatthe neurological development of the fetus can bethought to experience distress (samsara). For thisreason it has been suggested that this is a likely timefor the soul to undergo embodiment.

Another indicator for the embodiment momentis said to be related to the factor of identical twin-ing or other multiple birthing. If it is assumed thateach twin, triplet, etc. has received a totally sepa-rate soul then embodiment ought to come onlyafter the fertilized egg cell from which all the sib-lings will be produced has fully divided into sepa-rate embryos. Of course, one could always proposethat the twining, etc. was itself due to the earlierpresence of two or more souls having entered thewomb and that multiple identical children are due

to soul influence upon the original single fertilizedegg cell. The only other alternative would be thatof soul-fission.

Finally, the more embryologically sophisticatedreincarnationists believe that any concept of howearly a soul seeks embodiment must to take the fol-lowing timing into consideration. Technically, em-bryo formation does not occur right after the spermfertilizes the egg. This is because the egg is not yetprepared to fuse with the sperm’s genetic material(DNA). This fusion process actually takes abouttwenty-four hours. Until that happens one oughtnot to think of the embryo as a genetically completeorganism.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Creationism,soul; Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth;Emanationism; Embryonic fusion; Genesis;Hovering of the soul; Infusionism; Magnetic at-traction metaphor; Possession; Pratitya-samut-pada; Soul’s existence prior to embodiment;Rebirth and abortion; Rebirth and artificial in-semination; Rebirth in Buddhism; Scientology;Soul twins; Stake a claim; Traducianism; Wel-comers.

Embryonic fusion. This is the rare process inwhich two non-identical fertilized eggs or pre-em-bryos fuse and produce one single individual whichis technically referred to as a chimera. The resultcan be a single fetus having two different bloodtypes, some cells that have XX chromosomes andothers that have XY chromosomes, or even a fullset of female and male sexual organs. When the lastof these occurs the individual is genuinely a her-maphrodite. This fusion is, obviously, the directopposite of the production of identical twins bythe separation of a single fertilized egg. Embryonicfusion must not be confused with conjoined twins.

When dealing with the issue of soul embodi-ment the development of such chimeras, naturally,gives rise to the question of whether or not soul fu-sion can also occur. Since it is currently thoughtthat this bodily fusion can occur up to sixteen daysafter fertilization, any souls that were embodiedbefore this time would either have to fuse or one ofthem would have to voluntarily withdraw or in-voluntarily be expelled. To avoid such an incon-venient situation it could be that souls instinctivelydo not seek embodiment until after such time thatsuch fusion is possible.

Note that embryonic fusion is not to be con-fused with the process of conjoined twining whichis when two entirely separate individuals happento be physically attached to one another by one ormore bodily organs.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Soultwins; Twins, identical.

Embodiment 86

Emma-o. This Japanese Buddhist name is ulti-mately derived from the Sanskrit name Yama thegod-ruler of the underworld (Jigoku). Upon thedead being presented to Emma-o the god holds infront of the soul a magic mirror which discerns allthe virtues and vices of the deceased. These arerecorded by two secretaries, the female Miru-meand the male Kagu-hana, which are often depictedas two disembodied heads. It is these records thatwill determine whether the dead must spend timein purgatory or be reborn into one of the otherrealm of existence on the wheel of becoming(bhavachakra).

See also Heaven, Buddhist; Hell, the Chinese;Kshitigarbha; Yen-Lo.

Empedocles of Acragas (495–435?). This Greekphilosopher firmly supported the idea of metem-psychosis as suggested by Pythagoras. In fact, hebelieved that he could remember past lives as aplant, a fish, a bird, and a woman. In his workPurifications, of which only a part has survived,Empedocles describes the descent of the soul froman original state of unity and blessedness into therebirth cycle due to sin and the lengthy process ofpurification needed for it to ascend back to lifeamong the gods. This process begins with the soulfirst going through many lives in the vegetablerealm until it is reborn as a laurel, the highest formin that realm. From this tree the soul goes into theanimal realm until it is reborn as a lion and fromthere it can be reborn into a human form.

Empedocles understood corporeal existence aspunishment for the original sin of killing for foodor sacrificial rites. Such killing, according to Empe-docles, was the equivalent to murder because hu-man souls were reborn into animals and vice ver-sus, therefore, in killing animals, sooner or later,we would kill (murder) a body inhabited by ahuman soul. Also, according to Empedocles, as wellas the later Platonists, the soul could only be liber-ated from this bodily rebirth by living a pious,philosophical, and vegetarian life style. It seemsthat Empedocles may have become convinced ofmetempsychosis later in life since his earlier workOn Nature appears to deny the immortality of thesoul.

See also Fall of the Souls; Greeks and reincar-nation; Magna Graecia; Priesthood, lack of anorganized; Vegetarianism.

Empire of Jade. In Daoism this is a celestial par-adise ruled over by the Jade Emperor (Yu-hang,WG) or the August Personage of Jade, the first andhighest of the three heavenly deities. This ruler hasthe power to admit souls to his empire or condemnthem to further reincarnations in accordance withtheir karma.

An alternative Chinese heavenly concept is thatof the palace of the immortals. In this Daoistinfluenced Buddhist belief the virtuous souls maygo to this enchanting pagoda-like palace adminis-tered by the god of happiness, Fu-Hsing (WG),where they will enjoy themselves until it is time toreturn to a new embodiment.

See also Bhaishajyaraja-guru; Bodhisattva;Chinese religion and reincarnation; Hell, theChinese; Yen-Lo.

Empty Tomb of Jesus see Daniel, Book of; Res-urrection of Jesus.

Engrams (From German: Engamm, a memorytrace) see Scientology.

Ennius, Quintus (239– 169 BCE). One of thegreatest and most versatile of the early Roman poetsand a great admirer of Greek culture and litera-ture, Ennius is said to have introduced the idea ofmetempsychosis to the Romans. It is said that heregarded himself as a reincarnate of the Greek PoetHomer.

Enoch, Third Book of. Also called the Sefer ha-Hechalot, the Sefer Chanoch, or Hebrew

Enoch. The last name, in particular, is given todistinguish it from three other Books of Enoch—Enoch I, II, and IV. This kabbalic text includes a de-scription of reincarnation.

See also Cayce, Edgar; Gabriel; Guf ha-Briyot;Kabbalah; Melchizedek; Mormonism; Tzror ha-Chayyim; Unarius Academy of Science.

Ensomatosis (from the Greek soma: body, hence“embodiment”) see Kyklos Genesion; Metempsy-chosis.

Ephesians. Some reincarnationists believe there isa subtle teaching of reincarnation at Ephesians1:4–5, and 9. This reads, “In Christ He [God] choseus before the world was founded, to be dedicated,to be without blemish in his sight, to be full oflove; and He destined us—such was his will andpleasure—to be accepted as his sons through JesusChrist....” Like so many other biblical passagestaken out of their context, this one can be used tosay what anyone wants it to say. However, a properreading of the passage in context, especially as itcontinues in verse 9, shows that the author is ac-knowledging the doctrine of predestination, not ofa soul’s existence prior to embodiment that couldfavor a reincarnation reading. That verse reads, “Hehas made known to us his hidden purpose—suchwas his will and pleasure determined beforehandin Christ—.” In other words, even before the cre-ation of the world, God already knew that manwould fall, and determined in his own mind which

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of the souls that he would create in the future thathe would save and damn. This predestination con-cept is reinforced at Romans 8:29; 9:10–24; 2ndTimothy 1:9.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Christianatonement theories; Christianity and reincarna-tion; Corinthians, 1st and 2nd; Galatians; Gnos-ticism; Karma versus grace; New Testament andreincarnation; New Testament sacrificial con-cept; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Romans.

Equinox. This is the name of an entity channeledthrough a woman by the name of Jonee Scibienskibeginning in 1984. Equinox is a channeled entitythat supports the concept of reincarnation.

See also Channeling; Crowley, Aleister; Frank-lin, Benjamin (2); Hilarion; Lazaris; Mafu;Michael (2); Ra (1); Ra (2); Ramtha; Ryerson,Kevin; Satya, Seth; Torah (2).

Eschatology see Karmic eschatology; Rebirtheschatology; Soteriology.

Eskimos (Inuits) see Hunting cultures and rein-carnation.

Esoteric Buddhism see Buddhism, esoteric.

Esoteric Christianity see Ashoka, King; ChurchUniversal and Triumphant; Christianity, eso-teric; Esotericism versus Occultism; Steiner,Rudolf.

Esoteric Fraternity. An American occult organiza-tion begun by Hiram E. Butler and originallynamed Genii of Nations, Knowledge and Religion.In 1887 it became the Esoteric Fraternity and relo-cated its headquarters from New England to Cal-ifornia. It taught New Thought, Esoteric Chris-tianity, reincarnation, and celibacy.

Esotericism versus Occultism. The terms “eso-teric” and “occult” are often treated as synonyms,especially in New Age literature. This is becausethe two do overlap to some degree. However, onecan speak of esoteric Buddhism or esoteric Chris-tianity, but not occult Buddhism or occult Chris-tianity. The term esoteric comes from the Greek“esotero” meaning inside, inner, or within; whereasoccult comes from the Latin “occuere” and meansto conceal. Both terms imply something secret, butnot for the same reason. Esoteric usually signifies asecret or mysterious truth which leads to a higherspiritual level and that while this is currently knownonly to certain initiated persons ultimately it shouldbe open to all. Occult implies a secret that excludesmost people because it is oriented to a dangerousand/or self-enhancing power or ability to controlparts of the physical world, which usually includescontrol over other people. The term occult, but

rarely esoteric, is also used in reference to dealingwith the dead, for either benevolent or malevolentreasons. In this same regard, occult is more oftenfound in association with the word ‘supernatural’than is esoteric. In modern times the less sinisterand, indeed, more mentalist term “psychic” seemsto have replaced, to a large degree, the word super-natural with its occult association and in doing sopsychic is more acceptable in esoteric circles.

Modern reincarnationists were among the firstto refer to some of their views as esoteric versus oc-cult, and psychic versus supernatural.

See also Buddhism, esoteric; Channeling;Egyptian versus Oriental Occultism; Theoso-phy.

Essene Center. The Center was founded in 1972 byWalter Hagen in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Hagentaught that Jesus was an Essene and that, as themodern-day representative of that ancient order, itwas from Jesus’ followers that the Messiah wouldeventually come. A belief in reincarnation was animportant part of the Hagen’s teachings. The Cen-ter appears to have been defunct by 1980.

Essenes. This 1st century BCE and 1st century CE

millennialist Jewish ascetic sect has been creditedwith teaching metempsychosis. This mistaken ideais due to the writings of the very controversial Jew-ish historian Joseph ben Matthias (37–93 or 100CE), more commonly known by his Latin name,Flavius Josephus. This author, who was originallyconsidered to be the most reliable source of the in-formation known about this sect, claimed that theEssenes were very close to Platonism in many oftheir teachings, including that of the bodily chang-ing of the soul. The mistaken idea that bodilychanging means metempsychosis is actually basedon a misreading of a passage in his Jewish Wars. Itreads, “(It is said that) on the one hand all souls areimmortal; but on the other hand, those of goodmen only are changed into another body [meta-bainein eis heteron soma] but those of evil men aresubject to eternal punishment.” The distinctionmade in this passage between the fate of the goodand evil matches that of the “resurrection” of thegood into a new heavenly body and damnation ofthe evil in hell. In contrast to these words of Jose-phus, metempsychosis concepts have both the goodand the evil take on new bodies, and any talk ofeternal damnation is minimized or shifted to a timeafter a series of re-embodiments.

The 20th century discovery of the Dead SeaScrolls also has supplied enough information tochallenge the mistaken view of Josephus’ work. Wenow know that the Essenes considered themselvesto be among the most orthodox of all Jews andsince, in their time, the idea of metempsychosis

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was associated with pagan Greek thought, the Es-senes would have most likely rejected it. Instead,it appears that the Essenes believed in some sort ofresurrection of the dead.

One of the Dead Sea Scroll texts often mentionedas supposedly acknowledging metempsychosis isthe Qumran Melchizedek or I IQ Melchizedek.Within this text there is the sermon called “TheLast Jubilee” which identifies the future King ofRighteousness, or Messiah, with the ancient leg-endary pre–Israelite priest-king of Jerusalem,Melchizedek. According to one translation of thissermon it is written that the King of Righteousnesswill be the “revival” of Melchizedek.

If, in giving the benefit of the doubt to a metem-psychosis-favored reading of Josephus we must askwhy would Josephus attributes metempsychosis tothe Essenes if they didn’t believe in it? The reasonwould be that he was writing shortly after the bru-tal suppression of the great Judean revolt againstRoman rule in 70 CE, after which Judaism through-out the empire was looked upon with great suspi-cion and even contempt. Josephus could have beentrying to rehabilitate and enhance the reputationof Judaism by associating it with highly respectedGreek teachings, one of which was Orphism.

Despite the present new understanding of theEssenes and of the possible motives of Josephus anumber of modern believers in reincarnation havecontinued to insist that the Essenes were reincarna-tionists. To add further credibility to their insis-tence many of these supporters claim that Jesuswas a member of the Essenes. However, there seemsno real evidence for this claim other than the de-sire to connect Jesus to the sect on the assumptionthat he also accepted reincarnation.

If any orthodox Jewish sect of this time was moreintellectually open to Greek thought it would havebeen an Essene-like sister ascetic sect in Egyptcalled the Therapeutae. Although there is even lessaccurate information on this sect then there is ontheir Judean counterpart, it does seem that theTherapeutae took a more allegorical approach toJewish scriptures than did the Essenes. One itemthat both the Judean and Egyptian sects seem tohave held in common was a somewhat scripturallyunsanctioned belief in body-soul dualism. Suchan unorthodox Jewish dualism might have beenmore open to a metempsychosis belief in Hell-enized Egypt, under a possibly Orphic influence.

Finally, in a remaining attempt to prove that theEssenes, as well as Jesus, were supporters of metem-psychosis it is argued that since the Kabbalists teachreincarnation it must be a very ancient Jewish be-lief. The fact that no Kabbalist teachings can beidentified until the twelfth century CE is either ig-nored or denied.

See also Cayce, Edgar; False claims of supportfor reincarnation; Greeks and reincarnation;Resurrection, bodily.

Essenes of Arkashea. This group claims a heritagedating to an ancient order founded by PharaohAkhenaten in the year 1354 BCE. The modern Es-senes of Arkashea claim that the original Egyptianorder has survived secretly over the centuries andthat they are part of it; however, they became pub-licly known only in 1993 by finally publishing theirteachings. The term Arkashea refers to the historyof what each individual has done as he or she rein-carnates from life to life. The Essenes attempt to ex-plore this history as it is written within each mem-ber in order to become free of maya (illusion) andgain self-realization. In other words, the residentmembers of the Essenes’ monastery in Alabamastudy themselves.

See also Egypt.

Eternalism. (1) This is any general belief in the im-mortality of the soul. (2) More specifically, eter-nalism (S/P: shashvata-vada/sassata-vada) is one ofthe two philosophical extremes that Buddhism rejects as heretical. The other extreme is annihila-tionism (ucheda-vada). Buddhism, in contrast, advocates the Middle Way view of anatman orno-soul (self ). It might be thought that becauseBuddhism teaches a post-mortem existence throughrebirth that it qualifies as a form of eternalism. Thiswould only be true if Buddhists taught that rebirthwas endless or that upon liberation from the cycleof rebirth something still identifiable as a self(atman) continued on forever. Whereas Hinduismpositively acknowledges the latter, Buddhism re-fuses to do so. This does not mean that Buddhismdenies such continuation, which would make it akind of delayed annihilationism, but it simply re-fuses to speculate on the fate of the deceased en-lightened person.

See also Accidentalism; Amrta; Annihilation-ism, Buddhist view; Determinism; Hedonism;Soul; Immortality.

Etherian Religious Society of Universal Broth-erhood. This Society was formed in 1965 in Cali-fornia by its director, the Rev. E. A. Hurtienne.The Society teaches that all forms of life on allplanes of existence are related; that love, which isthe unifying force of life, must become a living re-ality, for only through this love can eternal life beachieved; that karma and reincarnation are univer-sal laws; and that man is a spiritual being withseven complete bodies. The purpose of the Soci-ety is to minister through love so as to insure dig-nity, equality and justice for all; to help establish thefuture root races (developmental stages) of human-

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ity upon earth; and to assure the entrance of earthinto the Planetary Federation of Light of our solarsystem.

Etheric body. In metaphysical terms this is the psy-chic body double that is responsible for the life oranimation of the physical body. It is the separationof the etheric body from the physical body that issaid to bring about death. In some esoteric systemsthe etheric body is called the prana (breath) body.

According to Theosophy once the physical bodydies the soul’s consciousness is centered on theetheric body and, depending on how materialisticthe deceased individual was while still in his phys-ical body, this etheric (earth-bound) state can lastanywhere from a few moments to several weeks.For the truly materialistic deceased his or her at-tachment to the former physical realm keeps theetheric body in a state of miserable turmoil. Sooneror later, however, sheer exhaustion in this limbostate will force the dissolution of the etheric body,in most cases, and the deceased will then experi-ence existence in his astral body. This dissolutionis only prevented if the etheric body in desperationmanages to take possession of some physical body,especially that of a psychically innocent infant, orin rare cases the body of an animal.

This view of the etheric body is taken from ATextbook of Theosophy (1912) by C. W. Leadbeaterwho differs in some minor ways from the versiontaught by Helena Blavatsky, in that Leadbeaterincorporates the views of Annie Besant.

See also Attached entity; Ghost; Kama-rupa;Linga Sharia; Sensation body; Soul and spiritlevels, Theosophical.

Etheric Cycle see Colton, Ann Ree.

Etheric plane. This is the realm of the ethericbody and is said to both exist between the physi-cal and astral planes and yet to interpenetrate theworld of ordinary physical experience. It is believedthat, like the oceanic tides, it is powerfully influ-enced by the moon and other celestial bodies.

See also Mental plane; Planes of existence,names of.

Etheric revenant. This is an entity in which thesoul of a recently deceased has failed to separate it-self from the etheric body (and or astral body) inthe second death as it is expected to do and whichnaturally delays its eventual rebirth. If this ethericrevenant entity survives too long it may become ahaunting ghost or a psychic vampire.

See also Kama-Rupa; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical.

Ethicalized or karmic rebirth see Karmic escha-tology.

Eucharist, Christian see Christianity and re-incarnation; Lucifer; New Testament sacrificialconcept; Rebirth and moral perfection.

Europe and reincarnation. While at times thedoctrine of reincarnation seemed to have been lostin Europe, in fact, from the time of the GreekPythagoreans and Ophics and of the Celtic Druids,there was in every period at least a small minorityof Europeans that did believe in it. Among thesewere some Romans, Gnostics, Manicheans, Pauli-cians, Bogomils, Patarines, Cathars, KabbalicJews, Renaissance Platonic and Pythagorean re-vivalists, Rosicrucians, Theosophists, and Spiri-tist.

See also Gnosticism; Kabbalah; Manichae-ism; Orphism; Pythagoras; Renaissance; Spirit-ism; Theosophy.

“Every knee should bend ... every tongue con-fess.” This biblical phrase is found at Philippians2:9– 11 in the context of “Therefore God raised tothe heights and bestowed on him [Jesus] the nameabove all names, that at the name of Jesus everyknee shall bend—in heaven, on earth, and in thedepths—and every tongue confess, Jesus Christ isLord, to the glory of God the father.”

Some pro-reincarnationist Christians use thispassage to support the idea that reincarnation isimplied in this biblical passage. According to theirthinking, since “every tongue” must include all thelanguages that have become extinct, and every kneemust refer to the speakers of those languages, thisliterally means that every soul that has ever beenembodied on earth must not only be evangelized,but truly converted to Christ; and the only waythis could happen is if every soul has had whatevernumber of lives necessary for it to be evangelized.

The more traditional or orthodox Christian ex-planation of these verses is that by the time thesepassages were written the faithful needed some ex-planation for the delay of the Second Coming ofChrist (the Parousia) and the establishment of theKingdom of God; therefore, the passages meantthat that Christ will not return until every livingperson of every language has, at the very least, hada chance to be evangelized, even if some of thismust be done in hell (the depths). This explanationreceives strong support from Mark 13:11, “But be-fore the end [presumably the end of the corruptworld and the coming of Christ and the kingdom]the gospel must be proclaimed to all nations.” Thisis repeated at Matthew 13:10.

It should be noted that almost identical to thephrase in Philippians is that found at Romans14:11– 12, “For Scripture says, ‘As I live, says theLord, to me every knee shall bow and every tongueacknowledge God.’”

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See also Christianity and reincarnation; Peter,1st and 2nd.

Evil and karma see Karma and the moral struc-ture of the universe.

Evolution, material and spiritual see Ontolog-ical leap or ontological discontinuity; Populationincrease issue; Soul, collective.

Evolutionary transmigration of souls. This is thedoctrine that human souls were first embodied inmineral form, then for various reasons were able totransmigrate into plants, then into animal bodies,and from there into human forms. From here thesesouls move on to trans-human bodies such as an-gels, and in time will evolve into still higher levelsof being. The Yazidis (Yezidis) seem to hold to evo-lutionary transmigration.

See also Dabistan; Morganwg, Iolo; Tanasukh;Yarsanism.

Ex Oriente Lux (Latin for “Out of the East,Light”). This is a belief which developed in the 19thcentury that there was a greater spiritual wisdomto be found in India, eastern Asia, and even in theMiddle East than in the progressively industrializ-ing, materialistic West. In Europe among thenames most closely associated with this belief wereSir Edwin Arnold, Helena Blavatsky, and ArthurSchopenhauer, while in America it was R.W.Emerson and the other American transcendental-ists. The ex oriente lux view has continued into the21st century and has been a major contributor to thestill growing Western acceptance of a belief in re-birth. The problem with ex oriente lux is that nosociety, culture or group of cultures has a monop-oly on wisdom, much less truth. The followers ofthis idea generally prefer to ignore the fact thatmany in the East believe in ex occidente lux. Any-one who has had contact with Korean Christians,for example, can attest to their belief in the supe-riority of Western religious wisdom over that ofthe East.

Existential seriality. This is a supposedly more sci-entific name for the theory of reincarnation. It isequivalent to the term seriate-lives.

See also Hetero-retrocognition; Somatic re-birth.

Exodus. This Old Testament book has as its mainthemes the revelation of God to Moses on MountSinai; the liberation of the Israelites from slaveryin Egypt; and of their forty years of wandering inthe desert. However, at least one Jewish gnosticgroup used the Exodus story to suggest that the Is-raelite escape from Egypt was analogous to the soulescaping from its bodily entombment.

For modern reincarnationists there are twoclosely related passages in Exodus that are believedto teach reincarnation. The first of these 20:5 reads,“I [God] will punish the children for the sins ofthe fathers to the third and fourth generations ofthose who hate me. This is repeated at Exodus 34:7as, “Jehovah, the Lord, a god ... who punishes sonsand grandsons to the third and fourth generationfor the iniquity of their fathers!” The reality is thatwhen these passages were originally written the Jewsstill believed in the primitive tribal morality of col-lective guilt. In typical tribal based mentality thereis little or no emphasis on the individual responsi-bility of a particular member. This means that if anytribal or clan member commits a crime against an-other tribe or clan it is unimportant to the offendedgroup which particular person in the offendinggroup committed the crime. The whole tribe orclan of the offender is held responsible and, there-fore, demanding retribution from the whole groupis considered valid.

This collective guilt concept is also behind thecase in Genesis 3:17– 19 where all of Adam’s de-scendents were considered as responsible for his of-fense against God as was Adam himself. It is alsobehind such thinking as in Leviticus 10:6 where itis said that God would be angry with all of thecommunity for a misdemeanor by one of God’spriests.

Recognizing this collective guilt concept as un-just, some reincarnationists, especially Kabbalists,claim that these passages actually refer to third andfourth soul reincarnation generations, not biolog-ical descent ones.

See also Deuteronomy 5:2–3; Exodus; Gilgulor Gilgulim; I AM Movement; Jesus; Kabbalah;Old Testament and the afterlife; Original sin,Christianity, and reincarnation; Sciomancy.

Extinctivist. This is a person who believes that per-sonal consciousness at death simply becomes ex-tinct; hence it is a synonym for an annihilationist.

Also see Annihilationism, Biblical view; Anni-hilationism, Buddhist view.

Extra cerebral memory. This is a term used byDr. H. N. Banerjee for memories that seem to beindependent of the cerebrum, the main repositoryof normal memory. It would be the equivalent ofmemory retained by a soul. It is to this extra-cere-bral memory to which Banerjee attributes past liferecall.

Extrasensory perception. It has been proposed bya number of critics of reincarnation that all so-called past life recalls that can not be explain bynormal sensory ability can be explained by a vari-ety of extrasensory or psychic abilities, none of

91 Extrasensory

which require any kind of afterlife state. IanStevenson in his General Discussion section ofTwenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966),gives a rather extensive review of extrasensory per-ception as one possible source for past life recall.However, he generally rejects extrasensory percep-tion as a real source for past life recall. He statesthat if past life recall is due to extrasensory percep-tion then such extrasensory perception must belimited or exclusively connected with past life re-call. Such extreme tunnel focus of any extrasensoryperception he regards as highly unlikely. Also,Stevenson points out that while such extrasensoryperception might account for even most of thememories that the recallers claim, it would not account for some of the behavior similarities (emo-tional responses, mannerism, habits, skills, etc.) be-tween the deceased and the recaller, which Steven-son believes can only be best explained by therecaller having inherited such behavior from thedeceased.

See also Akashic Record; Clairaudience; Clair-voyance; Cryptesthesia; Medium; Psychometry;Rebirth, alternative explanations to; Retrocog-nition; Telepathy (telegnosis) with the living.

Ezekiel see Karma in the Bible?; Old Testamentand the afterlife; Resurrection of Jesus.

Facial architectural consistency. This is the the-ory that the shape and proportions of the face aremore or less consistent from one life to another.Walter Semkiw, in his Return of the Revolutionaries(2003) and Born Again: Reincarnation Cases Involv-ing International Celebrities ... (2006), offers whathe regards as considerable proof of such consis-tency.

See also Birth marks; Kevin Ryerson.

Facial blank. This is the temporary total loss ofexpression, and sometimes other signs of life, thatoften occurs while a subject is in deep trance. Italso occurs when a subject is going from one pre-sumed past life to another such life. On the otherhand, this state is also especially noticeable when a person suffering from multiple personalitiesswitches from one personality to another. This hasbeen used by some anti-reincarnationists to sug-gest that past life recall is just a form of multiple per-sonality syndrome.

Faculty X. This refers to the psychic ability to ex-perience places and times other than the here andnow. This faculty has been suggested as the realsource of past life recalls.

Faith and rebirth see Karma and faith; Mind;Proof for and against reincarnation argument.

Fall of the Souls. This is a widely spread belief thatbefore the birth of mankind souls existed in a non-material state, and as such they were without defile-ments; in short, sinless. Due to some tragic eventthis state of purity was lost and souls fell into thematerial world and were trapped into bodily forms.In accordance with this belief the goal of all soulsis to escape from this entrapment and regain theirnon-bodily purity.

According to various ancient and modern gnos-tic groups, for such a goal to be achieved each soulmust pass through an ever more purified, less ma-terialistic series of lives until they are reborn into alife that will permit an escape.

A variation of the Fall of Souls is the “fall up-ward” or the “happy or blessed fall” (Felix Culpa).This is the idea that souls had to fall from a state of“immature innocence” into a state where, throughmoral struggle, they would gain the maturity andhigher wisdom that would qualify them for variousdivine states or other rewards. This more optimisticversion of the fall is not only the one that mostmodern reincarnationists prefer, but the one evensome liberal Jewish and Christian thinkers employin their interpretation of the fall of Adam and Eve,along with a standard belief in the resurrection ofthe dead.

See also Empedocles; Morganwg, Iolo; Or-phism; Original sin, Christianity, and reincar-nation; Original sin versus karma; Paulicians;Qlippoth; Ramtha; Resurrection, bodily; Scien-tology.

False claims of support for reincarnation. It isunfortunate that far too many supporters of rein-carnation consistently depend on false claims re-garding historical individuals and events concernedwith reincarnation. While some of these inaccura-cies smack of deliberate falsifications by over-zeal-ous reincarnationists, most of them can be attrib-uted to sloppy historical research. In the latter case,most of these supporters have simply relied on pre-vious information that was originally inaccurate,and which has been repeatedly passed on so manytimes that the resulting impression is that there isa consensus that the information is true.

See also Christianity and reincarnation;Church Council of 553; Clement of Alexandria;Egypt; Essenes; Franklin, Benjamin; Fraud;Justin Martyr; Rampa, Lobsang Tuesday; NewTestament and reincarnation; Origin; Past lifefakery.

False-memory syndrome. This is the condition inwhich a person remembers something about theirpast in this life that never really existed. This con-dition is far more common than most people be-lieve. Critics of past life recall point out that if we

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can not trust our memory in this life, how much lessought we to trust it in a so-called past life.

See also Hypnosis.

Falun Gong. Founded in 1992 this organizationteaches a form of Qi Gong (Chinese yoga) but alsothe concepts of reincarnation and karma. In 1999the Chinese Communist government launched anew campaign against what it regarded as religioussuperstition with Falun Gong as one of its tar-gets. This lead to a massive demonstration of FalunGong members which considerably unnerved thegovernment and in reaction the government in-tensified its effort to suppress the group, but this hasonly succeeded in driving the group underground.

Famous supporters and rebirth see Rebirth andfamous supporters.

Fantasy and reincarnation see Children remem-bering past lives; Fantasy prone personality;Fantasy versus past life regression; Hypnosis; I,William the Conqueror; Rebirth, proximity.

Fantasy prone personality. This refers to a per-son who is highly imaginative and spends a fairamount of his or her time fantasizing a life or livesdifferent from his or her real life. A hypnotist findssuch a person easy to hypnotize, not to mention toage regress to another life.

See also Hypnotism; Fantasy versus past liferegression

Fantasy versus past life regression. It is held bysome psychologists that the difference between fan-tasy and past life regression is that in regression theindividual experiences strong emotions while in-volved in the past life scene, which in a daydreamor other fantasy is lacking. Also, any fantasy is eas-ily open to modifications, minor or radical, at amoments notice. Past life recall during regression isfar more stable and consistent.

See also I, William the Conqueror; Past lifememory recall.

Far memory. This is a general term for remem-bering very distant past lives.

See also Grant, Joan Marshall.

Fatalism see Determinism.

Fellowship of the Inner Life. The Fellowship wasfounded in 1972 by the self-proclaimed psychicPaul Solomon who through trance sessions receivedmessages from a voice simply called “The Source.”These sessions eventually offered a complete spiri-tual philosophy which included a belief in the lostcontinent of Atlantis, information on the treat-ment of diseases, and certain prophecies. Reincar-nation is believed to allow time for the soul’s spir-

itual growth. In 1978 the Fellowship headquarterswere moved from in Atlanta, Georgia to VirginiaBeach, Virginia, where The Association for Re-search and Enlightenment is also located.

See also Edgar Cayce.

Fetters, the ten (S: Samyojana) see Buddhiststages of liberation.

Fiat Lux. This is a small monastic religious com-munity in Southern Germany founded in 1980under the directions of Christ as channeled throughErika Bertschinger Eike, who goes under the nameof Uriella. Besides advocating celibacy and vegetar-ianism, a belief in reincarnation and apocalypticUFOism are important teachings of the commu-nity.

Finite or infinite number of rebirths. In Hin-duism, Buddhism, and Jainism it is presumed thatthe number of reincarnating entities are so astro-nomically great that any finite guess as to that num-ber would be useless. Western reincarnationists, forthe most part, reject this “infinite” view mainly be-cause Westerners still hold on to a Judeo-Christianconcept of linear time which expects a finite num-ber. Among Western groups or individuals, how-ever, there is no consensus on the number of timesa soul may or must be reborn.

Among the earliest Westerners to suggest a finiteestimate of rebirth were some of the Theosophists.According to one of their reckonings the soul wentthrough no more than about 800 reincarnations.This number was arrived at by taking into accountthe need for each soul to be reborn into each ofseven branch races multiplied by each of seven sub-divisional races multiplied by each of seven mainraces multiplied by two necessary rebirths in eachbranch race. This gave a minimal figure of 686, towhich was added 100 or so as a variable, which wasthen rounded off to 800.

Noreen Quinn, the writer for the Grace-Loehrlife readings, gives the minimum and maximumfigures of 60 to about 200 lives. Goudey, in hisReincarnation: A Universal Truth (1928), mentionsthe theory that each soul is required to live 777lives, 700 of which are in ignorance, 70 in culture,and 7 in wisdom. Rudolf Steiner, on the otherhand, suggests a minimum of 24 lives, 12 of whichare male and 12 female, over a minimal period of25,920 years. Some Kabbalic traditions allow for nomore than three lives.

These figures do not exhaust the various esti-mates of finite rebirths, but provide a good exam-ple of the lack of agreement on this issue.

See also Aztec; Buddha’s necklace; Buddhiststages of liberation; Cummins, Geraldine; Day-aks; Fixed number or variable number of souls;

93 Finite

Gender issue of the soul; Genesis; Herodotus;Jataka Tales; Kabbalah; Rebirth in the West;Rebirth, restricted.

Finland. There seems to be some evidence that thepre–Christianized peoples of Finland believed thatthe dead could reincarnate in the bodies of grand-children and other future generations.

See also Lapps (Saami).

Fixed number or variable number of souls.Among religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism,and Jainism the number of waiting rebirth fac-tors that are in the cycle of rebirth is so astronom-ical that for all practical purposes there will neverbe an end to the rebirth process, even if this has tooccur in a succeeding universe after the death ofthe present universe. This view does not deny thatsouls periodically leave the round of rebirth, but itsimply states that there is a quite adequate supplyof souls present elsewhere, including in animals,that are waiting to replace the exiting souls.

Among most Western proponents of reincarna-tion such an endless process is usually disregardedin favor of a time limit when reincarnation comesto an end. Also, unlike most Eastern views the morepersonal monotheism of Western religion leavesopen the likelihood of the periodic creation of newsouls to both replace the ones that leave the systemas well as to account for the population increaseissue. This seems especially necessary if, as in theWest, there is a general objection to animals actingas a pool for human souls.

See also Blocked regression; Finite or infinitenumber of rebirths; Kabbalah; Population in-crease issue; Rebirth and cyclical time.

Fixed or free souls see Souls, fixed and free.

Fluorite. Chemically, this is calcium fluoride andit has many standard usages. For example, it is usedfor opalescent glass and in its clear, colorless formof optical quality it is used for apochromatic lenses.In the New Age crystal movement it is used in allthree of its forms—clusters, octahedrons, and pyr-amids; however, using it in the pyramid form dur-ing a specific kind of past life recall meditation issaid to assist in experiencing, not only the past, buteven future lives, and especially as to how karmaaffects such lives. Of course, regardless of whatpower fluorite might have in its own right, the em-phasis on the pyramid form is one more manifes-tation of the mistaken belief that the shapes of thepyramids of Egypt were related to a belief in rein-carnation.

See also Pyramidology.

Folk Buddhism see Buddhism, folk.

Forgiveness and karma see Christianity andreincarnation; Karma and forgiveness; Karmaversus grace; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism.

Fortune, Dion (1890– 1946). This was the pseudo-nym for Violet Mary Firth, the famous Anglo-American esotericist. Fortune derived her esotericname from a shortening and anglicizing of themagick motto (name) Deo non fortuna (by God,not chance). Fortune began her esoteric career in1919 when she joined the Alpha and Omega Lodgeof the Stella Matutina and the outer order of theHermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. She leftthe order in 1929 to establish her own order, theCommunity of the Inner Light, later renamed theFraternity of the Inner Light, which still later be-came the Society of Inner Light. This last namedsociety included a subdivision called The Guild ofthe Master Jesus which Fortune established forthose who wishes to consider themselves both es-otericists and Christians.

Fortuna is said to have remembered a nearly un-broken series of lives as a priestess going back asfar as one on the lost continent of Atlantis. Shebelieved that to understand the purpose of one’slife required understanding the nature of past lives,and in particular the archetype of the GreatMother, a symbolic embodiment of the universalmemory or akashic record. A number of membersof the Society of Inner Light claimed past lives asCathars, and were said to have brought Cathar el-ements into the Society.

Although Fortune never claimed any connectionto the Wicca movement, many in that movementuse her writings, both fictional and non-fictional,in their practice.

Finally, Fortune’s book Psychic Self-Defense(1930) was a seminal work on the subject of mag-ical attacks.

See also Crowley, Edward Aleister; Richard-son, Alan; Vampires; Yeats, William Butler.

Forty. The importance given to the number fortyin the Bible has encouraged some Christian reincar-nationists to suggest that there is a relationship between this number and the interim period sim-ilar to or even related to the forty-nine days in thebardo. The fact that the word quarantine, whichcomes from the Italian quarantine (forty days), andwas thought to symbolize a cycle of being or ofnon-being seems to have further encouraged a mys-tical significance to this number.

Actually, the original interest in forty may havecome from the importance in Mesopotamia of theforty day disappearance of the Pleiades, a period of rains, storms, floods, etc. The return of the starcluster was a time of celebration, and a bundle of

Finland 94

forty reeds was burned to commemorate the pass-ing of the forty days of bad fate.

Forty-nine days see Bardo; Critical time peri-ods; Forty; Gandharva/Gandhabba; Hell, theChinese; Interim period; Matthew, Gospell.

Foundation for Reincarnation and Spiritual Re-search. This organization was founded in 1985 tofocus empirical research on reincarnation as devel-oped by Ian Stevenson. However, the foundation’sgoal also included finding correlations between itspresumed scientific research and Vedic and yogicliterature.

See also Associations and organizations.

Frank, Jacob (1726– 1791). This Polish Jew wasone of the most notorious of the false messiahs toarise in Eastern Europe. He claimed that he wasthe reincarnation of the patriarch Jacob, KingDavid, as well as the previous false messiah, Shab-bettai Tzevi (1626– 1676). Frank, basing his teach-ings on the Zohar, rejected rabbinical Judaism,and for this reason his followers were called theFrankists or Zoharist sect. As part of his attemptedto weaken rabbinic Judaism he advised his follow-ers to embrace Christianity and about 1,000 ofthem were baptized. Frank himself abandoned Ju-daism for Catholicism in 1759 but later his insin-cerity was exposed and for a while he was impris-oned as a heretic. After his death his movementtotally disappeared.

See also Adam; Kabbalah; Koresh, David.

Franklin, Benjamin (1706– 1790). This signer ofthe America Declaration of Independence certainlyseemed to have some belief in an afterlife but, de-spite attempts by authors of books on reincarnation,the claim that he believed in reincarnation can notbe supported by a close reading of any of his works.Instead, the claim rests on an epitaph for his tomb-stone that he was said to have written in his youth.“The body of B. Franklin, Printer; like the cover ofan old book, its contents torn out and stripped ofits lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms.But the book shall not be lost, for it will as he[Franklin] believed appear once more in a new andmore elegant edition, revised and corrected by theauthor.” The problem with this epitaph as proofof a belief in reincarnation is that it could also de-scribe a belief in a resurrected body in the Christ-ian sense.

See also American Transcendentalists; Falseclaims of support for reincarnation; Rebirth andfamous supporters.

Franklin, Benjamin (2). According to the chan-neler Mark Victor Venaglia, the entity that has beenchanneled through him by this name is the same as

the American Founding Father. This entity, usuallydescribed simply as Ben, has a particular fondnessfor Manhattan, New York. According to Ben thisfondness is related to the fact that it is in New Yorkthat all those alive on the lost continent of Atlantisbefore its sinking have reincarnated. Ben has a par-ticular message for those inflicted with AIDS. Heclaims that it is an ancient disease that has mani-fested itself in the modern world to teach peopleto care about one another. Those individuals in-flicted with AIDS once inhabited the island ofCrete and a small island off the southwest coast ofAtlantis and belonged to a civilization of noblesand healers. Ben claims that in time a cure for thisdisease will be discovered by a women doctorwhom Ben calls Beth.

See also Channeling; Equinox; Grace-Loehrlife readings; Hilarion; Lazaris; Mafu; Michael(2); Ra (1); Ra (2); Ramtha; Ryerson, Kevin;Satya; Seth; Torah (2).

Fraternity of Light. Likely founded in Philadelphiaby a group of kabbalic magicians, it follows certainteachings of The Hermetic Order of the GoldenDawn. The Fraternity believes in an atman-likedivine consciousness in everyone which must rein-carnate until it evolves spiritually enough to nolonger need a physical body. Also included in theFraternity’s teachings is Celtic magic (or the Covenof Diana).

Fraud. While there undoubtedly are numerous de-liberately fraudulent claims of having experiencedpast lives, these can not account for the very sincereexperiences of many others. Even if innocent fraud,as in honest lying or holy lying, is taken into ac-count there still remains sufficient cases that mustbe accounted for by means other than fraud.

See also Cryptomnesia; Déjà Vu; Multiple per-sonalities; Past life fakery; Past life memory re-call; Rampa, Lobsang Tuesday; Rebirth, alterna-tive explanations to.

Free-association. This psychoanalytic techniqueis said to be useful at times and under certain cir-cumstances to provide clues to past lives.

From tomb to womb. Like coffin to cradle anddeath to breath, this is a metaphor for reincarna-tion.

See also Crypt.

Frozen or unedited past life memory problemsee Akashic Record; Retrocognition.

Full participation. A full participation past lifescenario can be experienced in two ways. One iswhen a person sees it projected before him like amovie. The other is when a person feels physically

95 Full

and mentally as if he had returned to the past andis fully participating in that life once more.

See also Trance states.

Future lives see Christos (anointing) technique;Dreams, announcing; Fluorite; Grant, JoanMarshall; Seth.

Gabriel (Hebrew: Man of God). Although Gabrielis mentioned in the Gospel of Luke 1:19, 26, he isnever specifically called an archangel. He is alsomentioned in Daniel 8:17, not as an angel, but as“one with the semblance of a man,” and at 9:21 as“the man, whom I had already seen in a vision.”

In the Kabbalic and gnostic systems this plane-tary angel or archangel, ruling over the moon, is thefinal guide of the soul to its next rebirth. In allforms of orthodox Christianity it is Gabriel whowill trumpet in the Day of Judgment after the gen-eral resurrection of the dead.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Celestialgates; Planetary descent and ascent of the soul.

Galatians. In this New Testament letter there isfound the major theme that will be later emphasizedin some of the other letters of Paul of Tarsus,which is that no one can be saved by the righteousmoral behavior of the Old Testament Law (Torah),but only through faith that Jesus, through hisdeath, took on the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:13)and in doing so freed the faithful from the Law’s im-possible requirements (Galatians 2:15–3:14). Withthis in mind it is difficult to imagine how some onecould find support for a soul’s existence prior toembodiment, much less than for reincarnation inthis letter, but the attempt has been made.

Galatians 1:15– 16 states that, “...God, who has setme apart from birth and called me through hisgrace, chose to reveal his Son to me and throughme, in order that I might proclaim him among theGentiles.” A very similar statement is found in theOld Testament at Jeremiah 1:4–5, “The word ofthe Lord came to me: ‘Before I formed you in thewomb I knew you for my own: before you wereborn I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophetto the nations.’” These two passages are often citedtogether as having a reincarnationist meaning.

However, for both of these passages the same ar-gument against a reincarnationist view can bemade, namely that they mean that “before birth”God had “predetermined” the “destiny” of Jere-miah and Paul even without their souls necessarilyalready being in existence.

Also, Galatians 6:7–8 at times has been regardedas a pro-rebirth verse. It reads, “Make no mistakeabout this: God is not to be fooled; a man reapswhat he sows. If he sows seed in the field of hislower nature, he will reap from it a harvest of cor-

ruption, but if he sows in the field of the Spirit, theSpirit will bring him a harvest of eternal life.”

This is actually only one of several “reap andsow” passages that are cited by reincarnationists tosuggest that there is also the doctrine of karma inthe Bible, yet here again the orthodox view that“with in a single life time one receive after deathwhat one deserve” fits better with the rest of thetext than does a reincarnation view.

Still another reincarnationist claim is made forGalatians 4:19 where, in the second part of this pas-sage, Paul is speaking to his followers and says, “Formy children [followers] you are, and I am in travailwith you over again until you take the shape ofChrist.” This passage has been use by some reincar-nationists to claim that Paul was claiming that hewould keep returning to earthly life [be reborn]until all his following was redeemed. Obviously itis the words “over again” that might seem to givethis passage a reincarnational meaning. That nosuch meaning is likely can be seen by what he writesnext, at 4:20, “I wish I could be with you now;then I could modify my tone [voice]; as it is, I amat my wits’ end about you.” What Paul is referringto is that his followers are regressing back to a be-lief that they must obey the Old Testament Law[Torah], he is worried sick about this and wisheshe could be with them now to change their misdi-rection.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Annihila-tionism; Christian atonement theories; Chris-tianity and reincarnation; Corinthians, 1st and2nd; Ephesians; Gnosticism; Karma in theBible? New Testament and reincarnation; Ro-mans.

Galya Raza (Hebrew: Revelation of a Secret). Thissixteenth century kabbalic work by an anonymousauthor has an elaborate theory of creation and theorigin of evil as a framework for its reincarnationalteaching.

See also Kabbalah; Sefer ha-Gilgulim.

Gandharva/Gandhabba (S/P). This is a term forthe presumed rebirth factor mentioned in the earlyBuddhist Canon. In early Buddhism it is regardedas the karmic causative aspect of rebirth. However,in Vajrayana Buddhism it is regarded as a tempo-rary intermediate being that exists in the interimperiod between lives, and as such it acts as a bridgebetween the old embodied being and the new em-bodied being. Such a temporary intermediate beingis technically made necessary by the Buddhist doc-trine of no-soul (self ) or anatman.

In the Abhidharmakoshabhasya (Treasury of theAbhidharma), by the famous fifth century Buddhistteacher Vasubandhu, the gandharva is described asa very subtle mental body which exists for a forty-

Future-lives 96

nine day period between death and rebirth, andwhich feeds on odors, hence the literal meaning ofits name “that which eats (arvati) odors (gandham),or odor-eater. This intermediate being is said tobecome attracted to a new life in accordance withthe electra/oedipus complex.

See also Karma and rebirth; Mahayana Bud-dhist rebirth texts; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Ganges (Ganga: Swift-goer) River. To Hindus thisis both the name of the most sacred of all rivers andthe name of the goddess that personifies it. It is be-lieved that pilgrims bathing in the Ganges at thecity of Varanasi (Benares), despite its modern indus-trialized pollution, cleanses them from sin and thuswill insure themselves a more fortunate rebirth.Also, having a person’s cremated remains throwninto the river at this site will improve the next lifeof the deceased even up to liberating the soul fromrebirth altogether. Even committing suicide bydrowning oneself in the Ganges will also improveones next life; otherwise, only the un-crematedbody of holy persons should be released into theriver. This is because the corporeal forms of holypersons do not need to be first purified by fire.

See also Hinduism; Karma versus grace; Pil-grimages.

Gap in current knowledge see Current knowl-edge discrepancy; Science and pseudo-science.

Garden of Waiting. According to one of the sub-jects of hypnotic regression by Dr. Alexander Can-non, this is the name of the realm where souls areprepared for their rebirth descent.

See also Great White Brotherhood.

Gates of death and rebirth see Celestial gates.

Gaulle, Charles-Andre-Marie-Joseph de see Na-poleon Bonaparte; Patton, George S.

Gehazi. According to one kabbalic source this ser-vant of the prophet Elisha was reincarnated as adog for the sin of aiding King Jehoboam in thatking’s efforts to establish worship of the golden calfin the northern kingdom of Israel.

See also Kabbalah.

Gehenna or Gehénnon. From the Hebrew Ge-Hinnom. It means hell in general, but morespecifically it refers to the first of the seven hells inKabbalic Judaism that a soul may spend time inbefore reincarnating.

See also Hell; Old Testament and the afterlife.

Gender issue of the soul. There is an on going de-bate in various reincarnationist circles as to whetherthe soul is genderless, androgynous, or has inher-ent gender. This is closely related to the debate as

to whether or not a soul is consistently reborn intothe same physical gender or periodically changesgenders.

In the case of creationism of the soul, God cre-ates an individualized soul to insert into each con-ceived embryo; but whether He has given it a gen-der already or leaves that to be determined by thebiology of the embryo is open to further debate.In traducianism, the soul, like the body, is formedfrom the union of the parents which leads to theconclusion that either the soul is genderless or takeson the gender of the embryo.

In infusionism, where the soul pre-existed, gen-dered, genderless, or androgynous may be the case.Plato, in his work the Symposium, gives details ofa myth told by the playwright Aristophanes. In thismyth the original human beings existed in a dou-ble form. Each had two faces looking in oppositedirections, four arms and four legs, and a pair ofgenitals. One group of these beings had one maleand one female genital, another group had twomale genitals, and a third group had two femalegenitals. This double genital nature allowed humanbeings a level of sexual freedom that contributedto making them so proud of themselves that theyangered the gods. In order to punishment human-ity the gods split each person in half. According toAristophanes this explains why the souls of humanbeings are so drive by passion, each human beingis not only looking for its other physical half, butits other soul half in order to be whole again. Ob-viously, this myth also conveniently explains whythere is both heterosexuality and homosexuality.

A later view of the soul and gender found inPlato’s Timaeus, is far less romantic and, in fact, ismisogynous. In this the female body was not onlycreated after the male body, but existed only out ofthe unfortunate necessity to house “fallen” malesouls. Presumably, then there were only male soulsand these could only escape rebirth from a malebody, with those male souls in a female body need-ing to reincarnate.

In some ancient gnostic sects it was believed thatthe reason that the original androgynous souls weredivided was because the lesser, and evil, creator(demiurge) wanted to keep souls trapped in bod-ily form for as long as possible.

The Kabbalah teaches that the pre-existent soul,as in the Symposium’s platonic system, is androgy-nous and that it splits into separate male and fe-male parts during its original descent from the ce-lestial paradise to the earth for embodiment. Also,as in the Symposium, the reason that souls undergoreincarnation is because they are searching for theirsoul mates; and no soul can or will be liberatedfrom continued embodiment until it finds its orig-inal other half.

97 Gender

Modern support for an original bisexual soulcomes from the Grace Loehr Life Readings. Ac-cording to these readings when the soul undergoesits first earthly embodiment it is divined or polar-ized in masculine and feminine halves which willnot be reunited until all of its numerous earth em-bodiments have been completed. In the mean timeeach half will taken on bodily forms of both sexes.In other words, the male soul half will experiencemany lives as both male and female, as will the fe-male soul half. This is considered necessary for thefull development of the soul as a whole.

R. F. Goudey, in his Reincarnation: A UniversalTruth (1928), says that ordinarily it is thought thatnot less than three and not more than seven lives ofthe same sex are followed before changing to a dif-ferent one.

The gender issue of the soul in Buddhism shouldtechnically be meaningless, since the anatmanteaching denies the very existence of a soul. It shouldeven be nonsensical to suggest that there is even avague gender related aspect of any kind to the karmiccarrier that official Buddhist doctrine regards as pass-ing from one life to another. If it should do so, it au-tomatically would be giving a personal quality tothat carrier, and such a quality at least borders onthe idea of a soul. This, of course, has not stoppedfolk Buddhism from assigning gender and variousother personal aspects to the karmic carrier. In fact,folk Buddhism is as fully soul-accepting as is Hin-duism, Jainism. This becomes especially obvious inthe Buddhist Pure-land scriptures where one of thereasons that Buddha land is pure is because there isno women’s rebirth factor in it. This means that allmust enter it only via a male body.

Among the Nusayris the gender issue is madeeven simpler. Women do not have souls; therefore,it is only male souls that reincarnate.

A fact to be noted is that in those cultures wheregender change during reincarnation is not expected,or in some cases not even considered possible, nosuch changes are reported. This is one of the ele-ments that have encouraged the claim that reincar-nation is a culturally determined fantasy. One re-sponse to this has been that the soul understandswhat the expectations are of the culture into whichit is to be reborn, and re-embodies according tothe rules of that culture.

In a small study in England of some twenty-twoage-regressed individuals mentioned in PennyThornton’s 1990 The Forces of Destiny (page 138),women are much more likely to acknowledge hav-ing gender changed in the past than are men. Thisprobably reflects the status of men in still patriar-chal Western society continues to be higher thanthat of women.

A few reincarnationists have acknowledged that

gender without physical sexual organs and the ac-companying secondary sexual characteristics is alogically meaningless concept.

See also American Indians; Angels and reincar-nation; Bhaishajyaraja-guru; Buddhism, folk;Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth; Fantasyversus past life regression; Finite or infinitenumber of rebirths; Generationism and Tradu-cianism; Grace-Loehr life readings; Homosex-uality and transsexuality; Jataka Tales; Kab-balah; Moon; Mormonism; Pure-Land orBlissful Land Buddhism; Rebirth in Buddhism;Seth; Soul twins; Stygian sexuality; Yanomamo.

Generationism and Traducianism. Both theseterms refer to the belief that each person’s soul isbrought into being along with the person’s bodythrough the sexual union of the person’s parents.In generationism the “souls” of parents give rise tothe soul of the child in an “analogous” manner tothe parents physically conceiving the child.

Traducianism, on the other hand, denotes a “ma-terialistic” belief that the “physical body” of theparents gives rise to the soul in a fashion similar toproducing the physical body of the child.

While no Christian denominations favor tradu-cianism some are willing to accept generationismin place of soul creationism. In a Christian con-text, generationism has the advantage of explaininghow everyone is born with “original sin” which soulcreationism has a moral problem justifying. On theother hand, if the human soul is a product of boththe parents’ souls then the human soul of Jesusmight not be free of original sin, which Christian-ity requires it to have been. This would also applyto the Virgin Mary, despite the any doctrine thatshe was conceived immaculately (without originalsin). An attempted compromise has been to statethat original sin is passed on only through the father,not the mother. In a context in which Jesus had onlya human mother, not a human father, this wouldsolve the problem of original sin for Jesus, but notfor Mary. Another form of uni-parental soul gener-ation would be that only the mother contributes tothe soul, either via her egg cell or into the fetus viathe umbilical chord, but this brings back the possi-bility of Jesus inheriting original sin from Mary.Obviously, no form of or generationism, much lesstraducianism is acceptable to reincarnationists.

See also Creationism, soul; Emanationism;Embodiment, moment of; Soul’s existence priorto embodiment; Gender issue of the soul; Infu-sionism; Original sin, Christianity, and reincar-nation; Soul, origin of the.

Genesis. This is the first book in the Old Testa-ment and the first of the five books of the Torah(Hebrew: Law). It is the first to mention the under-

Generationism 98

world (Sheol), often translated as simply “the grave”(37:36, 42:38). This book also is the first of severalOld Testament books in which the soul is directlyequated with blood (Genesis 4:10, 9:4). Also, someliteralist interpretations of Genesis 2:7–8 are said tomean that the soul’s entrance into the body, andhence authentic life, does not begin until the newlyborn infant takes its first breath. That passage reads,“The Lord God formed a man (Hebrew: adam)from the dust of the ground (Hebrew: adamah)and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.Thus the man became a living creature (livingsoul).”

Some reincarnationists believe that they can find disguised support for reincarnation in Gene-sis. First there is Genesis 4:24 which concernsLamech, a fifth generation descendent of Cain,who was the first man to have two wives. The pas-sage reads, “Adah and Zillah [name of the wives],listen to me; wives of Lamech, mark what I say: Ikill a man for wounding me, a young man for ablow. Cain may be avenged seven times [for themurderer of his brother Abel], but Lamech sev-enty-seven.” This very mysterious passage hassometimes been used to claim that the Old Testa-ment here is implying multiple life-times, in fact,7, 77, or 777, depending on who cites it. How thispassages might refer to past life times is open to se-rious question. It is possible that some Christianreincarnationists are interpreting at least 77 in lightof the 70 times 7 in Matthew 18:21–22 and/or viceversa.

Second, there is Genesis 28:12, 17, and 19. Thefirst verse reads, “He [Jacob] dreamt that he saw aladder [Hebrew: sullam], which rested on theground with its top reaching to heaven, and angelsof God were going up and down upon it.” The sec-ond reads, “This [dream site] is no other than thehouse of God, this is the gate of heaven.” The finalreads “He named that place Beth-El (House ofGod).” Actually, the original word for ladder can betranslated as “ramp” or “stairway” which, from anarcheological point of view, probably implies thatthe dream involved a ziggurat (stepped tower)which had both ramps and stairways and whichwas regarded by the Mesopotamians as a “gate ofheaven” or “house of god.”

According to a reincarnationist interpretation,these three passages should not be understood asGod promising to Jacob that his innumerable de-scendents would be the future owners of the land.If such a traditional interpretation were valid thenthe process in which the angels moved from oneend of the ladder to the other, would be for themto descend from heaven to earth and then ascendfrom earth to heaven, and not the other way aroundas stated in the text. This according to a reincarna-

tionist interpretation, must mean that the angelswere, in fact, souls which first ascended to heavenat death and then descended again at rebirth.Moreover, “rested on the ground” means that theladder is based on earth, which is a metaphor for theearthly body.

Finally, there is Genesis 9:6, which is reinforcedby Revelation of John 13:10. The Genesis versereads, “He that sheds the blood of a man, for thatman, his blood shall be shed.” Revelations reads,“Whoever takes the sword to kill, by sword he isbound to be killed.” Persons such as ParamahansaYogananda have argued that since many killers dienatural deaths the only way these biblical state-ments could be fulfilled would be for the killer tobe reincarnated and himself be killed.”

See also Adam; Angels and reincarnation; Ex-odus; Finite or infinite number of rebirths;Forty; Jesus; Job, The Book of ; Kabbalah;Melchizedek; Old Testament and the afterlife;Old Testament and the soul; Plato; Psalms; Ser-pent; Seven; Soul mates; Spiritism.

German supporters of reincarnation see Goethe;Herder; Lessing; Richter; Schiller; Schlosser;Schopenhauer; Wieland.

Gilgul or Gilgulim (Hebrew: Turning over orrolling over). This became the standard Hebrewterm for reincarnation. It replaced the somewhatearlier ha’takah (transference) or ibbur (impregna-tion) with ibbur taking on the special meaning ofbenign possession. In its more extensive form theHebrew word for reincarnation is gilgul neshamot(wheel of the soul).

Although most Jewish traditions do not acceptreincarnation the Hasidic sect uses reincarnationin its interpretation of Torah, as with the punish-ment to third and fourth generations mentionedin Exodus.

See also Deuteronomy 5:2–3; Hasidism;Holocaust, Jewish; Job, Book of ; Kabbalah;Karma, racial; Old Testament and the afterlife;Qlippoth; Rebirth, ethnic; Rebirth, selective;Tanya.

Gilgulim, Sefer ha- (Hebrew: Book of Transmi-gration). This Kabbalic text by Hayim (Chayyim)Vital (1543–1620), a disciple of the renowned Kab-balic mystic Isaac Luria, is not to be confused withthe Sha’ar ha-Gilgulim which is also by Vital andalso deals with reincarnation. Vital believed he hadundergone a variety of lives.

See also Galya Raza; Hezyonot , Sefer ha-;Kabbalah.

Glossolalia. This is speaking in a pseudo-languagewhile in some degree of altered state of conscious-

99 Glossolalia

ness. The most well known manifestation of glos-solalia is the Pentecostal “speaking in tongues,”which the New Testament regards as one of the giftsof the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3– 12, 10:46, 19:6; 1stCorinthians 12:10, 31; 1st Corinthians 13:8; 1stCorinthians 14 [throughout]; and Mark 16:17– 18 ).The church in medieval times and some churchesin modern times have viewed both glossolalia andxenoglossy as signs of possession by evil spirits.It is xenoglossy, and not glossolalia, that is some-times offered as proof of reincarnation.

See also Muller, Catherine Elise.

Glottologues. This is a person, such as a medium,who speaks in a language unknown to others. Glot-tologues must be clearly distinguished from thosepracticing the more past life-related xenoglossy.

See also Muller, Catherine Elise

Gnostic Order of Christ. This Order came intoexistence in 1988 as an offspring of the Holy Orderof Mans. The Gnostic Order regards itself as fol-lowing the Path of the Western Tradition of thePriesthood after the Order of Melchizedek of theOrder of the Holy Cross. According to the teach-ings of this Order Jesus was a man who, havingreincarnated through many lives, finally realizedthe secret gnostic or hermetic knowledge necessaryfor liberation and who is now one of the ascendedmasters.

Believing that all religions teach some form of truth the Order acknowledges the value of such Western religious literature as the Bible, theNag Hammadi Texts, and a variety of Easterntexts.

See also New Testament and reincarnation.

Gnostic Orthodox Church of Christ in Amer-ica. This church was founded in 1984 by GeorgeBurke (Swami Nirmalananda Giri), a westernmember of the Hindu monastic order of Shankara-charya. The Church is in communion with theLiberal Catholic, Province of the U.S.A. whichallows it to integrate the doctrine of reincarnationwith Eastern Orthodox mysticism.

Gnosticism. In the broadest sense of the term thisis any spiritual teaching that says that spiritualknowledge (Greek: gnosis) or wisdom (sophia),rather than doctrinal faith (pistis) or some ritualpractice is the main route to supreme spiritual at-tainment. In a more narrow sense Gnosticism is adesignation for a very diverse group of religioussects which appeared in the first through third cen-tury CE. Each sect was to one degree or another, asyncretism of Iranian Zoroastrianism and Zur-vanism; Greek Orphism and Neoplatonism;Egyptian religion; Judaism; and Christianity. Some

forms of Gnosticism were very ascetic, while otherforms were extremely libertine. The very diversesources from which these sects borrowed theirteachings usually meant that many of their teach-ings were not well integrated. Some gnostic groupsconsidered themselves Christian while the more orthodox Christians considered them all to beheretics. A number of both Christian and non–Christian gnostic groups accepted the doctrine ofreincarnation. The most successful non–Christiangnostic sect was Manichaeism. A strong element of gnostic mythology also entered into the Kab-balah.

See also Body is the hell of the soul; Carpo-crates; Cave; Doceticism; Emanationism; Her-metic philosophy; Karma versus grace; Mark,Gospel of; Neoplatonism; Pistis Sophia; Plane-tary descent and ascent of the soul; Qlippoth;Resurrection, bodily; Resurrection or reincar-nation; Right-hand path and left-hand path;Simon Magus; Valentinus; Zodiac.

God and karma see Karma and God.

God and rebirth in the West. For most people itis very common to associate a belief in a soul andsome form of an afterlife with a belief in God.

With the increased discovery by Westerners ofEastern religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism,the ability for some to believe in a soul and an af-terlife without having to believe in God accountsfor some of the growth of an interest in rebirth byWesterners. However, to state that religions likeBuddhism and Jainism do not believe in some formof deity must be clarified. The term atheism canonly applied to these two religions to the degreethat they reject the concept of a supreme creatordeity. In that these religions accept the reality oflesser or non-supreme deities (asuras, devas) theyare quite theistic.

The fact that Buddhism technically denies theexistence of a soul while acknowledging the conceptof rebirth is more or less as consistently ignored byWestern Buddhists as it has always been by EasternBuddhists. It is clearly the idea of rebirth that takespriority.

See also Arguments pro and con on an after-life in general (6 and 7); Arguments supportiveof rebirth; Bhavachakra; Brahma and rebirth inBuddhism; Devachan; Devaloka; Karma andGod; Karma as absolute or relative; Karma ver-sus grace; Ontological leap or ontological dis-continuity; Population increase issue and a the-istic solution; Rebirth and religious tolerance;Soul, origin of the.

God as creator and reincarnation see Anatman;Arguments pro and con on an afterlife in gen-

Glottologues 100

eral; Body-soul dualism; Brahman; Brahma andrebirth in Buddhism; Creationism, soul; Demi-urge; Gender issue of the soul; Gnosticism; Godand rebirth in the West; Jainism; Jiva; Karmaand free will; Karma and God; Karma as ab-solute or relative; Karma versus grace; Lucre-tius; Ontological leap or ontological disconti-nuity; Plato; Population increase issue and atheistic solution; Rebirth and logical symmetry;Soul, origin of the.

Gods, cyclically dying and rising. Many reincar-nationists assume that those ancient people whobelieved in a god or goddess that dies and comeback to life would automatically believe in rebirthof the believer; however, a close examination ofthis assumption shows otherwise. In the earliestrecorded belief about such a god, the Mesopo-tamian Tammuz, while he died each autumn-win-ter only to live again each spring-summer; his wor-shippers, upon death, simply went to a dismalHades or Sheol type underworld where they wouldnever again see the light of day. This same afterlifesituation applied to all the other Middle Easternand earliest Greek dying-rising god traditions. Itwas not until the development of the later GreekOrphism that a cyclical dying and reviving god in-cluded the believer in that cycle.

See also Rebirth, analogies from nature; Res-urrection of Jesus.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749– 1832). Thisfamous German poet and dramatist had a strongbelief in reincarnation as did his brother-in-law, J.G. Schlosser. Goethe’s fascination with everythingRoman made him suspect that he was the reincar-nation of Julius Caesar.

Going lilac. This term is found in Brennan’s TheReincarnation Workbook (1989) and is credited toone Margaret O’Donnell. It refers to those personswho have an interest in esoteric studies, includingrebirth, who are inclined towards vagueness, im-practicality, theatrics, a pseudo-sweet spirituality,and who have a liking for showy lilac colored robes.Taking on several of these elements would qualifyone as a lilac person. Lilac persons supposedly havea tendency to become so focused on their reincar-nation interests that they spend more time caringabout one or more of their past life personalitiesthan their present one.

See also Life script problem.

Gorgias see Plato.

Grace, divine see Bhagavad Gita; Bhakti Yoga;Christianity and reincarnation; Colton, AnnRee; Gnosticism; Id, ego, and superego; Jerome,Eusebius Hieronymus; Karma versus grace; New

Testament and reincarnation; Origin or Ori-genes Adamanthus; Original sin, Christianity,and reincarnation; Plato; Pure-Land or BlissfulLand Buddhism; Purgatory.

Grace-Loehr life readings. Grace WittenbergerLoehr was the wife of the Reverend Franklin Loehr,the founder of Religious Research Foundation ofAmerica. In the early 1950’s Mrs. Loehr discoveredthat she was an especially adept past life reader viathe channeled entity which called itself Dr. JohnChristopher Daniels who, in turn, stated that hehad been a research librarian in the akashic recordsfor some 4,300 earth years. By the time that Mrs.Loehr left the foundation in 1979 she had givenseveral thousand readings. The channeling of Dr.Daniels was then continued by Franklin Loehr untilhis death in 1988.

According to Dr. Daniels the soul is not a sin-gle unity, but a many-faceted, corporation-likegrouping that is also an individuation of cosmicbeingness. Because of this complexity, which im-plies a size too big for any single personality to con-tain, a soul is able to send only a portion of itselfinto an earth embodiment. This allows for otherparts of the soul to function independently of itsearth part in non-terrestrial areas. At death the per-sonality may survive for some time, but it willeventually cease to exist and the soul will create anew personality to be reborn, perhaps even beforethe extinction of the old one.

The life readings channeled through Dr. Daniels,some going back as far as lives on the lost continentof Atlantis, insist that the human soul never as-sumes anything less than a human personality, thusexcluding animal (regressive) transmigration.

See also Channeling; Finite or infinite numberof rebirths; Gender issue of the soul; Solity;Transmigration, regressive.

Grant, Joan Marshall (1907– 1990) Grant was aBritish author who claims to have remembered anumber of past lives, some going back to ancienttimes. She wrote a number of books which she re-garded as a chronicle of these lives. Among these,several deal with ancient Egypt, one with a 16thcentury Italian lute player, one with an AmericanIndian female warrior; and one with a Greek priest-ess of a mystery cult. Grant’s Far Memory, whichis her most recent life autobiography, was publishedby Ariel Press, Columbus, Ohio (1956).

Some skeptics of Grant’s claims point out that herfather had an interest in Egyptology and that as achild she may have assimilated information aboutEgypt and other past civilizations from him. Onthe other hand, it has been argued that her soulmay have deliberately chosen to reincarnate as thedaughter of a man interested in Egypt.

101 Grant

Grant had an interesting way of viewing the timefactor of her various lives. Instead of envisioningthem sequentially, or from past to present, she en-visioned them as existing simultaneously. The bestway to understand this is to think of an orange witha number of sections or segments surrounding acentral core. Each segment represents one life. Theindividual actually exists in the central core. The in-dividual normally focuses all his attention on a sin-gle segment which he then considers to be the pres-ent life. In remembering a so-called past life theindividual is just temporarily shifting his focus toa different segment which he then considers to bea past life. Theoretically this same model could beused to explain the so-called glimpse into the future.Here the individual is shifting his focus to a life heis simultaneously living, but from the perspectiveof the so-called present life he considers to be a fu-ture life.

See also Cooke, Grace; Future-lives; Kelsey,Denys; Lazaris; Ouspensky, Parallel lives; Plu-rality of existences; Pyotr D; Seth; Rebirth, si-multaneous; Stevenson, Ian.

Great White Brotherhood. This is an often citedalternative name for the secret adepts called the as-cended masters. This name seems to have origi-nally come from a text called The Cloud on theSanctuary (1800) by Karl Von Eckartshausen. Thiswork deals with inner spiritualism or the interiorchurch and, despite the word “white,” has no rela-tionship to any kind of racism. The Brotherhoodis sometimes also referred to as the Great WhiteLodge, the Occult Hierarchy, or even the Illumi-nanti.

While a belief in this Brotherhood does not au-tomatically implies a belief in reincarnation, theoverwhelming majority of Brotherhood believesare also reincarnationists.

The term Great White Brotherhood should pre-sumably not be confused with the White Broth-ers. According to one of the subjects of hypnotic re-gression by Dr. Alexander Cannon, those souls inthe garden of waiting that are prepared for their re-birth descent are guarded and protected during thispreparation by those called the White Brothers andBlue Sisters.

See also Aetherius Society; Aquarian Founda-tion; Ascended masters; Aum Temple of Univer-sal Truth; Crowley, Aleister; Dark Brotherhood;Holy Order of Mans; I Am Movement; Pythago-ras; Rosicrucians; Solar Temple, Order of ;White Lodge.

Greek afterlife, the ancient. The earliest Greekconcept of an afterlife was associated with the godof the underworld, Hades (Greek: the unseen).This god’s realm, which eventually was also called

Hades, was a dim and sad ghostly place, to whichall of the dead went regardless of their virtues inlife or lack thereof. In other words it was, like theoriginal Sheol, neither a place of punishment norreward. Later Greek thought began to make amoral differentiation between the afterlife of theperson of virtue and that of the person withoutvirtue. For the virtuous there was a paradise whichwas thought of as either the Isles of the Blessed orthe Elysium Fields.

The Isles of the Blessed were at first consideredan afterlife paradise for especially heroic persons.Later on it became less elitist and was considered thedestination of all who had lived a moral life.Pythagoras located the Isles on the moon, whilePlato and Cicero placed them somewhere beyondthe stars. This change from an earthly paradise toa celestial one was probably influenced by Baby-lonian astrological arts of the time.

The Elysium Fields or Plain was a paradise thatwas of special importance in the later Greek Elysiummystery religion. Like the Isles of the Blessed theexact location of this paradise was also in question.While some authorities also placed this paradise onthe moon other authorities placed it beneath theearth in a special section of Hades and still otherthought of it as being in the far west where the sunset.

For all those who died without gaining the rightto paradise their fate was to remain in Hades, onlynow it was mostly a place of punishment. For thetruly wicked, however, there was Tartarus. In ear-lier Greek mythology, except for the river of fire(Phlegethon) on one side of it, this was a totallylightless place beneath Hades where the gods senttheir enemies, especially the Titans, for punish-ment. By the time of Plato it had come to mean ageneral place of punishment for all general evildoers.

The major exception for the later view of Hadesas a place just of punishment was when it wasthought of as the place where souls resided priorto being reborn into another earthly body. ByChristian times Hades was simply equated withHell as the realm of Satan.

See also Greeks and reincarnation; Hermes;Kyklos Genesion; Old Testament and the after-life; Second death; Shadow or shade; Shinto;Virgil.

Greeks and reincarnation. The ancient Greeksnever formulated a consistent concept of an after-life. However, there is no mention, or even a hint,of a belief in metempsychosis or transmigrationin the oldest Greek literary works, the Homericepics. The earliest known clear-cut mention of thedoctrine of metempsychosis among the ancient

Great 102

Greeks has been attributed to the 6th century BCE

philosopher Pherecydes of Syros and his studentPythagoras.

It has been theorized that the belief in metem-psychosis entered the Greek world from Egypt, oreven India, but these beliefs are almost certainlywrong. While it was easy enough for Greeks totravel to Egypt, the doctrine of metempsychosis wassimply not taught there. While India would nothave been impossible to reach, it would have beennearly impossible for a Greek speaker to have com-municated with Indians in the 6th century BCE. Itwas not until the conquests of Alexander the Greatin the fourth century BCE that Greek and Indiancultures and languages were in direct contact withone another. Moreover, it was not until the dis-covery of the monsoon winds in 47 CE that a majorincrease in the exchange of goods and ideas beganto affect the Greco-Roman world from the East.

Another suggested source for the Greek doc-trine of metempsychosis has been from the sha-manic people of Thrace (Bulgaria) or even Scythia(Ukraine). The shamanic people of both these areashad direct relations with the Greeks through theGreek trading colonies around the Black Sea.Moreover, this possibility is supported by the factthat the cult of Dionysus, the god at the center ofthe Orphism, seems to have originated in Thrace.On the other hand, Jan N. Bremmer, in his TheRise and Fall of the Afterlife (2002), questions aThracian origin and suggests a more indigenousGreek source. This would make sense in that morerecent research has indicated that the Greek beliefin metempsychosis made its first appearance inMagna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily), a regionclosing associated with Pythagoras.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Ashoka, King; Bogomils; Book of the Dead(Egyptian); Butterfly; Cave; Creationism, soul;Empedocles; Greek afterlife, the ancient; Her-mes; Hermetic philosophy; Herodotus; KyklosGenesion; Plato; Priesthood, lack of an organ-ized; Second death; Right-hand path and left-hand path; Virgil; Zodiac.

Gregory of Nazianus (329?–389 CE). This bishopof Constantinople, in his On the Soul and the Res-urrection, declared the idea of reincarnation as in-compatible with Christian resurrection.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation.

Gregory of Nyssa (332–398 CE). This Christianbishop of Nyssa, in his On the Making of Man, crit-icized both the idea of the soul’s existence prior toembodiment and its reincarnation. Gregory wasthe brother of Basil (Basilus) of Caesarea.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation.

Grey occultists. According to Eklal Kueshana, inThe Ultimate Frontier (1963), these occultists arethe majority of the world’s clerics in that they tryto control humanity by teaching the false doctrinesof original sin, hell-fire, eternal damnation, the res-urrection of the dead, and an eternally indolentheaven, instead of the doctrines of universal salva-tion through reincarnation and spiritual growth todivinity. The grey occultists are, unknowingly orknowingly, in the service of the demonic powerscalled the Black Mentalists.

See also Esotericism versus Occultism; StelleGroup.

Grief and rebirth see Earth-bound.

Griffin, David Ray (1939–). Griffin, a contempo-rary Whiteheadian scholar, has dealt with thebody-mind relationship issue and reincarnation in several of his books. Griffin suggests that thehuman soul can function independently of thebody and even reincarnate into other bodies.Griffin also believes that Alfred North Whitehead’snotion of “prehension” (meaning the ability to in-clude past events and memories into one’s interiorbeing) may exist.

See also Body-soul dualism; Objective immor-tality.

Grof, Stanislav (1931–). This co-founder of trans-personal psychology and LSD researcher has writ-ten or co-authored a number of books dealing withreincarnation.

Group karma see Karma, group.

Group reincarnation see Karma, family; Re-birth, group; Soul groups.

Group soul. This describes a situation where threeor more former discernibly separate entities to somedegree unite or merge with one another to form alarger more efficient entity. The term group soulshould not be confused with either the terms col-lective soul or soul groups.

The concept of a group soul has sometimes beenused to explain past life recall without any kind ofrebirth doctrine. According to this explanationevery soul belongs to a group that can number inthe twenties, hundreds, or thousands. Since thereis a natural psychic connection between all the soulsin the group there is a great deal of shared memo-ries. Therefore, when a currently living individualrecalls aspects of the life of a person who died be-fore the birth of the individual, or even as recent ashis infant years, those recalled memories really be-

103 Group

long to a separate soul, but one that is in the samegroup as the soul of the living person.

The 19th century psychic researcher F.W.H.Myers had his own concept of a group soul whichwas a number of souls united in a single spirit, act-ing and reacting upon one another in the ascend-ing scale of psychic evolution.

See also Celestine Prophecy; Cummins, Geral-dine; Karma; Karma, racial; Lazaris; Michael(2); Ra (2); Rebirth, alternative explanations to;Rebirth, group; Seth; Wilcock, David.

Guardian of the Threshold see Dweller on theThreshold.

Guenon, Rene (1886– 1951). Guenon, was a Frenchphilosopher who, unlike most modern esotericwriters, strongly argued against reincarnation.Guenon took the position that all personal char-acteristics of a person, including memories, havenothing to do with the real soul. He believed thatthe real soul has many levels of existence to passthrough before fully realizing that it is part of a sin-gle universal being. Because the soul has so manyforms of existence through which it must pass itcan not afford to repeat any one of them. Any onesoul, therefore, will take on human form only once,regardless of how short or long that form lasts.Guenon further suggests that any memories of apast life are but the psychic residue shed by the soulat death and somehow picked up by a living per-son. Such shed memories, he believed, may also ac-count for possessions, hauntings, and the séancephenomena. In his Introduction to the Study of theHindu Doctrines, (1945) Guenon labeled reincar-nation as metaphysical nonsense because it limitsuniversal possibility: yet, despite this, his conceptof the soul is very atman-like.

Guf ha-Briyot (Hebrew: the Body or Vessel ofCreatures). This is said to be the celestial reservoir(guf) from which souls enter the cycle of bodily ex-istence. Until the guf is emptied, the Messiah cannot come. After death souls go on to the tzror ha-chayyim.

See also Enoch, Third Book of; Kabbalah.

Guided imagery. In this method for recalling pastlife memories, the conscious self is encouraged torelax and visualize images from the subconsciouswith the understanding that whatever images ariseare not without some significance in either the pres-ent or past life. Sometimes in certain kinds ofguided imagery music can accompany and facilitatethis process.

Guirdham, Arthur (1905–?). Dr. Guirdham, aBritish psychiatrist, was consulted in 1962 by a Mrs.Smith who was suffering from persistent night-

mares. She said that these dreams involved imagesof the 13th century Cathars of Languedoc (South-ern France). In particular, the dream involved aman by the name of Roger, who she came to regardas her past life lover. In fact, as her therapy contin-ued under Dr. Guirdham she came to identifyRoger with the doctor. Whether by coincidence ornot it turned out that Dr. Guirdham himself al-ready had an interest in the Cathars; therefore, it isnot entirely surprising that the doctor himself soonacknowledged that he was Roger. These Catharconnections did not stop with the doctor and Mrs. Smith, however. 1968 an acquaintance of thedoctor, a Miss Miles, by what was said to be purechance, admitted to Dr. Guirdham that she alsoexperienced memories of a Cathar past life. Moreremarkably, still three other individuals by 1971came forth to the doctor with Cathar past memo-ries.

This seeming group, or collective, reincarnationphenomenon soon took on another dimensionwhen it was claimed that all these individuals alsoremembered past lives together as far back as thefourth century C.E. and as recently as the Napo-leonic era.

The validity of this case was put into question bythe fact that Dr. Guirdham refused to permit inde-pendent investigators to interview any of the otherabove mentioned individuals. Furthermore, it wasdiscovered that the events in the Cathar past of Dr.Guirdham had many parallels to the 1945 novelHigh are the Mountains by Hannah Closs. (Lon-don: A. Dakers limited.)

Nonetheless, according to Guirdham the follow-ing books are a documentation of his past life ex-perience as a Cathar: Cathars and Reincarnation(1970); A Foot in Both Worlds (1973); We are OneAnother (1974); and The Lake and the Castle (1976).

Of course, since the publication of these worksit has been very fashionable for past life recallers todiscover a life as a Cathar.

Guirdham also wrote under the pseudonym ofFrancis Eaglesfield.

See also Honest lying; Memory contamina-tion; Past life fakery.

Gurdjieff, Georgi Ivanovitch (1872– 1949). Gur-djieff, a well known and often controversial Russianspiritual teacher, was the founder of what is some-times called the Fourth Way. The Fourth Way iswhat his followers consider the integration of theolder emotional path of the monk, the physicalpath of the fakir, and the intellectual path of theyogi. The greatest influence on Gurdieff seems tohave been Sufism. According to Gurdjieff, humanbeings are not born with souls, but must develop orearn them. As for Gurdjieff ’s views on reincarna-

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tion, it can be summed up in the words “reincar-nation is such a misunderstood and misrepresentedconcept that it is useless to talk about it.”

See also Astral body; Collin, Robert; Ouspen-sky, Pyotr; Russia, reincarnation in.

Gwenved. According to some ancient Celtic be-liefs if the soul, going through many rebirths, wasable to purify itself sufficiently it would eventuallyfind itself in the eternally peaceful White Heavenor Gwenved.

Hades (Greek: most likely meaning “invisible”or “unseen”). This name for the ancient after-life world in Homer’s time (12th century BCE)was thought of as being in the far west, beyondthe mythic river Oceanus, which was thoughtto surround the earth. Later it was placed be-neath the earth. By the time of the Greek poetHesiod (8th century BCE) Hades was dividedinto two regions of darkness, the shallower Ere-bus and the deeper Tartarus. Eventually, thegloomy fields of Asphodel were also added.

Hades was also at times the name of the god ofthe underworld; however, since it was thought thatto say his name could bring upon oneself misfor-tune, he was given the euphemism Pluto, meaning“Wealth.” This renaming was justified on the basisthat the underworld was also the source of preciousmetals and gems. Another euphemism for this godwas Zeus of the Underworld.

In at least one theosophical understanding ofHades, it is a metaphor for womb into which thesoul descends in order to be reborn.

See also Greek afterlife, the ancient; Lethe;Orphism; Pluto, the God; Theosophy.

Haggard, H. Rider (1856– 1925). Along withMarie Corelli, Haggard was one of the two mostwidely read Victorian novelists who brought theconcept of reincarnation and karma to British pop-ular awareness. His works with these themes, sometimes called the Ayesha series, include She(1886), Ayesha, the Return of She (1905), and Sheand Allen (1920). Haggard also makes reference inhis autobiography to his experiences in previouslives.

See also Karmic romances.

Hall, Manly Palmer (1901– 1990). Hall, a Cana-dian-American esotericist, showed an interest inexotic knowledge at an early age. He became amember of the Theosophical Society and the Rosi-crucian Fellowship of Max Heindal while in histeens. In the fall of 1920 he gave a lecture on rein-carnation in Santa Monica, California which beganhis career as an esoteric lecturer. In 1922 he beganto write his magnum opus The Secret Teachings of

All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Her-metic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Phi-losophy, which was published in 1928 and earnedHall a world-wide reputation. In 1923 he receivedordination as a minister in the Los Angeles basedmetaphysical Church of the People. In 1934 Halldeveloped plans for what soon became the Los An-geles Philosophical Research Society where hetaught up to shortly before his death. Hall has over200 books on esoteric subjects to his credit; a num-ber of these deal with reincarnation.

See also Midnight; Rosicrucians; Theosophy.

Hamsa. Sanskrit for crane, swan, or goose, espe-cially as the vahana (vehicle) of Brahma. It is alsoa Hindu symbol for reincarnation.

Harrowing of hell (Also Descent into Hell). Thisrefers to the Christian belief that during the timebetween the death of Jesus on the cross on GoodFriday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday hisspirit descended into hell to liberate the souls ofthe just, especially the Old Testament patriarchsand prophets, something that could not be doneuntil Christ’s sacrifice purged them of the sin of Adam. This descent into hell by Jesus became an official part of Christian orthodoxy at the Fourth Council of Sirmium (359 CE) and wasreaffirmed in the final form of the Apostles’ Creed(1216).

The notion of the harrowing of hell is notspecifically found in the New Testament, but isjustified on the very questionable basis of Acts2:27–31 “...for thou will not abandon my soul todeath, nor let thy loyal servant suffer corruption.Thou has shown me the ways of life, thou will fillme with gladness by thy presence” ... “he spokewith foreknowledge of the resurrection of the Mes-siah.” Acts here is actually quoting Psalms 16:10,“...for thou will not abandon me to Sheol nor suf-fer thy servant to see the pit.” On more securegrounds the Harrowing could be based on 1st Peter3:19, and 4:6. In 1st Peter 3 it states, “And in thespirit he [Christ] went and made his proclamationto the imprisoned spirits...,” while 1st Peter 4 states,“Why was the Gospel preached to those who aredead? In order that.... They might in the spirit bealive with the life of God.” There seems to be somedifference of opinion as to whether the “place ofimprisonment” and/or Sheol in these particular pas-sages referred to hell proper (Hades) or to thelimbo of the Fathers.

Christian orthodoxy has used the Harrowing toargue against reincarnation on the basis that therewould be no need for the Harrowing if all soulsreincarnated.

See also New Testament and reincarnation;Old Testament and the afterlife; Purgatory.

105 Harrowing

Hashimiyya. This rather obscure 8th century CE

Iranian gnostic group seems to have believed inreincarnation (tanasukh).

See also Islam; Kanthaeans; Khurramiyya.

Hasidism (Hebrew for “pious ones”). In its mostcommon usage this term refers to the Jewish mys-tical movement that began in the 18th century Rus-sian controlled part of Poland. This movement wasstrongly influenced by the Kabbalic teachings ofIsaac Luria, which included a belief in reincarna-tion.

See also Holocaust, Jewish; Kabbalah; Karma,racial; Old Testament and the afterlife; Qlip-poth; Russia, reincarnation in.

Hauntings. The common concept of a hauntinginvolves the restless spirit of a deceased person;however, for some reincarnationists it can meanthe spirit of someone who was so attached to ma-teriality that they are delaying the natural reincar-nation process.

See also Guenon, Rene; Kabbalah.

Hawkman. This is a superhero in the DC Comicsuniverse, who first appeared in Flash Comics #1(1940) and was a featured character in that titlethroughout the 1940s, but the title disappearedfrom print after World War II. Although severalincarnations of Hawkman have appeared in DCComics, the original Hawkman was Carter Hall,an archeologist who was the reincarnation of anancient Egyptian prince, Khufu. In the original se-ries Hawkman was accompanied by his reincar-nated bride, Shiera Sanders, who was the crimefighter Hawkgirl. In the 1950s a new version ofHawkman and Hawkgirl was introduced, but herethey were from another planet instead of earthlyreincarnates. Since 1985 Hawkman’s history hasbecome a very mixed affair with new versions ofthe character appearing sometimes as an ancientEgyptian reincarnate and other times as an extra-terrestrial.

See also Egypt.

Heaven. In Western religion this is both the dwell-ing place of God and final goal of the morally wor-thy dead. This is actually in contrast to most non–Western cultures where the dwelling place of Godand the dead are separate from one another. Mostfolk cultures have some version of a paradise forthe deceased, but in the majority of cases it doesnot depend on moral worth. Instead, heaven is apleasant realm for all of one’s deceased kin since allare regarded as worthy of it, regardless of theirmoral qualities. To view it any other way is impi-ous. In other words, in these traditions an afterlifehas no soterial (soul-saving) significance.

The Kabbalists maintain that there are sevenheavens with the highest, called Elyon, being thedwelling place of God and the most exalted angels.In Islam there are also said to be seven heavens,the highest of which is called Illiyum, and is formedof divine light. In Theosophy there are seven levelof the devachan.

In religious systems which acknowledge both a heavenly realm and the rebirth-karma complexor karmic eschatology such as Hinduism, Bud-dhism, and Jainism the heavenly realm is just oneof several possible realms other than an earthly oneinto which a person can be reborn. In these reli-gious systems any birth into a heavenly existence isusually not permanent. In time the heaven dwellermust pass out of that realm and re-enter the rebirthcycle.

See also Astral plane; Bhavachakra; Deva-loka; Ethicalized or karmic rebirth; Greek af-terlife, the ancient; Heavens, Buddhist; Hell;Kabbalah; Mental plane; Moksha, Mukta orMukti; Nine doors; Old Testament and the after-life; Paradise; Pure-Land or Blissful Land, Bud-dhist; Summerland.

Heaven, hell, and Buddhist no-soul (Self ). It hasoften been noted that the Buddhist teaching of no-soul (self ) or anatman is at odds with the tradi-tional Buddhist belief that a being can be reborninto a metaphysical state, the purpose of which isto reward or punish the “self.” The fact of the mat-ter is that traditional Buddhism has more or lessignored the teaching of no-soul (self ) in order tosatisfy the average believer’s desire to hold on to aself. The average Buddhist, like the average personof most other religions, wants to believe that if heor she has not gained what he or she either desiredor felt entitled to in this life then he or she wouldbe pleasantly compensated for this lack in someway, in one or more future lives. Also, that sameperson usually wants to believe that those who didnot deserve to enter heaven ought to experiencepainful deprivation (hell) in some way in one ormore future lives. This view can only be describedas an intense belief in the reality of selfhood.

See also Bhavachakra; Heavens, Buddhist.

Heavens, Buddhist. In traditional Buddhist mythiccosmology the concept of heaven, or more correctlyof the heavens, is nothing like the Western Judeo-Christian one. To simplify a rather complex schemeit can be said that all the various levels and sub-levels of the Buddhist heavens fall into threegroups. The lowest of these is the realm of desire(kamaloka) which has six sub-levels. The first sub-level is inhabited by (deities) that have bodies andemotions similar to those of human beings, espe-cially in that these deities come in either male or fe-

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male forms. Here are found the four heavenly kingsthat guard over the four cardinal directions; andabove them is the sub-level of the thirty-threedeities who are ruled over by the god Indra. Abovethis is the sub-level of Yama ( Japanese Emma-0),originally the ruler of the ordinary dead, but wholater was said to be the ruler of the hungry ghostrealm and still later the ruler of hell. The next sub-level is the Tushita Heaven, which is where thebodhisattva Maitreya dwells. The last two sub-levels of the kamaloka are the nirman-rati and thepara-nirmita-vashavartin. The only significance tothese two realms seems to be that Mara, the god ofDeath, resides in the latter one.

The second group of heavens is called the realmof form and is also divided, in this case into foursub-levels, each of which is named after one of the rupa (form) dhyanas (meditations). Of thesethe only one of any significance is the heaven of the first dhyana. It is here that the Brahma deities reside. These beings differ from the lowerdeities in that they are genderless and rule in soli-tude.

All of the heavenly dwellers above Brahma dei-ties, including those in the arupa (formless) dhyanas(meditation) realms, are so immersed in their statesof sublime meditative bliss that they are totally di-vorced from all states of existence below them.

The most important fact about all these heav-enly realms is that, although they are where humanbeings may go who have built up a large treasury ofkarmic merit, they are not the best of all possiblerealms in which to be reborn. The reason is thatthe very blissful nature of even the lowest of theserealms leaves their denizens with no motivation toseek enlightenment and liberation from samsara(world of birth and death). The result of this is thatas soon as these deities use up their store of karmicmerit they must fall back into one of the non-bliss-ful states of existence. If they are fortunate they willreturn to a human birth, which is the best of all therealms of samsara, because only in the human stateis there the required balance of joy and sorrow toallow for one to realize the value of seeking enlight-enment.

Finally, none of these Buddhist heavens must beconfused with any of the Buddha-fields or Pure-Lands. These are traditionally considered totallyindependent states of existence.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Asuras; Bhavachakra; Brahma and rebirthin Buddhism; Hungry ghosts.

Heaven’s Gate. This is the name of a group ofthirty-nine people who believed in apocalypticUFOism and who committed mass suicide at theirsouthern California Rancho Santa Fe headquarters

in 1997. The group was founded by Marshall HerffApplewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles in 1975. Thesetwo believed that they were reincarnated beingssent from heaven to restate the message of Jesus.They also believed that they were the two witnessesprophesied in Revelation 11:3– 12 who would bekilled by the enemies of God, but who in three anda half days would be brought back to life and wouldbe taken to heaven in a cloud. This cloud, they be-lieved, was actually a space ship of some kind. Withthe unexpected natural death of Bonnie Lu Nettlesin 1985 the ideology of the group changed some-what, but it continued to believe that Earth was aplace of great misery due to souls being trapped inthe cycle of reincarnation. With the arrival of the1997 Hale-Bopp comet and the belief that a space-ship was concealed in its tail, the members of thegroup were convinced that this was the ship toheaven for which they had been waiting. Since the ship could only transport disembodied souls itwas thought necessary for its passengers to releasethemselves from corporeal existence, which theydid.

See also Koresh, David; Solar Temple, Orderof the.

Hebrews see Christianity and reincarnation;Melchizedek; New Testament sacrificial concept;Old Testament; Rebirth and moral perfection;Seventeenth century renewed interest in rebirth.

Hedonism (S: kama-sukkha-allikanu-yoga). InBuddhism hedonism or the over indulgence ofworldly pleasures, is a major impediment to thegoal of escaping from the inevitable dissatisfaction(dukkha) of life or the cycle of rebirth and re-death.

See also Accidentalism; Amrta; Annihilation-ism, Buddhist view; Asceticism; Determinism;Eternalism; Middle Way.

Heimarmene (Greek: fate). As an ancient Greekgoddess, fate was in charge of the kyklos genesion(cycle of becoming, i.e. Metempsychosis or Trans-migration). The Greek moira was a synonym ofheimarmene.

Hell. This word commonly refers to a place or con-dition of punitive suffering, especially in an after-life. In examining cultures world-wide, ancient andmodern, it is to be noted that in comparison to thenumber of cultures that believe in some form ofafterlife paradise or heaven, those that believe alsoin an afterlife place of punishment are far fewer. Infact, the entire idea of hell is absent in most folksocieties since the whole concept of one’s deceasedkin going to a place of punishment is irreverent.This is especially true of cultures that practice an-cestor worship. Instead, in these folk societies pun-

107 Hell

ishment for breaking taboos or other undesirablebehavior is thought to result in illness or misfortunein this life. This anti-hell view precludes a mean-ingful place for a fully developed karmic escha-tology.

In most religions that teach rebirth and accept a hell the soul is usually said to abide there onlytemporarily, which actually makes hell much morelike the Western purgatory (naraka) than a truehell. This temporary or purgatorial idea has beenadopted by Christian reincarnationists who believethat the orthodox Christian view of an eternal hellmakes a mockery of God’s justice and love. In fact,most Western reincarnationists who accept a hellor purgatory state go one step beyond the Easternview of purgatory in that they regard it as, not onlytemporary, but as a remedial or purgative staterather than a retributive state. This, in turn, is partof the whole Western view of reincarnation as anoptimistic, necessary spiritual growth process to-wards enlightenment versus the Eastern view ofreincarnation as an exclusively punitive process thatis necessitated by the failure to attain enlighten-ment.

In the New Testament hell is referred to as ever-lasting which might seem an insurmountable ob-jection to any temporary stay in hell, but for theless orthodox this is not the case. They point outthat while hell itself may be ever lasting, this doesnot necessarily mean that those sent there must re-main there forever, for the mercy of God wouldnot require that. This view, obviously, is compat-ible with reincarnation.

Regardless whether it is the Eastern or Westernview of purgatory, it is important to understandthat in the context of rebirth and karma any idea ofan other than this-life punishment system, or forthat matter a reward system (heaven), must be verycarefully balanced with a this-life karma punish-ment and reward system if rebirth is to have sote-rial (soul-saving) significance. It is, in fact, for thisreason that in such religious systems as Hinduism,Buddhism, and Jainism, the stay in the hell realmcan not be permanent. In time the hell dwellermust pass out of that realm and re-enter the rebirthcycle and at some point must complete its punish-ment in the earthly realm.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Apoc-atastasis; Astral plane; Avichi; Bhavachakra;Christianity and reincarnation; Christianity, es-oteric; Eighth sphere; Greek afterlife, the an-cient; Harrowing of Hell; Heaven; Hell, theChinese; Hungry ghosts; Karma in the ancientand modern west; Limbo; Myers, F. W. H.; NewAge; Nine doors; Old Testament and the after-life; Rebirth, instantaneous; Rebirth in theWest; Resurrection, bodily; Romans.

Hell, the Chinese (Chinese : Yi/Di Yu, EarthPrison). Due to the custom of ancestor worshipthe Chinese had no real concept of hell, or evenpurgatory, until the arrival of Buddhism. OnceBuddhism became popular a specifically Chinesefolk version of hell, much influenced by Daoism,came into being. The Chinese folk hell, or morecorrectly purgatory, is divided into the Ten Palacesof Hell (Shih Tien-yen-wang, WG). Each of theseis administered by one of the ten kings (shih-wangWG) of hell, with each king having a specific func-tion with regards to punishing the evil souls (hun).

The soul upon death leaves the body and jour-neys to hell. Upon reaching it there is a demon gatekeeper who demands payment. The reason given forthis demand is that in one‘s previous death andjourney to hell one borrowed extensively from theBank of Hell (Yen-lo, WG) and the debt has notyet repaid. This payment is supplied by the familyof the deceased in a number of ways, especially bythe burning of special funeral money. If no pay-ment is forthcoming, a rare event thanks to familydeposits in the Bank of Hell, the gate keeper beatsthe arriving resident for the whole of the first week.Once past the gatekeeper there is a preliminarysorting out of the good from the evil souls by wayof a scale (psychostasis). Those souls that are tooheavy due to their vices are marked for punish-ment. This takes up the second week in hell. Next,the souls go to the Village of Bad Dogs where thedemon dogs perform a further, more refined sort-ing in the third week. The fourth week finds thesouls facing the Mirror of Retribution (Sie-kangtai, WG) which shows the condition into whichsouls will be reborn, either as human beings or an-imals. In the fifth week, the souls will be taken toa terrace where they will have one last chance tosee their former home, family, and have a chance toreflect on the life they have left. In the sixth week,all the souls will have to cross, by one of twobridges, a great watery chasm inhabited by mon-sters. The bridge for the evil doers, the Bridge ofSighs, is very thin and dangerous to cross, whilethe one for the virtuous, the Fairy Bridge, is wideand comfortable to cross. At the seventh week thesouls reach the rotating Wheel of the Law (orWheel of the King) of rebirth. However, beforeany souls climb on to the Wheel, however, theymust drink a bitter-sweet brew, or liquor of forget-fulness, which is given to them by the Lady Meng(Meng-Po Niang-Niang, WG), goddess of the un-derworld. This drink will vanquish all memory oftheir past lives.

The Chinese have conceived an interesting rea-son for such forgetfulness. This forgetfulness wasmade necessary because in ages past unscrupulousmen would claim that in a past life they had been

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the legitimate husbands of some women and sothey had this-life sexual rights to those women. Toend such skullduggery the gods instituted the drinkof forgetfulness so that everyone who claimed thatthey could remember a past life would be known asa liar.

Once souls are on the Wheel their future will bedetermined by the point they are permitted to dropfrom it. If souls are permitted to leave the Wheelnear the top right they will be reborn into wealthand power; if near the top left, as the poor and miserable; if at the middle right, as a viviparousanimal; if at the middle left, as an oviparous ani-mal; if at the lower right their rebirth is as a crea-ture with a shell or scales; and at the lower left rebirth is as an insect. These seven weeks make forthe forty-nine days that some consider the stan-dard interim period time between death and re-birth

A simpler competing Chinese schema of hellstates that the first king receives the deceased andjudges whether or not they deserve punishment. Ifthe soul is innocent of any major vices it will beimmediately sent to the hall of the tenth king. Ifguilty of one or more major vices or crimes thesouls will be sent to the second through to the ninthkings, who will administer specific punishmentsfor specific crimes. The tenth king determines thekind of life into which the soul, upon being re-leased from hell, will be reborn and here too this re-birth will occur only after taking the drink of for-getfulness.

In some versions of this Chinese hell schema sui-cide victims went to the “City of the Dead by Ac-cident (Wang-si ch’eng, WG)” where they weredoomed never to be reborn, but to remain thereforever.

Much of the information about the Chinese ver-sions of hell can be found in the Precious Records(Yu Li, WG), popular Daoist and Buddhist textswhich describe in grizzly detail the torment of thedead.

See also Bodhisattva; Chinese religion andreincarnation; Chuan-lun wang; Daoism; Drinkor fruit of forgetfulness; Emma-o; Empire ofJade; Naraka; Vegetarianism.

Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van (1618– 1699).This author of Two Hundred Queries (1640 is per-haps best known for having argued against the or-thodox Christian claim that Hebrews 9:27–28 doesnot deny the possibility of multiple life-times (rein-carnation). That passage reads, “And as it is the lotof men to die once, and after death comes judg-ment, so Christ was offered once to bear the bur-den of men’s sin,”

See also Christianity and reincarnation; New

Testament and reincarnation; Seventeenth cen-tury renewed interest in rebirth.

Heracleides of Ponticus (b. about 390 BCE). Astudent of Plato and Aristotle, Heracleides was atonce a philosopher, psychologist, and astronomer.He understood that the earth rotates, an idea notcommonly accepted until 1800 years later and thatboth the inner planets, Mercury and Venus revolvearound the sun. His interests in the mind-soul(psyche) lead him to study trance, visionary, andprophetic states of consciousness. He sought toprove the existence of the gods, divine retribution,and metempsychosis. He believed that the origi-nal home of the soul was in the Milky Way.

See also Kyklos Genesion; Planetary descentand ascent of the soul; Poimandres; Priesthood,lack of an organized.

Herder, Johann Gottried von (1744– 1803). Thisfamous German philosopher and man of letterswrote “Dialogues on Metempsychosis.” In ProseWriters of Germany, translated by Frederic H.Hedge. New York: C.S. Francis and Company,(1856).

Hermes. This ancient Greek god was originally anithyphallic (erect penis) fertility deity. By the timeof the composition of Homer’s Odyssey, however, hehad become the messenger of the gods and protec-tor of travelers in foreign lands. As such, Hermes intime took on a dual function. In the first of thesehe was the patron deity of commerce, science, andinvention. In the second he was Hermes Chthonius(Hermes of the underworld), the one who guidedthe souls of the dead (hence also Hermes Psychopom-pos) to the underworld (Hades). In one version ofthe Orpheus story it was Hermes who guided Or-pheus into and out of Hades. In some other mythsHermes also helps judge the dead and so was par-tially responsible for guiding them on to their nextrebirth.

Hermes was early on depicted as a fully grown,bearded man, clothed in a full tunic. Later on hewas portrayed as a beardless naked youth. This laterimage may have been encouraged by the Hermai,who were two boys whose function was to act asguides to enquirers of the dead at the oracle of Tro-phonius.

It is of some interest that Edgar Cayce consid-ered this mythological figure to be an embodiedcelestial soul sent from on high to help redeemmankind from bodily entrapment, while at thesame time helping Cayce, in his former life as RaTa, an Egyptian high priest, build the Great Pyra-mid.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Egypt;Greek afterlife, the ancient; Greeks and reincar-

109 Hermes

nation; Hermetic philosophy; Iliad and Odyssey;Orphism; Planetary descent and ascent of thesoul; Poimandres; Psychopomps; Pythagoras.

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This wasan occult society founded in England in 1888, ini-tially based on Masonic and Rosicrucian concepts,but soon expanded to include alchemical, Kabbalic,ancient Greco-Egyptian Hermetic, Theosophicalbeliefs, astrology, Tarot, and ritual magick. After theTheosophical Society, it was from this order thatsome of the most influential modern Western ad-vocates of reincarnation came.

While the order survived for only fifteen yearsit gave rise to a number of daughter esoteric groups,but since none of these claimed the original name,any of those modern groups that use the GoldenDawn title and claim direct descent from the olderorder are making a very questionable claim.

See also Ascended masters; Astrology and re-birth; Crowley, Aleister; Egypt; Fortune, Dion;Kabbalah; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Rosicru-cians; Sinnett, Alfred Percy; Theosophy; Yeats,William Butler.

Hermetic philosophy. This is a diverse set of esoteric or mystical beliefs supposedly based on the Alexandrian writings of Hermes Trismegitus(Thrice-greatest). This synchronistic figure was amerging of the Greek god Hermes with Thoth, theEgyptian god of wisdom, inventor of writing, andjudge of the dead. This Hermes Trismegitus wasthen humanized into a mythical king that ruledEgypt for 3,000 years and wrote 30,000 books.The literature embodying this philosophy, the Corpus Hermeticum, is essentially a blending ofNeoplatonism, alchemy, medicine, astrology, andmagic, and as such there is no uniform creed ordogmatic orthodoxy to it. In general, the aim ofHermetism was akin to its contemporary, Gnosti-cism, which was the spiritual transformation ordeification of man through superior (esoteric)knowledge of mankind, the world, and a transcen-dental God. In fact, the hermetic philosophy wasvery much drawn upon by Gnosticism. While thesurviving corpus of Hermetic writing date back tothe end of the third centuries CE, some of its teach-ings may date further back. The sections of theHermetic writings that most explicitly deal withmetempsychosis are the Poimandres and the As-clepius.

See also Book of the Dead (Egyptian); Bruno,Giordano; Egypt; Esotericism versus Occult;Greeks and reincarnation; Hermetic Order ofthe Golden Dawn; Herodotus; Jesus; Kingsford,Anna Bonus; Nag Hammadi Texts; Pistis Sophia;Poimandres; Priesthood, lack of an organized;Rosicrucians; Sallustius.

Hermetic Society for World Service. Founded in1947, the Society teaches that through its variousspiritual techniques it can liberate the souls of itsmembers from the cycle of reincarnation and the re-turn of those souls to God. The Society also be-lieves that there will be a biblical battle of Ar-mageddon, which will occur on “the inner planes,”but will, nonetheless, manifest through a series ofwars on the outer earthly plane.

Herodotus (484–430 or 420 BCE). It is probablyto this Greek historian that we first owe the mis-taken belief that the Egyptians believed in reincar-nation. In his The Histories, Book 2 he says of theEgyptians that “They were the first to broach theopinion that the soul of man is immortal and that,when the body dies, it enters into the form of an an-imal which is born at the moment, thence passingon from one animal into another, until it has cir-cled through the forms of all the creatures whichtenant the earth, the water, and the air, after whichit enters again into a new human frame, and is bornanew. The whole period of the transmigration is(they say) three thousand years.” Herodotus thengoes on to say, “There are Greek writers, some of anearlier, some of a later date, who have borrowedthis doctrine from the Egyptians, and put it forwardas their own. I could mention their names, but Iabstain from doing so.” This second quote presum-ably referred to Pythagoras and his followers.

This view of an Egyptian origin for metempsy-chosis by Herodotus was not necessarily an inno-cent mistake. Even for the Greeks the ancient na-ture of Egyptian civilization was enough to creditall wisdom to Egypt.

See also Empedocles; Greeks and reincarna-tion; Plato.

Heroic “I.” In Buddhism the normal concept of apermanent and autonomous factor or entity called“I” is thoroughly denied. Indeed, when it comes tothe process of fully realizing that there is no suchpermanent and autonomous factor there is libera-tion from all future rebirths. However, there mustbe some since of “I” want to strive for liberationfor liberation to occur. This striving “I” is theheroic “I.”

See also Anatman.

Heschel of Opatov, Abraham Joshua. This 18th–19th Russian Hasidic Kabbalist rabbi, not onlytaught about reincarnation (gigul), but believedthat in one of his past lives he was a High Priest ofancient Israel.

See also Kabbalah; Russia, reincarnation in.

Hetero-retrocognition. This is a supposedly morescientific name for the remembrance of past lives.

See also Existential seriality; Somatic rebirth.

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Hezyonot, Sefer ha- (Hebrew: Book of Visions).This diary of the Kabbalist Chayyim Vital containshis teachings on reincarnation, possession, andother mystical phenomena.

See also Gilgulim, Sefer ha-; Kabbalah.

Hidden observer. This is the part of the mind be-hind normal consciousness that has access to everyone of our memories, including all of the other-wise forgotten ones. This part of the mind is saidto have an extraordinary creative ability of it own.Also, this part of the mind is considered to be so in-dependent of our normal consciousness that whenit projects itself into ordinary consciousness it isnot recognized as a part of oneself. A number ofpsychologists attribute both multiple personali-ties and past life personalities to this hidden ob-server.

See also Honest lying; Past life fakery.

Higgins, Godfrey (1773– 1833). This British writerwas the author of two books. The first was TheCeltic Druids (London: R. Hunter, 1827), whichbecame a fundamental source for the contempo-rary revival of Druidism. The second was Anaca-lypsis, which became a major source for Isis Un-veiled by Helena Blavatsky. The entire title of Hig-gins’ book was Anacalypsis: An Attempt to DrawAside the Veil of the Saitic Isis: or, an Inquiry intothe Origin of Languages, Nations, and Religions. vol.2 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green,and Longmen, 1836)

Anacalypsis presents an esoteric history of thehuman race in which, during an ancient goldenage, humanity was of one language, one color(black), and one religion. That religion was Bud-dhism with its belief in metempsychosis, andwhich according to Higgins was far older than be-lieved to be today.

See also Druids; Theosophy.

Hilarion. In 1977 an entity by this name began tochannel through Maurice B. Cooke nearly a dozenscience-like metaphysical books. One of Hilarion’smessages deals with “the Tribulation” which is de-scribed as the catastrophic alteration of this worldin which mankind will be divided into two groups.The first is those who already have attained to acertain spiritual maturity and who will remain onan earth that has shifted into a higher spiritualplane; and the second is those who, needing moregrowth, will be relocated through reincarnation toanother planet on a less spiritual plane.

Hilarion is also the name of one of the DhyaniChohan in Theosophy. Whether the two Hilarionare the same or not is difficult to ascertain.

See also Channeling; Dark Brotherhood;Equinox; Franklin, Benjamin (2); Iamblichus

of Chalcis; Jesus; Lazaris; Lords of Karma;Mafu; Michael (2); Ra (1); Ra (2); Ramtha; Ry-erson, Kevin; Seth; Torah (2).

Himmler, Heinrich (1900– 1945). Himmler wasthe German Nazi Reich Fuhrer who, althoughtechnically a Roman Catholic, believed in reincar-nation. In fact, he was sure that he was the reincar-nation of the German King Heinrich I (918– 1024).Through Himmler’s semi-secret occult society,Ahnenerbe, he authorized searches for Christianrelics, such as the Holy Grail, which supposedlywere hidden away by the Cathars. To find the orig-inal homeland of the Aryan race he also sent expe-ditions to Tibet as well as to the American tropicsin the hope of discovering remnants of the lostcontinent of Atlantis, which some Nazi believedwas the original homeland of a pure Aryan race.

See also Moltke, Helmuth Graf von.

Hinduism. This term describes the religion of theoverwhelming majority of the people of India andNepal. Hinduism evolved out of a blending of theold Vedic religion with one or more pre–Vedic re-ligious traditions. Modern Hinduism is more likea family of closely related religions, rather than asingle religion, which is why there is no single or-thodox theology in Hinduism. What gives a mod-erate amount of unity to this family is a respect forVedic literature and a fundamental belief in thedoctrines of both reincarnation and karma.

As far as the popular Hindu belief in karma isconcerned it is not regarded as the sole factor inanyone’s personal destiny. Lawrence A. Babb, inhis Destiny and Responsibility: Karma in PopularHinduism (1983), has noted that quite separatefrom any influence of karma on one’s life that thereis also the belief in the influence of the grace oranger of the gods, the influence of the stars (astrol-ogy), and even malice of other human beings assometimes channeled through witchcraft.

While the issue of rebirth and karma in Hin-duism is more consistent and less controversial thanin Buddhism, that issue is still quite complex as thenumber of related entries noted below suggests.

See also Age factor and rebirth; Agra-sand-hani; Ahimsa; Ahmadiyya; Animals and rebirth,non–Western view; Astrology and rebirth; Atman;Besant, Annie; Bhagavad Gita; Bhakti Yoga;Bhava; Brahman; Buddhism; Caste system;Chakras; Critical time periods; Determinism;Dharma Shastras; Dualism; Duhkha; Ego; Eter-nalism; Finite or infinite number of rebirths;Fixed number or variable number of souls;Ganges; Guenon, Rene; Heaven; Hell; Immor-tality; Incarnation versus reincarnation; India;Individuality and rebirth; Indonesia; Interna-tional Society for Krishna Consciousness; Jain-

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ism; Jivakosha; Jivanmukta; Karma; Karma andfree will; Karma and justice; Karma and rebirth;Karma as absolute or relative; Karma,classifications of; Karma, origins of; Karma ver-sus grace; Karma yoga; Linga-Sharia; Lords ofKarma; Mandara; Madhva; Manu-Sanhita;Maya; Memories, reasons for loss of past life;Moksha, Mukta or Mukti; Monism; Moon;Naraka; Ouroboros; Pantheism and panenthe-ism; Patala; Patanjali; Pilgrimages; Prakriti;Prarthana; Pretaloka; Pritiloka; Puranas; RamDass, Baba; Rebirth and cyclical time; Rebirthand logical symmetry; Rebirth and religious tol-erance; Rebirth, East and West; Return andserve argument for reincarnation; Roy, RajaRam Mohan; Shiva; Shunya; Sikhism; Rebirthfactor; Soul mates; Soul, origin of the; Surya-marga; Swarga; Tantrism; Theodicy; Theoso-phy; Upanishads; Vaikuntha; Vedanta Society;Vegetarianism; Vivekananda, Swami; Yama; Yo-gananda, Paramahansa.

Hitler, Adolf. According to the book The Spear ofDestiny: The Occult Power behind the Spear whichPierced the Side of Christ (1973) by Trevor Raven-scroft, a well informed acquaintance of Hitlerclaims that in 1911 Hitler, during a peyote-inducedhallucination, experienced a past life regressiondrug trance. Hitler had hoped that his former ex-istences would include an early incarnation as apowerful German ruler; instead, it showed him tohave been the historical personage behind the evilsorcerer and villain of von Eschenbach’s Parzival(Parsifal), Klingsor. This personage was Landulf IIof Capua-Langobardi of Benevento (915–961 CE),the ninth century tyrannical Lord of Terra di Labur.Landulph’s insatiable grasping for power led him tostudy the black arts and to a traitorous link to theIslamic forces threatening Italy. It was for these rea-sons that he was excommunicated in AD 875 andwas forced to flee to Sicily, then a Moslem strong-hold. Part of Hitler’s identification with Landulfmay have come from the fact that Hitler apparentlyhad only a single testicle and it was claimed thatthe Landulf-Klingsor figure had been partially orfully castrated by the relatives of a noblewoman hehad raped. Also, it was possibly because the islandof Capri was associated with the principality ofCapua that Hitler appears to have believed that in a still earlier life he was the Roman emperorTiberius Claudius Nero Caesar (14 CE–37 CE), whospent the last ten years of his life in seclusion onCapri.

Dietrich Eckart, the man that introduced Hitlerto his peyote experience, came to believe that healso was the reincarnation of a ninth century char-acter. In his case it was Bernard of Barcelona, an-

other notorious betrayer of Christianity to theArabs and a black magician who was said to usethaumaturgy to hold off Carolingian (French)armies in Spain.

The prominent theosophist James S. Perkins, inhis book Experiencing Reincarnation (1977), be-lieved that in 1938, through sequence of dreams,he had a recollection of a past life during the timeof Alaric, King of the Visigoths (ruled 395–410CE), and he recognized that German ruler had beenreincarnated as Hitler. In fact, Perkins believed thatthe reason Hitler did not try to invade England bysea was due to a subconscious memory of the dis-astrous sinking of Alaric’s fleet in his attempt to in-vade North Africa from Italy.

See also Moltke, Helmuth Graf von; NeroClaudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus.

Hollywood and reincarnation. Movies and tele-vision have at various times taken advantage of thereincarnation theme. There are more than sixtymovies, some dating back to 1916; many of theseare demeaning to real believers. Wagner Alegretti,in his Retrocognition (2004), lists some 31 movies ortelevision shows, dealing with reincarnation whichwere made from 1922 to 1998 in various Europeanlanguages, 22 of which are in English. Also, a num-ber of movie stars have publicly stated their beliefin rebirth, none more so than Shirley Maclainewho has written several books on channeling andreincarnation.

See also Egypt; Karmic romances; Mummy,the; Vampires.

Holocaust, Jewish see Jewish Holocaust.

Holy lying see Honest lying.

Holy Order of Ezekiel. This Order was foundedin 1969 by Dr. Daniel Christopher. The Order’sbasic teachings centered upon the knowledge ofGod’s power and the techniques of achieving per-sonal success and fulfillment through that power.The Divine Life lessons distributed by the Orderprepared the seeker to receive the power promisedby Christ. These included instruction in medita-tion, yogic breathing, the use of “Aum” (a mantra),the meaning of mystical symbols, spiritual healing,and numerology. There was a strong belief in rein-carnation and karma. In the 1970’s the headquar-ters of the Holy Order were in Glendale, Califor-nia, but sometime after that the Order ceased tofunction.

Holy Order of Mans. The name “Mans” in thisorder is taken from the first letter of the Greekwords Mysterion-Agape-Nous-Sophia (Mystery-Love-Intelligence-Wisdom). This order was foundedin 1968 by Earl W. Brighton, a student of the

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AMORC Rosicrucians. In its original form itblended biblical themes with Eastern religion, be-lief in the Great White Brotherhood, and rein-carnation. After Brighton’s death the order broke upwith the main body abandoning eastern thoughtand converting to Eastern Orthodox Christianityunder the name of Christ the Savior Brotherhood.Those who chose to continue the original teach-ings formed several new groups including theGnostic Order of Christ, Science of Man, and theAmerican Temple.

Home, Daniel Douglas (1833– 1886). This worldfamous British psychic medium’s attitude towardsreincarnation can be summed up in the words, “Ihave met a dozen Marie Antoinettes, six or sevenMarys of Scotland, a whole host of Louis and otherkings, about twenty Great Alexanders, but never aplain John Smith. I would like to cage the lattercuriosity.”

Home, also claimed that the spirit of AllanKardec, the founder of Spiritism, regretted hav-ing taught the doctrine of reincarnation.

See also Cleopatra Syndrome; Soul-fission;Swarm of bees theory.

Homosexuality and transsexuality. Many believ-ers in reincarnation say that it can explain bothsame-sex gender attraction as well as the feelingthat one is the opposite gender to one’s present biological gender (gender dysphoria). These rein-carnationists suggest that if there has been an un-broken series of past lives in which a soul was em-bodied as a woman with a natural attraction tomen; but then is embodied as a man, there maystill be a strong residue of sexual attraction to men.The reverse of this would account for lesbians.Transsexuals, on the other hand, may still strongidentity with the former gender itself.

According to the teachings of channeled entityRa (2), as recorded by Don Elkins in part II of thebook Law of the One (1981) a person becomes ho-mosexual when 65 percent of their past lives havebeen of a gender opposite to the present life.

Not only is the existence of homosexual and trans-sexual people suggested as proof of reincarnation,but it has been further suggested that at least thevery belief in such cross-gendering reincarnationwould make societies more tolerant of such individ-uals. This, however, does not seem to have lessenedthe distain for such people in South Asia or EastAsian societies. The major difference between thoseEastern and Western societies is that the formerhave rarely persecuted, much less executed, suchpeople in the fashion that Western societies have.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth; Genderissue of the soul; Plato.

Honest lying. Many psychologists who are skep-tical of past life recall do not believe that most per-sons who recall a past life are consciously lying.The psychologists believe that there is sufficientproof that the individual, especially under hypno-sis, truly believes those memories to be authentic.Moreover, in those cases where the memories couldbe verified as having come from a normal or non-psychic source, the individual is honestly surprisedat his or her self-deception. In cultures that regardrebirth as a sacred teaching this honest lying canalso be called holy lying.

See also Fraud; Hidden observer; Past life fak-ery; Past life memory recall.

Hosea see Karma in the Bible?; Old Testamentand the afterlife.

Hotoke ( Japanese: A Buddha). The Sino-Japaneseterm, although meaning Butsu (fully self-attainedenlightened being) is actually used for any ances-tral spirit who, after a certain period of time and theproper rituals, automatically becomes a kind ofhonorific Buddha. Hotoke ni naru (to become aBuddha) is a polite term for having died. It is be-lieved that if the proper “becoming a Buddha” rit-ual is not performed the spirit may become an onryoor angry ghost. This is a uniquely Japanese tradi-tion and almost certainly is derived from the par-allel Shinto custom of regarding one’s deceased an-cestors as kami (divinities). Of course, the conceptof hotoke leaves the Westerner, at least, with thequestion of how such an ancestral status fits in withthe Buddhist rebirth concept. Two answers can begiven to this question. The first and religious oneis that all ancestors are reborn in the Pure-Landwhich ends any further rebirths. The second, andperhaps more realistic, is that for centuries manyJapanese have not taken the concept of rebirth veryseriously when it comes to their own ancestors.

Despite the terminology, Japanese Buddhists stillrecognize a difference between a hotoke and a trueButsu.

See also Ancestor worship; Animism; Karmaand justice.

Hovering of the soul. This is the concept that thesoul does not enter the womb to be reincarnatedright away but hovers around its prospectivemother for a longer or shorter period between em-bryonic conception and birth itself.

See also Embodiment, moment of.

Hubbard, Ron L. see Scientology.

Hulul (Arabic: descent or incarnation) see Tana-sukh.

Human embryo stem cell uses and rebirth. Inan article by John Tierney “Are Scientists Playing

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God? It Depends on Your Religion” (2007) it ispointed out that based upon the belief in a singleGod-given life in Euro-American society there isnaturally major religious opposition to the use ofhuman embryo stem cell; however, there is littleor no opposition in those Asian societies where themajority of the population believes in multiple re-births.

See also Rebirth and abortion.

Human personality complexity. One of the argu-ments supportive of rebirth is that the personal-ity of each human being, even at an early age, isso complex that trying to explain that complexityas having entirely developed during the present lifeis unreasonable. For this reason alone rebirth makessense.

Two possible responses to this argument are com-monly presented. The first is a biological one whichstates that the genetically determined complexityof the human brain is quite sufficient to explainhuman personality; for example, one of the mostcomplex aspects of human beings is their linguisticability, and most scientists now accept that thehuman brain is genetically hard-wired for language.

The second response is a metaphysical one whichsuggests that each person, through some subcon-scious ability, is individually connected to a groupsoul. While the individual members of this greatersoul experience only one embodiment period theyhave at their disposal the accumulated experienceof the group to use for individual development.

Hungry ghosts. In the general eschatology of Bud-dhism the realm of hungry ghosts (S/P: Preta/Petas)is one of the mildest of the three negative purgato-rial states of rebirth. Whereas the very evil wouldgo to hell (naraka) to undergo horrible suffering,those less evil could be born either into the animalor hungry ghost state. In the hungry ghost stateone has an extensive appetite but an extremelyminiscule mouth. Thus, no matter how much onetries to eat one is always painfully hungry. Greed,miserliness, envy and jealousy are among the rea-sons for being reborn into this state. The pretas willeventually be able to leave their miserable starvingexistence to be reborn into some more materialform so they can try to improve the future.

Pretas are not to be confused with Priti, whichare the ancestral spirits.

See also Astral plane; Bhavachakra; Chinesereligion and reincarnation; Karmic eschatology;Linga; Moon; Petavatthu; Pritiloka; Puranas,Rebirth eschatology.

Hunting cultures and reincarnation. In a varietyof hunting cultures it is believed that a certain partof the slain animal must be left behind to ensure its

eventual transmigration into a future body to behunted. In fact, it is believed that if the hunter doesnot assist his prey in being reborn he will experiencepersonal ill fortune.

Among the examples of this practice are thoseof the Inupiaq of Northern Alaska who believe thatthe souls of sea mammals (seals, walrus, and whales)are attached to their bladders or heads. When ahunter kills one of these animals it is essential thathe return that body part to the sea so that the soulmay be reborn as a new animal. Unless this is donethere will be no renewal of the food source. Amongthe Northwest Pacific Coast Indians it is the bonesof the salmon are returned to sea.

See also American Indians; Chukchi; Deaths,violent and premature; Koryaks; Lapps (Saami).

Hussien, Saddam (1937–2006). The deposed andexecuted leader of Iraq regarded himself as the rein-carnation of the greatest of the ancient Babylonian(Chaldean) kings, Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605–562BCE). This was the king who conquered Judah andtook the Jewish elite into captivity and is writtenabout in the book of Daniel.

Hutin, Serge (1929–). This French occultist haspublished extensively on a great number of esotericsubjects including reincarnation.

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825– 1895). This fa-mous British biologist regarded the concept of rein-carnation as equally valid as the doctrine of evolu-tion.

Hypermnesia. This is the condition of heightenedrecall. The unusual ability to remember otherwiseforgotten material may occur under both hypno-sis and free association. It is thought by many thatit can account for most cases of past life recall.

See also Hypnotic age regression; Cryptom-nesia.

Hypnoamnesia. This is the inability of the hypno-tized subject to remember what happened while inthe trance state, unless ordered to remember by thehypnotist. It accounts for much of the surprise bya person who has for the first time recalled a pastlife.

See also Hypnotic age regression.

Hypnosis. This is one of several states of alteredconsciousness to the degree that it differs from thenormal everyday consciousness. In this altered statethe normal consciousness mind gives way to thesubconscious mind which then permits, amongother phenomena, both positive and negative hal-lucinations, a remarkable control over the organicprocesses of the body such as an indifference topain, and a high susceptibility to suggestion. In the

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latter case no suggestions, however, will be acceptedthat conflict either with the normal will for self-preservation or with strongly held moral values.Hypnosis can be self-induced or induced by an-other (a hypnotist). Among the features of thedeeper levels of a hypnotic trance state are dissoci-ation and time distortion. In the latter case the per-son entranced has a less than normal ability to ac-curately estimate the passage of time. Also, undercertain circumstances, hypnosis can result in frag-mentation of the personality which can encourageparts of a seemingly secondary personality to man-ifest itself.

According to some hypnotic practitioners thehypnotic state is characterized by alpha brain wavesas opposed to the beta waves evidenced in normalconsciousness, theta waves evidenced in light sleep,and delta waves evidenced in deep sleep. The alphawave condition is presumably true whether thehypnotic state is of a light, medium or deep (som-nambulistic) level. It has been estimated that atleast 95 percent of the population can be hypnotizedinto the first of these three levels, 70 percent in thesecond level, but only about 5 percent in the thirdlevel. This deepest level is what a stage hypnotist re-quires. Breaking these percentages down to a divi-sion between adults and children, about 10– 15 per-cent of the adult population is highly hypnotizable,while 80–85 percent of children up to the age of 12are highly hypnotizable. It is in this deep state thathypnoamnesia occurs. It is also only in this thirdhypnotic level that the subject can experience pos-itive hallucinations of seeing, hearing, etc. unrealobjects and negative hallucinations of not seeing,hearing, etc. real objects.

It is sometimes thought that there are two differ-ent types of hypnosis, authoritative and permis-sive. In the first the hypnotist (operator) will beginwith an authoritative statement such as “you will”or “you are.” It works well with subjects used toobeying orders, but it also encourages the subjectto meet the expectation of the hypnotist, for ex-ample if a past life is called for. If the subject has afantasy prone personality he or she may satisfythe operator’s expectation with a made-up past life.

Permissive hypnosis begins with words like “youmay” and encourages far more self-directednesswhile under hypnosis, in which case there may bea much smaller percentage of past life recall.

It should be noted that just as some people underhypnosis remember past lives, others under hyp-nosis have been known to remember being victimsof kidnapping and physical examinations by spacealiens in their spaceships before being released. Italso appears that a hypnotic trance state gives anadult permission to return to a childhood fantasyworld. This is part of the reason that the reliabil-

ity of memory under hypnosis is sufficiently inquestion for it not to be accepted in most lawcourts.

See also False-memory syndrome; Hypnoticage regression; Leading question; Past life re-gression and suggestibility; Progression therapy;Proof for and against reincarnation argument;Soul fragmentation; Trance states; Wambach,Helen.

Hypnotic age regression. According to some ageregression hypnotists there are two types of age re-gression trance. The first is revivification, in whichthe subject relives, or re-experiences, the events ofa past life. While in this state the subject is totallyunaware of his or her present life. His or her speechwill match that of the presumed former life as willany handwriting sample. Persons capable of thisdeep trance state are called somnambules since it issimilar to the trance state of a sleepwalker.

The second type of age regression is calledpseudo-revivification. Here the subject, while inthe trance state, can review scenes from a presumedpast life, but, at some level, retain an awareness oftheir present life. His or her speech and handwrit-ing will match that of the present life. In both kindsof age-regression there is found hypermnesia orheightened recall.

Ian Stevenson, the best known researcher of pastlives, in his European Cases of the Reincarnation Type(2001), states that he thinks that all but a very fewcases of claimed previous lives induced by hypno-sis are worthless. His justification for this view isthat subjects mingle confabulated details with ac-curate memories; the previous lives generated arenearly always those whose existence can not betraced; and that investigators had often shown theorigin of the details of those previous lives to befrom normal sources available to the hypnotizedsubject prior to age regression.

The earliest record of attempts at age-regressionunder hypnosis appears to be from 1904 by theFrench psychical investigator, Colonel Albert deRochas.

See also Artificial rebirth; Bridey Murphycase; Fantasy versus past life regression; Hiddenobserver; International Association for Regres-sion Research and Therapy; Netherton Method;Past life regression and suggestibility; Rhine, J.B; Trance states.

I Am Movement. This politically conservative off-shoot of Theosophy was founded by Guy WarrenBallard (1878–1939) and Edna Ballard (1886–1971).According to Guy Ballard, while hiking in the for-est around Mount Shasta in Northern Californiain 1930, he met the ascended master Le Comte deSaint Germain, who informed Ballard that he had

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been chosen as an “Accredited Messenger” to re-store the truth about the re-embodiment of the di-vine “Mighty I Am Presence” or divine inner real-ity within everyone. This term “I am” as a name ofGod is found in the Old Testament at Exodus 3:14and Isaiah 41:4. In the first of these, Moses, uponbeing told by God (Yahweh) to go liberate the Is-raelites, asks God by what name shall he refer toHim. God answers, “I am; that is who I am. Tellthem that ‘I am’ has sent you to them.” Also, ac-cording to Ballard, Saint Germain revealed to himmany of Ballard’s previous lives, including the oneas George Washington.

Ballard is said to have later received more reve-lations when he joined the Master and an assemblyof others, including some Venusians, in a cave in theGrand Teton Mountains. All of these experiencesare recorded in Ballard’s books Unveiled Mysteries,(Chicago: Saint Germain Press, 1934) and TheMagic Presence, (Chicago: Saint Germain Press,1935). Ballard also wrote under the pseudonymGodfre’ Ray King.

The death of Ballard created a crisis in his I AmMovement since he had taught that the ascension,the liberation from the physical body and futurereincarnations would happen without undergoingphysical death. Nonetheless, some members re-mained faithful accepting Mrs. Ballard’s claim thatGuy had become one of the Ascended masters orhad joined the Great White Brotherhood. Afinancial scandal and a later dropped governmentprosecution further weakened the Movement untilthe death of Edna Ballard left it with few mem-bers. The I Am Movement was influential in therise of the Church Universal and Triumphant.

See also Jesus; Phylos the Tibetan; UFOism;Venus.

I, William the Conqueror: a meditation on animprobable past life. While doing research for thisEncyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma, and with-out undergoing a formal hypnotic past life trance,I entered into a private meditative state with theself-suggestion that I regress in time to find a life Imight have once lived. After a short while the namethat entered my mind was William, the French-Norman Conqueror of England (1066 CE). Nottaking this seriously, I tried to push this name outof my consciousness and search for another possi-bly less grandiose identity. No matter what I did,however, the name William always re-imposed it-self. To discover why this particular name mighthave insisted on appearing I analyzed my present lifeto see if there was any connection to that name.The results of that analysis came up with the fol-lowing particulars.

My father’s first name was “William” and his sec-

ond name was “Norman,” which is my first name.My mother’s maiden name was “Williams” and Iam of British descent. It was only a few days beforemy birth that my mother was in Montreal, French-speaking Canada, and crossed the border into En-glish-speaking America to ensure my birth as anAmerican citizen. Similarly, William had crossedthe Channel from French-speaking Normandy toinvade English (Anglo-Saxon) speaking England. Iwas born in the French Hospital in New York Cityin October under the sign of Libra, in the samemonth and under the same sign in which Williamlanded in England (Sept. 27) and won the decisiveBattle of Hasting (Oct. 14), which assured him theEnglish crown. The year of my birth, 1944, wasalso the year that the Allied military forces invadedNormandy from England in order to defeat theNazis. The first foreign language I was exposed toin my New England elementary school was Frenchand the European language I always wanted mostto learn was French. William’s immediate heir washis son William II, who ruled for only 4 years, onlyto be succeeded by his brother Henry, the fourthson of William I. After my father’s war-time disap-pearance, my mother’s lover, who was the only fa-ther figure I ever knew, was named Henry. Evenwhen it came to the last name of my father and mylast name I found correlations. My father was ac-tually born with the clan name of Campbell, whichis actually French for beautiful field. His stepfatherwas a McClelland and this name was added on toCampbell, which is how I ended up with McClel-land and not Campbell as my last name. Also, theCampbell clan in Scotland is one of the few re-maining clans to have as its official leader a Duke,in this case the Duke of Argyll. William the Con-queror held the title Duke of Normandy beforeseizing the English throne. William and I have thesame numerological breakdown to our names. Mc-Clelland is 4-3-3-3-5-3-3-1-5-4 which adds up to34 which is then reduced to 7, while William is 5-9-3-3-9-1-4 which also adds up to 34, reduced to7. A number of years before this meditation I hada past life reading via the tarot at a psychic fair atwhich time I was told that I had once lived as aDanish fisherman and it so happens that the Nor-mans, French for Norsemen, were descendents ofDanish Vikings. I have always had a fascinationwith ancient and medieval history and have stud-ied it extensively. This fascination has motivatedme to collect swords and armor. I have visited En-gland four times, and France once. Finally, it is in-teresting to fantasize having been a king rather thana peasant.

I concluded, that despite these seemingly nu-merous direct and indirect associations betweenWilliam and myself that this was most likely a good

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example of how these facts about my present lifeencouraged my subconscious to choose to identifywith William rather than there being any real con-nection between him and me. Of course, some re-birth proponents would suggest that all of thesepresent life facts were not just coincidental, but ac-tually represented my past life as William mani-festing itself in the present through synchronicity.

See also Fantasy prone personality; Fantasyversus past life regression.

Iamblichus of Chalcis (260/70–325/30 CE). ThisNeoplatonic and Neopythagorean philosophertaught that the soul’s main task was to escape theround of metempsychosis by practicing five kindsof virtue: paradigmatic, political, priestly, purifica-tory, and theoretical. Imblichus was also regardedin his time as a major theurgist (practitioner ofwhite magick). One of the written works of Iambli-chus was Peri Psyches (About the Soul). Iamblichuswas also a teacher of Sallustius the Neoplatonist;while Flavius Claudius Julian studied under oneor more students of Iamblichus.

In the modern theosophical and occult tradi-tions Iamblichus is said to have been in a former lifeHilarion, the Dhyani Chohan.

See also Kyklos Genesion; Neoplatonism;Priesthood, lack of an organized.

Ibbur. This is a form of benevolent possession de-scribed in the Kabbalah.

See also Dibbuk; Gilgul.

Ichantika. In general this refers to a hedonist ormaterialist, and in Theravada Buddhism it meansa being that is so spiritually degenerate that it haslost all ability to escape from the karmic wheel ofbirth and death.

See also Abhavya; Eighth sphere.

Id, ego, and superego. In Freudian depth psychol-ogy the id is the subconscious part of the mind inwhich all of our natural (animal) wants and desiresare contained. The id has no sense of what societyregards as right and wrong (morality). It is the re-sponsibility of society to tame the id by creatingthe ego and superego. Too great a taming, how-ever, can lead to repression of certain essential nat-ural needs which can lead to mental illness (neuro-sis or psychosis).

The ego is the fully conscious part of the mind.For the most part, it is where all of our rationalthinking takes place. The ego must constantly tryto balance the needs of the id with those of thesuperego. A failure to do this can also result inmental illness.

The superego is that part of the mind that hasadopted all or most of the moral views of society.If the superego is allowed to irrationally (too ex-

tensively) suppress the needs of the id mental illnesswill result.

In modern times the psychological concept ofthe id has to some degree replaced the religiousconcept of the devil, and the inherently sinful soul;the superego has replaced God given conscience,divine grace, or the Holy Spirit; and the ego hasreplaced the religious man caught between sin andGod. From a Freudian (psychoanalytical) perspec-tive this leaves little space for a soul to be reincar-nated.

See also Ego; Mind; Unconscious, the.

Idolatry of the brain. This is a phrase used by B.Alan Wallace and refers to the view of those cog-nitive psychologists and neuroscientists who as-sume the mind is merely the product of the phys-ical mechanics of the brain. Wallace is an AmericanBuddhist, who was a monk for 14 years, during partof which he was mentored by the Dalai Lama. Hethen went on to get a doctorate in religious stud-ies at Stanford and still later to become the presi-dent of the Santa Barbara Institute for Conscious-ness Studies. Wallace has written and edited anumber of books, and is a strong supporter of therebirth theory.

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency.

Igbo of Nigeria. This is one of the African peo-ples who have a belief in a form of reincarnation or“Returning to the World (Llo Uwa).” The Igbo be-lieve in a multiple soul with three aspects whichare called obi (breath, vital force, animation, con-sciousness), chi (emanation of the supreme god,one’s personal destiny), and eke (reborn spirit of anancestor, a guardian spirit).

See also Africa; Repeater children (Ogbanje);Soul, tripartite.

Iliad and Odyssey. In the schools of Pythagorasand Orphism these two epics were regardedmetaphorically as representing the descent and re-turn of the soul. In the first, the soul leaves its heav-enly home to struggle (go to war) in earthly lifeuntil, as in the Odyssey, it must leave that struggleand journey through the underworld, before at lastfinding its way back home (be reborn). It is in bookXI of the Odyssey that Odysseus journeys to the un-derworld (Hades) to consult the seer Teiresiasabout returning home and the dangers involved insuch a journey.

See also Hermes; Nepenthean veil.

Immortality. This term should not be confusedwith the idea of eternal life. The latter implies theformer, but the former does not necessarily implythe latter. Immortality should be reserved to meanthat a certain life is not subject to the “normal agelimits” or to the normal means of death. For ex-

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ample, the Greek gods were called immortals, buttheir immortality depended on their taking thefood and drink, ambrosia and nectar, of immor-tality. This same concept can be found in Hin-duism where the gods, to survive, must consumethe drink amrita (immortality) which the gods anddemons produce by churning the cosmic ocean.Legend says that this drink is stored in the moon,the periodic empting and the refilling of which ac-count for the moon’s waning and waxing.

Also, certain Daoist sages are called immortals,but this too depends on their eating the fruit ofimmortality, in this case, the heavenly peach. Like-wise, immortality is usually associated with suchsupernatural beings as vampires, yet as any horrorstory fan knows, not only must they sustain them-selves on fresh blood, but they can die killed byspecial means.

Reincarnation, like-wise, should not be assumedto mean eternal life. Indeed, even if souls pass fromlife to life this does not automatically mean thatthis passing will continue into eternity because oncethe soul is liberated from the rebirth process thereis no guarantee that liberation is not synonymouswith extinction.

It is to be noted that the Sanskrit term for im-mortal is a-mara (death-less).

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Eter-nalism; Mara; New Testament and reincarna-tion; Objective immortality.

Important person criticism. One often heard crit-icism of reincarnation is that most persons whoclaim to have had a past life claim that it was ofsome important or famous person. The critics thenusually add that such a claim to past fame is a wayto compensate the claimant for a present humdrumlife. To the degree that this is still assumed to be thecase, it is a valid criticism against reincarnation.However, in the past few decades the overwhelm-ing majority of reported past lives describe whatcould only be called quite ordinary lives; therefore,the important person criticism is far less valid thanit use to be.

See also Social status in past lives.

Inca Indians. According to some 16th centurySpanish records the Incas, although believing in anafterlife, did not have a clearly delineated conceptof what that afterlife was like. The Spanish sourcesstate that reincarnation was merely one of severalpossible options the Inca had available to them.Other old Spanish sources say that neither the Incaproper nor most other peoples of Peru believed inthe reincarnation: however, such a belief was men-tioned for the Cavina, who lived in the VilcañotaValley in the neighborhood of Quiquijana, andwho considered themselves to be “Inca by privi-

lege.” Since the Spanish views of the Indians wererarely positive there does not appear to be any con-clusive evidence as to what the Inca believed or didnot believe.

See also Unarius Academy of Science.

Incarnation versus reincarnation. The term incar-nation in its broadest meaning can refer simply toan ordinary soul entering a new body and is, there-fore, synonymous to reincarnation minus to the“re-” prefix. In the term’s narrower meaning itrefers to a non-ordinary soul or divine being enter-ing or assuming bodily form. In this sense Christis said to have incarnated into flesh, but not rein-carnated. Likewise, the Saguna Brahman godVishnu in Hinduism is said to have periodicallyincarnated or descended (hence an avatar) intothe world. In Mahayana Buddhism, but notTheravada Buddhism, the historical Buddha Gau-tama is regarded as a descendent (avatar) or incar-nation of the celestial Buddha Amitabha. AmongTibetans the Dalai Lama and other great religiousfigures (tulkus) are regarded as repeated incarna-tions of various celestial beings. Since such Tibetanfigures repeatedly incarnate it could be said thatthey reincarnate, but if the emphasis is placed ontheir presumed divine origins they are repeated (se-rial) incarnations, rather than ordinary reincarna-tions.

See also Avalokiteshvara; Panchen Lama; Pos-session.

Incest and reincarnation. One criticism madeagainst the idea of reincarnation is that in theory itmight be possible for a mother to return as a youngwoman and marry her own son, or for a father toreturn as a young man and marry his own daugh-ter. Of course, the probability of such situationswould decrease if there was a significant interimperiod between death and rebirth.

See also Augustine, Saint Aurelius; Child asits own reborn father or mother; Chinese reli-gion and reincarnation.

Inconsistent views and reincarnation. One of thearguments against the reincarnation concept is thatpeople, supposedly knowledgeable about reincar-nation, have such varying views on major parts ofthe concept that the whole concept is suspect. Thefollowing entries attest to this inconsistency:Akashic Record; Anatman; Animals and rebirth,non–Western view; Animals and rebirth, West-ern view; Atman; Causal body; Children re-membering past lives; Cryptomnesia; Currentknowledge discrepancy; Déjà Vu; Egypt; Em-bodiment, moment of; Gender issue of the soul;Interim period; Language inconsistency; Lostcontinents and reincarnation; Multiple person-

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alities; Old souls; Parents in the next life; Plan-ets, other; Population increase issue; Rebirth,qualifications for; Rastafarians; Rebirth in theWest; Rebirth, East and West; Rebirth, simulta-neous; Roberts, Jane; Screen memories; Soul,collective; Soul, origin of the; Supernatural-in-the-gap process; Rebirth and cyclical time;Urantia Book.

Incremental change of identity. From the mo-ment a person is born he or she starts the processof changing identity. By the time one reach the ageof ten he or she no longer identify closely with hisor her former infant stage, especially since most ofthat stage can not be remembered. Likewise, whena person is twenty he or she has only minor identi-fication with that former ten-year-old. By thirty,one is an almost totally different person from theten-year-old and certainly from the infant. By fiftyit becomes even more difficult to relate to any partof one’s childhood personality, and by senior citi-zenship it can be said that the senior is only vaguelythe same person as the youth. This is the incremen-tal change, or very slow change of identity, fromone age to another, and it is only because there areso many intermediate stages that an older personcan say he or she was born at such a place and sucha time. If there was a significant loss of memory ofone or more of those stages it is questionablewhether a person could, with full confidence, acceptthat continuity from childhood to late adulthood.

Critics of reincarnation argue that if the above istrue for this life, how much truer should it be fortwo lives between which physical death intervenes.For example, if in one life I am a white male, het-erosexual, upper class, Christian American and inthe next life I am a black lesbian, lower class, Mus-lim Tanzanian could it really be said that I can log-ically identify with both? If over a series of six livesonly one of the original factors changed, then in-cremental transformation might allow for a sense ofcontinuity of identity, but otherwise it is very ques-tionable to suggest such continuity. However, evena one factor per-life at a time change would notnecessarily constitute a continuity of identity inthe absence of all memories of the previous life orlives.

See also Rebirth, proximity.

Independent Spiritualist Association of theUnited States of America. This association wasfounded in 1924 by Amanda Cameron Flower(1863–1940). Flower was at first associated with theNational Spiritualist Association of Churches, butseparated from them because of their oppositionto a belief in reincarnation.

See also Associations and organizations; Spir-itualism.

India. The one doctrine that every religion that hasarisen in India has accepted is some form of rebirthand karma as absolute truths.

See also Ajivikas; Alexandria, Egypt; Ambed-kar, Bhim Rao; Ashoka, King; Astrology andrebirth; Besant, Annie; Buddhism; Caste sys-tem; Ex Oriente Lux; Hinduism; Jainism, Kabir-panthi; Priesthood, lack of an organized; RamDass, Baba; Rebirth and cyclical time; Rebirth,East and West; Reincarnation, origins of; SathyaSai Baba; Sikhism; Upanishads; Uttar Pradesh;Vedic Religion; Weber, Max.

India, Jesus in see Ahmadiyya; Aquarian Gospelof Jesus Christ; Church Universal and Tri-umphant; Jesus; Resurrection of Jesus.

Individuality and rebirth. All Indian based reli-gious traditions, be they Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist,have emphasized the ideal of an impersonal, or a de-personalized selfhood to one degree or another.

In Hinduism, especially Advaita (Non-dual)Vedanta, this emphasis takes the form of the atman(soul). Since each atman is a part of the undiffer-entiated Brahman (God) all atman are ultimatelyidentical. In other words, they lack uniqueness orindividuality, which means they are all impersonal.The individuality of a soul is considered to be apart of the sheath (linga sharia) that surroundsthe soul and it must dissolve away if liberation fromrebirth is to occur. Also, in Jainism the soul seeksto divest itself of all individuality so as to experi-ence impersonal transcendental bliss. In Buddhismthis same idealization of impersonality over individ-uality is found in the concept of there ultimatelybeing no intrinsic reality to selfhood (anatman)for all is emptiness (shunyata). In other words, eachof these traditions regards “individuality” as notonly an impediment to liberation, but as the verysource of suffering and the real barrier to libera-tion.

Even if not rejected by the Hindu and Jain con-cept of a totally impersonal self or the Buddhistconcept of no-soul (self ) or emptiness the value ofindividuality would still be reduced by their con-cepts of innumerable rebirths. If one’s present lifeis just one in a series of thousands of lives that aperson has lived and will live, then no one of thoselives can be more valuable than any other life. Theresult is that none of those lives have anything buta temporary value.

The pan–Indian tendency to devalue individu-ality is in great contrast to the Western religiousattitude of the personal individuality of everyonedue to a belief in a single unique life. This West-ern attitude has had a profound influence on the restof Western society; for example, the modern con-cept of democracy, of human rights, of women’s

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liberation, gay liberation, and to some degree evenanimal rights are all a by-product of the Judeo-Christian emphasis on the importance of the indi-vidual.

The Eastern devaluation of individuality result-ing from a belief in rebirth has given rise to the im-portant question of does the Eastern de-emphasisof individuality help account for the long history ofEastern indifference to social reformation or eventhe well documented willingness of the religiousestablishments to support even the most despoticgovernment regimes?

In several modern Western reincarnationistschools the natural depersonalization factor thatgoes with a belief in multiple lives has been coun-tered by viewing reincarnation as a spiritual evolu-tionary process, a view that is alien to the Easternideal of escaping from the cycle of rebirth and re-death.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Body-brain (mind) dependency; Kosha;Monism; Personality versus individuality; Re-birth and cyclical time.

Indonesia. In this Southeast Asian country the ma-jority of the population is Muslim, yet despite therejection of reincarnation in orthodox Islam, manyIndonesians accept the doctrine of rebirth. This isdue to Hinduism and Buddhism having precededthe arrival of Islam in the area as well as possiblepre–Indian influenced native traditions. The con-tinued belief in rebirth is especially strong amongJavanese Muslims. This includes a belief that cer-tain types of souls are reincarnated as monkeys.Among the Minangkabau of central Sumatra thereis the belief that God may allow a dying sinner toreturn to this world to do penance, but in the formof a tiger. Of course, to the east of Java is Bali,which is the last area of Indonesia to fully retainthe Hindu-Buddhist tradition with its official doc-trine of reincarnation.

See also Asia; Butterfly; Dayaks; Malaysia;Sufism.

Infusionism. This is the belief that souls pre-existand enter the body at some point. It is in opposi-tion to both soul creationism, generationism, andtraducianism. Infusionism is a pre-requisite for abelief in reincarnation.

See also Creationism, soul; Emanationism;Gender issue of the soul; Ontological leap orontological discontinuity; Soul’s existence priorto embodiment; Soul; Soul, origin of the.

Inquisition, Catholic. This Roman Catholic or-ganization was originally established in the 12thcentury to eliminate the reincarnation believinggroup called the Cathars, but it was eventually used

to arrest and try those accused of witchcraft, andany suspected deviation from orthodox Catholicteaching, such as pseudo–Jewish or pseudo–Mus-lim converts, and especially Protestants.

See also Bruno, Giordano; Karma; Rebirthand religious tolerance.

Interdependent Origination see Pratitya-samut-pada.

Inter-human reincarnation. This refers to rein-carnation that is exclusively between one humanbeing and another human being; in short, it is syn-onymous to lateral transmigration.

See also Evolutionary transmigration of souls;Transmigration, lateral.

Interim period. This is any period, short or longbetween death and rebirth. In Jainism the interimperiod is though to be about nine months, whichmatches the average gestation period. Among theDruzes immediate reincarnation is the expectedsituation. Among Western supporters of rebirththere is no agreed upon view of an interim period.Some follow a modified Theravada Buddhismview of no interim, while others have suggested aperiod of 400–600 years, and still others follow-ing a platonic lead, have suggested that there couldbe one to three thousand years between some re-births.

One reason Theravada Buddhism discounts anyinterim period (antara) is that the more one suggeststhat a rebirth factor can exist independent of aphysical realm or semi-physical realm the more therebirth factor would seem to take on the charac-teristics of a permanent entity or soul. The Ther-avada rejection of an interim does not mean an im-mediate rebirth into another human form, sincerebirth could occur in the animal, hell, hungryghost (pretas), or the heavenly realm (devaloka).Some forms of Mahayana Buddhism are less con-cerned about the implications of an interim periodand suggest an interim existence (antara-bhava) ofseven weeks or forty-nine days. Of all the schoolsof Buddhism it is Vajrayana Buddhism that mostelaborates on the interim, which it calls the bardo.

In Japan it is thought that the intermediate pe-riod between death and rebirth is thirty-three years,which is the reason for a full cycle of thirty-threeannual memorial services for the deceased. Whenit comes to opinions on an interim period amongWestern believers there are a number of differingopinions. In the first Western writing on the issueof the interim period, the Phaedo of Plato, there itis said to be a period of seven generations betweeneach rebirth.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy,believed that the longer one lived in the most recent

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embodiment, the longer might be the interim(pareschaton) state or rest period before rebirth.This would mean that death during infancy orchildhood would require a shorter interim thandeath during adulthood. A number of other rein-carnationists appear to support this view, especiallywith regards to childhood.

Again, according to Steiner, the soul in itsetheric body uses the first three to three and a halfdays after death to review its past life before aban-doning this body for the interim period astralbody. It has been suggested that this three to fourday period is derived from either the fact that thisis the longest most human beings can functionwithout sleep, or that there are three nights of thedark of the moon. Steiner further claimed that thesoul must reside in the astral world the equivalentof one third of whatever number of years it most re-cently spent embodied. For example, if the persondied at seventy five it needs to spend twenty-fiveyears in its astral body. This number was takenfrom the fact that most people spend a third of theirlives in sleep.

Irving Cooper, in his Reincarnation: The Hopeof the World (1964), agrees with Steiner that thelonger one lived in the most recent embodimentthe longer might be the interim state, but he addsthat the intensity of, or greater amount of experi-ence in, the most recent life makes for a longer in-terim period. Also, the greater the level of intellec-tual or spiritual development one has reached inlife increases the time between rebirths. Coopersays that while the interim period can be as short asfive years it can be as long as three thousand years,with the average being about five hundred years.

R. F. Goudey, in his Reincarnation: A UniversalTruth (1928), claims that among the factors in-fluencing the length of any one interim period are(1) the demands of others for joint relationships onearth; (2) the need of taking into account prema-ture or delayed rebirths so that a suitable physicalbody with proper environment and heredity canbe provided which will best suit the needs of thenew incarnation; (3) the race and era in which ex-periences are gained; and (4) the need to sacrificeindividual development for the grouping of soulsduring national crises so that racial consciousnesscan be properly molded to assist nations towardstheir development. In particular, Goudey impliesthat the interim period is likely shortened immedi-ately after major wars to relieve the sudden in-creased overpopulation of the heavenly world.

It has been suggested in some Rosicruciansources that the soul must have a combined em-bodiment period and an immediately followingpost-disembodiment period that must add up to144 years for each reincarnation cycle. In other

words, if the soul was embodied for 84 years it mustremain in the disembodied interim for 60 years be-fore it can begin a new embodiment.

In the past life reports collected from the nu-merous patients of Dr. Helen Wambach the in-terim period is said to have averaged about 52years.

No matter how long or short the interim mightbe, it has been suggested that the function of aninterim is to give the soul a resting period, not onlybetween the traumas of death and rebirth, but arest after the exhausting nature of bodily life as awhole.

The interim period has also been proposed as anaid in explaining the population increase issue.

See also Agasha Temple of Wisdom; Ahriman;Angels and reincarnation; Animals; Astral plane;Astrology and rebirth; Attached entity; Bhava-chakra; Birth trauma; Celestial gates; Child asits own reborn father or mother; Critical timeperiods; Death trauma; Devachan; Ethericbody; Gandharva; Incest and reincarnation;John, Gospel of; Karma, racial; Mahayana Bud-dhist rebirth texts; Moon; Plato; Psychology,abnormal; Romans; Soul, origin of the; Stygiansexuality; Summerland.

Interlife. This is another term for interim period.

Internal-external rule. This is the idea that inter-nalized factors in one life will in the next life man-ifest as external factors. For example, just the desireto be a great painter in the past life will be achievedin the present life. Also, the moral qualities of thepast life will manifest themselves as physical qual-ities in this life, such that a past deformed moral na-ture will result in a present deformed body.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence.

International Association for Regression Re-search and Therapy. This California based asso-ciation and was originally established in 1980 as theAssociation of Past life Research and Therapy. TheAssociation is less interested in proving reincarna-tion than it is in using past life regression as a ther-apeutic tool. Since 1986 the Association has pub-lished the Journal of Regression Therapy.

See also American Society for Psychical Re-search; Associations and organizations; Hyp-notic age regression; Society for Psychical Re-search; Theta (1).

International Board for Regression Therapy.This New York based organization was founded byRussell Davis. It is an independent examining andcertifying board for past life therapists.

See also Associations and organizations.

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International cases. This is a term used by IanStevenson to describe cases where a child recalls alife in a very different culture from the one in whichhe or she presently lives. In particular, Stevenson hasused the term to refer to those Burmese childrenthat recall past lives as Japanese soldiers who diedin Burma (Myanmar) in the Second World War.

International Society for Krishna Conscious-ness. This is a controversial and updated form of Hinduism carried to the West in 1965 by itsfounder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada(1896–1977). Its teachings are based upon the Bha-gavad Gita. Like all Hindu sects it is grounded ina belief in reincarnation and karma.

See also Brahman.

Internet and reincarnation. Search “reincarna-tion” in any internet search engine and more in-formation will be retrieved than one can possibly di-gest.

Intrauterine factor and rebirth see Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth; Embodiment,moment of; Soul twins.

Intuitive past life recall see Déjà vu; Reverie re-call; Spontaneous recall.

Intuitional plane see Mental plane; Soul andspirit levels, Theosophical

Inuits see Hunting cultures and reincarnation.

Iran (Persia) see Assassins; Babism and Bahaism;Gnosticism; Hashimiyya; Islam; Kanthaeans;Khurramiyya; Manichaeism; Mithraism;Rawandiyah; Yarsanism; Yazidis; Zoroastrian-ism.

Iraq see Mesopotamia; Yarsanism; Yazidis.

Irenaeus (about 130–180/200 CE). This Christianbishop of Lyons (Gaul), in his major work Adver-sus omnes Haereses (Against the Heresies), sought torefute Gnosticism, especially the teachings ofValentinus. Also, he criticizes the Carpocratesteaching of the reincarnation of souls, especially onthe grounds that there is no memory of the pastlife.

Irenaeus was the first known Christian author-ity to decide that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,Luke, and John alone were orthodox. All othersat his disposal he regarded as heretical. This suggestsfurther that the early Church Fathers saw nothingin these four gospels that would give biblical sup-port to the doctrine of reincarnation.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation.

Irrational fears. It has been claimed that certaintypes of long and strongly held fears that seem tohave no present life rational explanation are attrib-utable to a past life. There is no doubt that duringhypnotic age regression procedures a past life ra-tional explanation is sometimes offered for the fear.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Cryptomnesia; Psychosomatic illnesses; Screenmemories.

Isaac, Jacob, the Seer of Lublin (18th–19th cen-tury). Isaac was a celebrated Hasidic master whowas said to be able to recount the past lives of thepeople he met. Unfortunately for him, he wasthrown out a window and killed for incorrectly pre-dicting that the Napoleonic Wars signaled the Endof Days.

See also Kabbalah.

Isaac the Blind see Abraham of Posquieres,Isaac ben.

Isaiah see Akashic Record; Angels and reincar-nation; I AM Movement; Jesus; Lucifer; Mark,Gospel of; New Testament sacrificial concept;Old Testament and the afterlife; Resurrectionof Jesus; Sciomancy.

Islam. This third of the great monotheistic reli-gions arose out of a synthesis of Judaism, Chris-tianity, and Arab paganism. It is divided into twomajor groups: the Sunni and the Shiite. The formerhas remained closer to the earliest views as presum-ably taught by the prophet Muhammad/Moham-mad, while the latter has been more influenced bythe esotericism of Neoplatonism and even Zoroas-trianism. Both forms of Islam reject the conceptof reincarnation and, like orthodox Christianity,affirm the future Resurrection (Qiyama) of theDead. In fact, in the Quran, at Suras 2:62; 5:69and 22:17, it is stated that only those people who be-lieve in God and the Day of Judgment (Yawm al-Din: literally, Day of the Religion) shall have noth-ing to fear and will not grieve [their fate].

Despite doctrinal acceptance of resurrection, thishas not prevented some otherwise orthodox Mos-lems/Muslims, especially those in India and In-donesia, from accepting the concept of reincarna-tion (Arabic: tanasukh), stemming from the widespread belief in it in pre–Islamic times. Also, someIslamic groups whose orthodoxy is either suspect orconsidered heretical accept reincarnation unapolo-getically. Among these are various Sufi groups andthe Ahl-I Haqq or Ali Ilahis (Deifiers of Ali).

The early Islamic movement was actually veryfamiliar with the concept of reincarnation becausea significant percentage of the people conquered bythat movement in its first hundred years were fol-

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lowers of Manichaeism which accepted reincarna-tion. However, after the first few decades of toler-ating this religion the Caliphs turn to a major per-secution of it to the point of its extermination inIslamic territory. In contrast, the Caliphs continuedto tolerate the religions of both their Jewish andChristian subjects, who, with few exceptions, re-jected reincarnation.

Reincarnation, heretical or not, is probably eas-ier for some Moslems to accept than for mostChristians because in the Quran, at Sura 4:157, itis denied that Jesus was crucified unto death, andso Islam has no place for his personal resurrection,which orthodox Christianity has traditionally usedto counter reincarnation.

On the other hand, Sura 23:99–100 would seemto be very specific in its rejection of a second, muchless greater number of chances to live a righteouslife. This reads, “...when death comes to one ofthem [disbelievers], he says, My Lord, send me backthat I might do righteous in that which I left be-hind. No! It is only a word he is saying: and be-hind them is a barrier (Arabic: barzakh) until theDay they are resurrected.”

Despite the Quranic rejection of reincarnation,some Western and even Eastern reincarnationistshave made considerable effort to draft the Quraninto supporting a pro-reincarnation position, butlike the effort to do the same with the Bible thisonly works if one takes passages out of context, inwhich case one can distort those passages intomeaning anything one wants them to mean asnoted below.

According to H. N. Banerjee, in his The Onceand Future Life (1975), there are at least two cita-tions from the Quran that support reincarnation.He gives neither the name of the translation he isusing, nor the chapter and verse number he is quot-ing. Nonetheless, some searching through varioustranslations indicates that, at least for his first (mis-) quotation, he has chosen Sura 71:17–18. Baner-jee’s wording is (1) “from it (i.e, earth) have we cre-ated you, and into it we will return you, and out ofit we will bring you forth a second time.” Baner-jee’s second quote reads, “say, go through the earth,and see how he hath brought forth created beings,Hereafter, with a second birth will God cause themto be born again: for God is Almighty.” Even asBanerjee has given both citations, they can equally,if not better, be interpreted as support for the or-thodox Islamic teaching of the resurrection of thedead. For example, the translation by Unal (2007),compared to Banerjee’s first quote reads, “And Allahhas produced you from the earth growing, And inthe end He will return you return into (it), andraise you forth.” In two other translations of theQuran (Saheeh 1997, The Institute 1997), like

Unal, the phrases “second birth” or “born again”are not used and two of the four translationsspecifically include the word “resurrection.”

Another Quranic passage single out for a reincar-nation meaning is Sura 2:28. Using the translationby Pickthall (no date) it reads, “How disbelieve youin Allah when you were dead and He gave you life!Then he will give you death, then life again, andthen unto Him you will return.” Once again it isjust as easy to read the standard orthodox Islamicteaching of the resurrection in this verse as it is areincarnationist reading if the first reference tobeing dead is metaphorical for not yet having beencreated while the second death mentioned is thereturn to non-existence until the second resurrec-tional life.

A third so-called reincarnation passage is the veryambiguous Sura 7:172 which, at the very most,might prove the pre-existence of all the humansouls to eventually be embodied. To make sure thatall humanity, from the creation of Adam onwards,would have no excuse for not accepting the rule ofGod, God calls forth from Adam’s loins all the soulsof his descendents to be and makes them acknowl-edge that rule. Since there is no other even vaguelypossible mention in the Quran of the pre-existenceof souls, it can best be argued that pre-existence isnot really the theme in this Sura.

If one should think that that pro-reincarnationpassage hunting in the Quran is a recent activityone merely has to read Reincarnation in Islam(1927) by Nadarbeg K. Mirza, who includes asproof that the Quran teaches reincarnation the fol-lowing Suras: 3:26; 4:56; 12:57; 16:65, 70; 17:49–51; 22;5–6; 30:19; 46:17, 19; 57:17, 22; 84:6–19.But again, the problem with almost all of these isthat they can just as easily be interpreted to meana future resurrection of the dead. Mirza, however,goes one step beyond most passages hunters in thathe also cites the following Suras to show that evenkarma is taught in the Quran, 6:79; 10:44; 30:41;42:30–31. As far as Mirza’s contribution to the ideaof reincarnation in the Quran issue is concerned, itmust be noted that he was a supporter of Theoso-phy.

In one of the most recent efforts to read reincar-nation into the Quran there is Walter Semkiw’s Re-turn of the Revolutionaries (2003), pages 28–29.Here Semkiw sites Suras 2:28, 287; 3:30; 5:69, 171;6:95; 11:38; 21:47; 36:12. However, even with thetranslation he is using, The Essential Quran byThomas Cleary, only five of the cited nine verses“might imply” reincarnation versus a simple end-of-time resurrection.

No matter how one reads any of these reincar-national arguments the fact is that they pale whencompared with the overwhelming number of

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Quranic passages that “aggressively” teach a singlelife followed by a future resurrection.

Finally, if there was still any hope that a pro-reincarnationist teaching is found in Islam thisshould be countered by the teaching about the twoblue-eyed black angels Munkar (the Unknown)and Nakir (the repudiating). These two visit thedead in their graves and interrogate them as to theirbelief in the true religion (Islam). If the deceased isa true Muslim they are ordered to sleep in the graveuntil the resurrection. If they are found to be un-believers the ground will open to receive the soulwhere it will be constantly crushed until the finalDay of Judgment.

See also Ahmadiyya; Assassins; Birds, soul;Christianity and reincarnation; Cult of Angels;Doceticism; Druzes; Ismailis; Judgment of theDead; Kiramu’l katibin; Madhi, The; Malaysia;Monism; Nafs and Ruh; Nusayris; Peter, 1st and2nd; Resurrection, bodily; Sikhism; Sufism;Yarsanism.

Isles of the Blessed see Greek afterlife, the an-cient.

Isma‘ilis. This radically gnostic influenced subsectof Shiite Islam, unlike most other forms of Shiite,much less Sunni Islam, accepted the doctrine ofreincarnation (tanasukh). According to Ismailidoctrine, upon death everyone would be asked byangels the question, “Did you recognize who wasthe (rightful) imam?” If you answered correctlyyour soul was free to go to heaven; but if you an-swered incorrectly your soul would have to returnto earthly re-embodiment repeatedly until eventu-ally you gave the correct answer.

Israel, Manasseh ben (17th century). This Kab-balic leader taught a popular version of the mys-teries of the soul and reincarnation. He was the au-thor of the occult text The Soul of Life (Hebrew:Nishmat Chayyim).

See also Kabbalah.

Ivanova, Barbara. Ivanova is the first person in theformer Soviet Union to do research on reincarna-tion as well as conducting past life therapy. A col-lection of her works in English is titled “The GoldenChalice” (1986).

Jacob (Israel) see Adam; Cayce, Edgar; Gene-sis; Kabbalah; Romans.

Jainism. This is a non–Vedic Religion in Indiathat can be traced back to at least the 6th centuryBCE. The term Jainism comes from the Sanskrit“Jina” meaning the victorious one or conqueror;and in this case it means the religion of the spiri-tual conquerors of the passions. Jainism had its his-

torical beginnings in the teachings of the northernIndian religious ascetic (Jina) Vardhamana, alsocalled the Mahavira (Great Soul), who was aslightly older contemporary of the Buddha Gau-tama. Jains, however, do not actually regard Ma-havira as the founder of their religion in the sameway Buddhists regard Gautama as their religiousfounder. Instead, the Jains believe that Mahavirawas the latest of several great reformer or revitaliz-ers of a much older religion and there is some evi-dence that this Jain view is correct. An earlier formof the religion may even pre-date the Vedic Aryansettlement in India, in which case the concept of re-birth may have begun with some form of proto–Jainism and later have been picked up by nascentBuddhism and proto–Hinduism.

Jainism regards all animate and inanimate phe-nomena as possessing souls (jivas). These reincar-nate up and down the various levels of existenceuntil they are able to burn off all karma, both pos-itive and negative, thereby liberating themselvesfrom further rebirth. From the Jain perspective, theonly chance for liberation (kevala) to occur is for asoul (jiva) to be reborn in the body of a potentialJain ascetic.

The Jain understanding of karma that must beburned off is quite different from the understand-ing of karma in Hinduism and Buddhism. Whereas,Hindu and Buddhist karma is primarily psycho-logical in nature karma in Jainism is seen as subtlematter that attaches itself to the soul (jiva) andweighs that soul down. It is this weight that keepsthe soul earth-bound. Only by ridding the soulentirely of such weight can the soul, shedding itsmaterial individuality, eventually ascend to theheavenly top of the universe where it will remain asan impersonal entity absorbed in eternal bliss.

The Jain concept of karma must be considerednot only far more rigid than the Buddhist, or evenHindu concept, but the asceticism needed to elim-inate karma is far greater or more extreme in Jain-ism than it is in at least, Buddhism. This extremecan even include a painful ritual suicide by slowself-starvation (sallekhana).

In Jainism there are five vows that must be takenand uncompromisingly observed in order to escapefrom rebirth. These are absolute non-violence(ahimsa) to all life forms, truthfulness (satya), notstealing (aseteya), having no possessions (apari-graha), and complete celibacy (brahmacarya).

See also Abhavya; Ahimsa; Ajivikas; Animalsand rebirth, non–Western view; Asuras; Blam-ing the victim vs. illusion of innocence; Body-soul dualism; Brahman; Determinism; Dual-ism; Duhkha; Finite or infinite number ofrebirths; Fixed number or variable number ofsouls; Gender issue of the soul; Hell; Individu-

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ality and rebirth; Interim period; Jiva; Jivan-mukti; Kaivalya; Karma; Karma and free will;Karma and God; Karma and rebirth; Karma asabsolute or relative; Merit, transfer of; Nirjara;Plants; Rebirth and cyclical time; Rebirth andreligious tolerance; Rebirth and suicide; Re-birth, East and West; Rebirth factor; SamkhyaYoga; Samvara; Soul mates; Soul, origin of the;Swastika; Upanishads; Vedic Religion; Vegetar-ianism.

James 3:6. This passage is imbedded in a warningagainst the dangers of improper speech. It reads,“It [the tongue on fire] represents among our mem-bers the world with all its wickedness; it pollutes ourwhole being; it keeps the wheel of our existencered-hot, and its flames are feed by hell.” The phrase‘the wheel of our existence’ has been interpreted bysome supporters of reincarnation to mean a rein-carnational cycle. However, what precedes andwhat follows this passage does not support that in-terpretation.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Hell.

Janua Coeli , Janua Inferni (Latin: Gate ofHeaven, Gate of Hell). These names were derivedfrom the Roman god Janus, who, as keeper of thegate, had two faces, one facing right and the otherleft. In other words, he was the god of beginnings,looking to the past; and of endings, looking to thefuture. This dual positioning has made him a sym-bol of past and future lives.

Japan see Animism; Buddhism; Emma-o; Ho-toke; Kshitigarbha; Pure-Land or Blissful LandBuddhism; Shinto; Tama.

Jataka Tales (Birth (jataka) Stories). This is a col-lection of 547 tales which illustrate moral or virtu-ous acts supposedly performed by the Buddha as abodhisattva in his past lives, either as a humanbeing or as an animal. Many of the stories, minusthe figure of any specific bodhisattva, probably pre-date the rise of Buddhism.

Western critics have pointed out several inconsistencies with these stories. The first is with those Jataka Tales that claim that the bod-hisattva experienced previous lives as an animal.For example, he is said to have been an antelope, buffalo, deer, dog, elephant, hare, horse, lion, monkey, and rat; several kinds of birds, includinga vulture; a variety of reptiles, a frog, and a fish. Orthodox Buddhism, however, makes it veryclear that rebirth as an animal of any kind is theresult of bad karma and the idea that the Buddha had lived so many animal lives would technicallyimply that he had a lot of bad karma, which is inBuddhism a heretical belief. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that only the verses parts, not

the prose parts, of the Tales are considered canon-ical.

A second inconsistency has to do with the gen-der issue. In none of these tales is there ever foundthe possibility of the bodhisattva being female, ei-ther as a human or an animal. While this beliefmay be due to the patriarchal sexism of both Indiansociety and Buddhism, it has been justified on thebasis that rebirth entities rarely, if ever, change theirgender. However, this attempt to deflect a sexistcharge is futile in that another Buddhist doctrinestates that while a being in a female body can attainthe enlightenment level of a saint (S: Arhat), noone in a female body can ever become a fully self-enlightened Buddha. In other words, one sexiststatement is reinforced by another sexist statement.

In spite of these arguments Buddhism claimsthat rebirth is based upon karmic actions and noton the gender of the actors. The logic of this wouldseem to mean that since women are treated as in-ferior to men in most societies, it is more likely thatone would be reborn as a female for karmic pun-ishment and as a male for karmic rewards. In thiscase, there should be a lot of inter-life genderchanges unless just being a woman is a forever un-changeable karmic obstacle and just being a man isa forever karmic advantage.

Some Western Buddhists use the fact that thereare only 547 birth stories to mean that the numberof average rebirths is probably no more than 550 to600 spaced out over about 25,000 years; however,no such limited number has ever been proposed byorthodox Asian Buddhists. Even if the Buddha maybe a special case, other beings are expected to havethousands or more rebirths.

See also Abhijna; Avadana; Bhavachakra;Buddha’s necklace; Buddhist stages of libera-tion; Fetters, The Ten; Finite or infinite num-ber of rebirths; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism.

Jeremiah see Beruchim, Abraham; Karma in theBible?; New Testament and reincarnation; OldTestament; Sciomancy.

Jerome, Eusebius Hieronymus (about 345–419CE). This Catholic saint, and most learned of theRoman Catholic fathers, was commissioned byPope Damasus to revise the Latin translation of theGreek New Testament as well as a Latin transla-tion of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. It wasJerome’s translations that became the orthodox textof the Western Christian (Roman Catholic) churchthroughout the Middle Ages.

At first an admirer of Origin, Jerome translateda number of Origin’s Greek writings into Latin;however, he eventually became a party to an earlycriticism of the soul’s existence prior to embod-

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iment in the works of Origin. This criticism, it isimportant to note, made it clear that he regardedOrigin as innocent of any belief in metempsy-chosis. Oddly, this has not prevented some sup-porters of reincarnation for claiming Jerome asone of their own.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; ChurchCouncil of 553; New Testament and reincarna-tion.

Jesus (Hebrew: Yeshu from Yeshua from Yehoshua(Greek: Joshua) meaning God Saves), approximatedates 4 BCE–29 CE.

Among many Western, and some Eastern, rein-carnationists there is the belief that Jesus taught thedoctrine of reincarnation and to prove this theyhave cited numerous passages from the New Tes-tament. There are two major problems with thisbelief. First, as innumerable biblical scholars willadmit the only record of Jesus’ so-called teachingscome exclusively from Christian texts, either or-thodox or non-orthodox. In other words, we haveno evidence from an outside unbiased objectivesource as to what Jesus really taught. Second, sinceeach Christian source has a separate bias or highlypersonal agenda in its claim as to what Jesus taught,and many of these claims are in considerable con-flict with one another, we can not be sure which,if any of them, may have truly reflect the real teach-ings of Jesus. In view of these facts, all anyone canabsolutely claim is that a number of what are con-sidered Gnostic Christian writings contain indis-putable reincarnational teachings; but when itcomes to the orthodox or canonical texts of theNew Testament any claim that such a teaching isfound there is extremely questionable. Every oneof the biblical passages that supposedly quote Jesus’own words and that have been interpreted to sug-gest reincarnation can be so interpreted only iftaken out of context as proof text.

In addition to reading canonical passages out ofcontext, some reincarnation advocates have turnedto extra-canonical sources, both ancient and moremodern to support their view of Jesus as a teacherof reincarnation. Among these sources are a varietyof old Christian gnostic works such as the NagHammadi Texts and the Pistis Sophia, whileamong modern works are the Aquarian Gospel ofJesus Christ and the writings of Edgar Cayce.

Many Western advocates of reincarnation notonly believe that Jesus taught reincarnation, butthat he acquired this belief during his youth whiletraveling in the northern Indian region of Kashmiror Ladak (western Tibetan speaking area). This iscalled “The Young Jesus in India Theory.” How-ever, if Jesus had lived outside of the Palestinian-

Judea area as a youth the silence about this in all ofthe Gospels is difficult to fathom. There is also“The Post-crucifixion Jesus in India Theory.” Ac-cording to this theory Jesus only appeared to die(scheintod hypothesis) on the cross, but actuallysurvived and escaped to India afterwards; in whichcase, there was no real resurrection of Jesus. Nat-urally, none of the “Jesus in India” advocates ac-cept the orthodox Christian view of Jesus as part ofa divine trinity, but instead regard him as havingbeen one of the great ascended masters, theDhyani Chohan, or a tulku (reincarnated masters)who attained to that status by a series of ever per-fecting reincarnations or avatar incarnations.

Among the various proposed previous lives ofJesus are Horus, the Egyptian son of the god Osiris;Krishna, the divine manifestation of God (Brah-man) in the Bhagavad Gita; Mithra, the Roman-ized Iranian solar deity; and the Buddha.

Most recently the founder of the UnificationChurch, Sun Myung Moon, is said to believe hehimself to be the reincarnation of Jesus as the re-turned Messiah.

See also Acts of the Apostles; Aetherius Soci-ety; Ahmadiyya; Alexandria, Egypt; Apocata-stasis; Apollonius of Tyana; Ashoka; Baptism;Christianity and reincarnation; Church Univer-sal and Triumphant; Course in Miracles; Ema-nationism; Essenes; Fortune, Dion; Genera-tionism and Traducianism; Gnostic Order of Christ; Gnosticism; Harrowing of Hell;Heaven’s Gate; Hilarion; I Am Movement;Islam; John, Gospel of; Kingsford, Anna Bonus;Lazaris; Liberal Catholic Church; Lucifer; Luke,Gospel of ; Mark-Age, Inc; Mark, Gospel of ;Matthew, Gospel of; Melchizedek; Mithraism;New Testament and reincarnation; Notovitch,Nicholas; Oahspe; Paulicians; Peter, 1st and 2nd;Pluto, the planet; Rastafarians; Rebirth andmoral perfection; Rosicrucians; Sathya Sai Baba;Scientology; Soul twins; Steiner, Rudolf; Unar-ius Academy of Science; Urantia Book; Zhen-dao.

Jesus in India see Alexandria, Egypt; ChurchUniversal and Triumphant; Jesus; Notovitch,Nicholas.

Jewish Holocaust. This was the racially motivatedcollective murder of six million Jews by the Naziregime during the Second World War (1939– 1945).This “Time of Desolation” (Hebrew: Shoah) haselicited innumerable deeply thought out responsesfrom both Jews and Christians. Perhaps none ofthese were as radical, or morally questionable, asthe one suggested by the ultra-orthodox RabbiOvadia Yosef, the leader of the Shas (political) Partyin Israel. In August of 2000 the Rabbi made the

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very controversial statement that the Holocaust vic-tims were reincarnated Jewish sinners who had tosuffer as atonement for their transgressions. Jewishauthorities forcefully criticized Yosef for this blam-ing the victim view, for heartlessly deprecating thememory of the Holocaust victims, and cruelly dis-regarding the feelings of the surviving families ofthose victims. In a subsequent speech the Rabbitried to calm the outrage of his earlier Holocauststatement by the indirect apology of saying that hewas only trying to provide a theological explanationfor the Holocaust and he really regarded all of theJewish victims as pure and completely pure saints.

A very different view of the relationship betweenreincarnation and the Holocaust is taken by RabbiYonassan Gershom, in his book Beyond the Ashes:Cases of Reincarnation from the Holocaust (1992).Gershom, who as a self-identified reincarnation be-lieving Neo-Hasidic, states that he has been con-tacted by more than 250 individuals, most ofwhom were not Jewish in this life, but who in eachcase believe strongly that he or she was Jewish in hisor her immediate past life and lived through or diedin the Holocaust.

Gershom believes that the there are at least twolegitimate reasons that more non–Jews than Jewscontact him about former Jewish Holocaust lives.First, in the case of Jews who have sudden recallepisodes or flashbacks about the Holocaust noidentity crisis usually arise for them; but the sameis not true for non–Jews who have such flashbacks.The second reason is that those who rememberdying as terrified children, died fervently wishingthat they were not Jewish and that it may have beenthis wish that helps account for the fact that a highpercentage of those people were reborn as blond-haired, blue-eyed non–Jews in this life. At the sametime, Gershom acknowledges the theory that someof those with “Aryan looks” could be people thatfantasized being reincarnated Jewish Holocaust vic-tims in order to relieve some sort of guilt feelingsthat develop due to being identified with the Nazioppressors as a result of having such Nazi idealmaster-race looks.

Any attempt to use Gershom’s material as proofof rebirth is very difficult as Gershom is the first toadmit. He states that the Holocaust has so perme-ated modern Jewish culture that stories by Jews thatseem to recall lives in the concentration camps areeasily open to explanation of cryptomnesia. Onthe other hand, Gershom believes that whilenon–Jewish clients would be a less culturally bi-ased sample, as noted above, such issues as guiltmight negate their reliability; moreover, even with-out a guilt factor almost every person in the UnitedStates in the last half of the 20th century has beenexposed to Holocaust information of some kind

which is apt to contaminate any otherwise reliabledata.

Although not mentioned by Gershom, there isalso the possibility that some of his non–Jewishsubjects wish to share in the considerable sympa-thy directed towards most former concentrationvictims, if not from this life, than at least from a pastlife. Still another explanation that has been sug-gested is that such Holocaust memories are actuallyscreen memories for suppressed childhood abuse.

The idea that non–Jews in the present life wereJews in any past lives has been challenged by theorthodox Hasidic community. This is because itcontradicts the opinion of many Hasidic teachers,present and past, including the great 16th centuryKabbalic mystic Isaac Luria, that once a Jew, alwaysa Jew, and so rebirth into a non–Jewish family is im-possible. Naturally, this ethnic rebirth belief cre-ates a specifically Jewish version of the populationproblem issue.

See also Hell; Kabbalah; Karma, racial; Lostcontinents and reincarnation; Metagenetics; OldTestament and the afterlife; Olfactory psychicexperience; Rebirth, criteria for proof of; Re-birth, ethnic; Resurrection, bodily.

Jews, Ashkenazic and Sephardic. Historically theJewish people whose ancestors lived for generationsin Central and Eastern Europe are known as Ashke-nazic Jews, while those whose ancestry can betraced back to pre–sixteenth century Spain andPortugal are called Sephardic Jews. However, ac-cording to Rabbi Berg, in his Wheels of a Soul(1984), these terms when used correctly refer to onewho studies the Kabbalah (a Sephardic Jew) andone who does not study the Kabbalah (an Ashke-nazic Jew). Moreover, Berg states a Jew born tostudy the Kabbalah and who either ignores it oropposes it will be reborn as an Ashkenazi.

Jigoku ( Japanese: Purgatory or Hell) see Emma-o; Kshitigarbha; Naraka.

Jiva. This is the preferred term for the life monad(soul) in Jainism. This is because the commonterm atman in Hinduism implies a belief in thesupreme creator God (Brahman), which Jainismdenies. In the Advaita Vedanta form of Hinduism,however, jiva refers to the empirical, but ultimatelyillusory, self that reincarnates.

See also Jivanmukta; Monism; Purusha; Souland spirit levels, Theosophical.

Jivakosha. In Hinduism this is any of the sheathsthat surround the soul (jiva).

See also Kosha.

Jivanmukta. This is a person who has attained fullliberation (moksha) in this very life time and who

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will not be subject to further rebirth. In otherwords, this is a person whose karma has been re-duced to what can be burned off in this life (prarab-dha karma) with none left that would force thatperson into a new rebirth.

See also Buddhist stages of liberation; Karma,Prarabdha.

Jizo see Kshitigarbha.

Job. In this Old Testament book the God-fearing,virtuous and prosperous Job is described as a manwho has set his face against all wrong doing. Godtests Job’s faith in Him by striping him of his pros-perity and inflicting him with great miseries. Atfirst Job justifies the ways of God by saying, “If weaccept good from God shall we not accept evil?”As his suffering goes on, however, Job wishes fordeath (to sleep in Sheol) and then does questionthe justice of God, not just for himself, but for allmankind. Job notes how the wicked often prosperwhile the innocent suffer; nonetheless, Job neverquestions the existence of God, so finally Job concludes that God’s justice is a mystery and in-scrutably beyond human understanding. With thishe accepts that God’s actions are justified on thebasis that whatever God does is right, whether itmeets the human standards of fairness or not. Jobthen meekly submits to this argument in total hu-mility, repenting of any doubt.

Through all of this it is notable that compensa-tion after death for the innocent and/or punish-ment for the guilty is never mentioned or even in-directly implied. The good and evil, will share acommon end in either the shadowing underworldof Sheol or endless rest in the grave. Since there isno mention of possible compensation for Job’s suf-fering in a future afterlife it is clear that the bookwas written before the Jews developed a compen-satory concept of heaven.

Despite the clear lack of a satisfactory theodicyin this book, some Kabbalists have actually read areincarnation theme into Job 1:20–21. These Kab-balists regard Job as the reincarnation of the fatherof Abraham, Terah, who had sinned by worshippingother gods. These two verses in Job read, “NakedI came from womb, naked I shall return whence Icame.” To suggest that the word “womb” refers toreincarnation does not take into account that inthe Old Testament the “womb” is periodically usedas a metaphor for the earth or dust out of whichGod is said to have created man and to which manreturns upon death. This is first stated in Genesis3:19, “...until you return to the ground: for from ityou were taken. Dust you are, to dust you shall re-turn.” Further proof that there is no reincarnationimplied in Job 1:20–21 is found in the passages fol-lowing Job 1:20–21. They make it quite clear that

all of Job has the one theme that God, not man,has absolute control over life and death.

Some reincarnationists, rather than citing Job ashaving to do with reincarnation, prefer to hold itup as proof that the biblical view of God is morallyinadequate in comparison to a doctrine of karma.

See also Ecclesiastes; Kabbalah; Karma in theBible? Old Testament and the afterlife; Theod-icy.

John Chrysostom (347–407). This Archbishop ofConstantinople, in his Homilies on the Gospel ofJohn (about 391), criticized the Pythagorean andPlatonic doctrines of metempsychosis as shameful,especially the idea that a human soul could enter ananimal’s body.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Transmigration, regressive.

John, Gospel of. This New Testament book wasthe last of the four gospels to be written and thelast to be accepted as canonical.

John was written in at least three stages by threedifferent hands, one of which was pro–Gnostic,while the last was anti–Gnostic. Along with thesetwo perspectives there are both pro–Jewish andanti–Jewish sentiments in the Gospel. This con-flicting authorship makes it even more possible toread reincarnational passages into this Gospel thanis possible with the other three gospels. For thisreason, John is the favorite gospel for those whoargue that the New Testament at least alludes to anoriginal teaching of reincarnation by Jesus and/orthe earliest church.

The first of these favored passages is John 3:3–4.Jesus states, “In truth, in very truth I tell you, un-less a man has been born (from Greek gignesthai, tobe born) over again (anothen) he can not see theKingdom of God.” Naturally, orthodox Christian-ity claims that this passage refers to the need to be reborn spiritually, not physically. In other words,it is to have a profound spiritual conversion (meta-noia) from the doubting mind to a mind groundedin unquestioning faith. That this orthodox interpre-tation is far more likely to be accurate than a re-incarnationist one can be seen from verses John3:4–7, where one Nicodemus asks, “But how is itpossible for a man to be born when he is old? Canhe enter his mother‘s womb a second time and beborn?” Jesus clarifies his statement with the words“...born from water (baptism) and spirit (of God).Flesh can give birth only to flesh; it is the Spirit (ofGod) that gives birth to spirit.”

The idea that the term “born again” refers toreincarnation has also been challenged by the factthat the Greek word anothen can mean both “again”and “from above.” While Nicodemus interprets itmore in the first meaning, Jesus interprets it more

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in the second meaning. 1st Peter 1:23 also refers tobeing born again, but in the same way as John3:3–4.

The second passage that reincarnationists cite isJohn 5:14 which reads, “A little later Jesus foundhim [the cripple recently cured by Jesus] in thetemple and said to him, ‘Now that you are wellagain, leave your sinful ways, or you may suffersomething worse.’” To make this command have areincarnation interpretation the “...you may suffersomething worse” is said to automatically mean “ina future life-time.” However, there is no justifica-tion of any kind, other than wishful thinking, toadd to this phrase such a post-mortem meaning.

John 8:58 is the third passage that has been usedto claim one or more past lives for Jesus. Here Jesusis quoted as saying, “In very truth I tell you, beforeAbraham was born, I am.” This major proof textmight sound pro-reincarnationist, but only whentaken out of its context, and when done so can itbe made to say something it does not say. In its fullcontext the quote is being used to deny the chargethat Jesus is possessed, and to affirm that he is thesupernatural “pre-existent,” not “reincarnated,” Sonof God. If Jesus was really trying to convince hishostile listeners of the doctrine of reincarnation thetext should logically read, not “I am,” but I was,or even better, “we were.” In the first case he wouldbe acknowledging a unique reincarnation, not nec-essarily shared by others, while in the second case,he would be acknowledging a general doctrine ofreincarnation.

If John 8:58 is not read out of context then it isfirst understood as a deliberate reinforcement ofthe prologue of the gospel, “When all things began,the word [Christ] already was” ( John 1:1); and sec-ond, like all the many “I am” phrases in John, it ismeant to refer the reader back to Exodus 3:14 whereGod (Yahweh) answers the question of Moses withthe words, “I am, that who I am” and Isaiah 41:4,“It is I, the Lord, I am the first, and to the last ofthem, I am He.” Indeed, the most obvious proof ofthis is found at John 13:20 where Jesus more or lessrepeats Exodus with the words “I am what I am.”The other “I am” phrases that also emphasize thatJesus is in some manner as much God as is Yahwehare where Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life( John 6:35, 41, 48); the light of the world ( John8:12); the door of the sheepfold ( John 10:7–9); theresurrection and [the] life ( John 11:25); the way,the truth, the life ( John 14:6); and the real vine( John 15:1). In none of these is there any possiblereinforcement for a reincarnationist view.

John 9:2–3 is the fourth, and perhaps the mostoften cited, New Testament passage used to sug-gest that Jesus and the disciples not only knewabout but even accepted the belief in reincarna-

tion. It reads, “His [Jesus’] disciples put the ques-tion, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?Why was he born blind?” If the reading of this passage stops here it certainly suggests that sincethe man was born blind, the disciples, in askingwhether the man had sinned, must mean “sinnedbefore he was born”; in other words, in a previouslife. Since the Greek concept of metempsychosis,especially as mentioned by Plato and in Orphism,was widely known in the greater Mediterraneanworld in the 1st century, there is no reason not tobelieve that Jesus and the disciples were familiarwith the concept, but familiarity and acceptanceare not the same. In fact, there are several otherpassages in the gospels that imply a familiarity withthe concept of reincarnation most, if not all, ofwhich are connected with the Elijah and John theBaptist issues.

That John 9:2–3 does not mean reincarnation ismade clear by the next passage (9:4). This passagegoes on to say, “It is not that this man or his par-ents sinned,” Jesus answered: “he was born blindso that God’s power might be displayed in curinghim.” Following this Jesus then cures the man’sblindness and the resulting publicity from thisreaches the ears of the Pharisees, their intended au-dience. In other words, to read an acceptance ofreincarnation in John 9:2–3 is only possible if thepassage is taken out of its greater context.

The fifth passage cited by reincarnationists isJohn 11:25. It reads, “I [Jesus] am the resurrectionand I am life. If a man has faith in me, even thoughhe dies, he shall come to life; and no one who isalive and has faith shall ever die.” A reincarnationalreading focus on the “even though he dies, he shallcome to life.” At the same time, this is one of themain passages that orthodox Christians cite to tryto repudiate any claim to a New Testament sup-port for reincarnation. The argument is that Jesuspromises his followers a future eternal life that doesnot require any other lives between this one andthe promised one.

In the sixth passage favored by reincarnationists,John 14:2, Jesus, speaking to Peter, says, “There aremany dwelling-places [rooms] in my Father’s house;if it were not so I should have told you: for I amgoing there on purpose to prepare a place for you.”To make the passage read reincarnationally, theterm “dwelling places” (monai in the Greek) is in-terpreted as many different interim period realms.In fact, this passage was perhaps made most famousto reincarnationists through Gina Cerminara’s bookMany Mansions (1967), which is one translation ofthe above “many dwelling places.”

It might be noted that the Mormons interpretthis same passage to mean that there are four dif-ferent destinations for soul. First, there is the man-

129 John

sion with the greatest glory, known as the Celes-tial Kingdom; second is the Terrestrial Kingdom,which is a kind of secondary heaven; third is theTelestial Kingdom, which is a kind of purgatory;and the fourth is the kingdom without glory, theOuter Darkness, Hell.

Still another, and very liberal, interpretation ofJohn 14:2 is that it means that there is some placein heaven even for those who have followed a reli-gious tradition that has nothing to due with thebiblical God. This interpretation, however, wouldseem to clash with the passage in the verse below it,at John 14:6. In fact, it is John 14:6 that is oftencited by orthodox Christianity in its claim that anycompromise, such as a belief in reincarnation, witha belief in the exclusive power of Christ as one’ssavior is unchristian. This passage reads, “I am theway; I am the truth; I am the life: no one comes tothe Father except by me.”

The last of the Johannine passages to be offeredas “possibly” implying reincarnation are John 16:12and 16:25. Both of these imply that Jesus has a se-cret truth or secret teachings which pro-reincarna-tionist assume could only be about reincarnation.

John 16:12 says, “There is much that I could sayto you, but the burden would be too great for you.However, when he comes who is the Spirit of Truthhe will guide you into all truths.” John 16:25 says,“Till now I have been using figures of speech [sometranslations say proverbs]; a time will come whenI no longer use figures, but tell you of the Father inplain words.”

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Bap-tism; Born again; Clement of Alexandria; Gnos-ticism; Hell; Irenaeus; Jesus; John the Baptist;Karma versus grace; Lazarus; Mark, Gospel of;Mormonism; New Testament and reincarnation;New Testament sacrificial concept; Origin orOrigenes Adamanthus; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Pre-destination; Soul’s existence prior to embodi-ment; Psychopannychism; Resurrection of Jesus;Romans.

John, Revelation of see Revelation of John.

John the Baptist see Boullan, Joseph-Antoine;Carpocrates; Elijah; John, Gospel of; New Tes-tament and reincarnation; Work of Mercy.

Jonah see Resurrection of Jesus.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970). This delight-ful and extremely popular novel by Richard S. Bachoffers a beautiful description of reincarnation as thenecessary process whereby all seagulls, and presum-ably other species, learn that there is more to lifethan eating, fighting and flocking. Reincarnationallows for learning that there is such a thing as per-fection, and that our purpose for living is to discover

that perfection and personally manifest it. Bach haswritten a number of other books with reincarnationthemes. One of these, The Bridge Across Forever(1984), describes his three-year search for his soulmate.

Joseph of Genesis see Cayce, Edgar; Psalms.

Josephus, Flavius see Essenes.

Judaism and the afterlife. Present day Judaismhas a variety of views about life after death. Theliberal, or Reformed School, more or less leaves itup to the individual member to accept or reject apost-mortem state. The more conservative, and es-pecially the more mainstream, Orthodox Schoolexpect its members to believe in a future resurrec-tion of the dead. The esoteric orthodox, or HasidicSchool, champions a belief in reincarnation (He-brew, gilgul or gilgulim) as found in the Kabbalah.

Perhaps the earliest well-known Jewish teacher ofreincarnation or transmigration was Anan benDavid, the eighth century founder of the Jewishsect called Karaism. Most of his followers, how-ever, did not accept the teaching. In fact, the tenthcentury Karaite author Kirkisani, in his Sefer ha-Orot, condemned the teaching of reincarnation,particularly transmigration. Nonetheless, the teach-ing continued in some circles until it was adoptedby the authors of the Kabbalah.

Just as passages in the New Testament have beentaken in a proof text manner out of context andused to support the idea that parts of New Testa-ment teach reincarnation, so the same thing hasbeen done in the case of the Old Testament.

See also Old Testament and the afterlife.

Judas Syndrome. Quite a number of past life re-callers have suggested that they were Judas, the be-trayer of Jesus. To account for such multiple claimsmore sophisticated reincarnationists have acknowl-edged that most people have had some experienceat either being betrayed or betraying and that thesubconscious mind uses the biblical story as a kindof psycho-drama to resolve their personal betrayalaspect.

Jude see Predestination.

Judge, William Quan (1851– 1896). Judge was oneof the original founders of the Theosophical Soci-ety in 1875. He was also responsible for the revivalof the American branch of the Society during hispresidency of it, partially by choosing to separatefrom the mother movement in 1895. This separa-tion was due to the increasing Hinduization of theteachings of Helena Blavatsky and Henry S. Ol-cott’s once they moved the international headquar-ters to India in 1879. Judge also became president

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of the American Society for Psychical Research in1895. He is the author of a number of books andarticles on reincarnation and karma.

See also Blavatsky, Helena; Christianity, lostchord of; Theosophy.

Judgment of the Dead. This concept is found inOrthodox Judaism; Christianity, and Islam. Thegeneral judgment of the dead at the end of time(Hebrew: acharit hayamim), along with the resur-rection of the dead (tehiyat ha-metim), in Judaismis not envisioned as clearly or dogmatically as it isin Christianity or Islam and most present-dayforms of Judaism seem content to leave at that.

In standard Christian thought the judgment ofthe dead can be listed under either “particular judg-ment,” in which each individual is judged imme-diately upon death or “general judgment” in whichall humanity is to be judged at the end of time. InRoman Catholicism the distinction is necessary inthat the souls of some sinners may be sent to pur-gatory at their “particular judgment” so as to attainheaven at the final judgment; also that saintly souls,especially martyrs, can immediately upon death goto heaven were they can intercede between thefaithful and God.

To the degree that Protestantism rejects purga-tory and the cult of saints this distinction betweenparticular and general judgment is of no impor-tance. Instead, for those Protestant sects that ac-cept psychopannychism (pre-resurrection sleepingin the grave) there would be no particular judg-ment, only a final one.

For some Christians who accept the orthodoxbelief in the final judgment of the dead, but alsobelieve in reincarnation, the above particular judg-ment takes the form of reincarnation up until thesecond coming of Christ, at which point the finaljudgment and the resurrection of the worthy deadwill occur.

In Islam the Day of Judgment (Yawm ad-Din,literally the Day of Religion) is more precisely en-visioned. According to major Islamic traditions thatDay will be preceded by the rising up of the FalseMessiah (Masih ad-Dajjal, literally, the Lying Mes-siah) which will require the true Messiah, who is theprophet Jesus (Isa ‘l-Masih) to return from heaven(Sura 4:159), in part to defeat his false counterpart.Another apocalyptic figure involved with this Judg-ment Day is the Madhi (Arabic: al-Madhi, liter-ally, the Director), which one Islamic traditionclaims must be a descendant of the family of theProphet Mohammed. At some point, after muchstruggle between the true believers and the unbe-lievers, the resurrection of the dead (Yaumu ‘l-qiyamah, literally the Standing up) will occur withthe good inheriting paradise and the evil being sent

to a fiery hell. This orthodox final judgment viewhas not prevented many South and East AsianMuslims from believing in pre–Judgment Dayreincarnation.

See also Ahmadiyya; Doceticism; Druzes; Mil-lennialism; Muhammad Ahmad; Resurrection,bodily; Resurrection or reincarnation; Sikhism.

Julian, Flavius Claudius or Julian, The Apostate(reign 361–363 CE). Julian was the last pro-paganRoman emperor. Although raised as a Christian,he tried to reverse the pro–Christian policies of theprevious three emperors, which earned him the titlethe Apostate.

Julian was killed on the battlefield during a fu-tile attempt to conquer the Persian Empire. It hasbeen said that he believed that such a conquest waspossible because he, like the earlier emperor Cara-calla (188–217), considered himself to be the rein-carnation of Alexander the Great.

Julian, in his defense of paganism wrote a bookcalled Against the Galileans (Christians) all copies ofwhich were ordered destroyed by one of his Chris-tian successors, Theodosius II.

See also Mithraism; Porphyry Malchus;Priesthood, lack of an organized; Romans, An-cient; Sallustius the Neoplatonist;.

Jung, Carl. Jung is most famous for his ancestralmemory or collective unconscious concept, inwhich universal symbols called archetypes arestored. At no point in his professional career didJung make a clear statement in support of a beliefin reincarnation. There is some fleeting evidencethat he may have taken this belief more seriously ashe approached death, but even this, if true, wasdisguised under terms “ancestral souls,” “ancestralcomponents,” and “psychic ancestors.” This hasnot stopped some supporters, such as Michael Tal-bot, in his Your Past Lives: A Reincarnation Hand-book (1987), from trying to take Jung’s words outof context to prove he was a believer in reincarna-tion.

After Jung’s death a hearsay source implied thatJung suspected that he had once been the 4th cen-tury Egyptian hermetic alchemist Zosimus of Pa-nopolis, not to be confused with the later 5th cen-tury pagan anti–Christian Greek historianZosimus. A more a detailed investigation of Jung’sviews is found in Soul Journey: A Jungian AnalystLooks at Reincarnation (1991) by John A. Stanford.

See also Anima.

Justice, rebirth and karma see Karma and jus-tice.

Justin Martyr (About 100– 163/7 CE).This earlyChristian philosopher and Roman Catholic mar-tyred saint seemed to have been the first Christian

131 Justin

authority to mention metempsychosis. In his de-fense of Christian teachings, in his Dialogue withTrypho, he especially criticizes the idea of humansouls being reborn into animal bodies. At the endof the dialogue Trypho says, “Therefore souls nei-ther see God nor transmigrate into other bodies:for they would know that so they are punished, andthey would be afraid to commit even the most triv-ial sin afterwards. But that they can perceive thatGod exists, and that righteousness and piety arehonorable, I [Trypho] also quite agree with you[Justin], said he.)” “(You [Trypho] are right,” I[Justin] replied.)” Despite this Dialogue some pro-reincarnationists have actually listed Justin on theirside. The very fact that he was orthodox enoughin his views to be a Catholic saint should be suffi-cient proof that he was opposed to reincarnation.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation.

Kabbalah, also spelled Kabala, Kabbala, Qabbalah,Qabbala, Cabbala, Cabbalah, and Cabala. TheKabbalah is an esoteric theosophical or mysticalinterpretation of the Old Testament, which in-cludes a belief in reincarnation. In Hebrew “Kab-bala” means “tradition” and it more specificallyrefers to a collection of mystical Jewish texts, someelements of which may go back to the 1st centuryCE, but most of which are heavily dependent onlater Neoplatonism.

The earliest mention of the doctrine of reincar-nation in medieval Judaism is connected with thename Anan ben David, the late 8th centuryfounder of a break-away Jewish sect called theKaraites. Karaite belief in reincarnation, however,was eventually abandoned under criticism fromsuch figures as the 10th century Karaite teacherJacob al-Kirkisani in a special chapter of his bookthe Kitab al-Anwar (Book of Lights).

The next indication of a major Jewish interestin reincarnation is around 1180 by way of a textcalled the Sefer ha-Bahir (Book of Brightness). Thistext first appeared in southwest France and waswritten in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. Itmay only be coincidental, but it was in this samearea of France, in the 12th century, that was themain center of the reincarnation believing Cathars.

The Bahir is the first of many books to be con-sidered a part of the Kabbalah. In this text the ideaof reincarnation is supported in five separate pas-sages, even though gilgul, the later specific Hebrewterm for reincarnation, is not used. Also, in thistext the category of souls undergoing reincarnationis limited to those who have committed certain sex-ual sins that, except for God’s mercy, should resultin the extermination of those souls (Hebrew: keret).

In general, these sins meant any deliberate act thatcaused the persons to fail in their obligation to pro-create. The reason for non-procreation being a sinwas due to the Jewish belief that prior to procreationa soul, or person bearing it, was incomplete in itslife function. Only upon a person having a childdid he or she attain completeness. For this reasonif a couple died childless it was thought they wouldnot only reincarnate, but be united again to fulfilltheir parental obligation.

The second major Kabbalic text is the Sefer ha-Zohar (Book of Splendor). It was produced in late13th century in Spain. This is basically a mysticalcommentary on the Pentateuch (Torah), the first fivebooks of the Old Testament. It was mostly writtenin Aramaic. While the doctrine of reincarnationwas taken up by it, like the Bahir, it also taughtthat gilgul was simply a punishment for certain sex-ual sins. Significantly, with the expulsion of theJews from Spain in 1492, the Zohar was not onlycarried to other lands, but became a popular text inChristian, as well as Jewish, mysticism, especiallyafter the invention of printing in the 15th century.

One name that stands out in the early history ofthe Kabbalah is Nahmanides (c. 1194– 1270). Thisgreat scholar was the highest Jewish legal and reli-gious authority of his time in Spain. It was his pos-itive reception of the Kabbalah that permitted itsspread throughout the Spanish Jewish community.Several of Nahmanides’ works reflect a Kabbalicpoint of view, in particular his commentary on theOld Testament Job. Without mentioning the termgilgul he interprets the suffering of the seeminglyinnocent Job to a past life in which Job must havecommitted sufficient wrongs to deserve his laterpunishment. Indeed, some Kabbalists even identi-fied Job’s former life and sin as being that of theidolatrous father of the patriarch Abraham. Thisof course, was a very logical way of settling theproblem that Job always had in terms of theodicy(divine justice).

As the concept of gilgul evolved, it gradually wentfrom one of being just a condition of punishmentto also one of an opportunity to overcome past fail-ures. In this case the number of persons involved inthe gilgul process increased. For example, gigul wasused to explain such biblical obligation as leviratemarriage (Hebrew: Yibbum), as in Deuteronomy25:5– 10. This is the form of marriage where a sur-viving brother of a deceased man is required tomarry the deceased’s surviving widow if the de-ceased husband had no children. In the reincarna-tionist context it was even thought that the firstborn son of such a marriage was actually the de-ceased brother reborn.

The use of gilgul to explain a Biblical issue thathad hitherto gone either unexplained or unsatis-

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factorily explained, lead individuals such as Josephben Shalom Ashkenazi, a 14th century immigrantto Spain, to expound an extreme version of thegilgul theory that changed it into a cosmic lawwhich affected every part of creation. However,even more important than Shalom Ashkenazi, forthe increasingly official acceptance of gilgul, wasthe book, the Sefer ha-Gilgulim (Book of Transmi-gration), by Hayim Vital (1543– 1620), a discipleof the renowned Kabbalic mystic Isaac Luria.

Shortly there after, there evolved the Kabbalictheory of reincarnational chains of biblical figures.For example, this takes into consideration the factthat, with the exception of an initial vowel sound,only consonants are give value in written Hebrew.So, in accordance with the Kabbalic mystical lettersubstitution system called the notarikon, the lettersA-d-m in the name Adam indicated that the firstman Adam was reborn as (King) David, who inturn would be reborn as the Messiah (Hebrew:Mashiah). This theory could not be universally ac-cepted since in other Kabbalic texts the soul of thefuture Messiah, like that of a few other high rank-ing souls, was immune from gilgul. Also, some Kab-balists held that all the souls of human beings thathave been or will be embodied were contained inAdam, because when he sinned his soul fragmentedinto all subsequent souls. Also, due to influencefrom the Zohar, some Kabbalists believe that Adammay have even reincarnated as the biblical patri-arch Jacob (Israel).

Despite some more orthodox challenges to thegilgul system it proved too logically convenient tobe marginalized, and so according to it, not onlywas David, the reborn Adam; but Bathsheba was thereborn Eve; and Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, wasthe serpent in Eden. This rebirth scenario was usedto explain and justify David’s sin of having Uriahkilled in battle in order to steal his wife. While inthe Old Testament itself this act is vehemently con-demned by Nathan the prophet, the Kabbalists ac-tually give it a metaphysically based moral justifica-tion.

Again, Abel, the son of Adam, was regarded ashaving been reborn as Moses, while Abel’s brother,Cain was reborn as Jethro, the father-in-law ofMoses; and the daughter of Jethro, or wife ofMoses, was the twin sister of Abel. This group rein-carnation was said to be necessary to atone for themurder of Abel by Cain.

The ultimate expansion of gilgul was the inclu-sion of animal transmigration into the process.Although mentioned as early as the 13th centuryin the Sefer-ha-Temunah, a later addition to theZohar, (the Tikkunei Zohar), and in the Ta’ameiha-Mizot, such non-human re-embodiments wereof little importance at first. Also, while a minority

of some late Kabbalists spoke of the gigul even ofplants and minerals this was much farther thanmainstream Kabbalists were ever prepared to go.Even with a wider acceptance of animal gilgul, aclear distinction, nevertheless, was kept betweentrue animal souls being reborn as humans and truehuman souls being reborn as animals. In the lattercase, it was accepted that the truly wicked amongmen might be reborn as an animal one or manytimes as punishment, but not without a human re-birth in between animal rebirths. This allowed forthe person to repent and avoid another animal re-birth. If such repenting did not occur the soulwould be reborn into an even lower animal formthan previously. This acceptance of transmigrationwas not universal among Kabbalists, many of whichpreferred to confine themselves to a belief in rein-carnation (lateral transmigration) alone.

For those Kabbalists that did acknowledge suchanimal gilgul, no specific limitations on the num-ber of such regressive transmigrations were given.The same was not true for human gilgul. The Bahirstates that the soul of a sinner can reincarnate inhuman form up to a thousand times, but made nomention of the number of times for the righteousreincarnating. Some later authorities, however, ap-plied to the righteous the “three times only rule.”This number was based on the passage in the Job33:29, “Behold, God does all these things, twice,three times, with a man.” Also used were such pas-sages as Exodus 20:5 which reads, “I [God] willpunish the children for the sins of the fathers tothe third and fourth generations of those who hateme. This is repeated at Exodus 34:7 as “Jehovah,the Lord, a god ... who punishes sons and grand-sons to the third and fourth generation for the in-iquity of their fathers!” The reality is that whenthese passages were originally written the Jews stillbelieved in the primitive tribal morality of collec-tive guilt. Nonetheless, for those teachers who ac-cepted the “three times only rule” any soul that didnot succeed by the third time went to hell or, for amurderous soul, it might reincarnate into an ani-mal, plant, or even an inanimate object such as astone. In those cases, the souls so embodied weresaid to be able to act as haunting agents called ubar.

The early Spanish Kabbalic literature, on theother hand, reversed these numbers. They limitedreincarnation of sinners to no more than three timesafter the soul first entered a body, while the thou-sand times was applicable to the righteous, whowould return to benefit mankind. Besides the num-ber of possible rebirths there were several other im-portant conflicting rebirth related views in Kab-balic literature, among which is the view on theexact nature of the soul that reincarnates.

The most commonly accepted view of the soul

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was that it was a triad. There was the life, or vege-tative soul (nephesh), with which everyone was au-tomatically born; the animal or vital soul (ruah);and the rational or holy soul (neshamah). Onemajor deviation from this schema was that thenephesh is given vegetative, animal and ordinarycognitive (medabber) abilities and called the speak-ing soul (ha-nephesh ha-medabberet). The ruah sup-plies the ethical ability or power to distinguish be-tween good and evil. The neshamah was equatedwith the rational soul (ha-nephesh ha-sikhlit), whichin this case meant the higher cognitive ability ofbeing able to contemplate God, since this soul levelwas itself a part of God. A second major deviationschema simply recognizes a two part division of thesoul into the vital (ha-nephesh ha-hayyah) and theneshamah.

In the first, or most commonly accepted, tripar-tite schema the ruah and neshamah, while assignedto a specific nephesh, were not automatically em-bodied with it. Instead, they resided in the paradisewhere their descent into the embodied world oc-curred only as an individual developed. It wasthought by the majority of authorities that while theruah, along with the nephesh, could be defiled by theactions of the person, the neshamah, being of a holynature, could not be so contaminated. In fact, someKabbalic literature held that upon any person’s ac-tions becoming too wicked the neshamah wouldabandon the individual and return to paradise.This, of course, would exclude the neshamah fromany belittling reincarnation. A dissenting view as-sumed that the neshamah, while retaining its purity,would be forced into gilgul along with its partnersouls. Another dissenting view held that all threesouls could be involved with sins specific to theirnature. Thus, sins of the body belonged to thenephesh, sins of speech belonged to the ruah, andsins of thought belonged to the neshamah.

In later Kabbalic literature the tripartite soulschema was altered to include two still higher souls,the hayah and the yehidah. This pentad of souls,however, was not as popular as the earlier three-fold version.

Regardless of whether it was a triad or a pentadof souls participating in gilgul, an eschatologicalproblem arose about them, based upon the fact thatall Kabbalic authorities continued to hold on to theorthodox Jewish belief in a future final resurrec-tion of the dead. Orthodoxy held that at the resur-rection the soul, in all its parts or levels, would bereunited with its body. If a soul, over a few or manyreincarnations, had possessed more than one body,the question became which body was to be resur-rected for its eternal habitation? One answer wasthat each time reincarnation is required the soulacts like a lit candle lighting another candle, such

that only an exact copy of the first soul takes on anew body. This meant that at the resurrection therewould be any number of identical souls, but eachof these would be reunited only with its ownunique body.

Another solution to this resurrection based escha-tological problem was that each person actually hasmore than one soul inhabiting him or her. Eachtime a new body is born, God sends a pre-exist-ing, but a never having been embodied pure soulfrom “The Treasure-house of Souls (Ozar ha-Ne-shamot),” which is in the blissful celestial paradise(Gan Eden shel ma’alah), to dwell in that body. Thisnew body, however, attracts up to three old (for-merly embodied) souls whose natures, sins, andneeds for redemption are sufficiently similar to oneanother to allow them to function as a whole. Thisarrangement of a host soul and several guest soulswas permitted only for the relatively good guestsouls. Evil souls had to reincarnate in far less desir-able ways. The advantage to this arrangement wasthat each soul, as host to others, original had onlya single unique body which would be reassigned toit at the resurrection.

The issue of souls entering into hell (gehinnom)was another point of contention between Kabbal-ists. Some Kabbalists argued that a punishable soulsimply reincarnated instead of spending time inhell, while others insisted that souls must first bepurged of their major faults before reincarnation.Still others assigned souls to a purgatory-like statecalled the “Vale of Weeping (Emek ha-Bakha),”which it clearly distinguishes from gehinnom.

According to still another Kabbalic view, whena soul is first about to descend into the world it vis-its the terrestrial Garden of Eden and sees there theglory of the righteous souls, then it visits gehinnomand sees the unrighteous souls. After this the soul,originally hermaphroditic, divides into it male andfemale parts to enter their respective bodies. This,naturally, brought up the issue of the gender ofreincarnating souls, which was also in dispute. Itwas agreed that each soul prior to the first embod-iment was both male and female and split apart asit descended from heaven to earth for embodiment.Yet some Kabbalists argued that only male soulscould undergo gilgul. In fact, it was partly this sit-uation that was thought to account for barrennessamong some women. Such women were believedunfortunate to have had a male soul reincarnatedinto female bodies.

On the other hand, according to the book Wheelsof a Soul (1991), by Rabbi Berg, the Sefer ha-Gilgulim teaches that a woman has an easier timein fulfilling her tikun (cosmic repair) than a man be-cause she has more spiritual understanding (binah)and as a result may have to experience only a sin-

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gle embodiment. However, she may voluntarilyreincarnate more than once to help her male soulmate fulfill his tikun.

The category of persons who could ultimatelybe saved was another bone of contention. Thebroadest view was that both those from the otherside (sitra aha) or Gentiles, and those from the holyside (sitra di-kedusha) or Jews would be saved. An-other opinion allowed for only the inclusion ofNoahides to be saved. These were Gentiles who fol-lowed the seven pre–Mosaic (Noachian) laws asfound in Genesis 2:16; 9:4 that God gave to Noahas the new father of all mankind after the biblicalflood. A more radical view was that only Jews couldbe saved and a still more radical and exclusionaryopinion was that only those Jews that fully under-stood the Kabbalah could be saved.

One other concept found in the Kabbalah re-lated to gilgul was that of ibbur (Hebrew: embry-onic development, pregnancy or impregnation). Inthe main part of the Zohar and other early Kabbalicbut latewritings, this term overlaps with gilgul inmeaning, on it has a separate though related mean-ing. Ibbur came to signify the entry of a soul intoan alien body, not at the time near birth like a reg-ular reincarnation, but sometime well after that.

Certain limitations were believed to apply to thisform of possession. First of all, only relatively vir-tuous souls would seek such ibbur and then theywould do so only for a certain required time. Thepurpose of such an ibbur (possessing) activity waseither to fulfill a certain action or commandmentthat was not fulfilled by the time of the death ofthe soul undergoing ibbur, or for the entering soulto give encouragement to, or guide, the host soulin the performance of some righteous action. Forexample, this ibbur might take only the few mo-ments necessary to perform a single ritual act or itcould reside in with its host for several years, per-haps even up to the host’s death, if the host spiri-tually benefited from the ibbur.

While originally there was an acceptance of onlysuch righteous ibbur there soon arose the idea ofan unrighteous ibbur. A bad ibbur would be onethat gained entrance into its host because of someevil the host had committed prior to the ibbur’sentry. Once within the host an evil ibbur wouldseek to further corrupt the host, even to the pointof destroying the host’s own personality.

Since using the term ibbur for both benevolentand malevolent purposes was soon thought unde-sirable a new term was adopted to characterize anevil ibbur. This term, not found in the Kabbalahbut taken from a Yiddish folk tradition, was dib-buk, and literally meant an attachment from theoutside and was really the shortened form of dib-buk me-ru’ah ra’ah (an attachment of an evil spirit).

According to at least one Kabbalic view therewere not enough bodies for all souls to reincarnateat the same time. But instead of rotating, once soulsenter the rebirth cycle they continue in it untilfinally liberated. This means that there was a poolof souls, namely those in the treasure-house of soulsthat have not yet reincarnated, and they must waitthere until surplus bodies are available to enter.This is said to explain why there are some very oldsouls and some very new ones.

What has been covered in this entry does not in-clude all Kabbalic teachings, most which have lit-tle to do with the issue of reincarnation. For thisreason many Jewish and non–Jewish practitionersare involved in Kabbalic work that has nothing todo with reincarnation. This is particularly true ofwhat has been called Christian Kabbalah, most ofwhich became the Occult Kabbalah, more oftenspelled Qabalah. Such Occult Qabalah, whichoften did re-adopt a belief in reincarnation, was atthe heart of the magical systems associated withEliphas Levi, and S. L. MacGregor Mathers, theco-founder of The Hermetic Order of the GoldenDawn, and its many offshoots.

See also Ascended masters; Attached entity;Blavatsky, Helena; Candia Debate; Chakras;Chiromancy; Dibbuk; Elijah; Enoch, ThirdBook of; Fall of the Souls; Finite or infinite num-ber of rebirths; Frank, Jacob; Galya Raza; Ge-hazi; Gender issue of the soul; Gnosticism; Gufha-Briyot; Heschel of Opator, Abraham Joshua;Hezyonot , Sefer ha-; Jewish Holocaust; Job,Book of; Karma, racial; Karet; Layela; Leviratemarriage; Moses, the Old Testament prophet;Numbers 16:22; Numerology and rebirth; OldTestament and the afterlife; Philo Judaeus; Pop-ulation increase issue; Population increase issueand a theistic solution; Psalms; Qlippoth; Re-birth, ethnic; Rebirth, group; Rebirth, selective;Resurrection, bodily; Soul; Soul, tripartite;Tanya; Tarot cards; Tzror ha-Chayyim; Virgo(Elul).

Kabirpanthi (followers of the path of Kabir). Kabir(1440– 1518) was an Indian mystic who sought tounite Hindu and Muslim teachings in the hope ofbring the antagonistic followers of those faiths in apeaceful unity. In this regard he was the forerun-ner of Sikhism, which was established by a disci-ple of Kabir, Nanak. Kabir took from Islam thebelief in one God, the equality of all people beforeGod, and a rejection of idolatry, asceticism, andthe caste system. He took from Hinduism the be-lief in reincarnation and karma. There are presentlytwo main sects of Kabirpanthi, one is more Mus-lim, the other more Hindu. The sacred writings ofKabir are found in the Bijak (of Kabir).

135 Kabirpanthi

Kaivalya. (Isolation). This is the ideal state of thesoul (jiva) in Jainism. It signifies complete andeternal separation from further rebirth into a ma-terial body.

See also Buddhist stages of liberation; Jivan-mukta; Moksha; Nirvana and Parinirvana.

Kama dhatu, also kama-loka (Realm of Desire).In Buddhism this consists of the six sub-realms ofrebirth (sad-gati) into samsara. These are the realmsof human beings (manusya), animals (tiryak), gods(deva), anti-gods (asura), hungry ghosts (preta),and purgatory (naraka).

See also Astral plane; Bhavachakra; Ka-maloka; Mara; Tri-dhatu or Tri-loka.

Kamaloka. This is the first and lowest of the sixheavens of the realm of desire

in the traditional Buddhist mythological cos-mology. In Theosophy and the Anthroposophy ofRudolph Steiner it is a post-mortem period ofsometimes purgatorial-like recollection which pro-ceeds entering the devachan and finally rebirth.

See also Devaloka; Heaven, Buddhist.

Kama rupa (Body of Desire). In the book EsotericBuddhism (1973), by A.P. Sinnett, the term kamarupa is translated as the animal soul, but laterTheosophical works usually drop this translation.Instead, in some Theosophical teachings the kamarupa seems to be equated with the etheric body, es-pecially as it is thought that a distraught ethericbody (kama rupa) can turn into a harmless orharmful ghost-like figure (an elementary). In stillother Theosophical views the kama rupa is equatedwith the astral body.

See also Astral plane; Attached entity; Bud-dhism, esoteric; Etheric revenant; Soul andspirit levels, Theosophical; Vampire.

Kampman, Reima see Children rememberingpast lives; Multiple personalities.

Kant, Immanuel (1724– 1804). This preeminentGerman (Prussian) was perhaps the most impor-tant European philosopher of modern times. Kant’smain goal was to establish, once and for all, the au-thority of pure reason. In doing this he was forcedto admit that not only God, but also the immor-tality of the soul and free will could not be demon-strated through reason. However, to avoid beinglabeled an atheist by the Lutheran state church,Kant declared that the mind must inevitably ac-cept the existence of all three of these religious phe-nomena because they were a necessary basis forvirtue or morality. Kant’s compromise of his “truthbased on pure reason” has opened him up to thecriticism of betraying his own goal. While Kantwould only have been thinking of such immortal-

ity in the context of the Christian resurrection, hisargument of “a necessary basis for virtue or moral-ity” has been used by reincarnationists as well.

Kanthaeans. This little known Mesopotamian(Iraq) gnostic religious group may have originatedas early as the late 5th century CE, but was first re-ported on in the late 8th century. According to theArabic heresiographer Al-Shahrastani, at least oneof the three branches of this religion believed inreincarnation (tanasukh).

See also Hashimiyya; Islam; Khurramiyya;Rawandiyah.

Kardec, Allan see Spiritism.

Kardecismo. This is a Brazilian religious move-ment that incorporates the Spiritism of AlanKardec with elements from the Afro-Brazilianmediumship religion of Candomble and Macumbaand especially from Umbanda.

See also Afro-American religions; Santeria.

Karet (Hebrew: Cut-off ). According to the famousSpanish Kabbalist Nahmanides (1194– 1270), theterm refers to a soul that, due to sin, must rein-carnate into a degraded body. On the other hand,according to the 16th century Kabbalist Isaac Luriakaret means being block from entering the after-life and so becoming a ghost or dibbuk.

See also Kabbalah.

Karma/kamma (deed or action). In traditional Indian religions karma is regarded as part of theuniversal or cosmic law of cause and effect. Thismeans that we reap the fruit (vipaka) of what wesow (karma). If we sow what is constructive or skill-ful (kusala) we will reap what is constructive orskillful, if we sow what is destructive or unskillful(akusala), we will reap the same.

The starting point for understanding the theoryof karma is to recognize that it has a primary anda secondary function. The primary and more gen-eral function is to explain why there is such in-equality of poverty and wealth in the world as wellas why seemingly good and/or innocent people ap-pear to suffer unfairly, while bad, and presumablyguilty, people remain unpunished or even gain re-wards.

The secondary and more personal function ofkarma is to convince individuals that, despite theobvious inequality and unfairness in the world, baddeeds are eventually punished and good deeds areeventually rewarded, if not in this life then in a fu-ture life. This secondary function is obviously in theservice of the primary function. It says that one’spresent day rebirth into an undesirable state is usu-ally a punishment for past unskillful or unmerito-rious actions (S: akusala or papa karma), while one’s

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rebirth into a desirable state is usually a reward forpast skillful or meritorious actions (kusala or punyakarma). In other words, these two related functionsof karma teach that there is a logical, non-arbitraryreason for human suffering and as a result it im-plies that the world is ultimately a just place.

In actuality, in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jain-ism, it is the passing on of karma, rather than therebirth of a soul, that assumes priority. Soul re-birth is primarily the vehicle for manifestations ofkarma. Indeed, even spiritual liberation is subordi-nate to karma. For all practical purposes karma re-places the judging, sentencing, and rewardingpower of a Western style personal God.

In India both the primary and secondary func-tions of karma have also been used to justify thecaste system.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Karma and faith; Karma and forgive-ness; Karma and free will; Karma and God;Karma and justice; Karma and rebirth; Karmaand the moral structure of the universe; Karmaas absolute or relative; Karma as natural law;Karma as unfinished business; Karma, bodily;Karma, classifications of; Karma in the ancientand modern west; Karma, delayed; Karma, de-velopmental; Karma, family; Karma, global(planetary); Karma, group; Karma in the Bible;Karma, origins of; Karma, racial; Karma, ret-ributive; Karma versus grace; Karma, voca-tional; Karma with minimal rebirth; Karmicbankbook; Karmic boomerang effect; Karmiccarryover; Karmic diseases; Karmic eschatology;Karmic script; Karmic seeds; Karmic ties; Lordsof Karma.

Karma and faith. While some people can accept re-birth as real based on the ambiguous evidence in thevarious arguments offered in support of it the samecan not be said of the belief in karma. No concreteevidence for or against karma seems to be obtain-able. It does little good even to try to prove its ex-istence from rebirth itself, especially in the light ofthe lack of provable memories of past lives. A be-lief in karma, therefore, must ultimately be on thebasis of faith alone. This faith alone aspect is veryimportant because rebirth is a meaningless conceptin Eastern religion without the ethical continuityof karma. In short, it is karma and not rebirth thatis at the eschatological heart of Eastern religions.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Eth-icalized or karmic rebirth; Karma and justice;Karma and rebirth; Karma in the ancient andmodern west; Karma with minimal rebirth.

Karma and forgiveness. It has said that one of themost important differences between karma as theimpersonal judge of human transgressions, and a

personal God as a judge of such transgressions, isthat the karma can not forgive these transgressionswhile a God can. This is only partially true. Karma,unlike God, can not arbitrarily forgive, but for-giveness within the law of cause and effect is verypossible. To gain forgiveness as part of the fruit(vipaka) of karma simply requires one to make for-giving karma by freely forgiving others their trans-gressions against you. In short, to karmicaly giveforgiveness, in vipaka terms, is to receive such for-giveness.

See also Karma versus grace.

Karma and free will. In the West the doctrine ofkarma has often been criticized as being a fatalis-tic form of determinism. That there is a determin-ist aspect to karma can not be denied; nonetheless,Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism teach free-willand are technically opposed to determinism. Oneway of understanding this is to view karma as akind of leash tied to a pole in the ground by whichone’s life is held. While one can not act outside ofthe radius of that leash, within the radius of it onehas complete freedom to act. This, at the most,makes karma a weak form of determinism versesthe stronger form associated with fatalism whichallows no freedom for moral actions or responsi-bilities. A further indication that karma is not akind of fatalism can be seen in the form of ahosi-karma (karma that is ineffective). In order forkarma to produce an effect several auxiliary causes,such as circumstances, surroundings, etc., are re-quired. If those requirements are lacking, as some-times happens, karma does not produce any effec-tive results.

For Buddhism, in particular, karmic fatalism isagain further weakened by the Buddhist insistencethat there are, besides karma, four other non-karmic causal constraints (niyama) that can influ-ence a person’s life for better or worse. These arephysical inorganic constraints such as seasonal phe-nomena of winds and rains, heat and cold (utuniyama); physical organic constraints such as germsand seeds, which today would include the scientifictheory of cells and genes (bija niyama); constraintsof mind or psychic law, which would include allpsychic phenomena (citta niyama); and constraintsof what Buddhism regards as natural religious laws,as well as such laws of nature as gravity (dharmaniyama). These four constraints, along with karma,embrace everything in the world, and every men-tal or physical phenomenon can be explained bythem. In that karma and the four constraints areconsidered part of natural laws, there is no neces-sity for a supreme lawgiver. In fact, the oppositionto viewing karma as fatalism has always been a rea-son that Buddhism has opposed acknowledging

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any kind of supreme lawgiving-creator. Accordingto Buddhist logic, such an omnipotent deity wouldautomatically predetermine everything.

Despite the clear anti-determinist teachings inEastern religions, many Christian sources continueto label karma as deterministic, if not fatalistic.The more sophisticated pro-karma response to thislabel has been to point to the far more obvious andabsolutist Christian determinism implied in theNew Testament letters of the apostle Paul of Tar-sus. In some of these letters Paul teaches that Godchose who to save and who to damn even before theworld was created. In fact, this Pauline view onpredestination became the bedrock of later Calvin-ist Protestantism. It is true that most modernChristian groups today more or less ignore, or in afew cases completely repudiate this teaching, how-ever, this does not change the fact that in orthodoxChristian belief the Bible is the Word of God andcan only be ignored or repudiated at the risk ofdamnation.

See also Ajivikas; Karma and God; Karma andjustice; Karma as absolute or relative; Karma inthe ancient and modern west; Karma versusgrace; New Testament and reincarnation; Pop-ulation increase issue and a theistic solution;Rebirth, East and West.

Karma and God. When it comes to the issue ofkarma and God religious opinion generally has di-vided along a theistic and non-theistic line. In theEast this divide has traditionally been between the-istic Hinduism and Sikhism and non-theisticBuddhism and Jainism. However, for the mostpart, between these two groups a belief or non-be-lief in God has not made much difference in termsof karmic rebirth. The reason is that in both the-istic and non-theistic Eastern religions the func-tion of rewarder and punisher of behavior, as tech-nically performed by the impersonal law of karma(karmaniyama), is thought of as independent ofGod.

If this independence has rarely been a topic of de-bate in Eastern religions the same can not be saidof Western groups that support a belief in rebirthand karma. In fact, these groups have used thekarmic issue to strongly argue for either the the-ist’s or the atheist’s view.

The theistic view is that rebirth and karma allowsfor a just and loving personal God to give evil doersmore than one chance at redemption rather thansending them to an eternal hell after only one life-time. However, one major problem with this beliefin a personal caring God and karma-rebirth is thatsuch a God would most likely allow people to re-member at least the most immediate past life sothey could benefit from their mistakes; therefore,

the absence of such remembrance has been used tochallenge a belief in such a God.

Another karmic challenge to a belief in God hasbeen that a belief in karma serves one of the mainpurposes for a belief in God, in that it assures peo-ple that the universe cares enough about themmorally to bother to be a cosmic judge, punisherand rewarder of human behavior. Of course, this“karma as a substitute for a judging God view” it-self has provoked a challenge from the “extremeatheistic camp.” This camp argues that, first, a be-lief in karma and rebirth is not only a belief in a justGod under another name, but that it is humanhubris to believe that the universe cares enoughabout mankind to ensure justice and, second, fromthe perspective of human responsibility any typeof an after-life punishment or reward simply re-lieves people of opposing injustice in the worldsince karma will presumably deal with this.

See also Anthropopathism; Arguments proand con on an afterlife in general (6 and 7); Ar-guments supportive of rebirth; Atheism;Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism; Christianityand reincarnation; Creationism, soul; God andrebirth in the West; Karma and free will; Karmaand justice; Karma and the moral structure ofthe universe; Karma versus grace; Populationincrease issue and a theistic solution; Rebirthand religious tolerance; Theodicy.

Karma and intentionality (S/P: Cetana) seeKarma as absolute or relative; Restitution negatesretribution.

Karma and justice. Most supporters of rebirth andkarma, in both the East and the West, believe thatthese two concepts help to make sense out of theseeming judicial contradiction that good peoplefrequently suffer while evil people often prosper.This judicial or moral contradiction is resolved bystating that the present good person is working offsome past bad behavior, and the evil person is ex-periencing the benefit of some past good behavior.This simplistic view, however, does not take intoconsideration the “karma and memory problem.”

Throughout human society, past and present, itis usually assumed that a direct and provable rela-tion should be made between a crime and the pun-ishment in order for the punishment to qualify asjust. In fact, to punish someone for a crime thatnot even circumstantial evidence can link to thatperson is universally considered an act of grave in-justice. Equally, to reward a person for an actionthat can not be proven to have been performed bythat person, if not unjust, is at least unfair. With theexception of a few people who claim to rememberone or more past lives, no memory from one life toanother is retained; therefore, there can be no proof

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that a person, in misfortunate or fortunate circum-stances, deserves what is assumed to be punishmentor reward for past actions. In other words, this lackof memory puts the whole concept of karma as asource of justice in doubt. Indeed, in the absenceof past life memories, even if karma has somethingto do with unfortunate or fortunate circumstances,it might be considered morally meaningless.

On the other hand, in defense of the meaning-fulness of karma, even without a memory of thepast, the following analogy has sometimes been of-fered. What if a year old child finds some matchesand in the process of playing with them severelyburns his face, such that he is disfigured for life.By the time he is ten years old he will have nomemory of that tragic action; nonetheless, he is re-sponsible for his condition. The weakness of this ar-gument is that while the child has no memory of thecause of his disfigurement, his parents do have sucha memory and can attest to the child that he is thecause of his own condition. Nowhere in the conceptof karma is there the equivalent of the parents tocertify the claim that everyone is in some way re-sponsible for their present condition.

Despite the apparent incompatibility of memory-less rebirth and karmic justice it should be notedthat the memory and justice issue is essentially aWestern problem. This is because of the Western( Judeo-Christian) view that personal memory isrequired for individuality and hence for genuineindividual moral responsibility. This is in sharpcontrast to the Hindu and Buddhist view that in-dividuality, with all its attachment to personalmemories, is not only illusory in nature, but is theinitial cause of all moral or judicially wrong thoughts,words, and deeds. The very fact that most peopledo not retain personal memories from one life to an-other is regarded, less as a justice issue and more asproof of how insignificant such memories are. Inthese Eastern religions it is simply the impersonaldelusion of individuality itself that passes on fromone life to another. Therefore, there is little reasonto expect, much less morally demand, that personalmemories be retained.

The problem of past life memory and karmicjustice is also less of a problem for Eastern religions,in which there either is no supreme God (Buddhism,Jainism) or there is, ultimately, only an impersonalsupreme God (Hindu Brahman), than it is forWestern religions with their very personal God.

On the one hand, for a just and very personalWestern God to send even the most evil of personsto an eternal hell has often be criticized as unjust.Therefore at most, a temporary hell followed byrebirth might be a more logical extension of God’sjustice. This gives sinners all the necessary chancesto reform that they need. However, this still leaves

the previously stated problem of how can real jus-tice, divinely controlled or not, be based on an un-provable link between present life misery and pastlife wrong doings? Is this still not unjust punishmentwithout proof of guilt? Also, if there is a just per-sonal God should He or She not offer unquestion-able proof of the link between guilt and punish-ment? Obviously, this creates a problem for thoseWesterners who wish to harmonize a belief in re-birth with the lovingly just side of God.

If we dispense with the personally divine and re-turn to a non–God oriented religion, such as Bud-dhism, then it is really an inconsequential matterthat there can be rebirth without past life memo-ries. This is because karma is viewed as an imper-sonal natural law that will function, as would anynatural law, without the proof that would satisfy thenormal human demand for justice or fairness.

The belief in karma, with or without God, for allof its logical problems has clearly served some pur-pose for at least the 2,500 years or more that it hasdominated Indian religious thought. If nothingelse, belief in karma in the face of human sufferinghas made hundreds of millions of people believethat there is justice in the world. Whether karma istrue or false, if people believe in it this means thatthey have convinced themselves that the worldwould not make them suffer if they were not guiltyof something in the past. They can then regardtheir suffering as justified, and through such psycho-logical rationalization lessen their misery. In thissense, at a minimum, karma and rebirth functionas a convenient fiction and/or noble lie.

Everything said so far has to do with a belief inindividual karma. Another way of viewing karmaand justice is to view it collectively rather than individually. In this case, since according to theBuddhist law of interdependent causality or origi-nation (pratitya-samutpada) all beings are inter-dependent; every individual, past, present, and fu-ture, is part of every other individual, past, present,and future, and karmic rebirth is a part of this in-terdependency. Therefore, it can be argued that itmight not matter who sowed a deed and who reapsthe resulting punishment or reward.

Finally, it should be noted that the issue of karmaand justice is only important to those cultures thatrelate to rebirth as some form of punishment or re-ward. In cultures where an ancestral soul is thoughtto be reborn back into his or her family or clanthere is no concept that this is a punishing or re-warding event. In such cultures it is totally unim-portant that the past or ancestral life be remem-bered and the question of justice is immaterial.

See also Age factor and rebirth; Akashic Rec-ord; Anatman; Aquinas, Thomas; Argumentssupportive of rebirth; Atman; Creationism, soul;

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Blaming the victim vs. illusion of innocence;Caste system; Individuality and rebirth; Karma;Karma and faith; Karma and free will; Karmaand God; Karma as natural law; Karma in theancient and modern west; Karma in the Bible?;Karma, retributive; Karma versus grace; Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth; Limitation lifetime; MacTag-gart, John Ellis; Memories, reasons for loss ofpast life; Natal defects; Past life memory cate-gories; Predestination; Purgatory; Rebirth andcyclical time; Rebirth and unilinear descent; Re-birth, East and West; Rebirth in the West; Chi-nese religion and reincarnation; Theodicy.

Karma and logic. Critics of the concept of karmahave argued that the concept has failed to give log-ically consistent answers to the following questions.If karma is true what registers and administers it?Does each rebirth factor carry its own positive andnegative karmic points so that it automaticallychooses a new life that will punish or reward it?Does some collective intelligence such as the so-called Lords of Karma (Lipikas) perform this func-tion? Does some universal mind or consciousnesssuch as the impersonal Mahayana Buddhist alaya-vijnana, or personal God administer it?

If these questions can not be answer with somelogical consistency, and still people believe in karmathen it must be asked, why? At least three majorreasons seem to be behind such a belief each ofwhich has its own logical problems. First, millionsof people have accepted karma for thousands ofyears; therefore, it is probably true. People believedfor thousands of years that the sun revolved aroundthe earth, yet that did not make it true. Second, animportant teacher such as the Buddha is said tohave taught it; therefore, it should be true. Accord-ing to the Buddhist canon the Buddha also taughta mythic geography with a flat earth, and four con-tinents with Mount Meru in the middle. If theBuddha, in fact, taught these things as fact he wasclearly wrong so how can we be sure he was notequally wrong about karma. Third, people wantdesperately to believe in an ultimately just world.As desirable as such justice is, just because peoplewant it does not make it true.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Karma; Resurrection or reincarnation.

Karma and memory problem see Karma andjustice.

Karma and rebirth. If karma is to be consideredpart of a just existence it must be one of thecausative factors in the rebirth process. For exam-ple, if rebirth can not occur without some karmicaspect partaking in the rebirth process then karmais an integral part of being. On the other hand, if

the fruit (vipaka) of karma attaches itself to thereborn entity independent from the rebirth processitself then, being unrelated to the reborn entity,karma would act as a kind of a parasitic factor, likean attached entity. In this latter situation, vipakamight still be justified as long as it was a universaland not a selective attachment. In other words, itcould be that every newborn inherits the vipakaof another person unrelated to the newborn, butwhich the new being must work out. In this case itwould presumably be pure chance who inheritedgood vipaka and who inherited bad vipaka, but atleast in terms of the initial odds everyone wouldbe karmicaly equal. This would actually accountfor what is sometimes suggested in Buddhism asno-soul (self ) being reborn and only vipaka pass-ing from one life to another. This would also sat-isfy the “primary” function of karma, namely anexplanation of why some people have fortunatelives while others have misfortunate lives. It wouldnot, however, satisfy the “secondary” function ofkarma, the giving assurance that good people endup being rewarded and bad people punished, evenif this happens in another lifetime.

A problem with the inheritance of unrelatedvipaka is that in an ever expanding populationsome people would inherit another’s vipaka whilesome would not. This would make the system un-fair. Of course, just because it is unfair does notmean it could not be true. In this universe fairnessmay be just wishful thinking or at best a noble lie.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth;Ethicalized or karmic rebirth; Gandharva;Karma and faith; Karma and justice; Karmawith minimal rebirth; Karma, with and with-out Rebirth; Karmic eschatology; Populationincrease issue; Possession; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Karma and the moral structure of the universe.When any “religion” asks about the origin of theuniverse it is not really asking out of scientific cu-riosity but out of moral concern. In other words, itis really asking about the origin of good and evil.

In Buddhism the question as to the origin of theuniverse is usually stated to be logically unanswer-able and any discussion or debate on the subject asa waste of time and effort. This might seem to bea weakness on the part of Buddhism in relation-ship to some forms of theism since the theist caneasily answer that the origin of the universe is inthe creative act of God. The Buddhist counter tothis is that if God created the universe who or whatcreated God? The standard theistic answer is thatno one or nothing created God, since God has al-ways existed. The Buddhist response becomes“Why not just say that the universe has always ex-

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isted? Why add God to the eternity of existence ifHe is not necessary?” To do so is to make God sim-ply a logical redundancy. If a knowledgeable Bud-dhist is pushed for an answer to the origin of theuniverse the best possible answer he can give is thateach new universe comes into existence due tofruition (vipaka) of unresolved karma from theprevious universe.

Unresolved karma, rather than a Creator Deity,as the origin of the present universe has beencounter criticized by Western religions as simplypushing the origin one step back from God; hence,not really answering the question of its origin anymore than Western monotheism does. In otherwords, “the infinite regression or beginningless” ofboth Buddhism and Western monotheism are noreal explanation of the origin of the universe andhence of evil.

On the other hand, unlike Western religion,Buddhism has an alternative explanation for evil(papa) in the world. Since Buddhism is not de-pendent on belief in an all good God who logicallyshould have created only an all good world, Bud-dhism can acknowledge that the root of evil is in-herent in the very present nature of the world, es-pecially as it is understood as being in a constantstate of flux or impermanence. For mere mortalhuman beings to cope with this impermanence sat-isfactorily requires great skill. Some people attemptto cope by making choices that seem beneficial tothem in the long term, even if not in the short term.This, more often than not, is called skillful (kusala)behavior. Other people choose what seems benefi-cial to them only in the immediate future and ig-nore the more distant future. This more often thannot is called unskillful (akusala) behavior. One skill-ful choice often leads to another skillful choice, andso making skillful choices becomes habitual. Thesehabitually skillful choosers are usually thought of asdoers of good and builders of positive karma whicheventually can lead to liberation from the cycle ofbirth and death. Similarly, several unskillful choicesusually lead to more unskillful choices until un-skillful choices become habitual. These habituallyunskillful choosers build up very negative karmawhich pulls them farther and father away from es-caping the cycle of birth and death.

See also Karma and God; Karma-vipaka as along term moral tendency; Rebirth and logicalsymmetry; Soul, origin of the; Tetralemma orFourfold Negation.

Karma and the origin of evil see Karma and themoral structure of the universe.

Karma as absolute or relative. There has been along standing argument among traditional Indianreligious systems as to how rigid or flexible karma

is. In general this argument comes down to the de-gree to which intentionality is or is not of majorsignificance. In Jainism karma is thought to bemore or less inflexible or absolute, since it is con-sidered to be a form of matter similar to “clay par-ticles.” For this reason Jains believe less in develop-ing good karma and avoiding bad karma; instead,Jains try to avoid creating any kind of new karmaand getting rid of all past karma. In Jainism an ac-tion has more of a life of its own which means onemust experience the vipaka (karmic consequences)of the action regardless of intentionality. In Bud-dhism and Hinduism it is intentions that countmore than the action itself, which makes karma farmore relative. In Buddhism, and to a lesser degreein Hinduism, to be subjected to vipaka for an ac-tion one does, there must have been conscious in-tent to perform that action followed by the conse-quence of the action.

If intentionality (cetana) is the dominant deter-miner of whether an action is good or bad, thenmoral precepts must have a certain degree of rela-tivity to them. For example, it is not merely a mat-ter if one person kills another intentionally and adifferent person kills someone unintentionally, themotivation behind the intentional killing wouldhave to be added to the issue. If I intentionally killsomeone trying to kill me or someone I love this isnot the same intentionality as if I intentionally killsome one out of vengeance. In the case of the per-son I kill in self-defense, given different circum-stances, I would have had no intention whatsoeverto kill him. In short, the intentionality to kill wasforced upon me; whereas, the revenge killing wasentirely intentional.

The intentionality aspect of karma-vipakashould also make it culturally relative. For example,in certain Middle Eastern societies if an unmarriedwoman has a sexual affair that brings dishonor toher family then it is considered, not only acceptable,but mandatory that her family should kill her. Twovariables are present here. First, the woman pre-sumably knew the rules and customs of her society,which meant she understood the danger of her ac-tion and its probable consequences; in this sense,whether she admits it to herself or not, she is inten-tionally disgracing her family. Second, the familyhad no prior desire to harm the woman; in fact,she may have been a much loved member of thefamily. This means that the family’s intention hasless to do with killing the woman and more to dowith preserving its honor. This ought to mean thatthe family is being forced by the customs of its so-ciety to kill the woman. There is no question thata lot of very complicated, perhaps even contradic-tory karma-vipaka is involved here, because at leasthalf of the wrong is with the woman.

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If, prior to the sexual affair, we now have thisfamily immigrate to America the entire dynamicof intentionality changes. Regardless of the moresand customs of their former society, both the youngwoman and her family, in immigrating to a newcountry, are expected to accept the rules and cus-toms of that country. First among these is that inAmerica an unmarried adult woman is free to havea sexual affair if she chooses to do so and her fam-ily has no right to interfere. Second, if the womanhas an affair it does not shame the rest of the fam-ily in the eyes of American society in general.Third, if the family killed the women that woulddisgrace the family and the killers would be severelypunished which would add to the family’s disgrace.In this new scenario the intentionality factor hascompletely changed. The woman, if she acceptsAmerican mores unconditionally, does not have anyintentionality to disgrace her family and the fam-ily has no honor to protect. On the other hand, thewoman ought to take into account the possibilitythat her family might act “in the old way,” if whichcase she can not be entirely innocent; however, evenin this case, any killing by the family is still entirelyvoluntary and intentional, which means the wrongcontinues to be more with the family. Thus, thebad karma-vipaka of the family is going to begreater in America than it would have been in theold country.

The relativity of karma-vipaka, especially thesocial relativity aspect, may be difficult for Western-ers to relate to since it also means that there can beno justification for a “majority of one” as in themore absolutist Western case. Western ( Judeo-Christian) morality is presumed to be based on thewill of a personal God. This in theory means thatit does not matter what society accepts as right,but what God accepts as right. This is clearlyreflected in the Old Testament where the people ofancient Israel often had one set of standards whilethe prophet or mouthpiece of God, “the majorityof one,” had another set of standards that took pri-ority over that of society. It is for this reason thatthe Judeo-Christian view might find the killing ofthe young woman in either social situation asequally wrong.

Intentionality in the Buddhist understanding ofkarma-vipaka is important also in that it countersthe commonly heard Western view that karma isruthless and, therefore, unjust and far inferior tothe love based justice of God.

See also Ahimsa; Blaming the victim vs. illu-sion of innocence; Karma and God; Karma andjustice; Karma in the ancient and modern west;Karma versus grace; Restitution negates retri-bution; Return and serve argument for reincar-nation.

Karma as natural law. It is often claimed thatkarma is the spiritual parallel of the natural law ofcause and effect. When people speak of karma insuch causal ways they are implying that there is anempirically based causal connection between theobservable phenomena of suffering and happiness,and the unobservable phenomenon of a past life.However, this is not true.

The first problem with karma as a natural law is that, unlike all true natural laws, karma has nopredictable value to it. In other words, the claimto karmic causality is completely post hoc (after thefact). A predictability requirement can be explainedby the following example. If a person’s present lifeis a disaster one may be able to look back at inci-dents in that present life and say that it could havebeen predictable that his future would be a disas-ter. But there is nothing in the theory of karmathat allows us to predict anything on a similar em-pirical level. Any predictability in karma is entirelyspeculative and dogmatic. As a result of this, thegreatest criticism that can be made against the con-cept of karma is that it involves blaming the vic-tim.

The second problem with karma as natural lawarises when karma is said to be true because it is“simply an extension” of the natural law of causeand effect. The use of the word “extension” in thissupposition is very questionable. All scientificallyverifiable laws of cause and effect are totally amoralwhereas, good and evil, justice and injustice, fair-ness and unfairness, reward and punishment are allsubjective moral concepts that have no place in thenatural law of cause and effect. Nature is amoral orindifferent to human morality. This might suggestthat karma is little more than a desire by humanbeings for a cosmic support for human morality.If there is any karmic-like law in nature it is that thestrong will be rewarded by survival, and the weakwill be punished by extinction.

See also Karma-vipaka as a long term moraltendency.

Karma as unfinished business. A number ofWestern supporters of rebirth and karma object toany punitive aspect to them. This is generally relatedto an objection to a monotheistic style judgmentalGod and hell. These Westerners, while acceptingthe cause and effect nature of karma, prefer to viewwhat might seem to be punishment as the soul’sown need to expiate the unfinished business of itspast unskillful actions. Karma as unfinished busi-ness, however, does not always imply trying tomake up for past mistakes. It can also refer to try-ing to fulfill a personal goal or social obligation thatone was not able to fulfill in a former life. For ex-ample, according to certain Kabbalists, one of the

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main reasons for rebirth is to gives a person or cou-ple that died childless another chance at fulfillingtheir obligation of parenthood.

.See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Deaths, violent and premature; Kabbalah;Karma, developmental; Karma in the ancientand modern west; Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth.

Karma, attitudinal. This term describes deeplyingrained attitudes and emotions from a past lifewhich are said to manifest themselves in the pres-ent life in some physical manner. For example, aformer strongly held feeling of anger or resentmentmay manifest itself as heart, lung, liver disease, orif one felt constantly weighed-down with problemsin the past it might result in shoulder or back prob-lems in the present.

Karma, bodily. This term covers cases where aperson is born with or soon develops some physi-cal characteristic that can be traced back to a for-mer life. This is said to account for some birthmarks, natal defects, and physical handicaps thatdo not respond to normally successful therapy. Un-fortunately, it also provides an opening for blam-ing the victim.

See also Karma, organic or organismic.

Karma, Buddhist see Anatman; Karma as ab-solute or relative; Heaven, hell, and Buddhistno-soul (Self ).

Karma, classifications of. Karma, from an Indianperspective, has been classified in a number of dif-ferent ways. While the following is the classificationaccording to Buddhism, a very similar classifica-tion can be found in Hinduism. The followingclassifications come from the Pali canon. The firstis sanchita karma, which is unresolved karma accu-mulated from past lives. This can be altered to somedegree, especially through spiritual practices. Thesecond is prarabha karma, which is karma that is in-herited from past lives. This can not be alteredwithin the present life, so it must simply be ac-cepted as it is. The third is agami or kryamanakarma, which is created in the present life and overwhich one has complete control. This must be re-solved in a future life.

A second classification of karma is based onkarma’s particular function. Thus, there is regener-ative (janaka) karma, which conditions the futurebirth; supportive (upattham-bhaka) karma, whichassists or maintains the results of already-existingkarma; counteractive (upapidaka) karma, whichsuppresses or modifies the result of the regenera-tive karma; and destructive (upaghataka) karma,which destroys the force of existing karma and sub-stitutes its own results.

A third classification of karma is according tothe priority of the results. There is serious or heavy(garuka) karma, which produces its results in thepresent life or the next and which can be subdi-vided into positive and negative forms. In the pos-itive form there is highly skillful karma that is as-sociated with very refined mental ecstatic trancesstates (jhanas) and which are considered heavy be-cause they produce results more speedily than or-dinary unrefined mental states. On the negativeside there is the highly unskillful karma that resultsfrom any of the five serious crimes: killing one’smother, killing one’s father, killing a saint (arhat),wounding a Buddha, and creating a schism in themonastic order (sangha).

There is also death-proximate (asanna) karma,which is the action one does at the moment beforedeath, either physically or mentally. In the case ofconsciousness, this is thinking of one’s own previ-ous good or bad actions or having good or badthoughts. It is this karma which is said to deter-mine the conditions of the next birth, if there isotherwise no positive or negative garuka karma. In the absence of either asanna or garuka karma,what determines the conditions of the next birthis habitual (acinna) karma. Finally, in the absenceof acinna karma, the rebirth determining karma isreserved (katatta) karma, which is the unexpendedkarma of a particular being.

While all of the above kinds of karma are asso-ciated with a specific individual some believers, es-pecially Western ones, also acknowledge collectivekarma. This is the idea that karma can affect notonly individuals, but also groups of people. Vari-ous authors have suggested the existence of suchcollective forms as family karma, geographic karma,place or site karma, global (planetary) karma, mar-ital karma; national or state karma, and racialkarma.

It should be carefully noted that while karmaand vipaka are generally thought of as part of amoral law, they technically are not. Karma itself isoften said to make no clear and unambiguous dec-larations as to what is good and/or bad. In fact, inits nature as a so-called impersonal law of causeand effect, it should have no ability to make suchmoral distinctions. It is this morally neutral factorthat makes karma morally relative rather than ab-solute, at least from a Hindu and Buddhist per-spective, although not from a Jain perspective.

See also Alayavijnana; Arguments supportiveof rebirth; Astral body; Buddhist stages of lib-eration; Jainism; Karma as absolute or rela-tive; Karma, delayed; Karma, developmental;Karma, family; Karma, geographic; Karma,global (planetary); Karma, group; Karma, mar-ital; Karma, national or state; Karma, place or

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site; Karma, racial; Karma, retributive; Karma,vocational; Karma with minimal rebirth;Stevenson, Ian.

Karma, collective see Karma, classifications of.

Karma, delayed. This is karma that is not expectedto manifest itself for resolution either in this life orin the very next one. It is thought that since theaccumulation of karma can be very complex anyone rebirth may not be suitable for the resolutionof all of it; therefore, some karma may have to waitseveral lifetimes before it can be suitably resolved.

Karma, developmental. Developmental karma isthat which is thought to exclusively encourage spir-itual grow. If there should be some degree of suf-fering involved in such growth that suffering is notto be considered punishment of the individual; instead, it is a way to give the person the insightthat will help him or her continue to advance spir-itually.

This is a fairly new concept of karma suggestedby those Westerners who reject the standard East-ern idea of retributive karma. One of the majorpoints of developmental karma is the oppositionto any kind of human rebirth (transmigration)into an animal existence

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view;Karma as unfinished business; Karma in the an-cient and modern west; Karma, retributive;Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth; Rebirth, East and West;Roberts, Jane; Soul, collective; Transmigration,lateral.

Karma, family. This is said to apply to groups ofpeople who reincarnate together as families, oftentaking different familiar rolls. For example, a motherin one life may be a wife or daughter in anotherlife, while the former husband may be a son orbrother, etc. It is also believed that it is possiblethat gender role reversals may occur such as a for-mer father being a daughter or sister, etc.

See also Karma, group; Karma, relationship;Rebirth, consanguineous; Rebirth, group; Po-larities; Soul family.

Karma, geographic. This is a collective karma thatis related to a wide geographic area. As such itwould cover an area smaller than a global or plan-etary area, but much larger than an individual placeor site.

Karma, global (planetary). This is the idea that thewhole of humanity builds up a karma that musteventually be resolved.

Karma, group. This is karma that is said to beshared by a group of people such as a family or a

community. It is a form of collective karma, buton a very limited or small scale.

See also Karma, family; Rebirth, group.

Karma in the ancient and modern west. A verymajor, but often forgotten, point in a strong karmicbelief system is that any concurrent belief in another-worldly heaven or hell must not be allowedto weaken the secondary function of karma (sup-port for morality) to such an extent that it negateskarma’s primary function (explaining social in-equities). This is to say that if a time spent in eitherhell or heaven is sufficient to satisfy justice then theinequities of the world would no longer be ex-plained by the deeds of a past life; hence, the pri-mary function of karma would be undermined. Forthis reason, a belief in any other-worldly or interimperiod, hell or heaven becomes an unnecessary, ormerely optional, belief along side a karmic belief.

The fact that there was no strong karmic com-ponent associated with the classical Western con-cept of metempsychosis partially helps to explainthe failure of the Greek (Hellenistic) culture andeven later Western civilization to adopt metempsy-chosis as a major religious belief. This is in spite ofthe widespread acceptance of that belief in Platon-ism and Neoplatonism in pre–Christian and earlyChristian times.

It is true that some of the classical philosophers,such as Plotinus, were experimenting with akarmic-like belief, but it was not until such reli-gions as Manichaeism developed that a fullykarmic eschatology was adopted; however, by thattime Christianity was ahead of all other religions inthe competition for converts.

The absence of a karma concept in the ancientWestern world is not surprising. In fact, the con-cept of karma is not found in most non–Indianinfluenced cultures that otherwise have rebirth es-chatology. Even today, a number of Western sup-porters of reincarnation, such as Ian Stevenson,either reject the karma concept altogether or rejectsat least its retributive aspect. In fact, Stevensonstates that none of his extensive research on rebirthsuggests retributive karma. He believes that at thevery most rebirth might include developmentalkarma.

Another major reason for a lesser acceptance ofthe karma concept in both the ancient and modernWest has been the argument that no single lifecould eliminate all negative karma and since eachfuture life would usually build up its own new neg-ative karma, there is never likely to be a time whenall negative karma could be eliminated. In fact, itis argued that since the standard Eastern goal ofmoksha or nirvana requires liberation from bothnegative and positive karma, such liberation would

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be close to impossible. Obviously, Eastern religionsdo not accept this argument, believing as they dothat it is possible to eliminate all karma.

Finally, both the Platonist and Neo-Platonistsupporters of metempsychosis were blatantly elit-ist in that they taught that salvation (freedom fromrebirth) was only available to an intellectual mi-nority, primarily philosophers.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Buddhism; Caste system; ChristianObjections to Reincarnation and/or Karma;Christianity and reincarnation; Karma; Karmaand faith; Karma and free will; Karma and jus-tice; Karma and rebirth; Karma as absolute orrelative; Karma as natural law; Karma as un-finished business; Karma, Buddhist; Karma, de-velopmental; Logic of physical cause and effect;Natal defects; Parents in the next life; Plato;Plotinus; Priesthood, lack of an organized; Re-birth, qualifications for; Rebirth, East and West;Rebirth in the West; Stevenson, Ian; Theodicy;Unity School of Christianity.

Karma in the Bible? Many reincarnationists whowish to keep some ties to Christianity have soughtto prove that the Judeo-Christian scriptures ac-knowledges reincarnation, at least furtively, and insome cases they believe that the scriptures also ac-knowledges the doctrine of karma.

There is not the slightest doubt that many pas-sages in the both the Old Testament and the NewTestament teach that what a person sows, so shallhe reap, as the following passages demonstrate.Deuteronomy 24:16, “A man shall be put to deathonly for his own sin.” Job 4:8, “This I know, thatthose who plough mischief and sow trouble reapas they have sown.” Psalm 9:16, “Now the Lordmakes himself known. Justice is done: the wickedman is trapped in his own devises.” Psalm 62:12,“Thou dost requite a man for his deeds.” Proverbs17:5, “A man who sneers at the poor insults hisMaker, and he who gloats over another’s ruin willanswer for it.” Proverbs 24:12, “God, who fixes astandard for the heart, will take note. God whowatches you—be sure he will know; he will requiteevery man for what he does.” Jeremiah 17:10, 32:19,“I, the Lord, search the mind and test the heart,requiting man for his conduct, and as his deeds de-serve.” “Thine eyes watch all the ways of men, andthou rewardest each according to his ways and as hisdeeds deserve.” Ezekiel 18:20 & 30, “It is the soulthat sins and no other then that shall die : a sonshall not share a father’s guilt, nor a father his son’s.The righteous man shall reap the fruit of his ownrighteousness, and the wicked man the fruit of hisown wickedness.” “Therefore, Israelites, says theLord God, I will judge every man of you on his

deeds. Turn, turn from your offences, or your in-iquity will be your down fall.” Hosea 8:7 and 10:13,“Israel sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind.”“You have ploughed wickedness into your soil, and the crop is mischief; you have eaten the fruitof treachery.” Obadiah 15, “...you shall be treatedas you have treated others, and your deeds will re-coil on your own head.” In this final Old Testa-ment citation is one example of what has been in-terpreted as a statement of the karmic boomerangeffect.

The sowing and reaping metaphor continues inthe New Testament. Among these is Matthew7:1–2, “Pass no judgment, and you will not bejudged. For as you judge others, so you will your-selves be judged, and whatever measure you dealout to others will be dealt back to you;” Matthew16:27, “For the son of man is to come in the gloryof his father with his angels, and then he will giveeach man the due reward for what he has done;”Romans 2:5–6, “In the rigid obstinacy of yourheart you are laying up for yourself a store of ret-ribution for the day of retribution, when God’sjudgment will be revealed, and He will pay everyman for what he has done;” 2nd Corinthians 5:10,“For we must all have our lives laid open before thetribunal of Christ, where each must receive what isdue to him for his conduct in the body, good orbad;” Galatians 6:7–8, “Make no mistake aboutthis: God is not to be fooled; a man reaps what hesows. If he sows seed in the field of his lower nature,he will reap from it a harvest of corruption, but ifhe sows in the field of the Spirit, the Spirit willbring him a harvest of eternal life;” 1st Peter 1:17,“If you say ‘our Father’ to the One who judges everyman impartially on the record of his deed, you muststand in awe of him while you live out your timeon earth,” Revelation 2:23, “This will teach all thechurches that I am the searcher of men’s hearts andthoughts, and that I will reward each one of youaccording to his deeds,” and Revelation, 22:12,“Yes, I am coming soon, and bringing my recom-pense with me, to requite everyone according tohis deeds!”

It should be noted that the closest a sow and reappair that can be attributed to Jesus is found in theGospel of Matthew 6:26 where Jesus says, “Look atthe birds of the air: they do not sow or reap andstore in barns, yet your heavenly Father feedsthem.” Since these words of Jesus have nothing todo with moral cause and effect they can not supporta karmic teaching.

In the Gospel of Luke 13:2–5 words specificallyattributed to Jesus imply that he did not recognizethe kind of impersonal cause effect that karma im-plies. In reference to a seemingly unprovoked attackby Roman soldiers on Jewish worshippers in Gali-

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lee he says, “Do you imagine that, because theseGalileans suffered this fate, they must have beengreater sinners than anyone else in Galilee? I tellyou they were not.” Following this Jesus gives asecond example of the lack of any relationship ofguilt and tragedy. He says, “Or the eighteen peo-ple who were killed when the tower fell on them atSilaom—do you imagine that they were moreguilty than all the other people living in Jerusalem?I tell you they were not.”

Not a single one of the above passages, unlessextracted and isolated from the surrounding con-text, can be read in any way other than in standardJudeo-Christian future resurrectional terms.

See also Christianity and reincarnation; NewTestament and reincarnation.

Karma, justice, and infancy. A particular West-ern criticism of the concept of karma is that itwould be unjust to make an infant suffer for thesins of a former adult. One response to this West-ern criticism has been that the fruit (vipaka) of thesins (karma) of the previous life may not matureuntil the karmic inheritor has reached adulthood.But if this is the case why do infants suffer at all?

Karma-less rebirth see Karma in the ancientand modern west; Rebirth eschatology.

Karma, marital. This is a form of collective karmathat is built up by a married couple and may cometo fruit (vipaka) during the marriage and/or in a fu-ture life.

See also Karma, family; Karma, classificationsof.

Karma, national or state. As the name implies thisis the karma that citizen of nations collectivelybuild up and with which future citizens must deal.

See also Collective Karma; Karma, geogra-phic; Karma, global (planetary) Karma; RacialKarma.

Karma-nemesis. This is a term used by HelenaBlavatsky to refer to karma as a punishing agent.

Karma, organic or organismic. It has been sug-gested that whatever one did excessively, with one’sbody in a past life, will result in a greatly diminishedcapacity to do the same in the present or some laterlife. For example, if in a past life you were a totalglutton you may be born in this or a future life withsevere digestive problems. If in a certain past lifeyou were obsessed with having sexual intercourse,then in this or a later life you might be either im-potent or frigid.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Karma, bodily; Karmic boomerang ef-fect; Karma, symbolic.

Karma, origins of. The concept of karma, with-out doubt, had its origin in India, or morespecifically, in northern or northwestern India, astwo factors prove. First, it is in India, and thosecultural areas directly influenced by Indian culture,that the idea of karma as a moral element is inex-tricably bond up with the rebirth concepts. Outsideof Indian influenced cultural areas this linkage gen-erally does not exist. Secondly, the word ‘karma’ isof Sanskrit derivation and means ‘action’ and in itsearliest usage referred to the action required to per-form the Vedic sacrifices. As such, in this earliest usekarma had a purely ritual meaning and had noth-ing to do with the belief in rebirth. In fact, theoverwhelming majority of Western scholars,though agreeing that the concept of karma arosedirectly from Vedic thought, find no evidence of arebirth-karma association anywhere in the earliestVedic literature. It is a mostly pro–Hindu minor-ity of scholars who argue for such an early Vedicbased belief in both rebirth and an association of re-birth with karma as a moral principle.

Exactly how rebirth and karma became associatedwith one another will probably never be fullyknown; however, it is possible to speculate that inthe very late Vedic period, as tribal oriented villageunits were brought together into larger governingunits (small kingdoms) social disruption of urban-ization began to occur. With the resulting greatersense of individual alienation social conformitycould no longer be justified on the basis of tribal orfamily ties.

In a tribal system the behavior of the individualis more or less the responsibility of the kinshipgroup. If a member of the tribe commits a crime hisfamily, clan, or even the whole tribe may be heldequally guilty. With the breakdown of such a kinship group, a new, more individualized basis for moral responsibility had to be found. Karmafulfilled this need.

The idea that one’s current misfortune was dueto one’s “own” past mistakes, and that one’s futurecondition depended on one’s present behavior pro-vided such moral responsibility in the new socialmilieu. In other words, the concept of karma wasa socio-politically useful doctrine and it was thisconcept that became the main ideological supportfor India’s prevailing social organization, the castesystem.

Evolution of the karma concept appears to havecome about through two developments. First,rather than good or bad karma being the proper orimproper performance of any one Vedic sacrificeitself, it came to be interpreted as the cumulative ac-tions of a lifetime of performing proper or im-proper sacrifices. Such cumulative karma wouldthen determine whether or not the individual, at

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death, was blessed with the right to join the ances-tors or experience a less desirable fate. Second, thereseems to have been a reinterpretation of the Vedicsacrifice as an internal rather than an external action.This meant that one’s inner actions or deeds be-came the source of one’s success or failure in life. Atfirst, this inner sacrifice concept applied only to theVedic ascetics with their sacrificial-like self-tortur-ing activities. At some point, however, this moremoralized karmic idea apparently merged with theprevailing belief in rebirth. With this merger karmawould come to encompass everyone’s actions,which completed its development as a moral system.

The completion of the karmic concept mostlikely developed in the new urban environment be-cause this is where it was needed the most. Notonly was this environment the place where kinshipties were the weakest, but in the cities the idea ofkarma would have appealed to the rising merchantclass and somewhat later to the governing bureau-crats. Karma, as a pan-ethnic moral ideal, in par-ticular, was useful for those doing business withstrangers. Right and wrong, truthfulness and hon-esty in business transactions and negotiations couldnot depend on the capricious morality of “mygroup” has the right to cheat “yours.” Also, karmaholds that moral value, like a merchant’s wealth,depends on a willingness to work hard for it; it isachieved, not ascribed. Therefore, the merchantwho was ranked low in the caste hierarchy couldregard himself as morally equal even to a Brahmin.The Indian kings similarly found karma a usefulidea for uniting gradually detribalized and ethnicallydiverse people.

While the concept of karma as associated with re-birth, was probably initially looked upon suspi-ciously by the more conservative priestly circles,eventually no group came to benefit from this con-cept more than the Brahmins. Their position at thetop of the social hierarchy came to be totallyjustified by the concept of karma. Indeed, as thecaste system continued to evolve into an increasinglymore socially inflexible and morally questionablesystem it would have needed some morally justi-fiable dogma to support it.

Finally, there can be no doubt that the doctrineof karmic rebirth is one answer to the universalquestions of: Why I am here, what is the purposeof my life, and what happens after death? The be-lief in one’s individual pre-birth karma clearly givesmeaning to suffering in life by explaining that onemust pay for my bad actions committed by me inpast lives. Post-mortem karma also gives meaningin the form of hope that one’s present conditionmay improve in the next life.

See also Bhagavad Gita; Reincarnation, ori-gins of; Upanishads; Vedic Religion.

Karma, parental. In some of the Hindu Puranasthere is a vague reference to the idea that the karmaof parents can affect the karma of the child. Thesame idea is also found in some Tibetan texts.

Karma, place or site. This is the belief that certainplaces such as homes, or even cities, have their ownkarma connected to the actions of their inhabitants.If this is true, then whenever someone is planningon moving from one city or home to another theymight want to study the background or history ofthat new place in relationship to their present placeof residence to judge whether they are making amove to a karmicaly better or worse site.

The most karmicaly charged places would pre-sumably be holy sites; for example, to move toVaranasi, Jerusalem, or Mecca would be a goodkarmic decision because of the amount of holy feel-ings that have, over the centuries, been attached orimprinted in that place.

The logical problem with this “off to a holy land”concept would be that in the case, at least, of a sa-cred place like Jerusalem, which has for centuries ex-perienced sectarian violence of titanic proportions,might not that city have been imprinted also withan immense amount of negative karma. Thus, itmight be impossible to judge whether its holy na-ture is sufficient to counter that negativity.

See also Karma, geographic; Karma, global(planetary); Karma, national or state.

Karma, Prarabdha. This is the residue karma thatan otherwise liberated saint has and which will befully resolved in this life thus not causing any fur-ther rebirth.

See also Jivanmukti.

Karma, primary and secondary functions seeKarma; Karma in the ancient and modern west.

Karma, racial. This term can mean one of twothings. First, that a person born into a particularrace will share the collective karma of that race.Second, that a particular racial group will always,or almost always, have the same set of souls borninto it for some karmic purpose. If just rebirth, asopposed to rebirth and karma, is involved in thissecond situation then it is simply called ethnic rein-carnation. The prominent theosophist James S.Perkins, in his book Experiencing Reincarnation(1977), believed, that for different reasons, Aus-tralian Aborigines, Japanese, and Jews were pre-dominantly racial karmic people.

Although there is no official acceptance of theIndian concept of karma in Hasidic Judaism theredoes seem to be what amounts to the equivalent ofkarma in determining how a Jewish soul will bereborn. Since the 16th century Hasidic mystic IsaacLuria apparently believed that Jews remained Jews

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throughout all reincarnations, this would be a formof racial karma of the second kind.

The Rastafarians have a similar belief that Blackpeople are more or less always reborn as Black peo-ple and since Rastafarianism teaches that the plightof Black people today is due to sins of the distantpast, this also would fall under the first definitionof racial karma of the first kind.

See also Dor deah; Kabbalah; Karma; Metage-netics; Rebirth, ethnic; Rebirth, proximity.

Karma, redemptive. This form of karma is said todevelop between lives and is caused by either a de-cision to make reparations for harmful acts made inthe past or by the deliberate desire to become re-embodied to help others gain redemption.

Karma, relationship. This is karma that is believedto be specifically related to the relationships peoplehave had in the past. It starts in childhood withfamily interaction and continues throughout one’slife. It is said to operate even with the most tenu-ous of such relationships.

See also Judas Syndrome.

Karma, retributive. This refers to karma that, atsome point, will function as a form of punishmentfor past bad and unskillful actions, words, andthoughts. This is part of the boomerang karma ver-sion of justice. If you hurt someone in this life youwill be hurt by someone in another life. Thiskarmic boomerang effect is part of the traditionalEastern view of karmic justice as primarily a puni-tive phenomenon.

Among Western supporters of karma there hasbeen an ongoing argument as to how valid retribu-tive karma is. A minority accepts the standard, verypunitive Eastern view, but the majority of West-ern reincarnationists prefer to view karma as a morecompensatory justice phenomenon. This is whereif you hurt one in this life you will be required bykarma to counter this in a future life, perhaps bysaving or healing another. This is more in keepingwith the Western preference of viewing karma as more of a developmental factor in which any retributive-like aspects of karma are entirely in the service of the moral maturation of the individ-ual.

See also Karma; Karma and justice; Karma,developmental; Karmic boomerang effect; Re-birth, East and West.

Karma, symbolic. This is karma that a person ex-periences in a more symbolic fashion than would bethe case in boomerang karma. For example, if in apast life you purposely ignored the cries for help ofanother then in this or a future life you may expe-rience being deaf and/or a mute. If in a past lifeyou watched another person drown and did not try

to help, then you might be reborn with a debilitat-ing fear of water.

See also Karmic boomerang effect; Karma, or-ganic or organismic.

Karma versus grace. In Christianity there has beena two thousand year old, often quite violent, debateas to whether salvation is entirely dependent onGod’s grace (monergism); or whether human goodworks also contribute to salvation (synergism).

Christianity defines grace as the undeserved giftor favor of God. It is considered undeserved be-cause original sin is said to have so debased humannature that nothing a human being can do cancause him to be seen as worthy in the eyes of God.In the most conservative biblical sense this meansthat no matter how virtuous a person’s life is, orhow many good works he does, he can not con-tribute to his own salvation. Instead, it is onlythrough grace, or rather through faith in the graceof God through Christ, that salvation (eternal life)from sin is possible (John 3:16; 2nd Corinthians5:19, 17:3; Ephesians 2:8–9; Titus 3:5; Jude 21). Infact, this conservative biblical position of justifica-tion by grace alone (sola gratia) is based upon thebelief that all mankind’s virtues and good worksare contaminated by self-centeredness or pride (1stCorinthians 1:30). In other words, the Christiandoes not become perfect so that he may be saved,but is saved so that he can be perfected in hisglorification of Christ.

In the few Christian denominations that hold tothe extreme grace-only view of Paul of Tarsus,such as standard Calvinism, it is claimed that whilesalvation is open only to one who demonstrates avirtuous life, the virtue in that life does not reallyarise from the self-effort of the virtuous person, asit is only an outer sign of the grace that God has im-posed upon that person. This divine impositionthen has divided humanity into a predestined majority that will be eternally damned and a pre-destined minority which will be eternally saved(Romans 8:29–30, 9:12; Ephesians 1:4– 10; 2ndTimothy 1:9– 10). In short, Calvinism precludesthe existence of free-will.

The opposite of this orthodox grace alone viewis called the Pelagian heresy, which minimized therole of salvation by divine grace in order to maxi-mize the role of human effort via good works inthe salvation process. This heresy, despite Paul, haspenetrated almost all present day mainstreamChristian churches to the degree that while grace isthe main vehicle for salvation human good workscount for some worth.

If karma is defined as the actions of a person,and good karma is the virtuous actions of a personthat works towards salvation, it can be seen that

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karma would seem to make the Christian schemeof salvation through grace unnecessary. This is oneof the major reasons that mainstream Christianityrejects the notion of salvation through karma.

A clear distinction between Christian grace andnon–Christian karma is found in their respective at-titudes towards moral perfection. A karma-goodworks view justifies the idea of multiple lives, sinceit is obvious that few, if any, persons can attain tomoral perfection in one life time. The Christiangrace view holds that no such moral perfection isnecessary for salvation because Christ’s atoningsacrifice on the cross completely makes up for thelack of moral perfection of all those who, in faith,accept this atonement. For this reason more thanone life is unnecessary for salvation.

Of course, a number of Christian reincarnation-ists, such as Lynn E. Sparrow in her Reincarnation:Claiming Your Past, Creating Your Future (1988),believe that karma and Christian grace are entirelycompatible. Some Christian reincarnationists evenbelieve that a life with faith in Christ might actu-ally be liberating in that very life, while a failure tohave such faith forces one back into the multiple lifecycle until such faith is eventually acquired.

While the association of divine grace with Chris-tianity is very well known, it is far less well knownthat such grace can be found in certain forms ofBuddhism. In a predominantly non-theistic reli-gion such as Theravada Buddhism no god can in-terfere with karma; hence, grace of any kind wouldseem to be out of the question. On the other hand,Mahayana Buddhism, which is also technicallynon-theistic in that it rejects a supreme creatordeity, is theistic in that it accepts that the great di-vine bodhisattvas can, under certain circum-stances, significantly reduce a devotee’s karma be-cause of the bodhisattva’s own great surplus ofkarmic merit. That surplus is believed to act as akind of unearned saving factor or grace. Of course,such reductions of karma would mainly apply topersonal failures to keep the Buddhist precepts aslong as there was no strong intentionality or desireto break those precepts. This bodhisattva grace, toa great degree, is said to prevent karma from be-coming an absolutely ruthless law of cause and ef-fect.

Of all the forms of Mahayana Buddhism, it isthe Japanese Jodo Shin Shu (True Pure-LandSchool), with its worship of Amida (S: Amitabha)Buddha, that comes the closest to a Christian-like“grace alone” concept. This is because Amida Bud-dha, in the distant past paid for the sins of his past,present, and future devotees. But even here, as inall forms of Buddhism, a doctrine of predestina-tion is regarded as a form of fatalistic determinismand as such must be totally rejected. None of

Amida’s followers have ever been pre-chosen; eachone of those followers must make the minimal ef-fort of asking Amida for salvation.

In the case of Hinduism the grace of the gods canneutralize karma through a devotee’s practice ofbhakti (devotional) yoga. Such karma negating graceis found in all three of the dominant Hindu cults:Shaivism, Shaktism, and Vaishnavism; but it ismost pronounced in the last of these.

There are two main sects of Vaishnavism, theNorthern School (Vatakal or Vadagali) and theSouthern School (Tenkalai or Tengali). Theseschools are also at times referred to respectively asthe path of the monkey (kapi marga) and the pathof the kitten (narjara marga). These animal desig-nations come from the fact that in the northernsect the relationship between God (Vishnu) andhis followers is said to be like that between a babymonkey and its mother. While the baby is depend-ent on its mother for milk and protection, at leastit has the ability to cling to its mother’s back whenshe wants to moves around. In this sense the devo-tee of God (Vishnu) can, and must, make someminimal good karma producing self-effort in orderto receive the grace of the deity.

In the southern sect, the relationship betweenVishnu and his followers is like that between a kit-ten and its mother. Not only must the baby de-pend on the mother for milk and protection, buteven for it to be moved from place to place themother must pick it up in her mouth and carry it.In this sense the devotee of Vishnu is consideredso dependent upon God’s grace that not even themost minimal self-produced good karma could addanything significant to the devotee’s salvation.

See also Bhagavad Gita; Ganges; Jerome, Eu-sebius Hieronymus; Karma and free will; Karmaand God; Karma as absolute or relative; NewTestament and reincarnation; Original sin,Christianity, and reincarnation; Original sinversus karma; Palingenesis; Pilgrimages; Rebirthand moral perfection; Theosis; Unity School ofChristianity; Vaikuntha.

Karma-vipaka as a long term moral tendency.This concept is a response to the various weaknessesof karma-vipaka as a perfect system of reward andpunishment or karma as a natural law. It impliesthat those rebirth factors that developed beneficialmoral character had a greater tendency to be at-tracted to positive rebirth conditions, and those re-birth factors that developed malevolent moral char-acter had a greater tendency to be attracted tonegative rebirth conditions. This would acknowl-edge that mistakes or mismatches were very possi-ble in the short run, but that over many rebirths,or the long run, moral justice would be served.

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Karma as more a rule of chance rather than per-fect efficiency is also more in keeping with what isacknowledged as true of everyday life. People takechances throughout their lives that if they do theright thing they will reap a proper reward, but thesensible and mature person does not demand guar-antees of those rewards before doing what maybring them about.

The argument goes that if people automaticallyfunction in this way now, why is it not logical to as-sume and accept that if there is something called re-birth and karma that the same rules of chance applyto it? To expect some immutable law to pay forbeing virtuous and punish for being less so is to bejust as immature as the person who says I will notbother to try to invest in working for the good lifeunless someone can guarantee it.

A view of karma-vipaka as long term chance al-lows for plenty of room to accept that in any onelifetime an individual is not necessarily responsiblefor their misfortune. This then avoids the morallyunacceptable outcome of blaming of the victim.

See also Karma and the moral structure of theuniverse.

Karma, vocational. This form of karma-vipakamanifests itself when people enter into vocationsin which they seem to need little or no training,and which seems completely natural to them. Thisis said to indicate that they gained their training ina previous life.

See also Anamnesis; Child prodigies or ge-niuses.

Karma with and without rebirth. While the con-cept of karma has traditionally been closely associ-ated with the concept of rebirth, this association isnot an absolute requirement since there are fourways of viewing karma. First, there is “present col-lective” karma, which means that presently we areall collectively responsible for the good and ill in this world. Second, there is “present individual”karma, which means that a persons past actions inthis very life have resulted in their present condi-tion. Third, there is “non-present (past/future) col-lective” karma, which means that we are but thecontinuation of all the generations that have livedbefore us and those in the future will be our con-tinuations. In this case, we must take responsibil-ity for the past just as the future must take respon-sibility for the present. Fourth, there is “past/futureindividual” karma, which means that each of ushas been, is, and will be an “isolated entity” thatalone is responsible for the good and ill in all ourmultiple lives. Only the last of these requires an in-dividual rebirth, and in turn, it alone blames thesuffering, the poor, and the powerless for their owncondition while granting the healthy, the rich, and

the powerful all respects. Standard Hindu, Jain,and Buddhist sacred texts more or less ignore allbut the fourth view of karma.

Karma with minimal rebirth. This is the idea thatwhat is truly reborn is karma-vipaka itself. Thisidea has been proposed by some Buddhists as a wayof resolving the apparent contradiction of rebirthwithout a soul (anatman). Western critics of thisproposal have often seen it as a semantic trick toavoid annihilationism.

See also Annihilationism, Buddhist view;Atman; Heaven, hell, and Buddhist no-soul(Self ); Interim period; Karma and faith; Karmaand rebirth; Rebirth in Buddhism; Rebirth,qualifications for; Schopenhauer, Arthur.

Karma yoga. This is the yoga of social duty. It is firstmentioned in the Bhagavad Gita. In that text thegod Krishna teaches that any person who performshis caste obligations, be it that of a high caste or ofa low caste, with complete detachment (vairagya)will acquire merit sufficient to end the cycle of re-birth and enable the performer to attain liberation.Unfortunately this teaching has been convenientlyused justify the inequities of the caste system.

See also Bhakti Yoga; Return and serve argu-ment for reincarnation.

Karmic astrology. This is astrology specifically ap-plied to rebirth and past life karma.

See also Astrology and rebirth.

Karmic bankbook. This metaphor is used to sug-gest that release from the cycle of rebirth and re-death (closing one’s account) will not occur untilevery bit of one’s karmic credits and debits havebeen balanced. This is more a Western view thanan Eastern one in that in the latter all karma, goodand bad, must be dissolved before release from thecycle of birth and death.

Karmic boomerang effect. It is assumed that thatkarma-vipaka (deed and its fruit) function as the law of what one sows, one will reap. In otherwords, it is a form of moral reciprocity or retribu-tive justice which is said to act in the manner of aboomerang. If one throws evil at another personin this life the evil will circle around and hit thethrower either in the same life, but more often inthe next life. The question that must be asked iswhy this is necessarily so? It can not be presumedthat karma-vipaka is just as people want it to be,such that in the end bad people get their deservedpunishment and that good people get their de-served reward. Without having any memory of pastlives how can anyone be sure that karma-vipakadoes not really function so that a person who harmsothers builds up the kind of karma-vipaka behav-

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ioral habit that forces him to continue to harm oth-ers indefinitely. Likewise, the person who is vic-timized in one life may develop a karma-vipaka be-havioral habit that attracts more victimization insucceeding lives. This is, in fact, a not uncommonphenomenon in society where an abusive husbandand father produces a son who will become an abu-sive husband and father. Likewise, some womenare repeatedly attracted to relationships in whichthey are abused and victimized. In fact, someclaimed past life scenarios seem to suggest theworking of just such a repetition compulsion.

See also Karma and justice; Karma in theBible?; Karma, organic or organismic; Karma,retributive.

Karmic carrier see Buddhism, folk; Gand-harva; Interim period; Karma with minimal re-birth; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Karmic carryover. This is the concept that the car-rying over of an unwanted and unhealthy memoryfrom a past life to the present-life can greatly inter-fere with that present life. The memory of a certaintrauma, in particular, could be such a carryover.

See also Affect bridge; Blocked regression.

Karmic diseases ( Japanese: Gobyo). Until the ad-vent of modern medicine, throughout those partsof Asia where rebirth was the standard belief it wasalways assumed that some illnesses or diseases aredue to a person’s past bad karma. In Japan this wasan especially widespread belief when faced with adifficult to cure (nanbyo) diseases. In the most pop-ular Buddhist text, the Lotus Sutra, there are passagesthat equate illness, especially leprosy, with havingspoken offensively against that sutra in a past life.In such presumed karmic disease cases, the serv-ices of a Buddhist priest were sought rather thanthose of a doctor.

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Psychosomatic illnesses.

Karmic eschatology. This term is in contrast tothe simpler rebirth eschatology. Whereas karmadepends on some sort of rebirth, rebirth does notdepend on karma. In karmic eschatology rebirthis understood primarily as merely a vehicle forkarmic continuation. This is to say that any unde-sirable condition in one’s present life is probably apunishment for past wrong actions.

Outside of Indian and late ancient Greek cul-tures rebirth had little to do with moral or ethicalbehavior. Instead, it was mainly a process that al-lowed ancestors to be repeatedly reborn into thesame family. It was only in more sophisticated ur-banized cultures that an ethical component wasadded to rebirth. While the Greeks never devel-oped a specific word for such ethicalization the In-

dians did, and that word was karma. Once rebirthcame to be seen as the result of individual moralbehavior, rebirth as a recycling of ancestral soulswas greatly weakened. This was obvious since thenew born in a family would possess some soul thatneeded that particular family situation for its pun-ishment or reward. A major psychosocial result ofthis was that a person was no longer just part of afamily collective personality. Every person was nowa separate individual, morally responsible only forhim or her self, who now was in need of salvation,unlike in simple rebirth eschatology.

See also Heaven; Hell; Karma and faith;Karma and justice; Karma and rebirth; Karmain the ancient and modern west; Karma, originsof ; Karma with minimal rebirth; Priesthood,lack of an organized; Rebirth, consanguineous;Rebirth, proximity.

Karmic romances. These are stories that originatedin the late Victorian Era in which the main char-acters were reincarnated either in search of theirsoul mate and/or to atone for some sin commit-ted in a past life. In these stories the most popularsources for reincarnated souls were the lost conti-nent of Atlantis and ancient Egypt. Among themost popular writers of this genre were HenryRider Haggard (1856–1925), Marie Corelli (1855–1924), Edwin Lester Arnold (1857– 1935), and morerecently Katherine Kerr (1944–). The three-vol-ume novel Transmigration, by Mortimer Collins,published about 1874, is probably the oldest ofthese romances.

In the section on reincarnation in the book Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre (2005), bySarah L. Johnson, the author suggests that thereare far fewer novels of reincarnation featuring aman with past life experiences than there are thosefeaturing a woman with past life experiences.

See also Hollywood and reincarnation.

Karmic script. This is the term for a karmic pat-tern that is said to cover several embodiments. Thiscan manifest as bodily karma, vocational karma,and karmic ties. It is sometimes referred to askarmic themes.

See also Karma, bodily; Karma, vocational.

Karmic seeds (Skt. Bija). This is a term used by theVijnanavada (Consciousness only) School of Bud-dhism to try to describe the way that karma wasstored in the universal mind, or consciousness(alayavijnana), and which eventually gives rise tothe entire phenomenal world. One of the reasons forthe development of this school was to try to ex-plain how rebirth could occur without a soul (self )or anatman.

See also Manas.

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Karmic ties. These are believed to develop whentwo or more persons in the same life-time have anintense relationship that requires some sort of clo-sure or resolution, but which does not take place be-fore the death of one or more of the persons. Thisthen requires that those persons in another lifetimere-establish a relationship of some kind to resolvethe issue. It is further believed that the roles in theearlier life may be reversed in the later one.

See also Chinese religion and reincarnation;Karma, family; Rebirth, group; Soul groups.

Katsugoro case. This case is cited in the Gleaningsin Buddha Fields (1897) by Lafcadio Hearn whostates that the story is a translation of a Japanesedocument.

According to the story, Katsugoro was a boy bornin 1815 who, at about the age of seven, asked hiselder sister if she could remember where she camefrom before her present birth. Thinking the ques-tion silly, she asked him if he could remember any-thing before he was born. He said that he couldand that his name use to be Tozo and that he wasthe son of a man from another village. He said thatwhen he had been five years old his former fatherhad died and that he himself had died of smallpoxat the age of six. After relating all this, Katsugoroasked to be taken to his former home to visit thetomb of his former father, which his family agreedto do. When he arrived there it was determinedthat what Katsugoro had said was correct and that,in fact, the child Tozo had been born in 1805 andhad died thirteen years before in 1810 at the age ofsix. (Hearn states that the year of birth of a Japa-nese child is counted as one year of his age.)

This case is of interest in that the Japanese, atleast since the 17th century, have held to the Bud-dhist belief in rebirth only in a very nominal fash-ion and certainly have had no expectations thatsomeone might actually remember a past life.However, since there was no objective (scientific-like) investigation of this case its usefulness in sup-porting any reincarnation theory is extremely weak.

See also Children remembering past lives; Pos-session; Shanti Devi case.

Kelipoth see Qlippoth.

Kelsey, Denys (1917–2004). This British psychia-trist could be considered the founder of modernpast life therapy. He began his interest in this inthe 1950s, well before there was any real interest init such therapy in America. Kelsey co-authoredwith his wife, the psychic Joan Grant, Many Life-times. London: Gollancz, 1968. Kelsey’s book Nowand Then: Reincarnation, Psychiatry and Daily Lifewas published posthumously in 2007 by TrencavelPress, Folkstone, Kent.

Kennedy, John F. (1917– 1963). There are an ex-traordinary number of shared personal traits thatPresident Kennedy shared with President AbrahamLincoln which included familiar, spousal, career, as-sassination, funeral, and Vice-Presidential choices.These shared traits have convinced many peoplethat Kennedy was the reincarnation of Lincoln.What is not explained by those so convinced is whysuch traits and events in Kennedy’s life shouldmimic those of Lincoln because of reincarnation.Very few other lives that are thought to share thesame soul show such synchronicity.

Ketamine see Body-brain (mind) dependency;Moore, Marcia.

Khepra (Khepera, Khepri, Kheper, or Khefer).This is the Egyptian scarab god which Theosophytries to assign the role as the presiding deity overreincarnation. Khepra is the scarab or dung beetlewhich rolls before it a ball of dung in which to layits eggs. Ancient Egyptians believed a divine versionof Khepra brought the sun god, Ra (Re), out fromthe underworld each morning and rolled him acrossthe sky. As such the scarab beetle was associatedwith the daily rebirth of the sun. Also, because ofthis sun association beetle amulets were regardedas protectors against evil and placed in the wrap-pings of mummies to ensure the latter’s safety aswell as to guarantee a favorable judgment in theHall of Osiris. None of this, however, was ever as-sociated with the reincarnation of individuals sinceimmortality in ancient Egypt meant continued lifein the realm of Osiris.

Khurramiyya. According to the Arabic heresiog-rapher Al-Shahrastani, this little known Iranian,largely Kurdish, gnostic religious group believed inreincarnation (tanasukh).

One branch of this group was situated in Azer-baijan while another was in southern Kurdistan.The latter was involved in an uprising, which wasfinally put down under the Abbasid caliph Mu-tasim in AD 833. The Khurrami were also knownfor their revolutionary practice of communal own-ership of all properties and means of economic pro-duction and lack of social distinctions.

See also Cult of Angels; Gnosticism; Hashi-miyya; Islam; Kanthaeans; Rawandiyah.

Kingsford, Anna Bonus (1846– 1888). This re-markable feminist not only wrote her first book at the age of thirteen but was later to be the firstwoman to become a medical doctor in GreatBritain. While seeking for higher truth she encoun-tered Spiritualism in 1867 and, despite being mar-ried to an Anglican clergyman, she converted toRoman Catholicism in 1870. Sometime between1875 and 1878 she began to have a series of what she

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called “received illuminations,” which occurredchiefly during sleep and which were possiblyinfluenced by her reported use of nitrous oxide, themost popular consciousness-expanding drug of thetime. These illuminations formed the basis of hermany writings.

Kingsford believed that truth was not confinedto any one religion. This can be seen in her worksthat constitute a synthesis of the sacred mysteries ofthe Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews (Kabbalists), andChristians. Perhaps her most famous work is ThePerfect Way, or the Finding of Christ (London:Watkins, 1882). This was republished after herdeath in a more fragmentary and yet personal formunder the title Clothed with the Sun: Being the Illu-minations of Anna (Bonus) Kingsford (London:George Redway, 1889).

The title of this second work is presumably takenfrom the Revelation of John 12:1–2, which reads,“Next appeared a great portent in heaven, a womanclothed in the sun, beneath her feet the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Clothedwith the Sun supports the belief in reincarnation(in obvious disregard of her Catholicism) and inchapter XXXIV there is a recording of an illu-mination regarding the previous lives of Jesus. Inthis illumination Jesus was said to have acknowl-edged that womanhood is superior in form to man-hood and that he himself had a former life as awoman. When asked why he came the last time inthe inferior form of a man he stated that he was aman only outwardly and that actually he was awoman in all but body. This superficial appearancehe said was due to the necessities of that particulartime.

The standard theological understanding of “thewoman clothed with the sun” is that she representsthe 12 tribes of Israel, as made clear by the 12 starsin the her crown, so how this could be interpretedas part of a belief in reincarnation requires a certainleap beyond logic.

Kingsford was such an impressive figure that, al-though technically not a member of the Theosoph-ical Society, she became the President of its LondonLodge in 1883 at the personal request of HelenaBlavatsky. After finding the direction of the Soci-ety moving more towards Eastern thought, Kings-ford co-founded the Hermetic Society, which wasmore oriented towards the esoteric Christian tradi-tions. Some of this may have been due to theinfluence of the writings of the rather infamousmagus Eliphas Zahed Levi. Due to her death froma lung disease at age 42 Kingsford did not live to seethat her works would serve as a major inspirationfor the formation of the famous occult society, theHermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded inthe same year as her death.

Kingsford was also a strong advocate for vegetar-ianism and an ardent anti-vivisectionist.

See also Hermetic philosophy; Steiner, Ru-dolf; Theosophy; Woman.

Kipling, Rudyard (1865– 1936). This famousBritish author wrote a short story entitled TheFinest Story in the World (1899), in which the maincharacter can remember a series of past lives or, asKipling says, a case of true metempsychosis.

Kiramu-l-katibin (Arabic: Guardians and NobleScribes). These are two angels mentioned in theQuran (Sura 82:10– 11). The one on the right ofeach deceased person contemplates and dictates tothe one on the left all the good and evil deeds of aperson until the record is finally given to the angelof death (Azra-il or Izra-il). The Muslim daily clos-ing prayer (salat) acknowledges the presence ofthese angels along with the acceptance that every-one has only one pre–Judgment Day life.

See also Akashic Record, Islam; Lords ofKarma.

Kline, Milton V see Multiple personalities;Bridey Murphy case.

Koans see Mahayana Buddhist rebirth texts;Rebirth in Zen Buddhism.

Koran see Quran.

Koresh, David (1959–93). Born Vernon WayneHowell, Howell became a member, and laterleader, of the Branch Davidian Seventh-Day Ad-ventist religious cult in Waco, Texas. In 1990 How-ell legally changed his name to David Koresh,partly because he became convinced that he wasthe reincarnation of both King David and KingCyrus of Persia and that he had been appointed byGod to rebuild the Temple and destroy Babylon. Inother words, Koresh claimed to be the Messiah.The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearmslearned that the Branch Davidians had failed topay taxes on a hoard of machine guns that theypossessed and fearing another Jonestown incident,mounted the now-infamous raid on the MountCarmel complex outside of Waco in February 1993.This resulted in a 51-day siege, and ended in thedeath of numerous Branch members and govern-ment agents.

See also Adam; Frank, Jacob; Heaven’s Gate;Kabbalah; Solar Temple, Order of the.

Koryaks. This tribal and shamanic people of the fareastern part of Siberia, including the Kamchatkapeninsula, believe that every person is the reincar-nation of one of his or her ancestors and that a new-born must be given his or her former name. To di-vine just who the ancestor is a stone is placed in a

153 Koryaks

leather pouch which is suspended from a small tri-pod. The eldest family member pronounces namesof deceased ancestors in succession until the stoneshakes at the sound of a particular name. It is thisname that is then given to the newborn.

See also Chukchi; Eskimo; Lapps (Saami); Re-birth, consanguineous; Yukaghir.

Kosha (sheath or covering). In the Vedanta Schoolof Hinduism this designates the layers or bodiesthat surround the personality-less atman andhence make up the human personality. There arefive of these and they range from the most outerand most material to the most inner and most spir-itual in nature. The first of these is the anna-maya(food-made sheath) or the physical body (sthulasharia). The second is the prana-maya (breath, life-force, vital or subtle-made sheath) which gives basicanimation to the body and mind; and the body willremain alive only as long as this kosha remains withit. The third sheath is the mano-maya (mind-made)which functions as the receiver of all sensory im-pressions. The fourth is the vijnana-maya (con-sciousness-made) sheath which supplies intelli-gence, discrimination, and will to a person. Thelast is the ananda-maya (bliss-made) sheath whichis responsible for the blissful experience of unionwith God while the person is still embodied. Itshould be noted that sometimes only three sheath(sharias) are said to surround the atman. Fromouter to inner these are the physical (sthula) sharia,the subtle (suksma) sharia, and the causal (karana)sharia.

All these kosha must dissolve before the soul(atman) can be re-absorbed into Brahman. Thesekosha are described in the Taittiriya-Upanishad.The second, third, and fourth kosha are also col-lectively called the linga-sharia.

See also Causal body; Individuality and re-birth; Maya; Monism; Personality versus indi-viduality; Soul.

Krishna, the God see Aetherius Society; Ah-madiyya; Babbitt, Elwood; Besant, Annie; Bha-gavad Gita; Brahman; International Society forKrishna Consciousness; Jesus; Karma yoga;Steiner, Rudolf.

Kshitigarbha (S: Earth-womb) Bodhisattva. Thisis the name of one of the most important bod-hisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, particularly in East Asia. In China he is known as Ti-ts’ang(WG), and in Japan as Jizo. In his Japanese form,as an extension of his function as the protector oftravelers, Jizo is said to travel by himself to the un-derworld, Jigoku, to rescue the souls of aborted fe-tuses.

See also Emma-o.

Kubitschek, Juscelino (1902– 1976). This formerpresident of Brazil (1956– 1961) instituted thebuilding of the new capital of the country, Brasilia,in 1956. According to some Brazilians he was a rein-carnation of the 14th century BCE Egyptian pharaohAkhenaton and Brasilia was viewed by them as themodern version of the new capital (Amarna) builtby that pharaoh.

Besides both men being innovative leaders andbuilders of new capitals, what is said to have linkedthese two is the fact that both died 16 years afterinaugurating their cities, both cities are know fortheir pyramidal or triangular buildings; and Bra-silia is laid-out in the form of a flying ibis-like bird,the ibis being a sacred bird in Egypt. This belief inthe Kubitschek-Akhenaton link is further encour-aged by the fact that Brasilia, from the start, be-came the New Age and occult center for the coun-try.

See also Afro-American religions; Egypt;Kardecismo; Umbanda.

Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth (1926–2004). This well-known psychiatrist began the serious study of theend stages of life and inspired the hospice move-ment around the world. Her most famous book,On Death and Dying (1969), identified the fivestages of the average dying experience: denial,anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Dr. Kubler-Ross eventually came to believe thatout-of-the-body experiences and near-death-ex-periences proved post-mortem existence and thattravel in the astral body proved reincarnation.Kubler-Ross was, however, very critical about theconcept of karma, believing that everyone is rebornwith a clean slate. Kubler-Ross also came to ac-knowledge the channeling of some spirit guides.Two of Kubler-Ross’ books that specifically dealwith post-mortem survival are On Life After Death(1991) and Death is of Vital Importance: On Life,Death and Life After Death (1995).

See also Karma as unfinished business; Karma,developmental.

Kulkulcan. This is the Yucatec Mayan name forthe original Toltec-Aztec (central Mexican) culturalhero god Quetzal-coatl, the Feathered-Serpent.This same deity is called Gukumatz in GuatemalanMayan. Kulkulcan was associated with the planetVenus as the morning star, while his alter-ego, ortwin, Xolotl, patron of magicians, was identifiedwith Venus as the evening star.

Some sources state that among the ancientMayan people this cultural hero was the patrondeity of the afterlife, but whether this was of a newlife in the spirit world or reincarnation into thisworld is open to debate.

See also Aztecs; Lucifer.

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Kuthumi, Master see Church Universal and Tri-umphant; Dhyani Chohans; Pythagoras; Sin-nett, Alfred Percy

Kwakiutl. According to this Northwest Coast In-dian culture when people die they must be rebornfirst as animals, at least until their former humanbody is fully decomposed, and only then is the soulfree to be reborn as a human being. This alternat-ing life transmigration process is not the case ifthe person is unfortunate enough to have died atsea. In this case the soul belongs to the animals, es-pecially the sea otters, and can never return to thehuman world. The Kwakiutl also believe the ani-mal into which a soul will be reborn depends partlyon the occupation of a person. For example, a seahunter becomes a killer whale and a land hunterbecomes a wolf. One can also be reborn as thetotem animal of one’s clan. Twins, it seems, are al-ways reborn as salmon and, like shamans, have su-pernatural powers which include remembrance oftheir past life.

See also American Indians.

Kyklos Genesion (Cycle of Becoming). This is theancient Greek term for the repeated cycle of birthand death (metempsychosis).

See also Greeks and reincarnation; Orphism;Pneumatikoi; Samsara.

Lactantius, Lucius Caelius Firmianus (about250–325). This Christian Father rejected the Py-thagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, in his Di-vine Institutes, as unchristian.

See also Arnobius the Elder; Christian fatherscritical of reincarnation.

Ladder. Coming down and going up a ladder is ametaphor for death and rebirth.

See also Genesis; Planetary descent and ascentof the soul; Seven rungs of the heavenly ladder.

Lama [Tibetan: bla-ma] see Avalokiteshvara;Avatar; Dalai Lama; Lhamoi Latso Oracle;Panchen Lama; Possession; Tulku; VajrayanaBuddhism.

Language inconsistency. It has been suggestedthat a person who recalls a past life with a lin-guistic environment different from the present oneshould be fluent in the language of that former environment if the recall is genuine. This fluencyshould be independent of the subject ever havinglearned the former language in the present life. Sofar no such fluency has been proven for any subject.In every case studied there remains some suspicionthat any foreign language fluency has been learnedthrough normal channels during the present life.

One fairly consistent linguistic factor has been

noticed in subjects who give evidence of languagesskills from their past lives. There is very minimalverb usage in their utterances. This is undoubtedlybecause verbs and their conjugations are the mostdifficult elements of a language to learn or to falsify.It is far easier to unconsciously acquire and remem-ber nouns and noun phrases and this is what mostunfamiliar past life language utterances involve.

One response by pro-reincarnationists to this isthat nouns are also the first elements of languagelearned by an infant, which means the most deeplyencoded on the mind. Following the principle of“first learned last forgotten” it would be logical thata remembrance of nouns would be greater than aremembrance of other linguistic forms. Anotherpro-reincarnationist response to past life languageskills is that recalled memory involves mental im-agery more than verbal associations; therefore, alack of linguistic consistency may not be proof ofa pseudo-recall.

Only a few individuals have explored the issue ofreincarnational language recall, one of whom isThorwald Dethlefsen, the director of the Instituteof Extraordinary Psychology in Munich. His re-search has been published in his books Voices fromOther Lives: Reincarnation as a Source of Healing(1977) and The Challenge of Fate (1979). There isalso the work by Ian Stevenson, Unlearned Lan-guages: New Studies in Xenoglossy (1984).

See also Muller, Catherine Elise; Rebirth, cri-teria for proof of; Rosemary case; Xenoglossy.

Lapps (Saami). These people of northern Scandi-navia have been Christianized to one degree or an-other for several centuries which makes it difficultto know what their original belief system entailed.However, according to Frazer (Golden Bough),when a pregnant Saami woman was near the timeof delivery the mother would have a dream of a de-ceased ancestor or other relative who was to be re-born as her baby and whose name the child shouldreceive. If the woman did not have the appropriatedream the child’s father or other relatives wouldmake the necessary determination by consulting ashaman for divination. Also, one custom reportedamong some Saami entailed the use of an idol orimage which represented a departed person and wasevidently looked upon as that person’s second self.As a receptacle for that person’s soul it could helpto render the person’s rebirth in the future possible.

See also Old Norse.

Last judgment see Islam; Judgment of theDead; Nafs and Ruh; Rebirth and the scientifictheory of biological evolution; Sikhism.

Last thought. Some reincarnationists believe thatthe very last thought one has just before the moment

155 Last

of death is a major factor in determining the natureof one’s next life. However, other reincarnationistschallenge this idea on the basis that a whole life cannot be summed up in one last thought. Moreover,what if a person has had an exemplary life and yet,due to the trauma of dying has a less than exemplarylast thought? If the last thought proponents areright then the negative karma resulting from thatlast thought could make a mockery out of the per-son’s entire life.

See also Bardo; Death trauma.

Last Word: Therapies, Inc. This California basedorganization was formerly the Association for PastLife Research and Therapies.

See also Associations and organizations.

Law of parsimony see Akashic Record; Rebirth,alternative explanations to.

Layela or Laila[h]. This is the night-angel who,according to the Zohar, a major Kabbalic text, isthe angel appointed to guard souls at the time oftheir rebirth.

See also Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Kab-balah.

Lazaris. This is the name of an entity that is saidhave been first channeled through Jach Pursel in1974. This entity, rather than being human-like,described itself as a group being that exists in an-other dimension. According to Lazaris there are nopast or future-lives because what we think are pastand future lives exist simultaneously with our so-called present life. In fact, some of these simulta-neous lives even seem to overlap in time. For exam-ple, in a so-called present life one believes he thathe was born in 1960, but then there may be an-other one of his lives in which he believes he did notdied until 1980. The conflict that is perceived hereis only the result of my having been conditionedto think of time in an exclusively linear manner.

The name Lazaris is not to be confused with thebiblical Lazarus, the man whom Jesus is said tohave raised (revivified, not resurrected) from thedead after four days (John 11:41–44).

See also Channeling; Equinox; Franklin, Ben-jamin (2); Grant, Joan Marshall; Group soul;Hilarion; Mafu; Michael (2); Ouspensky, PyotrD; Parallel lives; Plurality of existences; Ramtha;Rebirth, simultaneous; Ryerson, Kevin; Satya;Seth; Torah (2); Wilcock, David.

Leadbeater, Charles Webster (1847– 1934). At onetime a curate in the Church of England, Leadbeaterlater joined the Theosophical Society (1884) andbecame one of its leaders after the death of HelenaBlavatsky. He is perhaps best known from his ATextbook of Theosophy (1912). Along with Annie

Besant he supported the candidacy of Krishna-murti as the reincarnation of Krishna and Christ,and hence, as the prophesized future Buddha(Maitreya) and the returning Messiah. After leav-ing the leadership of the Theosophical Society toAnnie Besant, Leadbeater went on to help estab-lish the Liberal Catholic Church, Province of theUnited States. Both as co-author, with Besant,and independently, Leadbeater published a numberof works on reincarnation published by the Theo-sophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras inIndia.

See also Astral plane; Etheric body; Mentalplane; Theosophy.

Leading question. This is any question that en-courages a response that the questioner desires. Inany investigation of rebirth claims, not only mustthe investigator avoid leading questions, but hemust ascertain whether such questions were askedof the person by earlier questioners. Most reportedclaims of past life memories have, to one degree oranother, been either contaminated by, or suspectedof, contamination by such questions.

In the case of hypnotic age regression a closelybound issue to leading questions is the factor oftransferential relationship which, like the relation-ship between patient and psychiatrist, tends tocause the hypnotic subject to fall in line with the ex-pectations of the hypnotist.

The most blatant form of leading questions iswhen a hypnotist chooses a time and place, such asParis in 1905, and then instructs the hypnotizedsubject to recall a past life there and then. The sub-ject will generally accommodate the hypnotist by“recalling” a life to suite that place and time evenif the subject knows nothing about the place andperiod. In other words, the subject will employwhatever material he can image that might be seemto be appropriate for Paris in 1905.

See also Artificial rebirth; Hypnosis; Proof forand against reincarnation argument.

Leek, Sybil (1917– 1982). This well known authorand media celebrity was foremost associated withastrology and promotion of the Wicca movementin both England and the United States. Guided bythe spirit of Helena Blavatsky, as she believed,Leek wrote and lectured extensively about reincar-nation. Her main book on the subject was Rein-carnation: The Second Chance (1974).

See also Astrology and rebirth.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von (1646– 1716).This famous German philosopher and mathemati-cian, in his Philosophische Schriften, offered a veryoften repeated quote concerning reincarnation,namely “Of what use would it be to you, sir, to be-

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come king of China, on condition that you forgotwhat you have been? Would it not be the same asif God, at the same time he destroyed you, createda king in China?” Despite this statement attemptshave been made to associate Leibniz’s theory ofeternal monads (souls) with a belief in reincarna-tion.

Leland, Charles Godfrey (1824– 1903). ThisAmerican folklorist and occultist claimed to havediscovered the survival in Italy of a pagan cult thatstill worshipped the goddess Diana. According toLeland one of the witches (stregha) of the cult thathe befriended gave him a copy of their cult book,which he published in 1899 under the name Ara-dia, the Gospel of the Witches. This book became aprimary source for the later Wicca tradition. It wasin an earlier book by this author, Etruscan RomanRemains in Popular Tradition (1892), in which hedetailed an Italian witch family tradition in whichone generation of male and female witches wouldbe later reborn among their own biological descen-dents.

See also Rebirth, consanguineous.

Lemuria see Aetherius Society; Lost Conti-nent(s); Phylos the Tibetan; Ramtha; UnariusAcademy of Science.

Lemurian Fellowship. The Fellowship wasfounded in 1936 by Dr. Robert D. Stelle, whoclaimed to be operating under the direction andguidance of the Lemurian Brotherhood, one of theoriginal mystery schools. According to the fellow-ship, the Great Being, Christ, in order to help hu-manity recognize its true purpose, first appearedto humanity as Melchizedek on the lost continentof Mu (Lemuria). Christ appeared for a second timeas Poseidonis, many thousands of years later on At-lantis, again as a guide to humanity. The Fellow-ship, in its dedication to the teachings of Christ,seeks to build a nucleus of the Kingdom of God(the New Order) on earth, which can be facilitatedby the spiritual progress of humanity through manyreincarnations. The fellowship was first formed inChicago, but established its permanent headquar-ters in Ramona, California, in 1941.

See also Stelle Group.

Lenz, Frederick (1950– 1998). In 1985 this disci-ple of Sri Chinmoy took on the title Zen MasterRama (incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu) andclaimed to teach Tantric Zen. The fact that up untilthat point there had never been such a tradition ei-ther in Zen or in Tantrism was of little concern toRama since he further claimed to have discoveredthis teaching by himself. This self-discovered“Tantric path” apparently allowed him to justifyhis right to sexually exploit a number of his female

students. Lenz died from drowning, while appar-ently under the influence of a drug overdose.

For someone who claimed to have been a mas-ter of “Eastern Thought” Lenz had a surprisingmisunderstanding of Buddhism and, to a lesser degree, of Hinduism. For example, on page 83 ofhis book Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation(1979) he states, “There is very little difference be-tween the Buddhist and Hindu versions of thedeath and rebirth process we call reincarnation.”On page 74 he states, “The Hindus and Buddhistsbelieve that when the soul is first created it is notfully developed.” On page 106 he again implies thatBuddhists believe in a soul and the goes on to implythat Buddhists believe in a creator God. As notedin many instances in this encyclopedia there aregreat differences between the Hindu and Buddhistnotions of death and rebirth and Buddhists cer-tainly do not believe in either a soul or in a creatorGod. On page 107 Lenz writes that Hindus believethat God personally interviews each soul before al-lowing it to reincarnate. This ignores the standardHindu belief in the totally impersonal workings ofkarma. On page 114 Lenz continues with his mis-information by stating that the Hindu and Bud-dhist theories of how karma operates are basicallythe same. This is followed up on page 116 with theabsurd statement that Hindus and Buddhists believethat there is no such thing as evil. Finally, on page124 Lenz makes the illogical statement that the pur-pose of karmic retribution is not to make the indi-vidual suffer but to teach him. In saying this hecompletely ignores the question of how karma canteach anyone when the overwhelming majority ofeven the strongest believers in karma and rebirthhave no remembrance of their so-called past lifemistakes from which to learn.

In Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation Lenzstates, on page 19, that he did not remember any ofhis own past lives, yet in his later book, The Last In-carnation (1983) he detailed several of these lives.

See also Fraud.

Leo, Alan (1870– 1917). Leo was an early 20th cen-tury astrologer, whose original name was WilliamFrederick Allan and who took the name Leo fromhis birth sign. Leo joined the Theosophical Societyin 1890 and founded the Astrological Lodge of thatSociety in 1915. Leo was one of a handful of personswho incorporated rebirth, karma, and Jungian psy-chology into his astrology.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Collin, Rod-ney; Mann, Tad; Theosophy.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729– 1781). ThisGerman man of letters, in the final chapter of his1780 Erziechung des Menschengeschlechts (Educationof the Human Race) initiated a public debate on

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reincarnation. However, while supporting the con-cept of lateral transmigration he rejected regressivetransmigration.

See also Transmigration, lateral; Transmigra-tion, regressive.

Lethe (Greek: Oblivion). According to Greek andLatin poets Lethe was a spring or river in Hades.When the deceased drank from it they lost allmemory of their past lives. The Greeks located thespring at the subterranean oracle of Trophoniusnear Lebadeia (Leivadia) in Boeotia. This wasthought to be the entrance to the underworld. Vir-gil, in his Aeneid, wrote that Aeneas saw ghostsdrinking at the Lethe before their rebirth.

Directly opposite of Lethe is the river or lake ormarsh of Mnemosyne (Memory), drinking fromwhich would allow the soul to retain its memory ofa past life.

See also Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Greekafterlife, the ancient; Greeks and reincarnation;Nepenthean veil; Orphism; Plato.

Levirate marriage. In its standard, or exoteric,meaning this is where a man is obligated to marrythe widow of his brother, if the brother died with-out having a son. Such marriages are mandated in the Old Testament. In post-biblical Judaism this practice was abandoned as no longer appro-priate. However, the Kabbalists, rather than justdeclaring the practice no longer in force, gave such a marriage an esoteric meaning. They claimedthat its original purpose was to allow the soul of the deceased man to be reborn through his formerwife.

See also Kabbalah.

Lhamoi Latso Oracle. In the traditional processof determining the whereabouts of the latest incar-nation of the Dalai Lama, this oracle uses a lakehigh in the Tibetan mountains, whose water is re-markably clear, for scrying purposes. This oracle isnot to be confused with two other major Tibetanoracles, the first of which is the Nechung State Or-acle that advises the Dalai Lama on issues of statevia the spirit Nechung, a protector of the DalaiLama. This spirit is channeled through a speciallytrained monk called a kuten (physical base). Theother oracle is the Gadong State Oracle, the kutenof which comes from a family lineage of lay medi-ums.

See also Tulku.

Liberal Catholic Church, Province of the UnitedStates (LCC). Like its sister church, the LiberalCatholic Church International (LCCI), this is adescendent of the Old (Dutch) Catholic Church,which separated from Rome in 1870. The separa-tion was caused by the Dutch church’s refusal to

accept the new Roman doctrine of Papal infallibil-ity. The LCC was founded between 1916 and 1918,mainly by Charles Webster Leadbeater. A majordifference between the two liberal churches is thatthe LCC is a form of Christian Theosophy, andas such its teachings include reincarnation and thebelief that Jesus was one of the great ascendedmasters, as opposed to the standard Christian viewof him as the Son of God. The LCCI, on the otherhand, holds to more standard Christian teachings.

See also Gnostic Orthodox Church of Christin America.

Life script problem. This refers to a condition inwhich a few rare individuals who, having discoveredwhat they believe to be a past life, tend to model thepresent life on the past one. This can go so far as al-lowing the problems of the past life to be acted outor repeated in the present life.

See also Going lilac.

Limbo. Limbo is generally defined as a place wheresouls go which do not qualify for heaven, yet donot deserve hell. In some religions souls reside inlimbo only temporarily; while in other religionsthey remain there indefinitely.

A number of pro-reincarnationist Christianwriters have claimed that limbo is not a place butrather is the passing through a series of rebirthsuntil one is qualified to enter heaven. The prob-lem with this non-standard Christian view is thatit can not be justified biblically or by any ortho-dox Christian tradition which, until recently, hashad a very different understanding of limbo.

As formulated in the medieval church, the or-thodox view was that there were three states oflimbo. These were the limbo of the fathers; thelimbo of the children; and the limbo of the fools.The first was the state of detention for the biblicalprophets and heroes who died before the atone-ment of Christ. This limbo was thought to havebeen emptied when the saintly dead arose from thegrave after the crucifixion (Matthew 27:52–53) orwhen Christ descended into the world of the im-prisoned dead (harrowing of hell) to preach hisatonement (1st Peter 3:19; 4:6; 1st Peter 4:6). Thesecond limbo was a place for children who eitherhad died before baptism, hence were not cleansedof original sin, or who had died before they couldbecome personally responsible for sin. Accordingto some authorities this second limbo was also therealm for adult souls who had lived moral lives butfor whatever reason had not received the gift of su-pernatural grace necessary to enter heaven. Themedieval churchmen were less sure about the thirdlimbo, also called Fool’s Paradise. This was forthose who were born mentally incapacitated; hence,not fully responsible for their sins.

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The existence of limbo as a neither heaven norhell state was originally considered a necessary partof God’s loving and just nature by the CatholicChurch, but most Protestant groups rejected theconcept of limbo as biblically unjustified. In fact,this weak biblical justification for limbo, plus themodern opposition to the idea of un-baptized chil-dren never entering heaven, recently caused eventhe Catholic Church to reevaluate the very exis-tence of limbo. In the early 1990’s reference to it wasdropped from the Catholic catechism and in April2007 Pope Benedict XVI signed a theological edicteffectively eliminating it from Catholic teachings.

From a Buddhism perspective a temporary rein-carnation into the animal realm might be thoughtof as a form of limbo in that it does not have the so-terial advantages of a human birth, but is also notas condemning as hell. In Theosophy being stuckin the etheric body for too long is being in a kindof limbo.

See also Baptism and reincarnation; Chris-tianity and Original Sin; Predestination; Pur-gatory.

Limitation lifetime. According to Dr. John aschanneled during the Grace-Loehr life readings,this is where a soul purposefully chooses to takeupon itself a life of major limitations or of greatadversity. This is done so the soul can acquire alevel of strength and development not otherwiseattainable. In this voluntary undertaking karma isof little importance; therefore, it was wrong to as-sume that all lives of great hardship are due to pastlife detrimental karma, which equated with blam-ing the victim.

It is important to note that this voluntary un-dertaking is exclusively a Western concept, sincein the East a life of hardship is always attributed todetrimental karma from the past. It might bethought that the bodhisattva vow to renounce fullyentering nirvana might be a kind of limitation life-time, but this would be incorrect. None of theofficial bodhisattvas reincarnate into the humanrealm, but serve humanity from a blissful other-worldly state, which is devoid of any limitations oradversity.

Limited life or soul substance. Many folk reli-gions teach that there is only a limited amount oflife or soul substance in the world; therefore, thatsubstance must constantly be recycled. Reincarna-tion is obviously one form of such recycling.

See also Reincarnation, origins of.

Lincoln, Abraham see Kennedy, John F.

Linga Sharia (Body of Characteristics). The San-skrit word linga originally meant only a phallicshaped object worshipped as a fertility symbol, es-

pecially by the worshippers of the Hindu godShiva. By the fourth century CE the term linga alsocame to mean a subtle body, which some considerto be the carrier of karma from one rebirth to another. Such a body is necessary since the soulproper (atman), which is enveloped by the lingasharira, can not be contaminated by karma. Thelinga sharira is also called the sukshma (subtle)sharia and the karana (causal) sharira. The lingasharia is also the collective name for the second,third, and fourth kosha.

In modern Theosophy and kindred systems thelinga sharira is also equated with the causal body insome texts; although, in other texts it is often re-garded as the equivalent of the more inferior astralbody.

See also Individuality and rebirth; Maya; Souland spirit levels, Theosophical.

Lingbao [Numinous Treasure] Scripture of theMost High Concerning Karmic Retribution (Py:Taishang dongxuan lingbao yebao Yinyuan jing).This Daoist text dates from the sixth or the begin-ning of the seventh century CE. Among its uniqueelements is its view that the seven stars of the Bei-dou (Py: Big Dipper or Ursa Major) serve as theawakeners of prenatal life. In the seventh month inthe form of seven divine boys (Py: qi shentongzi)or young lords (jun) the influence of these stars de-scends into the womb, enters the fetus to open itsseven orifices, and infuses into it seven celestialsouls (hun). Only then can the fetus be consideredhuman enough to be entered into the celestial reg-istry, which then affords control and protection ofthe destiny of the soon to be born.

This text also introduces, perhaps for the firsttime, the Daoist deity of the Heavenly VenerableSavior from Suffering (Py: Jiuku Tianzun) who isobviously modeled on the earlier, and highly pop-ular, Buddhist bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara andas Kshitigarbha. Like the second of these bod-hisattvas, Jiuku Tianzun has the ability to grantmerit to the deceased which allows them to escapefrom karmicaly deserved hell and to enter heaven.

See also Bodhisattva Daoism.

Logic and pseudo-logic and rebirth. Challengersof an afterlife have criticized some supporters of anafterlife for what the challengers regard as a num-ber of pseudo-logical tenets or ploys in support ofan afterlife.

The first of these ploys is to surround the claimwith scientific terminology; however, such termi-nology alone does not make the claim scientificallyvalid. A second is to swamp the public with massesof anecdotal cases devoid of any real corroborativeevidence. The fact is that a single fully scientificallycorroborated case of reincarnation would be worth

159 Logic

much more than a hundred uncorroborated anec-dotal ones.

A third ploy is to play on the fact that many peo-ple are convinced that if something can not be ex-plained by current scientific means that it justmight be mysterious enough to qualify as beyondnormal explanation (i.e. supernatural in nature).A fourth ploy is the ad ignorantiam practice, whereit is argued that if you can not disprove a claim itmust be true. An example of this is that since no onecan disprove an afterlife, an afterlife must be true.Once again, many surprisingly intelligent peoplesuccumb to this fallacy. A fifth ploy is to make suchbold claims that the public is sure that no onewould do that if the claims were not true. A sixthploy is the “fallacy of negation” or “false dilemma”thinking. This is where pseudo-science tries to dis-credit its opponents by dichotomizing an issue intoan “either-or” situation. For example, any weak-nesses in an otherwise perfectly logical argumentis distorted all out of proportion by the attempt toforce the argument into either it must be a logi-cally flawless proposition or the opposing argumentmust automatically be closer to the truth. An exam-ple of this is “all cases of past life recall can not beaccounted for by alternative explanations; there-fore, those past life recalls must be authentic.” Un-less one is willing to closely investigate the there-fore clause for its own flaws this is a very successfulploy. A seventh ploy is the fallacy of redundancy(begging the question, tautological thinking). Thiscan best be seen in the very widespread tautology“How do you know there is an afterlife? I knowbecause the Bible says so. How do you know theBible is dependable? I know it is because the Bibleis a revelation from God. How do you know thereis a God? I know it because the Bible says so.” Itmay seem ridiculous that anyone would be con-vinced by this circular thinking, yet millions ofbiblical Fundamentalists are convinced by it. Aneight ploy, called the “slippery slope argument,”goes as follows. “Believing in an afterlife can helpmake people be more moral. Not believing in an af-terlife can help people be more immoral. Moralityis better than immorality; therefore, it is better tobelieve in an afterlife than to disbelieve in it.” Ofcourse, what this conclusion fails to acknowledge isthat plenty of believers have been and are very im-moral (e.g. those who ran the Inquisition, the Cru-saders and other holy war fighters) and that plentyof disbelievers have been and are very moral; in thepast some of these became the victims of the firstgroup. A ninth pseudo-logical ploy almost every-one unconsciously plays is “An Afterlife (Survival)by Default.” Because no one really knows what itis like to be dead we attribute to the deceased men-tal traits without which we can not imagine exist-

ing. This default pseudo-logic is why it is oftenperceived as counterintuitive to deny an afterlifeand it is one reason why the belief in an afterlife isso strongly held world wide. A tenth ploy is an overdependency on authoritative individuals. If a dozenwell known and or admired people believe some-thing is true it must be true. The weakness of thisreason is that with a little more effort the potentialbeliever could probably find another dozen wellknown or admired people who do not believe thatsame thing is true.

See also Current knowledge discrepancy; Per-ception and reality; Rebirth and famous sup-porters; Stevenson, Ian.

Logic of physical cause and effect. This argumentfor rebirth says that if there is a reward and punish-ment process after death for actions done in thisbodily existence, then it only makes sense, and isonly fair, if the rewards and punishments are expe-rienced similarly in bodily form. In other words,reward and punishment lose their significance in anon-material heaven, purgatory, or hell. The realheaven, purgatory, and hell must be found in thephysical conditions of the next physical life.

The logic of this argument works best if any con-cept of an interim period reward and punishmentprocess (heaven or hell) is eliminated; and just suchelimination is favored by many Western reincar-nationists. The logic of this argument is weaker inHinduism and Buddhism where it is believed thatthere is both an interim period and this world re-ward and punishment.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Karma in the ancient and modern west; Rebirth,East and West; Rebirth in the West.

Lords of Karma. In Hindu mythology there is agroup of beings or supernatural forces known asthe Lipikas or “Lords of Karma.” Karma is techni-cally an impersonal law of cause and effect and assuch should have no personified aspect to it. Mostbelievers, however, hope that a more personal aspectto karma will take into consideration the, at timesfoolish and unintentional, mistakes of individualhuman beings. This has given rise to the idea thatintelligent and sympathetic beings are either ulti-mately in charge of karma or that they have thepower to modify karma to the advantage of indi-vidual human beings. These Lords can be thoughtof as either high-level angels, gods (devas), or moreabstract forces of nature. The concept of theseLords is also said to be necessary to prevent karmafrom being understood as a fatalistic denial ofhuman free-will.

Some Western theosophists believe that it is theLipikas that keep the akashic record updated. Thiswould be logical since the term lipikas comes from

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the Sanskrit “lip” meaning to write, and “Lipi-devi”is the Hindu goddess of the alphabet or, as Sar-avasti, she is the goddess of speech.

In modern Theosophy the Lipikas are frequentlymentioned, with the number of them given as fouror seven. In the first case, they seem to be looselyassociated with the four kingly guardians of thecardinal directions. In the latter case, they are as-sociated with the heptad of planetary spirits, butwhether this means the planetary angels (archangelsassigned to ruler the planets) is difficult to deter-mine. In the Secret Doctrine of Helena Blavatskythe Lipikas are mentioned many times, but theclosest description of them is found in the ambigu-ous sentence, “The Swift Son of the Divine Sons,whose sons are the Lipikas, runs circular errands.”Blavatsky gives no further explanation than this.

The theosophist Alice Bailey, in her Treatise onthe Seven Rays: Esoteric Astrology (1951), relates theterm Lord of Karma to Saturn, the planet which issaid to impose retribution and which requires thatall karmic debts be paid.

In Karma in Motion (1990), by the theosophistFelix Layton, it is stated that the Lords of Karmamay function at great sacrifice to themselves totemporarily store in their own consciousness someof the worst or most destructive of humanity’skarma until a future time when humanity will havegrown mature enough to deal with it construc-tively.

There are no specific “Lords of Karma” in Ma-hayana Buddhism because here the Buddhas andbodhisattvas, such as Amitabha, Kshitigarbha,and Bhaishajyaraja-guru function to amelioratethe fruit of karma (vipaka).

See also Aetherius Society; Agra-sandhani; As-trology and rebirth; Bhavachakra; Book of Life;Karma versus grace; Theosophy; UFOism.

Lost continents and reincarnation. In the late19th and early 20th century there was a revived in-terest in two supposedly lost continents, Atlantisand Lemuria (also called Mu). The belief in suchlost continents has allowed for the romantic ideathat there were many past lives or old souls fromthese continents that could be said to have reincar-nated into modern day bodies. This idea was wellnurtured by Helena Blavatsky, Edgar Cayce,Rudolf Steiner, and many other less well knownfigures. According to Edgar Cayce, 1910 and 1911were years in which there was a great influx of tech-nically advanced re-embodied Atlantian souls andthis helps explain the technological progress of theearly 20th century.

The problem with any continued attachment toeither of these submerged continents on the partof some more recent reincarnationists is that it sim-

ply gives the critics of any belief in reincarnationmore reason to discredit that belief as a whole. Thisunfortunately has not stopped some late 20th cen-tury reincarnationists from remaining loyal to thesehypothetical continents. This is especially true ofadherents of a number of UFO religions.

See also Aetherius Society; Akashic Record; Cur-rent knowledge discrepancy; Egypt; Franklin,Benjamin (2); Phylos; Planets, other; Ramtha;Rebirth and science; Supernatural-in-the-gapprocess; UFOism.

Lost soul. In modern Theosophy this is a soulthat over many lifetimes has become progressivelymore degenerate until it can no longer even attaina rebirth, but instead will fade out of existence.

See also Eighth sphere.

Lotus Ashram. Founded in 1971 in Miami, Floridaby Noel and Coleen Street, the Ashram follows thehealing tradition of Noel’s Maori (New Zealand)ancestors while teaching yoga, vegetarianism, anda belief in reincarnation.

Lucian (Lucianus, or Loukianos 115–200 CE). Thismajor Greek satirist made a particular effort toridicule the myths and religions of his time. Thisridicule was also directed at the doctrine of metem-psychosis, especially in his The Cock [Gallus] ofMicyllos the Tanner. Here the talking rooster men-tions his previous lives as Pythagoras and the fa-mous courtesan Aspasia, and instructs his owner,Micyllos, in the virtues of poverty over riches.

Lucifer (1). This is Latin for “Light Bearer” andrefers to the morning star, or the planet Venus, asthe brightest pre-dawn celestial body after themoon. The name Lucifer was not synonymous withthe term devil or Satan until sometime after the13th century. In fact, it is even a title for Jesus inthe New Testament (Revelation of John 22:16 and2nd Peter 1:19).

As the planet Venus, the name Lucifer in somereincarnationist circles is considered an ideal sym-bol of rebirth because it is the morning (birth) starrising in the east only to disappear in the glare ofthe sun, and then to reappear as the evening star de-scending (death) in the west.

On the other hand, according to Beredene Joce-lyn in her Citizens of the Cosmos (1981), Lucifer is acosmic agent that encourages pride, egotism, illu-sion, and spiritual alienation, also one who encour-ages the soul during the interim period to selfishly“drop-out” of returning to re-embodiment.

See also Ahriman; Arcane School; Daimones;Kulkulcan; Planetary descent and ascent of thesoul; Trance states.

Lucifer (2) see Helena P. Blavatsky.

161 Lucifer

Lucretius, Carus Titus (99–55 BCE). This Romanphilosopher, in his epic book length poem DeRerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), usedtwenty-eight arguments against the immortality ofthe soul and was the first recorded critic of metem-psychosis. His stated purpose for the poem was toliberate mankind from religious fear and falsepromises. Lucretius argued that the soul has twoparts: the anima which is distributed throughoutthe body and is responsible for sensation and the an-imus, which is located in the breast (heart) and is thesource of consciousness. Both soul parts are as ma-terial as the body, only they are of a finer matterand both die with the body.

Lucretius, while acknowledging the existence ofthe gods as immortals, denied that they had anypower to help or harm mankind because they werenot the creators of the world. Instead, the worldcame into existence through natural laws govern-ing the atoms out of which the world was made.The gods only function was to be examples of theideal life, which above all includes living withoutany fear of death.

Lucretius regarded the Pythagoreans, the Pla-tonists, and the Stoics as false philosophers sincethey encouraged the myth of immortality, and evenworse, the belief in heaven and hell.

According to Lucretius “Death being nothing toman, man is lord of himself.”

See also Pythagoras; Plato.

Luke, Gospel of. This New Testament book is lessoften cited for a supposed hidden doctrine of re-incarnation than is the case for the other threegospels. In fact, there are only two such passagesin this text. in Luke 20:29–33 Jesus is asked a trickquestion by some Sadducees, who intrinsically re-jected any belief in the resurrection of the dead.The passage reads, “Now, there were seven broth-ers: the first took a wife and died childless; thenthe second married her, then the third. In this waythe seven of then died leaving no children. After-wards, the woman died. At the resurrection whosewife is she to be, since all seven had married her?”Assuming she was not a “black widow wife” it isclearly rather absurd that any woman would evenhave the opportunity to be the widow of sevenbrother serially due to some strange death pattern;thus, it has been possible for some reincarnation-ists to interpret this passage to mean that thewoman really had seven different husbands overseven life-times.

The only other Lucian passage favored by rein-carnationists is Luke 17:3–4 which is more or lessidentical to Matthew 18:21–22.

See Annihilationism, Biblical view; Car-pocrates; Cayce, Edgar; Christianity and reincar-

nation; Doceticism; Elijah; Hell; Irenaeus; Jesus;John the Baptist; Mark, Gospel of; New Testa-ment; New Testament and reincarnation; NewTestament sacrificial concept; Paulicians; Pos-session; Rebirth and moral perfection; Resur-rection, bodily; Resurrection of Jesus; Steiner,Rudolf.

Luria, Isaac (1534– 1572). This founder of one ofthe main schools of the Kabbalah, not only taughtthe doctrine of metempsychosis, but some of hisfollowers believed he was the reincarnation of thegreat 2nd century mystic Shimon (Hebrew: Shi-mon) bar Yochai.

See also Fall of the Souls; Gnosticism; Ha-sidism; Karma, racial; Qlippoth; Sephiroth.

Maccabees, Book of see Anabios; Old Testa-ment and the afterlife.

MacGregor, Geddes (1909– 1998). MacGregor isone of the most distinguished Christian theolo-gians to defend the reincarnation concept. In his Reincarnation in Christianity: A New Vision of the Role of Rebirth in Christian Thought (1978),Macgregor deals with the standard question of why we do not remember past lives if we livedthem. He believes that, first, if we were to remem-ber those lives, the burden of all those memorieswould be such that we might become paralyzed by them; therefore, it is a mercy that we start eachnew life without those memories. Second, we allknow how difficult it is for most very old personsto be open to radically new ideas and values thatmight conflict with all the ideas and values withwhich they have grown old. This would doublyapply to people if they remembered the ideas andvalues of past lives. These two answers have beenadopted by most reincarnationists. MacGregor isalso a proponent of summation memory. MacGre-gor has written a number of other books on Chris-tianity and reincarnation and is the editor of Im-mortality and Human Destiny: A Variety of Views(1985).

See also MacTaggart, John Ellis; Memory,summation.

MacIver, Joanne (1948–). The father of Joanne,Ken MacIver, had learned hypnosis while servingwith the army and was an avid believer in reincar-nation. In 1962 Mr. MacIver tried in vain to hyp-notize a friend of his but failed to do so. Insteadhis 14 year old daughter, Joanne, fell into a hyp-notic state. Under hypnosis Joanne began to de-scribe a former life as a girl named Susan Ganierwho was born in 1833 and lived on a farm in On-tario, Upper Canada.

In 1966 Jess Stearn, deciding to research thecase, went to the area in which “Susan Ganier” said

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she resided, which was near Owen Sound andMeaford. Unfortunately, it was impossible to ob-tain a death certificate for Susan or any “official”documents of her existence. Some evidence seemedto indicate that Susan had existed and one musttake into account that in the early and mid–nine-teenth century, communications and proper statis-tical keeping were not very efficient. Nonetheless,the lack of proper documentation makes this aneasily suspected case of hypnotically encouragedhonest lying. On the other hand, if Joanne and/orher father were either trying to prove reincarnationand/or seeking publicity they did a poor job of itby choosing someone so obscure and difficult todocument.

Since both Joanne and Susan Ganier were said tohave blue eyes Stearn’s research ended with thewell-known book The Search for the Girl with theBlue Eyes (1968).

See also Past life memory recall.

MacLaine, Shirley (1934–). Perhaps no Hollywoodstar has shown as much interest in the paranormalthen Ms. MacLaine. She has written a number ofbooks about her past lives and about channeling.

See also Hollywood and reincarnation.

MacTaggart, John Ellis (1866– 1925). MacTag-gart was an important British Hegelian philoso-pher who wrote Human Immortality and Pre-exis-tence (1915) and The Nature of Existence (1921). Heoffered a solution to the criticism that rebirth with-out retention of memories of the past life wasmorally meaningless. MacTaggart’s theory was thatmemory is significant in the following ways. First,through memories acquired from the trials of life webecome intellectually more sophisticated and hope-fully more virtuous in our behavior. Second, mem-ory allows us to be attached to those whom we loveand to avoid those we dislike. When a person dieshis or her knowledge dies also, but neither the in-tellectual nor virtuous strength the soul gainedfrom the now extinct memories would be lost. Sim-ilarly, the soul will have an intuitive attraction in itsnext life to sympathetic souls from the previouslife. These factors are what make for a soul’s intel-lectual, moral, and spiritual progress.

A problem with McTaggart’s view is that if in-tellectual and virtuous strength is totally independ-ent of knowledge, much less memories, than whathe means by such strength is unclear. Commonsense would normally make it fully dependent onknowledge and/or memories.

See also MacGregor, Geddes; Memories, rea-sons for loss of past life.

Mafu. This is an entity channeled through a womanby the name of Penny Torres Rubin starting in

1986. After a visit to India Rubin took on the nameSwami Paramananda Saraswatti and upon return-ing to the United States established the Founda-tion for the Realization of Inner Divinity. The Foun-dation disseminates the teachings of Mafu whoclaims to be a 32,000 year old enlightened beingfrom the Brotherhood of Light, and who supportsthe concept of reincarnation. In fact, he says that hislast life on earth was as a first century BCE Greek.

See also Channeling; Equinox; Franklin, Ben-jamin (2); Hilarion; Lazaris; Michael (2); Ra;Ramtha; Ryerson, Kevin; Satya; Seth.

Magna Graecia. In ancient times Magna Graecia(Greater Greece) was the name for the entire coastalregion of southern Italy because of the large num-ber of Greek colonies there. It was here that Pythag-oras settled and established the first Pythagoreancommunities. As such the region became a fairlyconcentrated center of ancient reincarnationistthought, some of which spread to the nearby Greekcolonies on Sicily, one of which was Agrigentum,the birth place of Empedocles. Recent researchwould seem to suggest that it was from MagnaGraecia that the idea of reincarnation spreadthrough out the rest of the Greek world.

See also Archytas of Tarentum; Greeks andreincarnation.

Magnetic attraction metaphor. To explain how asoul or rebirth entity might be reborn to the rightparents it has been suggested that, like a magnetdrawn to an iron surface, each soul is magneticallydrawn to just the right genetic heritage of the par-ents and/or to the genetic code of the embryo orfetus.

Maha Bodhi, The. This is the English languagejournal of the Maha Bodhi Society in India, pub-lication of which began in 1892 and continues upto the present. Over the years it has contained nu-merous articles on rebirth and karma.

See also Open Court.

Mahayana Buddhism. This is the form of Bud-dhism practiced in the East Asian countries ofChina, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Unlike Ther-avada Buddhism it usually acknowledges an in-terim period between rebirths.

See also Bodhisattva; Buddhism; Merit, trans-fer of; Vajrayana Buddhism.

Mahayana Buddhist rebirth texts. While thereare far too many Mahayana texts dealing with re-birth and/or karma to list here the following areamong some of the most well known or important.

Diamond Cutter Sutra’s Revilement. This ZenBuddhist encounter dialog is found in two koancollections, as case 97 of the Blue Cliff Record and

163 Mahayanna

as case 80 in the Book of Serenity. It reads, “The Di-amond-Cutter Sutra says, ‘If someone is reviled byothers, this person has done wicked acts in previ-ous ages and should fall into evil ways, but becauseof the scorn and revilement of people in the pres-ent age, the wicked deeds of the past ages are dis-solved.’”

Fox Koan. This is a famous Zen Buddhist storyabout a Chinese Buddhist monk who was reborntime after time in the form of a fox as punishmentfor having denied the Buddhist doctrine of causal-ity. In East Asian lore foxes are regarded as havingmagical shape-changing abilities. Therefore, it wasnot too difficult for this monk-fox to temporarilytake on human form and appear before one of thegreat Zen masters and beg the master to show himhow to gain liberation from his vulpine life. Themaster, taking pity on the poor creature, magicallyliberated him by reversing the monk’s originalheretical denial. This would seem to be a clear“doctrinal (teaching Buddhist doctrine) koan” inthat it states the standard Buddhist teaching ofkarma and vipaka.

Garbhavakranti-nirdesha-sutra and Saddharmas-metyupasthana-sutra. These are two Sanskrit Ma-hayana Buddhist texts in which the nature of the in-terim period is outlined. The first of these texts, theSutra of Entering the Womb, details the progressionof the interim period entity from the last momentof death to its conception in the womb and througheach week of its fetal development. The secondtext, the Sutra on Stability in Mindfulness of the TrueDharma, describes an elaborate set of up to seven-teen individual interim period states.

Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment. This is an apoc-ryphal Chinese Buddhist text, the full Chinesename is Ta-fang-kuang Yuan-chueh-hsiu-to-lo-liao-i-ching; while the abbreviated name Yuan-chueh-ching. In this text each of twelve bodhisattvas asksa question of the Buddha with regards to the issueof perfect and immediate enlightenment. What isof special interest is that one of the bodhisattvasmentioned is that of “Clean Karma.”

Finally, there are two especially important textsthat give detailed arguments for rebirth. These arethe Tarkajvala by Bhavaviveka (5th century CE) andthe second chapter of the Pramanavarttika byDharmakirti (7th century CE).

See also Blaming the victim vs. illusion of in-nocence; Chan-ch’a sha-o yeh-pao ching; Gand-harva; Rebirth in Buddhism; Rebirth in ZenBuddhism.

Maher Baba (1894– 1969). This Indian holy manwas the first important guru to gain a following inthe West. His name, which means “Loving Father,”was born into a Zoroastrian family, was a student

of a Sufi, and taught a synthesis of various religionswhich included the doctrines of reincarnation andkarma.

See also Sufism; Zoroastrianism.

Maiden embodiment or incarnation. This refersto a soul that has never before experienced embod-iment in human form.

Malachi see Akashic Record; Elijah; Old Testa-ment and the afterlife; Sciomancy.

Malaysia. This Southeast Asian country is dividedinto two geographical regions. The western parttakes up the southern portion of the Malay Penin-sula, where the majority of the population is Mus-lim, but with significant Hindu, Buddhist, andChristian minorities. The other region takes up thewestern third of the island of Borneo. This part ofthe country has a very large number of people ofChinese descent, most of whom are Buddhists andDaoists. Despite Islamic unorthodoxy the belief inreincarnation and karma is widespread amongMalaysian Muslims.

See also Indonesia; Islam.

Male births, greater proportion of. According toIan Stevenson there is evidence that the proportionof male births after wars is often greater than atother times. This could suggest that due to the largenumber of military (male) fatalities there are moremale souls to be reborn than female souls, assum-ing that most of these souls did not change genderbetween the two lives. On the other hand, thismore than normal number of male births couldhave something to do with the fact that in time ofwar there is a higher incidence of delayed marriageswhich could ultimately affect this gender condi-tion. Some have also claimed that there is a greaterfrequency of sexual intercourse during home leavesand after demobilization which tilts the sex ratiotowards boys.

See also Arguments for Rebirth; Gender issueof the soul.

Malkula. It is generally believed among these peo-ple of Vanuatu (New Hebrides) that once the cor-rect funeral rites have been performed for the spiritof the dead (nimwinin) the spirit departs to takeup its abode in the Land of the Dead. However,sometimes it is reborn into a human body. For ex-ample, if a child shows a striking resemblance, fa-cially or in character, to some deceased relative suchas a grandparent it is said that the nimwinin of thisrelative has become reincarnated in the child. Whensuch a reincarnation is believed to have taken placethe child is generally called by the name of the per-son of whom he or she is the new manifestation.

See also Oceania.

Maher 164

Mana (pride or conceit) see Asmi-mana.

Manas (mind). In early Buddhism manas was moreor less synonymous with vijnana (consciousness)and chitta (mind), but in the later Vijnanavada(Consciousness only) School of Buddhism manaswas distinguished from the latter two. In both earlyand later Buddhism manas is where the seeds ofpast karma are activated and call for rebirth.

In Theosophy manas is the equivalent of thehigher mind or ego if it is used by itself. As kama-manas it refers to the lower mind. As the ego it isthe reincarnating entity.

See also Astral soul; Causal body; Mentalbody; Mental plane; Soul and spirit levels,Theosophical.

Mandara. This is the coral tree (Erythrina indica)which is found in the paradise of the Hindu godIndra. When the inhabitants smell its fragrancethey can remember their past lives. This tree is alsoknown by the name parijata.

Manichaeism. A dualist religion founded by theIranian (Persian) prophet Mani (216–274 CE), itwas a syncretism of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism,Orphism, Neoplatonism, and Christianity. Thissyncretic approach technically qualified Mani-chaeism a form of Gnosticism, but it was Mani’steaching that was the first major religion to know-ingly unite Western and Indian thought. Mani-chaeism may have even been the ancestor of thePaulicians.

According to Manichaeism in the distant pastthere was a great battle between the forces of good,or light, and the forces of evil, or darkness. Whilethe forces of light won the battle they did not do sobefore the dark forces had captured some of thelight elements. These elements, as souls, weretrapped in matter (bodies) which were part of theevil creation. The religious goal was to liberate thistrapped light, and that could only be done throughsuch ascetic practices as absolute non-violence,celibacy, and vegetarianism. Manichaeism adoptedfrom Buddhism, and possibly Orphism, the beliefin transmigration and karma.

At first Manichaeism was a strong competitor toChristianity, but with the establishment of the lat-ter as the state religion of the Roman Empire Mani-chaeism was treated as a heresy and ultimately sup-pressed in the Mediterranean world. Manichae-ism, however, spread east as far as China and for ashort time became the state religion of the UighurTurks in Western China. Due to Islamic persecu-tion Manichaeism eventually died out in West andCentral Asia. In China it was outlawed in the 9thcentury but became an underground religion, pos-sibly surviving there until the 17th century.

See also Ashoka, King; Augustine, Saint Aure-lius; Body-soul dualism; Bogomils; Cathars; Cultof Angels; Demiurge; Dualism; Islam; Priscillian.

Mann, A. Tad (1943–). This major astrologer be-lieves that he has found a way of locating past lives.To do this he has developed what he calls the As-trological Reincarnation Time Scale (ARTS). Manncalls his uniquely developed astrological system LifeTime Astrology. The system uses a logarithmictime scale adapted from one developed by RodneyCollin. According to Mann his system has shownthat the same entity that was Alexander the Great(336–323) was later Charlemagne and then Napo-leon Bonaparte.

Mann is the author of The Divine Plot (1986),The Eternal Return (1993), and The Elements ofReincarnation (1995).

See also Astrology and rebirth; Leo, Alan.

Manson, Charles Willie (1934–). This CharlesManson is the leader of the infamous Manson Fam-ily who, in 1969, ordered his disciples to murdersome of his enemies. Altogether there were eightpeople killed, most of whom were Hollywoodcelebrities. As the Family guru Manson tried totake on the appearance of, claimed to be, and wasaccepted by the Family as, the reincarnation ofJesus.

Manu-Sanhita (Laws of Manu). This highly re-garded Hindu text is ascribed to a legendary figurenamed Manu and rather than being a well plannedsystematic code it is a collection or digest of thelaws and beliefs that were current during the timeof its compilation, which probably covered a periodranging from 600 BCE to 300 CE.

Although called a book of law, besides what isnormally thought of as law the text also contains anoutline of the ultimate goal as salvation throughunion with Brahman (God) by means of one’s fullacceptance of caste system duties.

The text is very explicit about what happens tothose who ignore or violate such duties, or other-wise performs ill deeds. For example, if a man stealsgrain he will be reborn as a rat; if honey—a bee; ifmilk—a crow; if meat—a vulture; if a cow—aniguana. An adulterous woman will become a jackal;the violator of a teacher’s (guru’s) bed will be reborna hundred times as grass or a creeping vine; and aBrahman (priest) who deserts his caste duty willbe reborn as a vomit eating ghost (ulkamukha).This is, of course, only a partial list. The Manu-Sanhita is also called the Manu Smrti, or Manavad-harma-shastra.

See also Dharma-Shastras; Hinduism.

Mara. In Buddhism this is the name for the per-sonification of death or entrapment in the round

165 Mara

of rebirth and re-death (samsara). In the West it issometimes thought that Mara is the equivalent ofthe Christian devil, but this is only partially thecase. Mara, as the personified natural phenomenonof death, does not have the connotation of a sinfullyrebellious figure opposing God as the devil does in Christianity. Since in Buddhism it is ignorancethat keeps us trapped in our suffering, Mara israther consistently equated with ignorance, not sin. This nondemonic view of Mara can also be ap-preciated by the fact that Mara is sometimes usedas an appellation for Kama, the god of love (lust)who is responsible for keeping people attached toeach other and so trapped in the cycle of birth anddeath.

Finally, Mara should not be equated with theWestern devil because Mara is not regarded as oneof the asuras (anti-gods). Instead, he is one of thegods (devas) who is on par with all the other gods.It is for this reason that Mara inhabits the heavenof the gods, not hell (purgatory).

See also Immortality.

Marie Antoinette see Cleopatra Syndrome.

Mark-Age, Inc. This organization originated in1960 under the direction of Nada-Yolanda, thepseudonym for Pauline Sharpe, who the organiza-tion regards as a prophet for the new age and the“messianic second coming.” The name of the organ-ization comes from its belief that the years from1960 to 2000 marked the age in which the Earthwould be entering a period when mankind wouldrealize a new brotherhood of humanity. The teach-ings of Mark-Age are a blending of Western andEastern traditions, as exemplified by its teachings of reincarnation and karma as well as its referenceto the Jesus as Sananda (S: He who has ascended)the Christ, the name of Jesus as an ascended mas-ter.

Mark, Gospel of. This is the earliest of the fourcanonical gospels to be written, the date of its com-position is about 70 CE. The priority of Mark canbe demonstrated by the obvious fact that both theGospels of Matthew and Luke were dependentupon Mark for much of their material.

As the earliest gospel Mark is the first to mentionthe empty tomb story. Whether the author of Markinvented the story of the empty tomb or found italready in development remains a mystery, but thereason for the story, of which the pre–Marcan Paulseemed to know nothing, was to make what mightotherwise have been thought of as a purely spiritualresurrection into an unquestionably non-gnosticor non-docetic physical one. Since then it has beenthis physicality that has been used by orthodoxChristianity to exclusively support the concept of

resurrection against reincarnation and to declarethe latter belief heretical.

Since many present-day Christians more or lessignore the idea of heresy it should not be surpris-ing that those Christians who wish to find biblicalsupport for reincarnation believe they can find itin at least the three following sections of Mark.

First there is Mark 4:10– 12. Here the discipleshave asked Jesus why he teaches in parables. Jesusanswers, “To you [the disciple] the secret of thekingdom of God has been given; but to those whoare outside everything comes by way of parables, sothat, as the Scriptures say they may look and look,but see nothing; they may hear and hear, but un-derstand nothing; otherwise they might turn toGod and be forgiven.” These words are actuallylifted right out of Isaiah 6:9– 10, and Mark usedthem to imply that Jesus’ teachings are for a (hid-den) elect, not for the masses, who are to be left inconfusion.

This idea of a secret teaching has been pickedup by some pro–Christian reincarnationists to sug-gest that among those secret teachings is the doc-trine of reincarnation. However, Mark’s real moti-vation for implying a secret teaching is less tosupport a secret teaching factor itself than to sup-port his whole idea of a Messianic secret which hehopes will explain to his readers why the Jewishand Roman authorities put Jesus to death insteadof hailing him as the Messiah.

The Gospel of Matthew 13:10– 15, despite drop-ping the Messianic secret theme of Mark, borrowedthese secret or elect passages without much alter-ation. However, in the Gospel of Luke, at the placewhere Mark’s passages should appear (Luke 10: be-tween 22 and 23) the whole idea of a secret teach-ing has been dropped.

The second section of Mark to be given a rein-carnational interpretation is Mark 2:22 is repeatedMatthew 9:17 and Luke 6:37–38. These passagesrefer to “not putting new wine into old skins (con-tainers) but new wine into new skins.” The wineskins are regarded by some as a biblical metaphorfor reincarnation.

The third so-called reincarnationist passage isMark 10:29–30. Here Peter has claimed that he andthe other disciples have given up everything to fol-low Jesus. “Jesus said, ‘I tell you this: there is noone who has given up home, brothers or sisters,mother, father or children, or land, for my sake andfor the Gospel, who will not receive in this age ahundred times as much—houses, brothers and sis-ters, mothers and children, and land—and perse-cutions besides: and in the age to come eternallife.’” To make this passage supportive of reincar-nation it is claimed that no one in a single life couldbe as spiritually self-sacrificing as required by Jesus.

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So if the disciples had met the demand it impliesthat they had perfected themselves over multiplelives to do so. Furthermore, the promise that theywill receive in return everything a hundred-fold,including a hundred mothers, must imply a hun-dred life-times to come.

See also Carpocrates; Christianity and reincar-nation; Corinthians, 1st and 2nd; Doceticism;Elijah (Elias); “every knee should bend...; Forty;Gnosticism; Hell; Jesus; John the Baptist; John,The Gospel of; New Testament and reincarna-tion; New Testament sacrificial concept; Old Tes-tament and the soul; Resurrection of Jesus.

Marlowe, Christopher (1564– 1593). This Eng-lish dramatist, in his The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus,has Faust invoke Pythagoras in his final momentson earth (scene X1V, 116– 121): “Ah, Pythagoras’metempsychosis—were that true, this soul shouldfly from me, and I be changed unto some brutishbeast. All beasts are happy, for when they die theirsouls are soon dissolved in elements, but mine mustlive still to be plagued in hell.”

Masefield, John (1878– 1967). While many of thepoems of this poet Laureate of England (1930–1967) are well known, this is less true of his poemCreed.

I hold that when a person diesHis soul returns again to earth:Arrayed in some new flesh disguiseAnother mother gives him birth.With sturdier limbs and a bright brainThe old soul takes the road again.

See also Patton, George; Poetry on reincarna-tion.

Maternal impressions or maternal psychokine-sis. This refers to the possibility that a pregnantwoman may some how impress on the body of herfetus minor physical characteristics that were pos-sessed by another person with which the motherwas familiar. The idea of “maternal” impressionsprovides an alternative explanation for those thatdoubt that a newly embodied “soul” could causebirthmarks, nevi (moles), etc. on its new body asa physical manifestation of a wound or defect in-herited from its former body.

Mathesis. This Greek word means the ability toremember a previous life.

See also Pythagoras.

Matthew, Gospel of. As in the other Gospels therehas been a variety of attempts to find support forreincarnational teachings in this gospel. The firstsection suggested for this support is Matthew 5:26.It reads, “I tell you, once you are there [in jail] you

will not be let out till you have paid the last far-thing.” A reincarnational reading of this passage isthat the jail refers to the entrapment in the roundof birth and death and until you have paid out(eliminated) all your karma, or at least bad karma,you can not be freed from jail.

The second favored section is Matthew 9:16which reads, “No one sews a patch of un-shrunkcloth on to an old coat; for then the patch tearsaway from the coat, and leaves a bigger hole.” Thispassage is immediately followed by Matthew 9:17which is the passage about put new wine into oldwine-skins that is also found in Mark 2:22 andtaken directly from there. It should be no surprisethat the contrasting of old and new in 9:16 and 17would be used in attempting to imply the soul goesfrom an old body to a new one.

The final favored section is Matthew 18:21–22.This reads, “Then Peter came up and asked him[Jesus], Lord, how often am I to forgive my brotherif he goes on wronging me?” Peter then asked, “Asmany as seven times?” Jesus replied, “I do not sayseven times; I say seventy times seven.” It should bementioned that some New Testament translationsinstead say seventy-seven times. What follows theseverses is statement that such multiple forgiving ishow a believer should think of the forgiveness of theKingdom of Heaven. However, since the idea offorgiving someone seventy-seven times, much lessfour hundred and ninety times in the same life timeseems such a superhuman requirement that somereincarnationists believe that Jesus did not reallymean to forgive that many times in a single life.With this in mind the passage can be esoterically in-terpreted to mean that the forgiving nature ofHeaven (God) offers at least seventy-seven andmaybe even up to four hundred and ninety life-times for individuals to work out their karma. Thesupporters of this multiple lifetime interpretationoften use the last two lines of Genesis 4:24 as par-allel. This reads, “Cain may be avenged seventimes, but Lamech seventy-seven.”

In Luke 17:3–4, on this same issue of forgiveness,it is advises that only seven-fold is sufficient, soLuke is not considered as supportive of a reincar-nation interpretation as is Matthew.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; As-trology and rebirth; Augustine, Saint Aurelius;Carpocrates; Christianity and reincarnation;Doceticism; Elect or chosen of God; Elijah; Ex-odus; Forty; Hell; Irenaeus; Jesus; John the Baptist; Karma in the Bible?; Limbo; New Tes-tament and reincarnation; New Testamentsacrificial concept; Origin or Origenes Adaman-thus; Palingenesis; Possession; Predestination;Psychopannychism; Purgatory; Rebirth andmoral perfection; Resurrection of Jesus; Seven.

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Maya (S: illusion, magic). In Hinduism mayasignifies the activity of Brahman in producing anillusory or magical world in which nothing is as itseems. Maya is the mind of Brahman playing a hid-ing, seeking, and finding game with himself. Thehiding is the illusion of birth and death. The seek-ing is the illusory act of striving for liberation frombirth and death. The finding is the realization thatthere was never any birth and death or need for lib-eration from it in the first place.

See also Monism; Prakrit; Shunya.

Mayan Indians. During the first half of the 20th century the assumption, as reflected by scholars such as J. Eric Thompson, was that theClassic (prior to the Toltec warring kings’ influence)Maya culture (250–900 CE) was a society ruled by peaceful, indeed benevolent, astrologer-priests.This idealistic view led to all sorts of romantic speculation about Mayan higher wisdom and anumber of metaphysical groups were certain thatthis wisdom must have included a belief in rein-carnation. However, the latter half of the same century provided extensive evidence that the ear-lier picture of Mayan society was wrong and thatwell before the arrival of the Toltec the Mayan culture included the brutal ritualized warfare and human sacrifice that was characteristic of other Mesoamerican people, such as the Toltecsand Aztecs. Despite this new evidence, many newage individuals and groups continue to believe inthe advanced cosmological prophetic abilities of areincarnation believing Maya society. Among themore bizarre beliefs is that Mayan culture was de-scended from Atlantis. This belief, In particular,was encouraged by the writings of Edgar Cayce.The fact is that for the ancient Maya there is no se-cure evidence of a belief or non-belief in reincar-nation.

During the 1930’s Protestant missionaries beganseeking converts among the Maya so the currentbeliefs of these people may now be very differentfrom their ancestral beliefs. On the other hand, according to research in 1930–31 by the anthropol-ogist Robert Redfield, the Mayan speaking peopleof the village of Chan Kom, in the state of Yucatan,believed that the souls of good people, after spend-ing some time in heaven, were reincarnated intonewborn infants. This was necessary because God did not have sufficient souls to continuouslyrepopulate the world. The souls of the wicked, incontrast went to the lowest level of the underworld(Metnal) which was ruled over by the Lord ofDeath.

See also Christian missionary influence andreincarnation; Kulkulcan; Lost continents andreincarnation; Mayan Order; Mayan Temple.

Mayan Order. This San Antonio, TX, based Orderhas existed since at least 1944. It claims to have beenfounded by some individuals who rediscovered theteachings of an ancient group of Mayan Indian holymen who were in possession of great astrological,mathematical, medical, and occult knowledge,which included a belief in reincarnation. Only afew of these holy ones survived the attempt by theSpanish to destroy them and their wisdom litera-ture. The wisdom that has survived is now said tobe preserved by the Mayan Order. A major sourceof information about the Order’s teaching can befound in The Miracle Power by Rose Dawn. (SanAntonio, TX: Mayan Press, 1959).

See also Mayan Temple.

Mayan Temple. This was the name of a San An-tonio based organization that prospered from themid– 1930s to the early 1960s. It offered correspon-dence lessons in an eclectic mixture of Kabbalic,Esoteric Christian, and Buddhist teachings, whichincluded the doctrine of reincarnation. Very littleof these teachings had anything to do with actualculture of the Mayan Indians.

See also Mayan Order.

Meditation. Some authorities believe that certaintypes of meditation can be instrumental in retriev-ing past life memories.

See also Bardo; Yoga

Medium. In Spiritualism this is any person whoacts as an intermediary between the spirit worldand the ordinary material world. From the middleof the 20th century on the term medium has largelybeen replaced by the term channeler. At times ithas been suggested that all authentic past life re-calls are the result of unconscious mediumship abil-ities on the part of the recaller.

See also Automatic writing; Channeling; Ex-trasensory perception; Necromancy; OuijaBoard; Sciomancy.

Melchizedek or Melchisedec (Hebrew: King ofRighteousness [Tzedek] or Righteousness is king).This is the ancient legendary pre–Israelite priest-king of ([Jeru]-salem [peace]). He is described as apriest of “God the Most High” (Hebrew: El Elyon)in Genesis 14:18–20, and is even more crypticallymentioned in Psalm 110:4. The name Melchizedekis also found in the Slavonic apocrypha’s SecondBook of Enoch, and in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls,where as a nephew of Noah, Melchizedek was takento heaven before the Flood to serve as a priest untilthe Messianic age.

In the New Testament Melchizedek is mentionedin Hebrews 5:6– 10; 6:20; and 7:1–20 where, re-ferring back to Psalm 110, Christ is called a priestforever in the succession of Melchizedek. Hebrews

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says that Melchizedek “has no father, no mother, nolineage; his years have no beginning, his life has noend. He is like the Son of God: he remains a priestfor all time.” The author of Hebrews clearly wantsto make Jesus a priest, but the author knows thataccording to Jewish law a priest must come from theline of Levi-Aaron and Jesus is supposedly of theline of Judah-David, so the author finds a separatepriestly lineage in Melchizedek into which he canfit Jesus. Hebrews then regards the priesthood ofMelchizedek, not only as prior to Levitical priest-hood, but more perfect than it. The connection be-tween Christ and Melchizedek is further strength-ened, according to Hebrews, by the fact thatGenesis mentions that Melchizedek offered “breadand wine” to the patriarch Abraham.

Considering the mystical aura that Hebrewsgives to Melchizedek it is no surprise that EdgarCayce and some of the New Age religions regardedJesus as the “successor” of Melchizedek in a reincar-national sense.

See also Enoch, Third Book of ; Essenes;Gnostic Order of Christ; Lemurian Fellowship;New Testament and reincarnation; New Testa-ment sacrificial concept; Stelle Group; UrantiaBook.

Melville, Herman (1819– 1891). In his most famouswork, Moby Dick (1851) [chapter 119], CaptainAhab, talking to himself, declares that in a formerlife he was a fire-worshipping Persian (Zoroastrian)who was burned during a sacrifice and in his cur-rent life still bears the scar.

Memories, ancestral or genetic. It has been the-orized that part of what may be called a past life isactually memory that somehow has passed downfrom one generation to another through commongenetic material. Of course, such memory, shouldit be valid, has very limited expressiveness. First ofall, such memory would have to be from someonein the direct ancestral line. For example, it wouldhave to be from a parent or grandparent that diedbefore the birth of the person claiming the mem-ories, not from a cousin, aunt or uncle. Second, thememories of a grandparent, for instant, passed on toa grandchild would be limited to those that existedbefore the conception of the grandchild’s parent. Al-together, the idea of genetic memory does not havea great deal to offer on the issue of reincarnation.

See also Archetypes; Collective Unconscious;Jung, Carl.

Memories, reasons for loss of past life. There area number of reasons suggested for the fact thateveryone does not retain the memories of a past lifeor lives. One reason is that the conditions of bothdeath and birth are traumatic enough to wipe these

memories away. A second reason is that if we re-membered even one of our past lives, much lessmany of them, we would be so bogged down inthese memories that we would have difficulty inliving the present life. This is especially true if anyof the most recent lives were extremely unflatteringto our present egos. A third reason is that by nothaving past life memories we have the opportunityto start each life afresh. This third reason is far morepopular among Western reincarnationists than it isamong Eastern ones because it is often thought toweaken, or even discount, any karma factor. Thefourth reason is that our more distant memories inthis current life are often flawed and it is very com-mon to fill in any forgotten elements with imaginedinformation. This being the case, how much moretrue must it be for memories of a past life.

There are four additional reasons for not remem-bering a past life all of which are closely related toone another. First, since the immortality of thesouls does not allow it to relate to time sequencing,memories are not stored in the soul sequentially.Instead, memories are stored in like-nature clus-ters. For example, there are separate clusters formemories dealing with love, hatred, sadness, grief,etc. Second, the soul, being immortal naturally, hasno understanding of time in the sense of past, pres-ent, and future, since these divisions are exclusivelyrelated to the concept of mortality. Since memoriesare organized sequentially if the soul should storethem they would be of little use to anyone. Thisalso gives the soul an impersonal atman-like nature.Third, just about every memory a person has ac-quired in a particular life is of relevance to that lifealone. When reborn into a new body, there will bea new set of relatives, a new set of friends, possiblya different gender, race, socio-economic situation,and culture, etc. none of the memories of the pastlife are going to be of much use in the new life. Infact, from the point of view of the eons old soul,each set of memories related to a specific life ismerely a set of short term memories. As in the pre-ceding reason this one would also be characteristicsof an atman-like impersonality. Fourth, memoryis a factor of body-brain (mind) dependency andthe soul does not participate in those memories,so the memories are lost at death rather than beingcarried over into the new birth. This reason alsomakes the soul relatively impersonal or atman-like.

In an attempt to bring modern science into theexplanation for past life memory loss note has beentaken of the relationship between memory and thehormone oxytocin. It seems that this hormone,when given to laboratory animals, causes a mem-ory loss in them and it is also this identical hor-mone that controls a pregnant woman’s rate of laborcontractions. It has been suggested, therefore, that

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a large amount of oxytocin passes into the fetusduring the birth process and this washes away thepast life memories of the newly born child. An op-posite effect of an enhancement of memory is linkedto the chemical adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH),which is released by the body under stress. So ithas been suggested that this chemical in the womballows some children to remember a past life.

It might be noted that oxytocin is also the hor-mone that is needed in sufficient amounts in thehuman body to ensure social bonding. Childrenraised in orphanages often fail to develop normaloxytocin levels and as a result have life-long socialbonding problems. Of course, this and other hor-monally determined mental states have been usedto support the idea that the mind (soul) is simplya product of brain chemistry and when the braindies so does the mind or soul and any possibility ofreincarnation.

With the possible exception of the ACTH fac-tor, the preceding reasons for the absence of past lifememory seems to negate the possibility of authen-tic past life recall. This conclusion is not accept-able to those, mainly Westerners, who believe thatsome form of authentic past life recall is essential tosustain their belief in reincarnation. That this is farmore a Western issue than an Eastern one is dem-onstrated by the fact that Eastern believers seemcontent to accept that most, if not all, such recallis the exclusive privilege of enlightened sages. In-deed, it is even thought that such recall or remem-brance (purvanivasanusmrti) develops only as anecessary pre-condition to liberate the sage fromany remaining hidden karmic causes or roots thatotherwise would keep the sage still bound to thecycle of rebirth and re-death.

Finally, it must be remembered that the “reten-tion of memories issue” is of real significance onlyif the concept of karma is also involved. If the sit-uation into which one is reborn is in no way re-lated to the moral behavior of the past life, that iswithout punishment or reward, then the criticalargument that it is unjust to be born withoutknowing (remembering) why becomes a non-issue.

See also Abhijna; Age factor and rebirth; Birthtrauma; Child prodigies or geniuses; Deathtrauma; Future-lives; Karma and justice; Mac-Taggart, John Ellis; Mental plane; Past lifememory categories; Vegetarianism.

Memory alone critique. This is a criticism of theidea that having a memory of a past life is proof of rebirth. The criticism is based on the idea thathuman personhood constitutes not only memories,but personality traits, emotions, intellectual capac-ities, likes and dislikes, and even a particular orunique bodily form.

See also Karma and justice; Personality ver-sus individuality.

Memory categories and past lives see Diatha-natic; Past life memory categories.

Memory contamination. This occurs when a per-son hears something from a trusted source aboutwhich that person had no previous knowledge, butsoon becomes convinced that he or she also remem-bers that same something. In a significant numberof cases of past life recall such contamination hasbeen documented.

See also Guirdham, Arthur; Resurrection ofJesus.

Memory, summation. This refers to the theorythat while each of us loses our memories of specificevents of past lives, we are influenced by the sum ofall of the character, disposition, and innate talentswe have had in those lives.

See also MacGregor, Geddes.

Memory, suppressed. This is any memory that hasnot been allowed to enter the conscious mind, buthas been pushed into the subconscious mind. Suchsuppression is usually due to some traumatic eventassociated with the memory which would be toopainful or disturbing to the conscious mind to ac-knowledge. Some psychologists believe that suchsuppressed memories in the form of screen mem-ories can account for at least some of what are oth-erwise considered memories of a past life.

See also Blocked regression.

Mental body see Astral body; Causal body;Etheric body; Soul and spirit levels, Theosoph-ical

Mental plane. In Theosophy and related systemsthis is one of the six spiritual planes of existence; itis the next highest after the astral plane. The ex-perience of the soul, in its mental body form, on themental plane is unlike the experience of the astralbody on the astral plane because the soul has left be-hind every negative or stressful aspect of conscious-ness, after which it will work out all of its positivememories in the mental plane. This, according toTheosophy, is the reason why most people have nopersonal memories remaining to be passed on intothe next embodiment.

The mental plane can be considered as offeringa more heavenly experience than the astral planeand most souls remain here longer than in either theearthly physical or astral planes. This mental planeis of great significance because it is here that theego or true individuality is established, which re-tains a permanency until that future time in whichit can be reunited with the divine primordial. This

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view of the mental plane is taken from A Textbookof Theosophy by C. W. Leadbeater. It differs in someminor ways from the version suggested by HelenaBlavatsky, in that it incorporates the views ofAnnie Besant.

See also Individuality and rebirth; Karma andjustice; Memories, reasons for loss of past life;Second death; Soul and spirit levels, Theosoph-ical; Planes of existence, names of.

Mental retardation. According to such figures asAlice A. Bailey, a soul that had in a past life becomemorally degenerate, if reborn into a life of mentalretardation could avoid any further retribution inthe next life or lives. This, of course, is a prime ex-ample of blaming the victim.

Merit, transfer of. In Hinduism, Mahayana Bud-dhism, and Vajrayana Buddhism there is the be-lief that the karmic merit accumulated by one en-tity can be transferred to another entity. Forexample, in Hinduism the merit produced by theproper performance of certain sacred rituals by ason can help the deceased parent(s) gain a betterrebirth. Similarly, in Mahayana Buddhism the offering of alms to monks is believed to producesufficient merit that can be used to redeem a par-ent from hell or the hungry ghost realm. It is alsoa Mahayana teaching that those beings who, aftereons of having spiritually perfected themselves andbecome bodhisattvas or Buddhas have accumu-lated so much surplus karmic merit that they cantransfer this to their worshippers for better rebirths.

The status of merit transference in TheravadaBuddhism is somewhat controversial. Some textsseem to deny it while other texts affirm it. In Jain-ism it is most clearly denied.

See also Amitabha Buddha; Karma versusgrace; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Buddhism.

Mesoamerica see Aztec; Maya.

Mesopotamia (Iraq). This area included the an-cient cultures of Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria.There is no evidence of any belief in reincarnationin this region until two or more centuries after theGreek conquest of the area in the 4th century BCE

and the later development of Manichaeism.See also Greeks and reincarnation; Yarsanism;

Yazidis; Forty; Genesis; Gods, cyclically dyingand rising; Kanthaeans.

Messiah. According to some Kabbalic traditionsthe Messiah will be the reincarnation of the bibli-cal King David.

See also Ahmadiyya; Besant, Annie; Christian-ity and reincarnation; Essenes; Frank, Jacob;Harrowing of Hell; Jesus; Judgment of theDead; Kabbalah; Koresh, David; Leadbeater,

Charles Webster; Mark-Age, Inc; Mark, Gospelof; Melchizedek; New Testament and reincar-nation; Old Testament and the afterlife; Paul ofTarsus; Rebirth and cyclical time; Steiner,Rudolf; Zoroastrianism.

Metagenetics. This is the idea that genetically re-lated people share spiritual links that can not beshared by those who are genetically unrelated. Oneor more Nordic deity oriented Neo-pagan reli-gions advocate a metagenetic view. This has lead toaccusations that their followers are disguised Neo-Nazi sympathizers. Clearly, expressed in the wrongcontext metagenetics can be a dangerously misun-derstood belief. Metagenetics is also a part of thereincarnation theory of the Rastafarians.

See also Jewish Holocaust; Kabbalah; Karma,racial; Rebirth, ethnic.

Metempsychosis. The term is derived from theGreek, meaning to animate over again the soul, orthe changing (meta-) of the soul (psyche). Alter-native names for this term are palingenesis, rebirth,reincarnation, and transmigration and with theexception of the first of these, all are more com-monly used today than metempsychosis. Metem-psychosis is actually somewhat of an inaccurateterm because it implies changing souls rather thanbodies. For this reason the alternative term ofmetensomatosis (changing of bodies) has been pro-posed, but this is almost never found in modernwritings. Even rarer is the term metacosmesis. Metem-psychosis generally shares with transmigration theidea of cross species reincarnation and as such isrejected by most pro-reincarnationist Westerners.

Although some older English translations ofBuddhist literature used the term metempsychosisit is avoided today for the same reason transmigra-tion is because, from a Buddhist view point, bothterms have the same connotation of a permanentand autonomous soul (atman) entering a newbody. This leaves “rebirth” as the most acceptableEnglish term for translating Buddhist material.

In this encyclopedia the term metempsychosisis primarily used when referring to the issue of mul-tiple embodied lives in the Greco-Roman, earlyChristian, and Renaissance periods.

See also Anatman; Animals and rebirth, non–Western view; Animals and rebirth, Westernview; Animals, Domestic; Ensomatosis; Greeksand reincarnation; Introduction; Kyklos Gene-sion; Ontological leap or ontological discontinu-ity; Origin or Origenes Adamanthus; Orphism;Rebirth, cross-species; Rebirth, non-backslid-ing; Theophilus.

Metempsychosis, or the Transmigration of Souls,Systematically Considered, and Rescued from

171 Metempsychosis

Obloquy and Contempt by the Joint Authorityof Reason and Revelation; the Whole Compre-hending a Complete Body of Animation, Sci-entifically Investigated and Impartially Revised,by the late Lord (the name has been deleted here),in the Probationary Character of a Post-Horse.This ambitious title is found on a fifty-four pagebook published in 1781 in London by an unknownauthor. In the introduction to the book it states,“The succeeding pages furnish authentic proof infavor of a system long since exploded with deri-sion. The doctrines it inculcates will be exposed tothe objections of the learned, perhaps to the con-tempt of the ignorant. The writer will endeavor toobviate the former with all the assiduity he is mas-ter of; the latter must, in consequence remain un-noticed.”

Considering the renewed interest in reincarnationin seventeenth century England, as measured bythe number of books on the subject published thereat the time, it is somewhat surprising that the abovebook was one of only a few books on metempsy-chosis or transmigration published in the 18th cen-tury. It was not until the 19th century that a re-newed interest in the subject occurred.

See also Seventeenth century renewed inter-est in rebirth.

Metensomatosis. This Greek derived term means“Changing of Bodies’ and is not only a more accu-rate term than metempsychosis or transmigra-tion, but it is the term most often used in ancientGreco-Roman and early Christian sources. For rea-sons that are not too well understood the termmetensomatosis fell out of favor and is almost neverused in modern writings. It is because of the mod-ern rarity of this word that in this encyclopedia theless rare metempsychosis is substituted for it whenreferring to the issue of multiple embodiments ormultiple embodied lives in the Greco-Roman toRenaissance period.

Michael (Hebrew: Who is like God) (1). In tradi-tional Christianity the archangel Michael acts as apsychopomp, or carrier of souls to the afterlife state.In fact, the gospel song “Michael Row the Boat toShore” suggests that he replaced the classical Greekunderworld figure Charon, in whose boat the deadwere rowed across the river Styx.

See also Babbitt, Elwood; Work of Mercy.

Michael (2). This is the channeled entity ofMichael’s Teachings (1979). Contact with this en-tity was first reported in 1970 when Jessica andWalter Lansing (pseudonyms), both of whom hada long interest in the paranormal and parapsychol-ogy, began using the Ouija Board. The collectiveentity that manifested called itself Michael and at

some point during its channeling it explained thateach individual soul is actually part of a larger bodyor group soul of approximately a thousand mem-bers. Each individual member enters into the phys-ical plane (is reincarnated) as many times as is nec-essary to experience all aspects of life and to achievefull human understanding. At the end of a cycle ofsuch reincarnations all members of the group re-unite, on what it called the causal plane, in orderto combine their knowledge, skills, and wisdom ashad the Michael group. Such a collective of soulsthen acquires lucidity and benevolent karma byministering to those still on the physical plane of ex-istence. Michael, itself, is a group soul of 1,050 suchformer human souls. The teachings of Michaelhave been documented by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro,a popular writer of occult fiction.

See also Akashic Record; Angels and reincar-nation; Babbitt, Elwood; Causal body; Franklin,Benjamin (2); Gabriel; Hilarion; Lazaris; Ra;Ramtha; Ryerson, Kevin; Saint Germain; Seth;Stygian sexuality; Wilcock, David.

Middle Way or Middle Path (S/P: Madhyama-pratipad/Majjhima-patipada). This is one of themost important terms in Buddhism, since it is be-lieved that only by following such a path is a per-son capable of gaining liberation from samsara (thecontinued cycle of birth and death). The use ofmiddle in this term signifies an avoidance of ex-tremes while seeking liberation. Actually this avoid-ance entails three pairs of extremes. The first pairis the extremes of hedonism (kama-sukkha-al-likanu-yoga) and extreme asceticism or self-morti-fication (attakilamathaanu-yoga); the second pairis accidentalism (ahetu-apachaya-vada) and the-istic determinism (ishvaranimmaana-vada) andpast-action determinism (purvaketa-vada orpurvekatahetu); and the third pair is annihilation-ism (uccheda-vada) and eternalism (sasvata-/sas-sata-vada). Sometimes the term middle path is assigned to what is more commonly and more cor-rectly called the Eight-fold Path, which are rightviews, right intentions, right speech, right action,right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, andright concentration.

Midnight. According to Manly P. Hall, in his TheSecret Teachings of All Ages (1928) it was believed inthe ancient Greek Eleusian Mystery Cult that atmidnight the invisible (spirit) world closed to theterrestrial world and that the souls to be reborn hadto slip into their new bodily forms just before themidnight hour.

Milinda Panha (Pali: Question of Milinda). Thisis a text that reports to be a series of questions askedby a king of a Buddhist monk. The king was Mi-

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linda, the mid 2nd century BCE, Hellenized (Greek)ruler of Bactria (modern Pakistan-Afghanistan),whose name in Greek was Menander. The monkwas the very learned Thera (monk-elder) Nagasena.The whole purpose of the dialog was to clarify cer-tain puzzling aspect of Buddhist doctrine. Amongthe most important of these doctrines was how itwas possible to have rebirth without a soul (atman).Nagasena uses a variety of metaphors and similes tojustify this Buddhist teaching of anatman (soulless-ness), as well as other controversial elements ofBuddhist teachings. The Milinda Panha, which wasnot actually written down until about 100 BCE, istoday an extra-canonical text of Theravada Bud-dhism.

See also Ashoka, King; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Milky Way. To the ancient Greco-Romans this ce-lestial band of presumably unmoving stars, or aplace just beyond this band was regarded as a realmthat souls would ascend to at their final liberationfrom further bodily rebirth. This same belief was re-vived in more recent times by some Spiritualists.

See also Heracleides of Ponticus; Ogdoad;Planetary descent and ascent of the soul;Poimandres; Sephiroth; Summerland.

Millennialism (also Millenarianism). In Christianresurrectional belief this is the idea that a thou-sand-year period (Latin: millennium; Greek: Chil-iasm) of the Kingdom of Heaven will be establishedeither immediately before (pre-millennialism) orimmediately after (post-millennialism) the secondcoming (Parousia) of Christ.

In the case of “pre-millennialism,” as found atRevelation of John 20:1–21:5, the world will expe-rience extraordinary tribulations and the appear-ance of the Anti-Christ (Satan). This tribulationwill call forth the true Christ to defeat Satan, whowill be chained up. The loyal Christian, and per-haps other “redeemable,” dead will be resurrectedto participate in the millennium. At the end of thistime Satan will be let loose, the forces of evil willagain challenge the forces of good, the “unre-deemable” dead will resurrect, and the final judg-ment of the living and dead will occur in whichSatan and his unredeemable following will be con-signed forever to eternal punishment.

In the case of “post–Millennialism” the millen-nium will precede the Parousia which will be fol-lowed by a single, or undivided, great battle be-tween good and evil as well as a general resurrectionof all the dead and the final judgment. In 1944post-millennialism was declared unorthodox by theRoman Catholic Church; but continues to be ad-vocated by some Protestant groups.

While Christian millennialism may seem in op-position to any form of reincarnation, some Chris-

tian supporters of reincarnation believe that it ispossible to harmonize them. In this harmonizedversion people will remain in the cycle of rebirth“only” until a future point when the general resur-rection, followed by the final judgment, will occur.

See also Judgment of the Dead; Peter, 1st and2nd; Resurrection, bodily; Resurrection or rein-carnation.

Mind. In psychology mind or consciousness cangenerally be defined as awareness; however, in somereligious views mind or consciousness are each con-sidered either identical to, or a function of, the soulor spirit. Making mind, soul, and spirit synony-mous with one another can lead to considerableconfusion. To avoid this it is best to regard mindand consciousness as religiously neutral terms,while soul and spirit should be seen as exclusive re-ligious terms.

The mind is most consistently thought of as thatwhich contains memories. Even as far back as OldEnglish the ancestor of the term mind meant mem-ory, to remember or to warn. That it had the samemeaning even farther back is demonstrated by theSanskrit cognate manas, which also means themind. The word mind also commonly refers to theintellect and reason. In dualistic systems of thoughtit can be placed in opposition to the body, butrarely to the extent that the soul or spirit is oftenplaced in opposition to the body.

In the West in the late 17th century there begana gradually greater understanding of the functionsof the brain, and with this a progressive distin-guishing of the mind from such metaphysical con-cepts as the soul and spirit. The issue of mind as thereal essence of the individual can be traced back atleast as far as Rene Descartes (1596– 1650) and hisfamous formula of “I think, therefore, I am” (Cog-ito, ergo sum). In the following century the rise ofcapitalism for the first time allowed the more ma-terialistically viewed mind, under the term “psy-che,” to take the place of the soul as the repositoryof memory and, hence, as the basis of the real self.

There is, of course, a certain humorous incon-gruity in applying a word that has the Greek rootpsyche (soul) to mean something that pertains tothe mind as a non-metaphysical factor. Nonethe-less, it was the early 20th century science of the psy-che (psychology), especially in the form of depthpsychology, that more than anything else encour-aged replacing the soul with the mind. It was fur-thermore with such non-supernatural concepts asthe id, ego, and superego, libido (sexual desire),thanatos (death wish), and the Electra/Oedipus(child and parent or God conflict) complex ofFreudianism that revolutionized our perception ofselfhood as mind-hood. The success of depth psy-

173 Mind

chology in replacing certain religious views, how-ever, must be partially credited to the fact thatdepth psychology itself adopted mythic, even semi-religious, vocabularies, doctrines, and attitudes.This can best be understood in that, at least for theearliest depth psychology advocates, it seemedjustified that if the mind took the place of the soul,then the psychiatrist could take the place of thepriest. This replacement of the specialist of the soulby the specialist of the mind was also evident inJungian depth psychology, which actually was moresympathetic to religion than was Freudianism.

Even before depth psychology traded in theword soul for mind, a number of late 19th centuryteachers and groups offering new esoteric doctrineswere active in this trade; a major leader in this ef-fort was Theosophy.

Replacing the term soul with the supposedly lessmetaphysical term mind has not been universallyaccepted. Many Western philosophers and psychol-ogists have concluded that the term mind is actu-ally no less metaphysical and possibly no more realthan the term soul. These philosophers and psy-chologists have regarded both terms as simply sim-iles we have created for behavior that we are at pres-ent unable to explain in more concretely scientificways. In support of their opposition to regardingmind as more scientific than soul these opponentscan easily point to the fact that in a number ofmetaphysical systems consciousness, as the DivineMind, is considered synonymous for UniversalSoul, spirit, or God. Furthermore, any attempt toreplace the soul with the mind as the object of re-birth does not, in the least, make rebirth a morescientific concept.

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency; Body-soul dualism; Chitta; Ego; Electra/OedipusComplex and rebirth; Guenon, Rene; Skandha;Soul; Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical;Willis, Thomas; Vijnanavada School of Bud-dhism.

Mind (soul)-body relationship see Body-souldualism.

Mind, theory of. The “theory of mind” is the termused to mean that one individual can infer the per-ceptions and motivations of another individual.There is considerable controversy as to how muchevidence there is of “theory of mind” in non-hu-man species. Great apes and porpoises, and some-times elephants, are thought to have this ability tosome degree; however, it is this unquestionableability on the part of human beings that is oftenused to distinguish humans from other animals.

When it comes to the issue of reincarnation andanimals, the logical approach would seem to be thatto show that if any animal has an individual versus

just a collective soul, then that animal should firstbe able to exhibit “theory of mind.”

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Ani-mals, domesticated; Soul, collective; Soul, psy-chology of.

Mindstream Church of Universal Love. TheChurch began in 1979 with a charter from the Uni-versal Life Church of Modesto, California; how-ever, it has no set doctrine. Its prime mission is toassist members in discovering their own path inlife. This assistance is through classes, individualsessions on dream study, development of psychicskills, meditation, spiritual healing, relaxation, goalsetting, and reincarnational age regression that isdone without hypnosis.

Minimalist Reincarnation Hypothesis. This hy-pothesis is found in Robert Almeder’s essay A Criticof Arguments Offered Against Reincarnation (1997).Almeder believes that there is something essentialto some human personalities, which we can notplausibly construe solely in terms of brain states,and which survives after biological death in somemanner. Almeder further states that this essentialtrait is the repository of certain memories and dis-positional factors and that after some time this es-sential trait, by some mechanism, comes to residein other human bodies either some time during thegestation period, at birth, or shortly after birth.Also, Almeder says that this minimalist hypothesisdoes not commit anyone to know why or how thisre-embodiment occurs, or for how long, or forwhat end. He also does not speculate on any so-called interim period, how frequently reincarna-tion occurs, or whether reincarnation occurs for allpersons, after every death. Finally, the minimalisthypothesis does not require any commitment to abelief in karma. In short, the minimalist reincarna-tion hypothesis just says that “at least some humanpersonalities reincarnate.”

One thing Almeder does not mention is that hishypothesis could as easily be applied to possessionas it could to reincarnation. The rest of A Critic ofArguments Offered Against Reincarnation offers acounter argument to the scathing and often sarcas-tic criticism of reincarnation by Paul Edwards, andincludes a defense of the research of Ian Stevenson.

Minimal rebirth see Karma with minimal rebirth.

Mirror see Emma-o; Hell, the Chinese; Scry-ing; Yama.

Mithraism. This was a religion developed duringthe latter part of the Roman Empire and was basedon the worship of the Persian (Iranian) sun godMithra. It was especially popular with members of

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the Roman army. For a short time, it was even themore or less the official state religion under the em-peror Aurelian (died 275 CE). Mithraism acceptedthe Neoplatonic concept of metempsychosis andthe seven stage planetary descent and ascent of thesoul; the latter were associated with the sevenMithraic levels of mystical initiation.

See also Celestial gates; Cult of Angels; Julian,Flavius Claudius; Romans; Seven rungs of theheavenly ladder; Theophilus.

Mnemosyne (Greek: memory). This was a femaletitan goddess who was believed to be the mother ofthe nine Muses (goddesses of the arts) by Zeus. Ariver or lake named for Mnemosyne was said to flowthrough Hades, the drinking from which wouldallow the soul to retain the memories of its previ-ous life. Directly opposite this river was the riverLethe, the drinking from which would cause thesoul to forget all memory of its past life.

Moksha, also Mukta or Mukti (S: Released). Thisterm signifies that a person has been released fromfurther rebirth. When used in Hinduism it meansthat the person will be united in some way withGod (Brahman) at death. When used in Buddhismit is the equivalent of nirvana and parinirvana.

Moksha as an element of the word mokkhassamaggam means the way to full liberation, and as suchit is considered far superior to the saggassa maggamwhich is merely the way to heaven.

See also Jivanmukta; Kaivalya; Vaikuntha.

Moltke, Helmuth Graf von (1848– 1916). ThisPrussian Field Marshall and military genius notonly had a great interest in the occult, but in par-ticular he was interested in finding the Holy Grail,which some believed had been brought to Nieder-munster, Germany, in the 9th century. His part inthis belief was related to his conviction that he wasthe reincarnation of the 9th century sainted PopeNicholas the Great, whose Papal reign was 858–867. After Moltke’s death his spirit is said to havekept up a periodic communication with his wifeEliza von Moltke; through these communicationsa number of other individual’s in the Field Mar-shall’s life were credited with past lives. For exam-ple, Moltke’s even more famous uncle, also namedHelmuth von Moltke (1800– 1891), was said to bethe reincarnation of Pope Leo IV (r. 847–855);General Ludendoff (1865– 1937) was once PopeJohn VIII (r.1003– 1009), General von Schlieffen(1833– 1913) was once Pope Benedict II (r. 684–685), and Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859– 1941) was pre-viously the Bishop of Rothard, the Fox of Soisson(9th century). Moltke, the nephew, was an ac-quaintance of Rudolf Steiner.

See also Himmler, Heinrich; Hitler, Adolf.

Monad. This term means “the one” or “the alone”and originated with the philosopher Gottfried Wil-helm Leibniz (1646– 1716) who used it to describean infinitesimal psychophysical entity which com-prised ultimate reality. While all monads were uniqueand indestructible they were only distinguishedfrom each other by their differing degrees of con-sciousness. Later uses of the term monad equated itwith a part or aspect of the soul. Theosophy, inparticular, used the term to mean either the unifiedtriad of Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or just the dyad ofAtma-Buddhi. In some esoteric and occult systems

Monism (Greek mono: one). This is the metaphys-ical concept that all of reality is ultimately one in-divisible phenomenon. All that we perceive as sep-arate and distinct is in the final analysis due to ourmisperceptions.

A major problem with most kinds of monism, es-pecially Hindu monism, is that it leaves no “logi-cal” place for either rebirth or karma except as anillusory factor. It is for this reason that in the chap-ter on karma in Advaita Vedanta: a PhilosophicalReconstruction (1969), by Eliot Deutsch, the authornotes that the necessity of karma is not logicallyimplied by the metaphysical principles of advaita(non-dual), in which Brahman is the sole reality;hence, karma must have the logical status of a con-venient fiction or noble lie. Although in theory theMahayana Buddhist non-dualist position allowsmore room for both rebirth and karma, it must be noted that the pluralism of Theravada Bud-dhism is on even more secure grounds for these al-lowances.

See also Body-soul dualism; Dualism; Pan-theism and panentheism.

Montgomery, Ruth Shick (1912–2001). This au-thor has written some ten popular books relating toautomatic writing (typing), lost continents, spir-itualism, walk-ins, and reincarnation.

Moody, Raymond A. Jr. (1944–). Dr. Moody haswritten extensively on the subject of the afterlife, in-cluding reincarnation, as in his books Life AfterLife (1976) and Coming Back: A Psychiatrist ExploresPast Life Journeys (1991). Moody is also well knownfor his research center, the Theater of the Mind, inwhich he has revived the ancient Greek practice ofpsychomanteum. For the ancients this meant look-ing into a pool or pan of water (hydromancy) inorder to gain a vision of, or communication with,the deceased. In Dr. Moody’s updated version theclient, seeking to recall a past life, stares into a mir-ror (catoptromancy or enoptromancy) which is ac-tually a form of scrying.

Moon. Because of the moon’s waxing and waningcycles it has long been a common symbol in many

175 Moon

traditions for the afterlife, and especially for re-birth.

Among the ancient Greeks the moon was re-garded as one of the possible locations of the par-adise called the Isles of the Blessed or the ElysiumFields (paradise for the worthy dead). Also, in cer-tain esoteric traditions purgatory, especially that associated with the Indo-Buddhist kama-loka(world of desire), is considered to be located on themoon.

In very late Vedic Religion the dead were said tofollow either of two paths. The souls of those whohad performed perfectly the proper Vedic sacrificeswhile alive ascend along the solar path (suryamarga)never to return to earth. The souls of those whofailed in their sacrificial duties went along the lunarpath (chandramarga) to wait on the moon untiltime for their reincarnation on earth.

In present day Indian astrology the points atwhich the moon’s orbit intersects with the ecliptic,called northern node and southern node, have animportant reincarnation function. The northernnode of the moon called Rahu (Dragon’s head) iscommonly accepted as an indicator of the individ-ual’s fate in a specific life, while the southern nodeor Kethu (Dragon’s tail) is acknowledged as an in-dicator of an individual’s unresolved karmic residueof earlier lives, most especially any unlearned les-sons the individual failed to learn from one life toanother. This association of the lunar nodes withfate and karma may have to do with the fact thatthe nodal axis is the point at which eclipses hap-pened, and in ancient times eclipses were thoughtto signify dramatic events to come.

Beredene Jocelyn, in her book Citizens of theCosmos (1981), states that souls upon descendingback to earth for rebirth will become males if theyapproach at the new moon phase, which is whenmost of the light reflected from the moon is turnedaway from earth towards the outer universe. Thosesouls that approach at the full moon phase will be-come females.

The three nights in which the moon is dark (in-visible), due to its location directly between theearth and sun, has also been thought important insome reincarnation traditions in that they considerthese three days (nights) to be the interim periodbetween death and rebirth. Some forms of mod-ern Theosophy have also adopted the idea that the soul journeys to the moon as its first stop dur-ing the interim period between death and rebirth.In the Kabbalic magic tradition, the archangelGabriel, who is assigned to ruler over the moon, isregarded as the final guide of the soul to its nextrebirth.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Astrologyand rebirth; Celestial gates; Eighth sphere; Gen-

der issue of the soul; Greek afterlife, the ancient;Immortality; Pritiloka; Rebirth, analogies fromnature.

Moore, Marcia (1928– 1979). Besides Reincarna-tion: Key to Immortality (1968), this author has writ-ten several other books on the subject of past lives.However, what is of most interest in her approachto reincarnation is the suggestion, in Journey into theBright World (1978), that the anesthetic agent “ke-tamine hydrochloride” can be used to recall pastlife memories. Moore mysteriously vanished fromher home in 1979 and it was not until two yearslater that her lower jaw alone was found in a localforest and identified through dental records. Thecause of death is not known.

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency.

Moral perfection see Rebirth and moral perfec-tion; Resurrection or reincarnation; Theosis.

More, Henry (1614– 1687). Although the essay TheImmortality of the Soul (1659) by this English phil-osopher was primarily concerned with proving the soul’s existence prior to embodiment he diddeal with the issue of reincarnation. While reject-ing both regressive and progressive transmigration,Moore was willing to accept lateral multiple lives asa real possibility.

See also Transmigration, lateral; Transmigra-tion, progressive; Transmigration, regressive.

Morganwg, Iolo (1747– 1826). This was the penname of Edward Williams and meant Iolo ofGlamorgan, Glamorgan being William’s birthplace. Morganwg was a major figure in the revivalof the Welsh bardic tradition and of the druids.According to Morganwg, the ancients believed thatall souls passed through an evolutionary processthat started with the mineral world, which he calledthe Cauldron of Annwn. From here souls were borninto the first world or circle of existence calledAbred. This was the common world of plants andanimals, including humans. From here enlightenedhuman souls could reincarnate into the secondworld, or circle of existence, called Gwynfydd. Thisis the realm of angels and was the intended ulti-mate goal of mankind. In this angelic world soulscould remember all of their past lives and incar-nate into any form of life they wished. The thirdworld or circle of existence was called Ceugant andwas the exclusive realm of the divine infinity.

A modified version of Morganwg’s scheme wasthat all souls were once in Gwynfydd, but fell intothe mineral world because of their prideful attemptto enter Ceugant. This is a modified version of thefall of the souls.

See also Evolutionary transmigration of souls.

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Mormonism. Because Mormonism teaches thesoul’s existence prior to embodiment it is some-times mistakenly believed that this highly Freema-sonic and Kabbalic influenced form of esotericChristianity teaches reincarnation; but it does not.In fact, orthodox Mormonism regards the teach-ing of reincarnation with even more repugnancethan does more orthodox Christianity. Nonetheless,there seems to be some indirect evidence thatJoseph Smith (1805– 1844), the scrying, and pos-sibly sciomancing, founder of Mormonism mayhave at one time speculated on the belief in reincar-nation. This may have been encouraged by a mis-taken belief that the Egyptians taught reincarna-tion.

While the mainstream Latter Day Saints (LDS)of Salt Lake City, Utah, and even most splinterMormon groups reject reincarnation, at least onesplinter group, The True and Living Church ofJesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days (TLC) located in Manti, Utah accepts reincarnation. Thischurch teaches about “multiple mortal probations(MMPs),” which are said to be similar to Easternreincarnation concepts; however, in the TLC’smultiple mortal probations, the person always returns with the same gender and personality. Also, the more righteous a person is the fewer the probations (lives) he or she will have to expe-rience.

See also Aquarian Foundation; Christianity,esoteric; Egypt; Gender issue of the soul; Lostcontinents and reincarnation; Sciomancy.

Morning Star see Lucifer; Yeats, William Butler.

Morse, J.J. (1848– 1919). This communications fa-mous trance medium declared that he had receivedseveral spirit that stated that “reincarnation wasnonsense.”

See also Davis, Andrew Jackson; Spiritualism;Wickland, Carl A.

Moses, the Old Testament prophet. According toboth the Zohar and the Kabbalic thinking of theschool of Isaac Luria, Moses was the reincarnationof the patriarch Noah due to the fact that Noah, asthe second father of humanity, had failed to guidehis generation to repentance.

See also Deuteronomy 5:2–3; Grant, JoanMarshall; I Am Movement; Jesus; Kabbalah;Matthew, Gospel of; New Testament and reincar-nation; Numenius of Apamea; Old Testament;Philo Judaeus or Philo of Alexandria; Psalms;Resurrection of Jesus; Serpent.

Mother, mule, and son. This grouping of termsmade up a little known criticism of metempsy-chosis by some early Christians. They suggestedthat if a human soul could return as an animal then

it was theoretically possible for a mother to be re-born as a mule which her son might some day ride.This idea then was ridiculed as violating the bibli-cal commandment to honor one’s parents.

See also Child as its own reborn father ormother.

Mount Shasta. This volcanic mountain some14,162 feet high in northern California has beenlinked to the subject of reincarnation through suchworks as A Dweller on Two Planets (1894) by Fred-erick Oliver; Lemuria: The Lost Continent of thePacific (1931) by W.S. Cerve and James Ward; andUnveiled Mysteries (1934) by Guy Ballard, thefounder of the I Am Movement. The mountain’smysteriousness was further reinforced by E. L.Larkin (d. 1924), who ran the Mount Lowe Ob-servatory and claimed to see strange lighting effectscoming from the mountain.

See also Cayce, Edgar; Phylos the Tibetan;Saint Germain; Rosicrucians.

Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. Foundedin 1971 by the ex–Mormon John-Roger Hinkins(1934–), the Movement’s teachings derive mainlyfrom Buddhism, Hinduism, and particularly theSant Mat (Radhasoami) tradition of Sikhism. TheMovement emphasizes gaining the assistance ofMystical Traveler Consciousness which is donethrough initiation and meditating on the mantra“Hu.” With the assistance of this Consciousnessand taking responsibility for one’s own karma theindividual can be liberated from the cycle of birthand death.

Muhammad Ahmad (1834?–1885). In Islam it isbelieved that in the future there will come a di-vinely sent man (Arabic: al-Mahdi, the GuidedOne) to purify Islam and the world prior to theLast Judgment. Throughout Islamic history therehave been a number of individuals who haveclaimed to be al-Mahdi, but perhaps the most fa-mous of these was Muhammad Ahmad, from thethen Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

The full name of this Sudanese messianic leaderwas Muhammad Ahmad ibn Sayyid ‘Abd Allah. A charismatic figure and founder of his own der-vish order (religious fraternity), Muhammad Ahmaddeclared a holy war (jihad) against the British andtheir Egyptian allies and succeeded in temporarilydriving both out of the country. Although heclaimed to be descended from the prophet Muham-mad, Ahmad did not object to being also consid-ered the reincarnation of the Prophet.

See also Ahmadiyya; Islam; Judgment of theDead.

Mula (S/P: Root). In Buddhism there are said to bethree great negative or unskillful (S/P: akushala/

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akusala) root factors that keep entities trapped in theround of birth and death (samsara). These are sex-uality (kama) or lust (raga), hatred (dvesa/dosa), andignorance (avidya/avijja). Sometimes the wordgreed (lobha) or thirst (trishna/tanha) replaces lustand the word delusion (moha) replaces ignorance inthis triple root concept. At the same time there arethe three positive or skillful (kushala/kusala) or op-posite root factors that aid in liberating beings fromsamsara. These are contented sexual abstinence(brahmacharya/brahmachariya), friendliness (maitri/metta) or charity (alobha or dana), and knowledge(vidya/vijja) or right apprehension (amoha). Theterm thirst (trishna/tanha) is particularly importantin Buddhism because in the absence of a soul(atman) to pass from one life to the next what re-ally causes rebirth is the thirst for being or existing.

See also Anatman; Brahman; Buddhist stagesof liberation; Schopenhauer, Arthur.

Mu-lian, The Story of. This popular Chinesestory tells of a boy that was sent by his poor parentsto a monastery where he worked diligently to be-come a monk. When he grew up he went to visit hisparents only to find that his father had died andhis mother had abandoned the Buddha’s teachingand had become very hard-hearted and cruel. Shewas unkind to her servants, animals, and had takento meat eating. Mu-lian tried to reform her, butto no avail. When the mother died she went to oneof the lowest hells. Mu-lian realizing her conditionwished to save her and, being a devoted monk, hegained the assistance of heaven to do so. Aftermany trials during his journey through the variouslevels of hell Mu-lian finally found the spirit of hismother. However, his mother’s sins had been sogreat that even heaven could not freely absolve herof them. Instead, Mu-lian was told to return to theworld and acquire enough merit to pay for hismother’s redemption. This he did and finally hismother was released to be reborn again in theworld. This story is obviously one of great filialpiety, and as such, it serves to reinforce belief inthat virtue in Chinese society.

See also Chinese religion and reincarnation.

Muller, Catherine Elise (1861– 1929). This Frenchmedium was one of the earliest to claim not onlypast lives but an ability to carry on inter-planetarycommunications. She was studied by the early mul-tiple-personality researcher and French physiologistTheodore Flournoy. Muller claimed to have pre-viously lived over 500 years, from life as the daugh-ter of an Arab Sheik to, more recently, as Marie An-toinette. Furthermore, Muller claimed to be incommunication with beings on Mars and, to evenspeak their language. Not surprisingly, an analysisof her Martian speech turned out to be character-

ized as a strange vocabulary with a very Frenchgrammar. Flournoy published his study on Muller,using the pseudonym Helene Smith for her, in hisbook From India to the Planet Mars: A Study of aCase of Somnambulism with Glossolalia (1963).

See also Cleopatra Syndrome; Glossolalia;GloLanguage inconsistency; Planets, other.

Multiple personalities. This describes a form ofmental illness in which two or more seemingly dis-tinct personalities are said to share the same body.Over the centuries two main theories have beengiven for this phenomenon. The first, and oldest,theory is that it is a case of possession by a malev-olent spirit. While most people in the modern in-dustrialized world have ceased to believe in thispossibility, the present day belief in channelingcould be considered a modern variation of suchpossession. In this case, however, the possession isgenerally thought to be for the good of the recipi-ent and society at large.

The second, and more modern, theory is that asplit or multiple personality disorder (MPD) is atype of schizophrenia in which the normally inte-grated personality fragments into two or more per-sonalities, each which appear to be integrated per-sonalities of their own, and which are relativelyindependent of one another. It has been thoughtthat the reason for this split is to eliminate un-wanted or painful memories from the original per-sonality. This is why the original personality is usu-ally unaware of the off splits. In rare cases anindividual has been known to manifest more thantwenty such personalities.

Both the old possession theory and the modernMPD theory have been used to try to explain pastlife recalls; however, since the possession theory isdealt with under the entries attached entities andpossession, only the MPD theory will be deal withhere.

A careful comparison of MPD with past life re-call shows that there are at least four reasons fordiscounting past life recall as a form of MPD. First,many of today’s psychiatrists deny the validity ofMPD as a patient generated disorder. It has beensuspected, due to some clinical evidence, that MPDsarise, not before therapy, but during therapy as a byproduct of a patient’s fantasies that have been un-intentionally encouraged by suggestions from thetherapist.

Second, all the so-called separate personalitiesin MPD are contemporary with one another;whereas, the presumed past life personalities forma non-contemporary past timeline series. Thismeans that the past and present personalities arenot in competition with each other and so do notinterfere with the present mental health of the pres-

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ent personality. This is in great contrast to MPDswhere the various split personalities can cause dan-gerous interference with one another.

Third, when comparing past life recall withMPD there is usually no highly emotional or deep-seated traumatic element associated with the pastlife recall that would trigger the kind of mentalconflict found in MPD. An exception to this couldbe in the case of some past life recall that is relatedto screen memories.

Fourth, in most cases, past life recall is mani-fested by very young children who have not hadenough time to develop a MPD.

It should also be noted that there is growing ev-idence to suggest that even the most normal of in-dividuals have benign multiple personality capac-ities. Unless exaggerated beyond a tolerable level,when manifested, these are not taken too seriously.

For an early investigation into the relationshipof multiple personalities and past lives there are twopapers found in Hypnosis At Its Bicentennial: Se-lected Papers, edited by Fred H. Frankel (1978). Oneis by Reima Kampman and Reijo Hirvenoja andthe other by Milton V. Kline.

See also Bridey Murphy case; Children re-membering past lives; Christos (anointing) tech-nique; Dissociation; Facial blank; Fantasy ver-sus past life regression; Past life regression andsuggestibility; Past life therapy; Possession; Psy-chosomatic illnesses; Retroactive inhibition.

Mumukshatwa (S). This term means the desire forliberation from the cycle of birth and death (rein-carnation).

Mummy, The. In many versions of The Mummymovies reincarnation has been part of the plot. Thefirst, among the more noted ones, is The Mummy(1932, Universal) in which the female character,Anck-es-en-Amon, has had many lives over a pe-riod of four thousand years and now is embodiedas the English woman Helen Grosvenor. As movietiming would have it, Helen just happens to be inEgypt when her ancient love, the mummy Imho-tep, is mistakenly resuscitated as Ardath Bey. Be-tween 1940 and 1945 Universal produced a series offour more mummy movies, each more preposterousthan the other. In these, the mummy’s name haschanged to Kharis and his former love is Ananka.

The Mexican film industry produced its own se-ries of mummy (momia)-past life regression moviesstarting with the Aztec Mummy vs. the Robot (LaMomia Azteka Contra el Robot Humano, 1958, Cin-ematografica Calderon S.A). Here the mummy is anancient Aztec warrior, Popoca, and his love is theprincess Zochi, reincarnated as Flora, the wife of apast life regression psychiatrist.

British cinema contributed to the mummy scene

on several occasions, but in the 1971 Blood from theMummy’s Tomb (EMI Films), an archeologist dis-turbs the tomb of an ancient Egyptian queen, whileat the very same moment, thousand’s of miles away,the archeologist’s wife is giving birth to their daugh-ter. This perfect timing allows the queen’s soul tobe reborn in (or take possession of ) the daughter’sbody and the mayhem begins.

In the Canadian The Mummy Lives! (1993,Global) Kia, the ancient concubine of the god Zothhas reincarnated in modern times only to becomethe object, not of love, but lust of her ancient vio-lator Azira, a resuscitated mummy.

In the 1999 Trimark Pictures mummy movie,The Eternal, the soul of a Druid witch, whose bodyhas been preserved as an Irish bog-mummy, is rein-carnated as a woman who has to struggle againsther former evil self and her present good self.

There is also the 2001 The Mummy Returns (Al-phaville Films) in which there are two modern dayreincarnations; the first is of the daughter of thePharaoh Seti I and the second is the Pharaoh’s adul-terous wife who was had him murdered by herpriest lover, Imhotep. It is Imhotep who becomesthe resuscitated mummy.

See also Hollywood and reincarnation; Steiner,Rudolf.

Myers, E.W.H. (1843– 1901). This British classi-cist was the co-founder of the (British) Society forPsychical Research. According to at least one Spir-itualist medium, Myers’ post-mortem spirit ex-plained that reincarnation was necessary for thosesouls that had sunk so morally low in life as to oth-erwise have no chance of spiritual redemption. Heis said to have referred to these people as animalmen.

See also Cummins, Geraldine.

Nafs and Ruh (Arabic: soul and spirit). Nafs, whichcorresponds to the Hebrew nephesh, is the generalterm in Islam for the human soul. It is the nafs ofthe individual that is subject to the Day of Judg-ment (Yaum al-Din).

Sometimes the term nafs is used to mean thelower spiritual self of a person, that which is pos-sessed of passions and is easily incited to evil. Othertimes nafs is used reflexively to mean self or itself inwhich case it can refer to a person, animal, inanimateobject, or even God. In other words, only the speci-fic context can determine what exactly nafs means.

The nafs must be clearly distinguished from theruh (spirit) which is what God breathes into humanbeings to give them life, and corresponds to theHebrew ruah. The ruh is regarded as an intellectu-alizing element (aql ) which raises each personabove the animal level. Ruh is that part of each per-son that returns to God at death.

179 Nafs

For the minority of Moslems who accept reincar-nation it is difficult to know whether it is the nafs,the ruh or both that reincarnates.

See also Muhammad Ahmad.

Nag Hammadi Texts. This collection of 13 diversegnostic and hermetic papyrus manuscripts, writ-ten in Coptic (old Egyptian), and dating from the3rd-4th centuries, were discovered in a large clay jarin the upper (southern) Egyptian desert in 1941.Up until that time most of what was known aboutGnosticism was culled from anti-gnostic materialwritten by various early Christian authorities. TheNag Hammadi texts gave scholars their first sub-stantial understanding of various forms of Gnosti-cism in the Gnostic’s own words. In some of thesetexts, such as The Secret Book of John and The Apoc-ryphon of John, reincarnation of at least a spiritualelect is mentioned.

See also Gnostic Order of Christ; Hermeticphilosophy; Pistis Sophia.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769– 1821). According tothe Memoirs of Prince Talleyrand (1892) Napoleon,whether he sincerely believed it or not, was said tohave told his generals that in a past life he was theFrankish emperor Charlemagne (742–814 CE).

According to the calculations of the astrologerA. Tad Mann Napoleon was first embodied asAlexander the Great (356–323 BCE) and then asCharlemagne and it was as the re-embodiment ofthe latter that Napoleon believed he was justified indeclaring himself Emperor of France in 1804, andsubsequently refusing to recognize the legitimacy ofthe German office of Holy Roman Emperor with itsclaim to be the legitimate elected successor of Char-lemagne. At the same time, some reincarnation au-thorities claim that Charles-Andre-Marie-Josephde Gaulle (1890– 1970), the French general andpresident, considered himself the reincarnation ofNapoleon. This is said to account for De Gaulle’sgeneral dislike for the British. Reincarnation, how-ever, is not needed to explain any French dislike ofthe British, since these two nations have felt en-mity towards one another since the Middle Ages.

See also Patton, George S; Repetition compul-sion.

Naraka or Niraya (Devoid of happiness). This isthe general name for the Hindu and Buddhist hellor purgatory. In Hinduism it is sometimes di-vided into seven parts. The first part is reserved forchildless persons, the second for those awaiting re-birth, and the third for general evil doers. It is thefourth and below that are places of torment. Thelast of these is kakola and is a pit from which thereis no escape through rebirth.

See also Avichi; Bhavachakra; Hungry ghosts.

Natal defects. Many Eastern, and some Western,advocates of reincarnation believe that the reasonthat some children are born with a physical or men-tal defects is the result of bad karma. This blam-ing the victim is a morally questionable belief inthat it has allowed many in Asian societies to offerno real sympathy, much less assistance, to thesechildren on the basis that such assistance would beinterfering in the children’s well deserved karma.

See also Birthmarks; Caste system; Death;Karma and justice; Out-of-the-body experiencesand near-death-experiences.

National character reappearances. One of the ar-guments supportive of rebirth is that certain cur-rent national characteristics closely reflect certainformer national characteristics. This particular ar-gument is almost exclusively an Anglo-Americanone. It says that 18th and 19th Britain, with its greatempire mirroring the Roman Empire, strongly sug-gested that there was a mass rebirth of ancientRoman souls in Britain. This was followed by agradual decline in that empire due to those soulsnext choosing rebirth in the United States in the20th century. This same argument regards 17th and18th century France as a recipient of a large influxof ancient Greek souls. This argument suffers fromthe same circular logical problem as the nations,their rise and decline argument.

See also Renaissance.

Nations, their rise and decline argument. Oneof the arguments supportive of rebirth is that re-birth explains the rise and decline of nations. Thisargument states that a nation rises to greatness be-cause a very large number of advanced souls are at-tracted to it for rebirth. Likewise, a nation declineswhen the reverse situation occurs. The problemwith this argument is that it does not state why avery large number of advanced souls are attractedto that nation in the first place. In short, the argu-ment can only end up being circular in its logic.

Naylor, James (1618– 1660). This prominent earlyQuaker leader was persuaded by some religiouslyoverly enthusiastic Quaker women that he was areincarnation of Christ. Tried for blasphemy he wasimprisoned for three years and died a year or soafter his release.

Near-death experience see Out-of-the-body ex-periences and near-death-experiences.

Necromancy. This is the practice of divinationfrom corpses. The term is also commonly, but improperly used for the communication with thespirits of the dead for the purpose of divination.However, the proper term for such spirit commu-nication is sciomancy. Many conservative Christ-

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ian sects, making no distinction between theseterms, accuse those who attempt to delve into pastlives as necromancers (sciomancers) who are receiv-ing information coming from lost souls, polter-geists, and/or demons.

Nemesius of Emesa (4th century). This bishop ofEmesa (modern Homs), Syria is famous for hiswork Peri Physeos Anthropou (On the Nature ofMan). This work is the first known Christian ori-ented compendium of inductive psychology andtheological anthropology. In the book Nemesiuscriticized the views of the soul as taught by bothPlato and Aristotle. Nemesius says that in Plato’sview the soul was regarded as too independent ofthe body, while in Aristotle’s view the soul was toodependent upon the body. Nemesius claimed thatthe Christian view was a proper balance betweenthese two extremes. Nemesius apparently acceptedthe soul’s existence prior to embodiment, but theattempts that have been made to claim him as asupporter of reincarnation are very questionable.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion.

Neo-pagan religions. Neo-Paganism is oftenlumped together with New Age religions, andwhile there is a considerable overlap between thetwo, most Neo-Pagan groups consider themselvesas a separate spiritual movement and several char-acteristics do differentiate the two. First, as wor-shippers of various phenomenon found in nature,Neo-Pagans rarely speak of realizing ones “HigherSelf ” as do most New Age groups. For Neo-Pagansthe present, ordinary self, in harmony with the nat-ural world, is perfectly acceptable. Second, there isno talk of any apocalyptic or new millennium erain the future in which many New Age groups be-lieve. Third, Neo-pagans look back in history todevelop their beliefs, rites and rituals; New Agersrarely do. Fourth, Neo-Pagans are generally veryritually oriented, unlike most New Age groups.

Some groups do bridge the separation betweenthe New Age and Neo-Pagan groups such as theNeo-Shamanists. Still, even here there is a tendencyto lean to a New Age side or a Neo-Pagan side. Theformer focuses on the self and personal develop-ment, while the latter focuses on community heal-ing that may include a symbolic healing of nature.

One commonality that should otherwise unitethe two groups, namely a preference for a belief insome sort of rebirth, reincarnation or transmigra-tion actually serves to further separate them. NewAge believers generally take a very gnostic attitudetowards rebirth, seeing it as a condition from whichto escape through developing one’s higher self.Neo-Pagans, on the other hand, consider rebirthas something to repeatedly welcome.

See also Druids; Gnosticism; Hell; Rebirth,East and West; Rebirth in the West; Summer-land; Taylor, Thomas; Wicca.

Neoplatonism. This school of philosophy, originat-ing in Alexandria, Egypt, was most likely estab-lished by Ammonius Saccas (175–242). Althoughtechnically it was an attempt to revive and expandon the teachings of Plato Neoplatonism really grewout of the teachings of Plotinus (204–269), withProclus (411–485) its last major teacher. As a for-mal school it lasted until the fifth century when,along with all other pagan philosophical and reli-gious schools, it was closed by order of the Chris-tian Roman (Byzantine) emperor Justinian I in 529CE.

Despite its pagan origins, Neoplatonism had amajor influence on later orthodox Christian, Jew-ish, and Islamic thought. Since many Neoplaton-ists accepted a belief in metempsychosis it was because of this influence that a number of unortho-dox Christian, Jewish, and Islamic sects adoptedthe belief as well.

See also Druzes; Emanationism; Gnosticism;Hermetic philosophy; Iamblichus; Julian, theApostate; Kabbalah, Manichaeism; Nusayris;Platonism; Priesthood, lack of an organized:Sallustius the Neoplatonist; Sufism; Synesius ofCyrene; Theosophy.

Nepenthean veil. This means the veil of forgetful-ness. The word nepenthe or nepenthes comes fromthe Greek ne-(for not), and -penthos (for grief );and is traced back to the Odyssey of Homer whereit is the name of an Egyptian drug believed to makeone to totally forget all one’s troubles or miseries andas such it is a synonym for the waters of Lethe.

See also Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Iliadand Odyssey.

Nephesh and Neshamah see Kabbalah; Nafs andRuh; Old Testament and the soul; Soul; Soul,tripartite.

Nero. Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus(54–68 CE). This infamous Roman emperor is notto be confused with either of his two predecessors,Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar (14–37 CE) or Ti-berius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (41–54CE). The biographer and moralist Plutarch (46–119?CE) mentions that Nero Claudius was rebornas a frog for all of his sins.

See also Paul of Tarsus; Plutarch; Redivivus;Romans, Ancient; Simon Magus.

Netherton Method. This is a method advocatedin the book Past Lives Therapy (1978) by MorrisNetherton and Nancy Schiffrin. It uses word orphrase association to recall past lives. Here specific

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recurring or out-of-place words or phrases of thepatient, especially those that seem to be accompa-nied by a strong emotional or body language re-sponse, are used to open up the subconscious byhaving the patient concentrate on and/or repeatthose phrases. In many cases this will lead to a re-call of some past life trauma. For Netherton thisconcentration automatically puts the patient into amild self-induced trance state, but one of whichthe patient is always in control. This, in turn, hasthe advantage of the individual who is recalling apast life doing so directly without an intermediateperson such as a hypnotist. Clearly, in the Nether-ton Method the boundary between the consciousand subconscious mind is far more permeable thanit is thought to be where hypnotic regression isused. Morris Netherton founded the Associationfor the Alignment of Past Life Experience in Cali-fornia.

See also Affect bridge; Blocked regression;Hypnotic age regression; Leading question; Past life readings; Reverie recall; Spontaneousrecall.

Neverdies. This group, also known as the Churchof the Living Gospel or Church of the EverlastingGospel, is of the Pentecostal tradition but includesthe teaching of reincarnation. The exact date forits founding in West Virginia is not uncertain.

New Age Community Church. This is said to bea church for the Age of Aquarius (the New Age).The Church teaches that the differences betweenthe major religions are relatively unimportant incomparison to the nine pathways that can lead toGod. These nine are social relationships; medita-tion or mental discipline; psychic revelation, whichincludes channeling; a belief in and understandingof karma and rebirth; the ecstasy of music anddance; magical and sacramental rituals; wisdomand understanding through intellectual knowledge;healthful physical practices of yoga and diet; andworshipful devotion and adoration. The Churchteaches that God, rather then being a personaldeity, is all there is. In other words, the universecan be thought of as God’s physical body. Also,Christ is to be thought of as the Logos or HigherSelf of mankind. The Church further teaches thathuman beings are currently trapped on the wheelof reincarnation because people continue to believein good and evil and this creates emotional valuesbased on that belief. When we cease to create suchvalues karma can no longer hold us and we will as-cend to the level of the divine.

New Age religions. This term encompasses a variety of religious movements and sects of the 20th century, all of which have an optimistic view

of human nature and a sense that there is a higher spiritual reality which it is the destiny ofmankind to eventually discover. The New AgeMovement is in a number of ways a revitalized con-tinuation of 19th century New England Transcen-dentalism, new thought, spiritualism, Theoso-phy, 19th–20th century astrology, and Easternreligions. Most New Age believers reject the West-ern orthodox view of an eternal hell which is whymany of them prefer the doctrine of reincarnationor transmigration in place of the orthodox Chris-tian resurrection of the dead. Some authors whowrite about New Age religions include neo-paganreligions into the New Age category; however,those more nature based religions object to this in-clusion.

See also Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ; As-cended masters; Astrology and rebirth; Chan-neling; Christianity, esoteric; Resurrection, bod-ily; Sutphen, Dick; UFOism.

New Testament see Antinomianism; Christianatonement theories; Corinthians, 1st and 2nd;Ephesians; Galatians; Gnosticism, Hebrew;James 3:6; Jesus; John, Gospel of; John the Bap-tist; Luke, Gospel of; Mark, Gospel of; Matthew,Gospel of; Paul of Tarsus; Peter, 1st & 2nd; Ro-mans; Revelation of John; New Testament andreincarnation; New Testament sacrificial concept;Palingenesis.

New Testament and reincarnation. Many rein-carnationists have tried to find some evidence ofreincarnation (metempsychosis) in the canonicalNew Testament; however, any such evidence, evenof a hidden nature, is more wishful thinking thananything else. Without doubt, many of the “apoc-ryphal” gospels and letters that were refused inclu-sion into the canon did include a belief in metem-psychosis. This was especially the case for variousgnostic Christian texts of the very late first centuryto the third century CE, but not earlier. The reasonfor this is that the earliest Christian community, asrepresented by the writers of the earliest synopticgospels Mark and Matthew, and Paul of Tarsusbelieved that Jesus, as the Christ (Messiah), wouldreturn from heaven in their “own generation”;therefore, these authors had no real need for anylong term afterlife theory such as reincarnation,and so no such theory should be expected in theirworks. It was only after it became obvious that thereturn (the Parousia) of Christ might be some timeaway that more specific theological concerns aboutthe afterlife were needed. It was at this point thatsome early gnostic Christian groups accepted a be-lief in metempsychosis.

It must be noted that it took three centuries forthe church to decide which writings to accept as

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orthodox and which to reject. Moreover, this de-cision was made in various church council debateswhich are among the most well documented activ-ities of their time. If the question of metempsy-chosis, either for or against, were a part of any ofthese early council debates the documentation onthat issue would certainly have been preserved.Usually what modern day reincarnationists claimwere council debates on reincarnation where reallydebates on the soul’s existence prior to embodi-ment, which was ultimately declared heretical.However, even if prior existence had been accepted,this would not have automatically meant prior ex-istence for more than one life. Without exceptionall pro-metempsychosis texts were rejected as toounorthodox for inclusion in the canon at theChurch Council of Laodicea in 364 CE; a decisionthat was confirmed at the synod of Carthage in 397.

Despite the orthodox success in excludingmetempsychosis from the canon many modern at-tempts have been made to still read it into the NewTestament. This, of course, can only be done if thetargeted passages, as proof text, are taken com-pletely out of context. A number of modern “eso-teric” Christians have done just this. Of course, theability in the first place to make the claim that theNew Testament subtly teaches reincarnation is madeeasier by the fact that the New Testament is very in-consistent in its views of both a general afterlifeand, more specifically, the resurrection of the dead.

One of the first modern attempts to use this in-consistently in support of reincarnation in the NewTestament was made by Helena Blavatsky. Theclaim on her part that Jesus taught reincarnationwas clearly not only an attempt to undermine anyChristian opposition to her Theosophy, but to tryto prove that Theosophy was more of a truly uni-versal religion than was orthodox Christianity.

Among the most common phrases or verses in theNew Testament that have been used to supportChristian reincarnation are those found in Corinthi-ans, 1st and 2nd, Ephesians, Galatians, the fourGospels, James 3:6, and Peter, 1st and 2nd.

Whenever any claim is made that the New Tes-tament secretly teaches reincarnation it should beclearly understood that although that text was orig-inally written in Greek, it represents Jewish, notGreek, thinking when it comes to life and death.The Jews only conceived of the human personalityas something contained in a physical body, not asa disincarnated soul. The latter notion was purelya Greek contribution to Western religious thought.It is true that by the Middle Ages Christian theol-ogy, especially as it applied to the cult of deceasedsaints, adopted more of that Greek view; however,that adoption was not until well after the Bible hadbeen officially closed to new additions.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Annihila-tionism, Biblical view; Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ; Arguments supportive of rebirth;Carpocrates; Christian atonement theories;Christian view of the afterlife; Christianity andreincarnation; Christianity, esoteric; ChurchCouncil of 553; Church Universal and Tri-umphant; Course in Miracles; Elijah; Essenes;False claims of support for reincarnation; Gen-esis; Gilgul; Gnostic Order of Christ; Gnosti-cism; Heaven’s Gate; Jesus; Job; John, Gospelof ; Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van; I Am Movement; Justin Martyr; Karma and for-giveness; Karma and free will; Karma versusgrace; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Limbo; Lucifer;Luke, Gospel of; Melchizedek; New Testamentsacrificial concept; Old Testament and the afterlife; Origin; Original sin, Christianity, and reincarnation; Paulicians; Predestination;Psychopannychism; Purgatory; Resurrection,bodily; Resurrection of Jesus; Romans;Sciomancy; Soul; Theodicy; Work of Mercy;Xenoglossy; Yogananda, Paramahansa; Zoroas-trianism.

New Testament sacrificial concept. One of themain Christian arguments against reincarnation isthat it would weaken or even make unnecessary thesuffering, dying, and resurrection of Jesus as atone-ment for humanity’s sins. In particular, it wouldmake the “sacrificial blood” of Jesus largely irrele-vant. According to the New Testament, however, itwas only through the expiating-shed blood of Christthat salvation (heavenly immortality) is at all pos-sible. Among the biblical passages to this effect areRomans 3:25, 5:9; 1st Corinthians 5:7; 1st John1:7, 5:6; Hebrews 9:12– 14, 22–28; 10:5– 10, 19, 29,12:24, 13:20–21; Ephesians 1:7, 2:13– 14; Colos-sians 1:20, 1st Peter 1:2, 19.

This need for blood as a general outward cleans-ing of sin, however, was not considered sufficient bythe New Testament, since there was also a theopha-gic need to complete the salvific process. Theo-phagy refers to the belief and practice of eatingwhat is believed to be the flesh and/or blood of a di-vine or sacred being, as in that the Eucharist. Herebread and wine are said to be transformed into thereal flesh and blood of Christ, which must then beconsumed so that at the final resurrection of thedead those who have partaken of the immortalessence of God the Son alone will inherit immor-tal life. Among the biblical passages supporting thisbelief are Mark 14:22–24; Matthew 26:26–29;Luke 22:17– 19; John 6:47, 51–51, 52–58; and 1stCorinthians 10:16.

When some people try to find in the New Tes-tament evidence for a secret or even deliberately

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hidden reincarnational theme they generally ignoreall the sacrificial and theophagic language presentedthere. This is because such language points directlyto the absolute seriousness of having only one lifein which to attain salvation.

See also Christian atonement theories; John,Gospel of; Melchizedek; Old Testament and thesoul; Original sin, Christianity, and reincarna-tion; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Rebirth and moral per-fection; Resurrection, bodily; Steiner, Rudolf.

New Thought see Spiritualism; Unity Chris-tianity.

Nightmare of eastern philosophy. More thananything else, this is a derogatory term employedby some Christians who consider that the belief inreincarnation seduces people away from the ortho-dox Christian truth. The term is also used by thosemodern secularists who believe that the doctrineof reincarnation encourages escape from the world,rather than trying to improve it through social en-gagement. Finally, it is used as a synonym for blam-ing the victim factor.

See also Caste system; Noble lie; Old Brah-min moonshine; Rebirth and cyclical time.

Nine doors. In Vajrayana Buddhism it is believedthat the rebirth consciousness of the deceased can pass out of the body through one of nine open-ings (doors). Which door the consciousness willpass through depends on the fate awaiting the de-ceased in the next existence. If the hell realmawaits, the rebirth consciousness will pass out ofthe body through the anus; if it is the animal realmthen that consciousness will leave through the sex-ual organs; if it is the hungry ghost realm thenroute is through the mouth; if it is back into thehuman realm then the exit is through the nose; ifthe asura realm is the destination then it is the ears;if the consciousness has earned the desire god (deva)realm (the lowest heaven) then the navel is the cho-sen way; if the form god realm (intermediateheaven) then it is through the eyes; if the formlessgod realm (highest heaven) then the exit is some-where through the top of the head; and finally, if thePure-Land realm of Amitabha Buddha is the des-tination then the consciousness passes through theaperture of Brahma at the crown of the head (high-est of the chakras).

See also Bardo; Third eye.

Nirjara (Without birth). In Jainism this termmeans there are no more rebirths because all karmahas been annihilated and, therefore, the person isforever liberated.

See also Moksha; Rebirth and suicide; Sam-sara.

Nirvana and Parinirvana. These terms mean re-spectively “the blowing out” and the “supremeblowing out,” in other words, the release from anyfurther rebirth. Nirvana is a state of being (con-sciousness) in which one enters into and remains induring this life. The person achieving it has the re-alization that he or she will never again be reborn.Parinirvana is attained upon death, and is the non-reoccurrence of rebirth itself. These two states arethe highest spiritual goal of Buddhism. The Paliequivalents of these two terms are nibbana andparinibbana.

See also Kaivalya; Moksha.

Nirvikalpa Samadhi. In Kundalini (Serpentpower) Yoga this is the seventh and highest con-centrative state (S: Samadhi). Once attained, it isbelieved that the attainer can usually only remainembodied for 21 days, after which physical death oc-curs and the soul is forever free of further rebirths.In the case of some great saints continued embod-iment is made possible by their ability to bring theirconcentration down to the sixth or, at most, thefifth chakra level.

See also Chakras; Yoga.

Noble lie. This is a belief that serves a psycholog-ically or morally constructive purpose; hence is“noble,” while at the same time, it is a belief that onclose scrutiny is show to be logically incompatibleeither with the greater or more logical parts of someother belief. Buddhism, in acknowledging rebirth,yet teaching the non-existence of a soul (anat-man), is a logical contradiction. The belief in re-birth therefore qualifies as a noble lie to the degreethat it serves to encourage morality.

In a less benevolent sense the noble lie is alsocalled a convenient fiction. For many people whoare appalled at the way that the doctrines of rebirthand karma are used to support the horrendous in-equities of the Indian caste system regards thosedoctrines as convenient fictions on the behalf of theBrahman caste.

See also Annihilationism, Buddhist view;Blaming the victim vs. illusion of innocence;Course in Miracles; Karma and God; Karmaand justice; Karma and rebirth; Monism; Re-birth and maturity; Rebirth, compensation andlife fulfillment; Rebirth in Buddhism.

No-rebirth wish. According to Edgar Cayce aslong as a person wishes not to be reborn that per-son can be assured that he or she “will be” reborn.To exemplify this Lynn Elwell Sparrow, in her Rein-carnation: Claiming Your Past, Creating Your Fu-ture (1988), offers the following story: Two disciplesof a master are in the forest. When the master ap-pears, one disciple asks the master how many more

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lives must he (the disciple) must live before reach-ing liberating enlightenment. The master says only three more lives. The disciples obviously dis-couraged at this prospect, returns to his medita-tion. Soon the second disciple comes dancing byand asks the same question of the master. The mas-ter says a thousand more lives. The disciple’s re-sponse to this answer is glee, and becoming in-stantly enlightened, continues dancing through theforest.

Norton, Rosaleen (1917– 1979). Sometimes de-scribed as Australia’s best known witch, this occultartist believed that in one of her past lives she hadbeen a rural English poltergeist.

No-soul (self ) see Anatman.

Notovitch, Nicholas (1858–?). This Russian aristocrat, Cossack officer, war correspondent, journalist, and spy claimed that in visiting Ladakh(East Kashmir) in 1887 he broke his leg and had to be taken to a lamasery named Himis, where hediscovered some ancient Tibetan verses that de-scribed the life of Jesus (Isa) during his stay in thatregion as a youth. Supposedly, having had the versestranslated, Notovitch published them as The Un-known Life of Jesus Christ (French edition 1894, En-glish edition 1895). Later visitors to the samelamasery reported that the monks had no knowl-edge of such verses in their collection of ancienttexts.

Notovitch’s story of his visit to Himis seems tobe taken from Isis Unveiled by Helena Blavatskywhere in the original the traveler with the brokenleg was taken to a monastery on Mount Athoswhere he discovered the long lost text of Celsus’True Word in the monastic library.

Despite the debunking of Notovitch’s claim,“The Young Jesus in India Theory” has enabledany number of later individuals and groups toclaim that Jesus was instructed in and later taughtthe concept of reincarnation. According to ElizabethClare Prophet of the Church Universal and Tri-umphant, Notovitch, a year after his Indian discov-ery, was visiting Rome where he was told by an“unnamed cardinal” that the Vatican Library had anumber of documents about “Jesus in India”brought back by Catholic missionaries.

See also Ahmadiyya; Alexandria, Egypt;Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ; Origin.

Nous see Emanationism; Nafs and Ruh; Nume-nius of Apamea; Soul, tripartite; Thumos.

Number of rebirths see Finite or infinite num-ber of rebirths.

Numbers. After Genesis this is the second book ofthe Old Testament to specifically mention the un-

derworld as Sheol (Numbers 16:30, 33). On thesurface this certainly has nothing to offer in supportof reincarnation; nonetheless, some Kabbalists findsuch support in the middle part of Numbers 16:22.But to do so they must ignore the first and last partsof the passage, which leaves the middle open to al-most any interpretation. The whole passage reads,“But they prostrated themselves and said, ‘O God,God of the spirits of all mankind, if one man sinswill you be angry with the whole community?” Theitalicized words are the ones focused on by the Kab-balists.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Kabbalah;Forty; Old Testament and the afterlife; Serpent.

Numenius of Apamea (late 2nd century CE). ThisSyrian born Greek philosopher was the main force in the transition from Platonic idealism to the Neoplatonic synthesis of Pythagorean, Hellenistic, Persian (Zoroastrian), Indian, gnostic,and Jewish thought. Numenius is especially famousfor his characterization of Plato as “an Atticizing (of Athenian) Moses.” Also it is believed that Nu-menius had an influence on the thought of Ori-gin.

The soteriological view of Numenius was notonly based on a body-soul dualism, but on theidea that beings possess a two-fold soul, a rational(nous or noos) and an irrational one. It is the first ofthese that rightfully seeks to escape from its roundof evil bodily transmigration. There are a num-ber of surviving fragments of the writings of Nu-menius, one of which is Peri Aphtharsias Psyches(On the Indestructibility of the Soul).

See also Gnosticism; Planetary descent and as-cent of the soul; Priesthood, lack of an organ-ized; Pythagoras; Zoroastrianism.

Numerology and rebirth. Numerology (more cor-rectly, arithmancy) is the use of numbers to inter-pret an inner or hidden meaning of a word or phrase.It is loosely based upon the Pythagorean conceptthat all things can be expressed in numerical termsbecause they are ultimately reducible to numbers.In particular, numerologists believe that everyname has a significant number value as well as apsychic vibration that relates to it and which, inturn, is related to a specific personality type. Forsome numerologists who also accept reincarnationthere is the belief that the name that prospectiveparents have chosen for their child will influence areincarnating soul as to whether or not to be bornto those parents.

See also I, William the Conqueror; Kabbalah.

Nupe. This is one of the tribal peoples of Nigeriawho have a belief in a form of reincarnation. Theybelieve that everyone has two souls, of which one

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goes to the ancestors at death while the other rein-carnates.

See also Africa; Souls, multiple.

Nusayris/Nursaris. This is a religious communityfound in northern Syria, southeast Turkey andLebanon. While they claim to be Shi’a Moslems, themain Shi’a community rejects this claim. The nameof this group comes from that of its founder, AbuShu’ayb Muhammad ibn Nusayr (died 880 CE).The Nusayris are actually regarded as a subsect of Alawis/Alevis, which is to say those that showadoration to the memory of Ali (Muhammad’s mar-tyred cousin and son-in-law) to the point of dei-fication (Ali Ilahis, Arabic: Deifiers of Ali). TheNusayris, in fact, believe that Ali created Moham-mad.

A major difference between the Nusayris andother Alevis, not to mention orthodox Muslims, is the unusual belief that women, unlike men, aregenerally soulless. This means that male souls alonereincarnate (Arabic: tanasukh), and should awoman have a soul it is because the soul of a sin-ful man has reincarnated into a woman in order toexperience the purgatory of a woman’s soullessbody. This, of course, creates the problem that the“deified Ali” is dependent for his status on havingbeen the husband of the Prophet’s daughter, Fa-tima. This seemingly contradictory fact is dealtwith by having Fatima claim that she was a man,manifesting himself as a woman only to give birthto Ali’s sons and imams, Hasan and Husayn. TheAlevis also believe that all souls begin as stars andafter seven reincarnations will return to being suchbodies of light.

See also Ahmadiyya; Babism and Bahaiism;Cult of Angels; Islam; Druzes; Finite or infinitenumber of rebirths; Yazidis.

Oahspe: A Kosmon Bible in the Words of Jehovih[sic] and his Angel Ambassadors. This book wasproduced by John Ballou Newbrough (1828– 1891)through automatic (type)-writing and was pub-lished in 1882 by Oahspe Publishing Associationin New York. The name Oahspe is said to mean sky,earth, and spirit.

Newbrough, who was deeply interested in thespiritualism and lost continents movements ofthe late 19th century, claims that the book was ac-tually written by an angel (ashar) channeled throughhim. Among the teachings in the book is that thedoctrine of reincarnation is not only false, but hasbeen taught to mankind by lower order maliciousangels called drujas. These spiritual entities, whichwere actually created by the false Jesus of standardChristianity, seek to possess both the homes andbodies of human beings in attempts to corruptthem.

See also Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ;Channeling; Urantia Book.

Oasis Fellowship. Founded by George and AliceWhite after being contacted by several spiritual en-tities via channeling, this Florence, Arizona basedFellowship advertises itself as following the teach-ings of Jesus and accepts psychic communicationand a belief in reincarnation.

Ob Ugarins. These Siberian tribal people believethat men have five souls and women have four. Thefirst of each is the shadow-soul, which is in people,animals, and even inanimate objects. At death thissoul either follows the body to the grave o, aban-doning the body, it can become a ghost-like entity.The second soul can leave the body during sleep,but with the exception of some shamans, it must beembodied during waking hours. The third soultakes on an independent form outside of the bodybut may enter the body during sleep. If this soulshould die, then the person would die. The fourthsoul is the reincarnating entity which re-embodiesas an infant in the same clan as the deceased. Thefifth soul, exclusive to men, is less well explained.It too is sometimes called a reincarnating soul, butat other times it is called “strength.”

See also Souls, multiple.

Objective immortality. This is a term used by thephilosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861– 1947)for the belief that each person is for all eternity amemory in the mind of God. This is because everythought, word, action, and experience an individ-ual has is recorded in the divine memory. Obvi-ously, objective immortality is in contrast to sub-jective immortality which is where each soul retainsits individuality and autonomy. Objective immor-tality might be thought of as a more personal ordynamic version of the akashic record and as suchis a possible source for what might be mistaken forpast life memories.

See also Griffin, David Ray; Immortality; In-dividuality and rebirth.

Obsession. This is the term used by Harold Mar-row Sherman, in his You Live After Death (1949), toaccount for past life recalls. He uses this term ac-tually to attribute such recall not to one’s own soul,but to possession by a foreign former living entity.

See also Attached entity; Bjorkhem, John.

Occult, the see Esotericism versus Occultism;Grey occultists.

Occult hierarchy see Angels and reincarnation;Ascended masters.

Oceania. This is a large cultural area in the Pacificthat includes Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polyne-

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sia. A belief in reincarnation has been found insome parts of Melanesia, including Papua NewGuinea, as for example among the Orokaiva; theTrobriand Islanders; and the Malkula of Vanuatu(formerly the New Hebrides). The belief in Mi-cronesia is not well documented, and such a beliefseems to have been unknown in Polynesia.

See also Australian Aborigines; Christian mis-sionary influence and reincarnation; Orokaiva.

Ogdoad. In ancient Greek this term means any setof eight but, more specifically, it refers to eight highdeities that resided in the realm of fixed stars(Milky Way). Since this realm was the originalhome of all souls, and the realm from which theydescended or fell to earth for their original embod-iment, it is presumed that the eight rulers had someinfluence over the descent process and possibly re-nascent of souls.

See also Planetary descent and ascent of thesoul; Plato.

Ojas. In Hindu Tantric yoga this is the spiritualenergy or psychic power that is within semen andwhich is needed to escape from the round of birthand death. Through yogi practice the disciplecauses his semen to rise up through the chakra sys-tem to his crown (sahasrara), where it is stored inthe brain as ojas shakti (divine power). The risingof ojas is achieved by meditation, especially on theatman; by worship of the gods; by yogic breathpractices (pranayama); and above all by avoidingany release of semen (celibacy: brahmacharya).Some Tantric texts imply that transforming sexualenergy into ojas can also be done by woman via theova and menstrual cycle.

Old Brahmin moonshine. This is a sarcastic 19thcentury British metaphor of the Brahmin claim totheir high caste status as due to former good karmaand, by extension, to the whole doctrine of reincar-nation.

See also Nightmare of eastern philosophy.

Old Norse. In certain Eddic or Old Norse sagasthere is mention of rebirth of certain heroic per-sons. In particular, in the two related sagas, Heli-gakvitha Hjorvarthssonar and the Helgakvida Hund-ingsbana, the hero Helgi and the heroine Svavaundergo rebirth (endrborin). Svara was first rebornas the Valkyrie Sigrun and later as the ValkyrieKara; while Helgi Hundingsbana (Helgi Sigmund-son) is reborn as Helgi Haddingjaskati. Through-out these rebirths the two remain lovers until inone of those lives Kara, who has taken the form ofa swan, is mistakenly hurt by Helgi’s sword. Afterthis Kara can no longer protect Helgi from himbeing killed by the enemy.

See also Lapps (Saami).

Old souls. For most of those who believe in uni-versal reincarnation all souls are equally old, butnot equally wise. In this regard an old soul is onethat has not only been reincarnating for centuriesor millennium, but one which during those incar-nation, has gained great wisdom. For those whobelieve that only a minority of people have had pastlives, the term old souls refers just to that minor-ity.

See also Deaths, violent and premature; Kab-balah; Population increase issue.

Old Testament and the afterlife. There are a “mi-nority” of Old Testament passages that might sug-gest the doctrine of reincarnation. However, con-sidering the “majority” of Old Testament verses, inwhich the fate of the dead is at best a rather dismalplace, called in Hebrew Sheol, any authentic rein-carnational interpretation of such passages becomeshighly improbable. Sheol was thought of as an un-derworld destination that was neither a place ofpunishment nor of reward for all the dead, whethervirtuous or sinful. It was a dark cavernous regionwhere the dead continued a cold, dry, lethargic andghostly existence, mere shadows of their formerselves. Sheol was, in fact, very similar to the earlyGreek Hades. For all practical purposes, death wasequated with near annihilation, as in Genesis 3:19;Psalm 39:12– 13, Psalm 49, and Ecclesiastes 9:5–6,and 10. This meant that immortality was essentiallythrough one’s biological descendents, as implied inPsalms 22:29.

Only in some of the later Old Testament booksdoes the post-mortem view begin to change. The earliest possible “indirect” mention of resurrec-tion is at Isaiah 26:19, and Ezekiel 37:12– 13; and, possibly Hosea 13:14. These citations may suggest redemption from Sheol, which under the names Abbadon (Hebrew: Destruction) orGehenna, is considered to be a place of punish-ment; however, these indirect passages do not specify either a rewarding afterlife in some sort ofother-worldly heaven or a future heaven on earth.A possibly more heavenly affirming post-mortemfuture is implied in Malachi 3:16–4:3 and 2 Mac-cabees 7:9b–14; but the earliest biblical text to emphasize an indisputable positive future resurrec-tional state for the dead comes from the still later in Daniel 12:1–2, but even here the exact conditions after the resurrection are left undevel-oped.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Annihila-tionism, Biblical view; Bible and rebirth;Deuteronomy 5:2–3; Elijah; Essenes; Exodus;Ezekiel; Hell; Job; Judaism and the afterlife;Kabbalah; Karma, racial; Numbers; Old Testa-ment and the soul; Proof text; Proverbs; Psalms;

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Resurrection, bodily; Sciomancy; Shadow orshade; Soul; Yogananda, Paramahansa.

Old Testament and the soul. Any attempts to readinto the Old Testament ideas of reincarnation arecomplicated by the earliest concept of the soul as thelife force that was equated with blood, as at Leviti-cus 17:10– 14; and Deuteronomy 12:23. It was onlymuch later that a concept of a soul independent ofthe blood developed in ancient Judaism.

See also Hell; Old Testament and the afterlife.

Olfactory psychic experience. This is a déjà vu–like experience in which one is suddenly over-whelmed by a smell that is actually not present, butpresumably has been triggered by some significantpast life recall. For example, a person who wasburned to death in a former life might suddenlyexperience the scent of burning flesh during eithera spontaneous or hypnotically induced recall mo-ment. Rabbi Yonassan Gershom, in his Beyond theAshes, mentions just such an olfactory psychic ex-perience related to those who in their past life werethought to have been burned alive in synagogues bythe Nazi.

See also Jewish Holocaust.

Omega. According to the entity Alexander, aschanneled through Ramon Stevens in Earthly Cy-cles (1994), this is the second post-mortem levelinto which the disembodied soul must pass beforeattaining bodily rebirth. The other levels are thetaand the astral plane.

See also Embodiment, moment of ; OuijaBoard; Welcomers.

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. This wasa 1960’s hit Broadway musical by Alan J. Lernerwith a hypnotic age regression to a past life as itstheme.

Only Fair Religion. This group was founded by aSaint Kenny and a group of his followers. Neitherthe identity of Saint Kenny, nor any of his group,is disclosed in the group’s literature. The Religionteaches that through reincarnation the soul progressthrough lower life forms to higher ones. When abeing evolves to a point of gaining a sense of self-awareness, it simultaneously acquires an immortalsoul. This soul moves through a series of reincar-nations which are necessary for its developmentand which will eventually allow it to become aplanetary ruling spirit. The name “The Only FairReligion” is said to represent its teachings that thereis eventual salvation for all.

Ontological leap or ontological discontinuity.This is a theological concept that attempts to assigna soul exclusively to the human species and yet ac-

knowledges that the human body evolved from alower, soulless pre-human form. The ontologicalleap (radical change in the nature of being or exis-tence) is said to have occurred when God suddenly,and at only one critical point in human evolution,injected souls into the still evolving human species.This is one reason why the ontological leap theoryof the soul can also be called the soul injection the-ory.

The ontological leap concept, even when super-ficially examined, offers a number of logical andmoral problems. If God decided that he was goingto implant or inject souls in “generation y” then,while that generation must be regarded as fullyhuman, the parents of that generation (“generationx”) must be have remained sub-human in status.This would make the two generations ontologicallydiscontinuous, even though for all practical pur-poses there was no anatomical or biochemical dif-ference between these two generations. This discon-tinuity means that this first ensouled generation iseternally denied the right to share the joys of heavenwith their beloved parents, while all later genera-tions of ensouled persons have such a privilege.

It might make more sense to propose a verygradual evolution of the soul, but the theologiansclearly understand that such parallel physical andspiritual evolution has at its own set of three prob-lematic ontological questions. For example, at whatpoint in a gradual process was humanity morallyresponsible for its actions and entitled to a favorableor unfavorable afterlife; would there be souls inheaven or hell that were more primitive than othersouls; and would this ontological inequality be aneternal status?

Gradual soul evolution that parallels bodily evo-lution also has a problem with the population in-crease issue, unless combined with generationismor traducianism.

The ontological leap problem also applies toreincarnation if one denies progressive reincarna-tion. If the earliest human souls did not evolve fromanimal souls, but at one point entered pre-historicsub-human bodies by the process of infusionism,the parent generation of those newly ensouled re-mained sub-human.

See also Animals, domesticated; Creationism,soul; Generationism and Traducianism; Rebirthand the scientific theory of biological evolution;Soul Darwinism; Soul, origin of the.

Open Court. This is the name of an Americanmagazine published from 1887 to 1936 which,under its first editor, Paul Carus (1852– 1919),sought to introduce Asian religious ideas to theAmerican public. Several of its issues dealt with the more orthodox Asian concepts of rebirth and

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karma, as opposed to the more speculatively west-ernized views on these concepts offered by Theoso-phists or Rosicrucians.

See also Maha Bodhi, The; Theosophy.

Oracles see Lethe; Lhamoi Latso Oracle; Or-phism.

Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of the OrientalTemplars) see Crowley, Aleister; Rosicrucians;Scientology; Spare, Austin Osman; Steiner,Rudolf; Templars.

Origin or Origenes Adamanthus (185–254 CE).Origin, as the head of the catechetical school inAlexandria, was the most influential and seminaltheologian of the early Greek Church. Origin’sname is often used by Western reincarnation advo-cates as proof that the early Christian Church alsohad reincarnation advocates. There is little doubtthat Origin favored both universal salvation (apoc-atastasis) and the Platonic view of the soul’s exis-tence prior to embodiment, but there is no proofthat he favored a previously “embodied” existenceof the soul concept.

Origin had taught that rational beings, afterbeing created, neglected to worship God and so tovarious degrees, fell from His grace. Those soulsthat fell least became angels, while those that fellmost became devils. Human souls experienced anintermediate fall and for these God created the ma-terial world to embody those souls for purposes ofdiscipline-ship. Origin further speculated that toremind mankind that this material world was notits true home God periodically ordained such nat-ural catastrophes (acts of God) as earthquakes andplagues. Since metempsychosis depends upon thepre-existence of souls it is easy to see how a shal-low reading of Origin’s views could be interpretedto suggest a belief in pre-embodiment. Moreover,while some of his early writings can be more easilyinterpreted as supporting such a belief, his laterwritings such as his Commentary on Matthew can-not be so interpreted. In fact, that Origin rejecteda belief in the multiple lives is evidenced by his at-tack on the idea that Elijah had been reborn asJohn the Baptist.

Also, any idea that Origin was a believer in mul-tiple embodiments is further disproved by his welldocumented rejection of the Platonic belief thathuman souls could be reborn as animals and viceversa, as found in his Contra Celsum (Against Cel-sus). This work is Origin’s response to the anti–Christian Logos Alethes (True Word) by Celsus andit reminds the reader that the human soul, havingbeen made in the image of God, could not possi-bly have that image obliterated by being reborninto the body of an irrational animal.

Origin’s Peri Anastaseos (On the Resurrection), atreatise in support of the Christian doctrine of theresurrection of the dead, is a further indication ofhis opposition to metempsychosis. Origin evenwrote a commentary on the Gospel of John with theexpress purpose of refuting Gnostic followers ofValentinus.

Both Origin’s pre-existent and universalist views,especially his belief that eventually even the devilswould be reconciled to God, were attacked earlyon by Theophilus (late 4th—early 5th centuryCE), the patriarch of Alexandria. It was not, how-ever, until the mid sixth century that both of theseviews were finally declared heretical. This occurredat the synod convened by the eastern Roman em-peror Justinian I in 543 where nine anathemasagainst Origin’s work were proposed, and was final-ized by the Church Council of 553. What is im-portant to note is that there is, in this well docu-mented declaration, no mention whatsoever ofmetempsychosis, the presence of which would beexpected, if Origin did indeed advocate it.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; Christian-ity, esoteric; John, Gospel of; New Testamentand reincarnation; Plato; Pre-existiani; Resurrec-tion, bodily.

Original or ancestral sin and reincarnation. It istenet of a number of reincarnational belief systemsthat souls are trapped or imprisoned in the bodybecause of some sin committed eons ago by previ-ously “non-incarnated” souls. Some Christian rein-carnationists, while rejecting the orthodox biblicalview of how such sin arose, nonetheless, wish tokeep the general concept of a pre-natal sin factor inmankind, and see past lives as a preferred explana-tion for it.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Fallof Souls; Original sin, Christianity, and rein-carnation; Original sin versus karma; Mor-ganwg, Iolo; Orphism; Steiner, Rudolf.

Original sin, Christianity, and reincarnation.The concept of sin as defined in the New Testa-ment goes far beyond that of the Old Testament; inthe latter there was still considerable room for aself-made righteous man or woman to exist. Thisis declared to be impossible in standard PaulineChristianity, as in Romans 3:10–18; 5:12– 19, wherethe sin of Adam is inherited by all his descendentsin the form of the universal inevitability of death.This sin-death dyad was only overcome by thecrucifixion and resurrection of Christ, whose obe-dience to the Father was the antithesis of Adam’sdisobedience. With this Pauline view in mind itshould be clear why standard Christianity can findno place for any person purifying him or herself

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through multiple lives. In fact, from the Paulineview any attempt by a person to be virtuous throughself effort is the further sin of pride and that per-son is twice damned.

Even if Christianity should be more amenableto the doctrine of reincarnation, it would not mat-ter how many lives a person had; that person wouldstill need to depend entirely on God freely choos-ing to forgive that person both Adam’s sin and thatperson’s personal sins. In other words, a person canonly be redeemed by surrendering to the free grace(gift) of God; a grace that actually is not free sinceit was in theory paid for through the willingsacrificial crucifixion of God himself as Christ. Inshort, reincarnation would accomplish nothing forthe Christian.

See also Christian atonement theories; Cre-ationism, soul; Exodus; Fall of Souls; Genera-tionism and Traducianism; Karma and forgive-ness; Karma versus grace; New Testamentsacrificial concept; Original sin versus karma;Steiner, Rudolf; Theodicy.

Original sin versus karma. Belief in reincarna-tion is often said to free people from the oppressivebelief in the concept of Original Sin, the sin that infected all mankind due to the disobedience towards God by Adam and Eve. It is true that the biblical concept of Original Sin can be oppres-sive; however, it is questionable whether the concept of karma is any less oppressive. When itcomes to Original Sin there are two factors thatameliorate its oppression. First, the guilt connectedto this sin is assigned to humanity collectively; second, this collective guilt is assigned to a very far past. In most cases these two factors weaken any sense of personal responsibility and hence ofany personal guilt for that long ago sin. This leavesonly one’s present life sins about which to feelguilty. The doctrine of karma-vipaka, on the otherhand, burdens one not only with one’s present lifesins, but all of one’s past life sins. It is therefore de-batable whether or not the concept of karma is lessor more oppressive than the concept of OriginalSin.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Blaming the victim vs. illusion of innocence;Original sin, Christianity, and reincarnation;Rebirth, East and West.

Orokaiva. These are a people of the Northern Dis-trict of Papua New Guinea. At least before Chris-tian missionary activity, they had a belief in rein-carnation. In particular there was the belief thatthe spirit of a male child may be derived from ei-ther an agnatic (male) or a uterine (female) an-cestor through reincarnation. This seems to havebeen a clear political utility as that dual allegiance

pattern forms the basis of Orokaiva political al-liances.

See also Christian missionary influence andreincarnation; Oceania.

Orpheus. Orpheus was a legendary mystical Greekmusician. According to one story Orpheus is saidto have died by being ripped apart during an orgias-tic festival by the Maenads, the mad female wor-shippers of Dionysus. After this disembodimentthe head of Orpheus, having been tossed into thesea, floated to the island of Lesbos where an oracleof Orpheus was established. On the other hand,according to the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic Or-pheus was reincarnated as a swan to live an inno-cent and graceful existence as reward for his virtues.

Orphism. Orphism was one of the Greek mysteryreligions established at least by the 6th century BCE.Orphic doctrines were based on a particular mythicstory about the god Dionysus Zagreus that ex-plained both the immortality and metempsychosisof the soul (psyche). In this myth Dionysus is theson of Zeus, king of the gods and Persephone,queen of the underworld. Due to the jealousy ofZeus’s wife Hera, the infant Dionysus is murderedby the evil Titans and all of his flesh, except hisheart (soul-center), is consumed by them. The en-raged Zeus destroyed the Titans with his thunder-bolts and from the ashes of the Titans Zeus createsmankind, whose body is of the titan element andwhose his soul is of the divine element (Zagreus).

Following the metaphysical implications of thismyth the Orphics (Orphikoi) believed that sincethe souls of mankind were of a divine substancethey were immortal unlike the body. Indeed, lifein the body was thought to be a penance and onlythrough suffering and the conquest of bodily pas-sions could the divine element be disassociated andpurified from its impure titanic prison (phroura).This could not be done in one lifetime so the soulhad to go through the cycle of becoming (kyklosgenesion) or metempsychosis, until it was pureenough to liberate itself. Part of this purificationwas to be achieved through a ritual enactment of thedeath and consumption of Zagreus, followed by alife of asceticism (ascesis). This asceticism includedcelibacy, the avoidance of wine, and vegetarianism.

There were apparently for two reasons for thisvegetarian ascesis. First, since one could never besure that an animal killed for food might have harbored a former human soul, killing it wouldamount to murder. Second, it allowed the humanpractitioner to arise above the level of a meat-eat-ing beast.

Also, as might be expected from the name Or-pheus, the sect apparently believed in the spiritu-ally healing power of music.

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Much of our information about the Orphic re-ligion has come from texts inscribed on gold leaves(laminae) found in tombs assumed to be those ofOrphic initiates. These texts appear to be adviceto the souls of the deceased that would enable themto authenticate their divine (Dionysian) originsand, therefore, escape further transmigrations.Some of these leaves show that by the second cen-tury BCE at least one branch of Orphism had beeninfluenced by the platonic shift of the dwellingplace of the dead from the earth, or under the earth,to the celestial realm. Not only do the golden leavesplace Hades and the Lake of Mnemosyne (Mem-ory) on the moon; but they give instructions onavoiding drinking from the waters of Lethe anddrinking of those of Mnemosyne instead, afterwhich the soul will be able to travel on the right-handed path to the starry heavens.

While Orphism had significant influence over anumber of later religious movements it never be-came as popular in Greece as some other mysteryreligions did. There were probably two main rea-sons for its minor popularity. First, the ascetic idealof Orphism and its view of the body (Greek: soma)as an imprisoning tomb (sema) could not be ingreater contrast to the more common Greek view ofthe human body, especially the well-proportionedathletic body, as the epitome of a beauty nearing di-vinity. Second, there was no strongly organizedpriesthood in Greece to support the spread of Or-phism.

Despite the limited appeal of Orphism it stillmanaged to influence the philosophies of Empedo-cles and Plato; and most of all it was through thelater modified Platonism, called Neoplatonism,that the Orphic doctrine of metempsychosis wasadopted by various gnostic sects, as well as still laterheterodox Islamic sects, and possibly even KabbalicJudaism.

See also Beans; Body is the hell of the soul;Body-soul dualism; Cave; Double torches;Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Druzes; Eggs;Egypt; Fall of Souls; Gnosticism; Greek after-life, the ancient; Greeks and reincarnation; Her-mes; Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Kabbalah;Lethe; Ogdoad; Phaedo; Priesthood, lack of anorganized; Right-hand path and left-hand path;Sufism; Symbola.

Osho Movement. This is a Hindu-Buddhistmovement founded by Rajneesh Chandra Mohan(1931– 1990), also known as Bhagwan Shree Ra-jneesh. After beginning his guru career in India in1966 he relocated with his disciples to the UnitedStates in 1981. There he established his headquar-ters in Oregon, where he sought to create a utopiancommunity or Buddha-field. Much of his teach-

ing focused on a modernized and modified Tantricconcept of the sacred nature of sexuality.

As regards his views on reincarnation, Rajneeshclaimed that the reason most people could not re-member their past lives was because they were meateaters. Meat, he said, blocked the necessary chan-nel through which such lives could be remembered.

Rajneesh’s Western following began to abandonhim after he was arrested in 1985 for tax evasion,embezzlement, wire-tapping, and immigration of-fenses and he was deported back to India.

See also Vegetarianism.

Osiris see Book of the Dead; Egypt; Khepra;Pyramidology; Rebirth, analogies from nature;Unarius Academy of Science.

Ouija Board. Also called a witch-board, this is a flatboard with the alphabet, the numbers 0 to 9, andthe words yes and no printed on its surface. A second small, pointed, easily movable board, orplanchette, is used as a pointer to spell out answersto questions asked of the board. Depending onone’s view the answers come from either the spiritworld or subconscious minds of the board’s users.While the Ouija board has often been used as justa parlor game activity, a few individuals have beenhighly traumatized by its use.

According to the teachings in Earthly Cycles(1994) by the entity Alexander as channeled throughRamon Stevens, messages coming through theboard that involve foul language, predictions ofimpeding calamity, and threatening demands areusually from very immature spirits. Despite the badname often given the board, some have claimedthat it can be used to discover one’s past lives.

See also Automatic writing; Michael (2);Omega; Sciomancy.

Ouroboros (Greek: Tail-biter). This is the namefor a circular symbol that depicts a serpent ordragon swallowing its own tail. In one form or an-other it has been employed in a widely diversenumber of cultures. The interpretations given itare equally diverse. In Hinduism and Buddhism,however, it symbolizes the round or cycle of sam-sara. The end (the tail) of life merges into a newbeginning (the mouth) or rebirth.

See also Circle of Necessity; Swastika.

Ouspensky, Pyotr D. (1878– 1947). In his book ANew Model of the Universe (1971), this former stu-dent of Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdieff provides avery unique and complex concept of reincarnation,though it can be difficult to understand and evenmore difficult to summarize. Ouspensky seems tosay is that very few people have a correct under-standing of time. That, in fact, everything is eter-nal and reincarnation is nothing more than part of

191 Ouspensky

an eternal reoccurrence. This means that souls rein-carnate into “the past,” not into the future; and sothe normal concept of reincarnation is a completedistortion of the truth. Ouspensky believes that theplurality of existences implied in reincarnation isdue to people “simultaneously” living more thanone life.

Regarding karma, Ouspensky says that since anykarmic debt was made in the past, it can only be un-made (resolved) by going back into the past to re-live that life. He also says that some souls that havelived more evolved lives can escape reincarnation.This, however, does not annihilate the past livesthey lived, and so some other souls will have toreincarnate into those lives. On the other hand,some people who have lived meaningless lives ofhardship may simply experience the annihilationof their souls; but again, this also does not annihi-late their past lives, and so some other souls mayreincarnate into those lives in the hope of doing abetter job at living them than was done by the for-mer souls.

See also Annihilationism; Collin, Robert;Grant, Joan Marshall; Parallel lives; Plurality ofexistences; Rebirth, simultaneous.

Out-of-the-body experiences and near-death-experiences (OBE/NDEs). The first of these phe-nomena is a state in which a person feels that hisconsciousness has separated from his body andfrom a distance can view that body as though itwas no longer a part of the self. In psychic terms thisseemingly disembodied consciousness is usually re-ferred to as the astral body.

Out-of-the-Body Experiences (OBEs), also la-beled ecsomatic experiences, are often used as evi-dence of life after death. The argument for this isthat if consciousness can leave the body while aliveand then return to it then it ought to be possible forconsciousness to leave one body at death and sur-vive on its own to some degree and for some periodof time. Although such survival does not provereincarnation, OBEs have been used as support forsuch re-embodiment on the basis that if the soulcan leave and then re-enter its own body, it shouldbe able to do so with another body. This use ofOBEs to prove post-mortem survival is immedi-ately flawed by equating what can occur with a stillliving body with what can occur with a dead one.

In most of the popular Western literature de-scribing OBEs, it is claimed that there is a silverchord that runs from the back of the head of thephysical body to the astral body and that physicaldeath is associated with the breaking of this cord.This chord concept alone should make it clear thata consciousness that can leave and return to a liv-ing body can not be equated with a consciousness

that leaves a dead body. In other words, assumingthat such a cord and astral body exist then all thatcould possibly be suggested is that while conscious-ness may temporarily distance itself from the phys-ical body it must remain attached to that body forboth to continue to exist.

There is no doubt that out-of-the-body experi-ences happen; however, their psychic rather thanphysiological nature has been challenged in a num-ber of ways. First, most OBEs occur under circum-stances when there is a decreased or insufficientamount of oxygen to the brain (cerebral hypoxia),such as under anesthesia or temporary heart failure.This easily leads to hallucinatory experiences. Sim-ilar results have been reported with high levels ofcarbon dioxide (cerebral hypercarbia).

Second, an out-of-the-body experience can re-sult from a medically induced procedure such aselectrical simulation to the right angular gyrus nearthe back of the brain. This simulation can causepeople to experience themselves floating and look-ing down at their normal body just as in a non-medically induced OBE. It should also be notedthat the same electrical stimulation to the left sideof the angular g yrus will cause people to have thesensation of a shadowy person lurking behindthem.

Third, there is a related laboratory procedure inwhich a person is filmed with video cameras fromthe back while they wear goggles that capture theview of the cameras. This give the person a stereo-scopic view of their back and the person experi-ences himself as if he were physically embodying aspace six to seven feet behind were he really is.

Fourth, OBEs can occur under the influence ofdrugs such as marijuana.

The logical conclusion is that OBEs can notprove an afterlife unless it can be proven that con-sciousness “actually” can leave the body, even ifonly temporarily.

Some challengers of the psychic origin of OBEsadd to their “disproof ” the fact that people of dif-ferent cultures and religions describe their OBE,as well as NDE, experiences differently, thus sug-gesting that such experiences are subjective (insidethe mind), not objective (outside of the body). Thischallenge is not as valid as the preceding ones be-cause the supporters of psychic OBEs can pointout that such cultural relativity of experience is tobe expected, at least as surface phenomena; but thatbeneath that surface OBEs are a trans-cultural ex-perience.

When OBEs occur during life-threatening con-ditions they are often referred to as Near-Death-Ex-periences (NDEs). In a majority of these NDEs,at least in the Western world, the subject claims tosee a great white light or tunnel of light. Along with

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this light “beings of light” are often perceived,which seem to come as guides to the subject. Theguide is sometimes a loved one who previously diedor culturally specific religious figures. In the lattercase, if the subject considers him/herself or a Chris-tian the figure will usually be an angel, a saint, oreven Jesus; if Jewish it might be an angel or Elijah;if Hindu it could be one of the gods; and if thesubject is a confirmed atheist the light alone may beall that is perceived. To some this religiously andculturally relative factor proves that the vision iscompletely within the mind of the perceiver andnothing more.

It should be mentioned that while a majority ofNDEs are described as being very positive andcomforting upon the return to normal conscious-ness, a minority are felt to have been negative. Insome cases the subject reports that he/she felt at-tacked by malevolent forces or as being pulled intohell.

The latest scientific research has shown that thereis a common ground between near-death experi-ences and the brain’s sleep-wake control system.For most of those who have reported near-deathexperiences they have also reported having a con-dition called REM intrusion at times in their lives.In this condition, the boundaries between sleepand wakefulness are blurred. The most extreme ofsuch cases are those of narcolepsy (brief attacks ofdeep sleep), which are fairly rare. In the far morecommon mild forms of a REM intrusion condi-tion the person feels a short term inability to moveduring waking hours. During a crisis this experiencecan convince the person that that he or she has diedand only come back to life once the condition andcrisis is over.

For an interesting analysis of near-death experi-ences see the article by Emily Williams Cook,Bruce Greyson, and Ian Stevenson, “Do AnyNear-Death Experiences Provide Evidence for theSurvival of Human Personality after Death?” (1998)Also informative is the chapter “Near-death expe-riences: ancient, medieval and modern” in Brem-mer’s The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (2002).

See also Altered states of consciousness;Alzheimer’s Disease; Arguments supportive ofrebirth; Astral plane; Body-brain (mind) de-pendency; Borderline state; Death.

Over-soul, personal. This is believed to be theconsciousness that collects and integrates all the ex-periences of an individual person’s past, presentand, according to some, future-lives. The personalover-soul is a greater identity than that of thepresently perceived self. There are, therefore, asmany personal over-souls as there are people pres-ently living. It is believed that when a person “re-

members a past life” they are reading from theirpersonal over-soul. This over-soul can also be con-sidered a personal akashic record.

Over-soul, universal see Anima; Brahman;Group soul.

Ovid or Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BCE– 17 CE?).Among the works of this Roman poet is the Meta-morphoses. In this he offers various tales in which he utilizes the metempsychosis concept of Pytha-goras.

Oxytocin see Body-brain (mind) dependency;Memories, reasons for loss of past life.

Palingenesis. This term is derived from two Greekwords, palin- (again) and -genesis (birth) and hasbeen translated variously as rebirth, new birth, re-generation, recreation, or renewal. The word wasoriginally used in an alchemical sense for the ability to regenerate life from ashes. In other words,it attempted to prove that sentience survived phys-ical destruction. Only later did it become one ofthe synonyms for rebirth, reincarnation,metempsychosis, or transmigration; however, itis almost never used in this way in modern rebirthliterature. Nonetheless, the fact is that it is foundin the New Testament at Matthew 19:28 and Titus3:5 has encouraged some reincarnationists to claimthat reincarnation is meant by the term, at least,in Matthew’s, “I tell you [the disciples] this: in theworld the is to be (paligenesia), when the Son ofMan [Jesus] is seated on his throne in heavenlysplendor, you, my followers, will have thrones ofyour own, where you will sit as judges of the twelvetribes of Israel.” Paligenesia here is usually trans-lated as either the “world to be” or “in the regen-eration” and clearly refers to the rebirth of the worldas the Kingdom of Heaven, not to an individual’srebirth.

In Titus the wording is, “But when the kindnessand generosity of God our savior dawned upon theworld, then, not for any good deeds of our own, butbecause he was merciful, he saved us through thewater of rebirth (paligenesia) and the anakinoseoz(renewing) power of the Holy Spirit.” The onlyway to make paligenesia mean reincarnation in ei-ther of these passages is to read them out of theirproper context.

Panchen Lama (Tibetan: bla-ma). The PanchenLama is regarded as a tulku, or incarnation ofAmitabha Buddha (Tibetan: O Pame) and as suchhe the second most important religious figure intraditional Tibetan society after the Dalai Lama.The Panchen Lama’s residence and court is situ-ated in Shigatse, not far from Lhasa. The termPanchen Lama is actually an abbreviation of Pan-

193 Panchen

dita-chen-po which is a combination of Sanskritand Tibetan for Great Scholar.

See also Incarnation versus reincarnation.

Pantheism and panentheism. The first of theseterms means “all God” and it is the belief that theuniverse in its entirety is God, and God is identi-cal to the universe. The second term means “all inGod” and is the belief that while the whole uni-verse is God, God is greater than the universe. Pa-nentheism is a compromise between pantheism andtranscendental theism which makes the universeand God two entirely separate states of being. Inpantheism and panentheism both the body andsouls of all beings are made-up of, or are a part of, God. The transcendental theism of orthodoxChristianity, Judaism, and Islam regard both pan-theism and, to a lesser degree panentheism, asheretical, especially in that it they allow for no trueindependence of the human soul, much less an in-dependent post-mortem existence. In other words,the human soul becomes an atman-like phenom-enon with all the logical problems that this phe-nomenon has with regards to an afterlife.

See also Brahman; Monism.

Pantomnesia. Greek for universal (panto-) mem-ory (-mnesia) see Déjà Vu.

Papa-purusha (Man of sin). (1) In traditional Hin-duism this is the personification of all evil inhuman form. (2) In Theosophy it also means asoul that has been reborn after a stay in the lowestand worst of hells (avichi).

Paradise see Devachan; Empire of Jade; Heaven;Interim period; Mandara; Pure-Land or BlissfulLand Buddhism; Summerland; Swarga or Svarga;Vaikuntha.

Parallel lives. This refers to the concept that we alllive in more than one dimension simultaneously and,therefore, are living more than one life at the sametime. Some people believe that such parallel exis-tences may be the real explanation for the experi-ence of what seem to be past and even future lives.

According to Alex Vilenkin in an article in Nat-ural History magazine (2006) a recent cosmologi-cal theory called “eternal inflation” proposes thatthere ought to be an infinite number of parallelearths which have undergone, are undergoing, andwill undergo all the histories we have and will ex-perience. The only problem with this for readingpast or future lives is that there seems to be no wayfor these parallel worlds to communicate with oneanother.

See also Grant, Joan Marshall; Ouspensky,Pyotr D; Plurality of existences; Rebirth, simul-taneous.

Paramacca Maroons. These people are the descen-dents of Negro slaves who escaped from theirDutch owners into the jungles of Surinam. Despitebeing mostly Christian today they believe that al-most everyone is a reincarnation of an ancestor and,most often, is of the same matrilineage and sex ofthe ancestor. Early in childhood the reincarnatedancestor (nenseki) is determined by divination, orpersonality or physical characteristics, or dreams.Reincarnation as nenseki is reward for “not” hav-ing been a witch in the previous incarnation. Thebodies of those persons who were found to bewitches in this life are taken at death to a remoteplace in the forest and abandoned without anyproper burial rituals and without their name everagain mentioned. This ensures the permanent an-nihilation of that person.

See also Rebirth, consanguineous.

Paramnesia see Déjà Vu.

Parapsychology. This is the study of the proposedabilities of the mind beyond those abilities that areassumed to be its normal limits. Among these abil-ities would be clairvoyance, telepathy, precogni-tion, and post-mortem survival, including reincar-nation.

Parapsychologists can be divided into those whoare only concerned with the abilities of living mindsand those who are also concerned with possiblenon-embodied minds.

See also Rhine, J. B.

Parents in the next life. Most Western reincarna-tionists believe that the soul has some freedom indeciding who its next life parents will be. Easternreligions assume that karma itself will determineall future parentage. This difference of views reflectsthe West’s greater insistence on personal freedomversus the East’s greater acceptance of impersonalkarma. An example of this greater freedom is thebelief that premature death, especially of infantsand young children, is often a voluntary event. Insome of these cases it is due to the souls of the chil-dren deciding that they had made a mistake inbeing reborn either at that time and/or to thoseparents. In other cases, the children’s souls hadsome karma as unfinished business to complete,but this only required a minimal embodiment tocomplete it. Also, it is believed that children that ex-perience involuntary death not only try to reincar-nate as soon as possible, but do so in such hastethat they are often very unselective about their fu-ture parents. This can create a situation in which thechild literally does not seem to belong to those par-ents.

See also Australian Aborigines; Congenital retardation; Deaths, violent and premature;

Pantheism 194

Dreams, announcing; Jewish Holocaust; Re-birth, East and West.

Parmenides. This 5th century BCE Greek philoso-pher was said to have been a student of Ameinias,who was a student of Pythagoras and as such wasalso a teacher of metempsychosis.

Parousia (Greek: Presence). In a Christian con-text it means the second coming of Christ.

See also Millennialism; New Testament andreincarnation; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Resurrectionof Jesus.

Pascal’s wager. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), a Frenchphilosopher, in trying to justify the belief in Godand an afterlife devised a set of four gamblingpropositions for that purpose. These are: (1) If webelieve in God and an afterlife and it is true, wewin; (2) If we believe in God and an afterlife and itis not true, we neither win nor lose; (3) If we dis-believe in God and an afterlife and it is true, welose; (4) If we disbelieve in God and an afterlife andit is not true, we neither win nor lose. Since threeout of the four propositions are either beneficial orneutral to the believer, the rules of chance tell us itis safer to believe than to disbelieve.

This same wager argument can be made for abelief in karma and rebirth by substituting that be-lief for a belief in God.

See also Arguments pro and con on an after-life in general; Arguments supportive of rebirth.

Pasricha, Satwant K. Dr. Pasricha is a protégé ofIan Stevenson and, since 1973, has investigatedabout four hundred cases involving children whoclaim to remember previous lives. Dr. Pasricha hastried to respond to one of the most common argu-ments of skeptics regarding reincarnation. This isthat most children who claim to remember theirprevious lives come from cultures or communitieswhose people believe in reincarnation. The skepticsrationalize these claims as being a kind of fantasyarising from the hereditary belief of their culture.In response to this Dr. Pasricha has found a fewcases occurring among Sunni Moslems who, guidedby their religious teachings, do not believe in rein-carnation. A full analysis of Dr. Pasricha’s four hun-dred child recall cases revealed twenty six Moslemsubjects who remembered having been Moslemsin the previous life (nineteen cases) and Hinduswho remembered having been Moslems (sevencases). There were seven Moslems cases from whereno change in religion was reported. Most of the re-maining cases involve members in the religiouscommunities of Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains, who dobelieve in reincarnation, as well as some ShiiteMoslems who also endorse the idea of reincarnation.

See also Children remembering past lives; Re-birth and cultural conditioning.

Passing-memories adoption (PMA). PMA hasbeen suggested as one of several possible psychicalternatives to past life memories due to rebirth. Ithas been proposed that some newly created or gen-erated souls, while descending or passing into thematerial existence from their place of origin, oftenpick up (are imprinted by) the memories of soulsthat are ascending or passing back to their place oforigin. The new or imprinted souls unintention-ally adopt those passed on memories as their own.In particular, this imprinting idea has been favoredby some Sufi traditions.

See also Rebirth, alternative explanations to;Sufism.

Past life fakery. The best way to fake a past life isto invent one that is well over a century old and,therefore, very difficult to verify, and equally diffi-cult to disprove.

See also Fraud; Honest lying; Past life mem-ory recall; Rampa, Lobsang Tuesday.

Past life journal. A number of past life counselorsadvise people who want to explore the possibilityof past life recall to keep a journal for this purpose.Possible inclusions in this journal could be recordsof reoccurring night time dreams; reoccurring day-dreams; insights gained during past life recall med-itation practices; déjà vu experiences; and longheld habits, desires, and fears (phobias) that do notseem to be related to anything in the present-life.

See also Philias and phobias.

Past life memory categories. When we think ofmemory we often first associate it with semanticmemory, which is memory of general knowledge,such as the definition of words, facts, etc. Unlesssome strong emotion is connected with such mem-ory it is thought that it would not carry over to an-other life. The parapsychologist James G. Matlock,however, has suggested an alternative view. He di-vides past life memories into four categories. Thefirst is verbal, or informational, the ability to mem-ber names, dates, and events. This is usually verypersonal and emotionally laden, and hence it is be-lieved to carry over from one life to another. Thesecond memory category is imaged memory whichis where a living person is able to identify (remem-ber) people and places associated with a prior liv-ing person. This is also very personal and wouldbe carried over. The first and second categories aresometimes grouped together as episodic memory.The third of Matlock’s categories is behavioral,where there is a great similarity between the de-ceased and a living person in mannerism, habits,likes and dislikes, especially philias and phobias,

195 Past

skills, and so would have been carried over fromthe past. The fourth memory is physical and in-volves such traits as birthmarks, scars, or deformi-ties of one person that are the same or very similarto those of a second person who died previously tothe first person’s birth. According to Matlock, inmany cases only one or two of these four categoriesis present in the presumed reincarnated person;rarely, if ever, are all four fully present.

While any theory of a past life recall must takethese different kinds of memory into account, atthe same time, it must not be forgotten that allmemories are actually modified by what is accept-able to our current personality. This means that weare loaded with false memories. With this the case,the question might be asked, how can anyone besure that a set of so-called past life memories is ac-curate?

See also Alzheimer’s Disease; Karma and jus-tice; Memories, ancestral or genetic; Memories,reasons for loss of past life; Memory, summa-tion; Rebirth, qualifications for.

Past life memory recall see Rebirth, criteria forproof of.

Past life psychic reader. A past life psychic readermust be carefully distinguished from a past lifetherapist. A past life psychic reader is someone who claims that, through some psychic ability, he or she can read a client’s past life. Such a readerdoes not require any kind of state licensing, whicha genuine past life therapist is required to have. Ac-cording to Lynn E. Sparrow, in her Reincarnation:Claiming Your Past, Creating Your Future (1988),when seeking out a past life psychic reader theprospective client should be aware of a number offacts. First, although some psychics might havemore consistently correct information than othersthere is almost certainly no such person as a totallyaccurate psychic. Second, all psychics have psychicon-days and psychic off-days. Third, some psychicsand clients match well together and some do not.Fourth, even the best of psychic readings are aptto mix incorrect information with correct infor-mation. Fifth, no matter how pleasant or unpleas-ant the information from a past life reading maybe, none of it should be uncritically accepted if itdoes not intuitively seem accurate and/or offer ac-curate or beneficial insight into one’s current life.

See also Past life readings; Past life therapist,finding a.

Past life readings. These are readings done by apast life psychic reader. The most common waysthis is done is either by the psychic in a non-trancestate using a deck of regular cards or tarot cards orby the psychic conducting the reading through

some form of scrying, more often than not in atrance state. Perhaps even more controversial is pastlife reading via channeling. In this case there is, atleast in theory, a doubly indirect source throughwhich the reading occurs. First, there is the chan-neled entity and second, there is the channeler.

Since in past life readings the individual whoselife is being read is passively receiving informationfrom a totally outside source, such readings are gen-erally thought of as being of less value to the indi-vidual than past life information more actively ac-quired through past life regression. However, evensuch regression, in that it depends on a hypnotist,is to a degree second handed and the only truly firsthand source for discovering a past life is throughspontaneous recall.

See also Netherton Method; Trance states.

Past life recall. There are a number of theories asto what might account for what might be a gen-uine ability to recall memories of a past life. Theseinclude the akashic record, soul imprinting (pass-ing-memories adoption), possession, retrocogni-tion; and reincarnation.

See also Clairaudience; Clairvoyance.

Past life recall meditation. There are believed tobe a number of meditation practices that can stim-ulate past life recall. Most of these involve usingthe image-forming abilities of the right brain toaccess the subconscious where past life memoriesare thought to be stored. It is thought that the bestmeditations involve the elements of visualization,concentration, and creative imagination. For ex-ample, focusing on one’s astrological chart or thechakras, engaging in scrying exercises, or usingtarot cards can be a part of such meditation. Cer-tain mineral or gem stones and fragrances are alsoregarded by some as assisting in recall.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Fluorite; I,William the Conqueror; Patanjali; Pyramidol-ogy.

Past life regression and suggestibility. In a studyconducted at the University of Kentucky by RobertBaker and reported in the American Journal of Clin-ical Hypnosis (1982), some sixty undergraduate students were divided into three groups of twentystudents per group to undergo hypnotic age-re-gression. Beforehand, suggestions highly support-ive of past life therapy were given to Group A.More neutral or non-committal statements aboutpast lives were given to Group B. Skeptical and der-ogatory statements about past lives were given toGroup C. The results showed that Group A recalledthe most past lives while Group C recalled the least.

See also Christos (anointing) technique; Hyp-notic age regression.

Past 196

Past life therapist. This is a person with some psy-chological training who has also been licensed forpsychological counseling by the state in which heor she is working. A past life therapist must be care-fully distinguished from a past life psychic readerin that the latter does not require any kind of licens-ing from the state and thus a client has little re-course for claims of malpractice or fraud.

Past life therapist, finding a. Karl Schlotterbeck,in his Living Your Past Lives (1987), recommendsthat one uses the following guide lines in finding apast life therapist. Ask the following questions.What is the therapist’s background and training?Does he belong to a certified association or organ-ization? What percentage of his therapy has dealtwith past lives? Is past life therapy his exclusivepractice? Is it the only practice in which he istrained and has he been trained in more than onepast life therapy technique? Is he also trained toprovide general counseling? How long are his in-dividual sessions? Does he encourage or discour-age recoding the sessions for future playback if de-sired?

See also Atlantic Guild for Past Life Aware-ness; Past life psychic reader.

Past life therapy. This is the exploration of one ormore past life scenarios, usually through hypnosis,for possible relevance to present life physical and/orpsychological issues. Past life therapy began in Eu-rope as early as 1862, but it did not become a morewide spread and legitimate form of therapy untilthe 1960s. Past life therapy seems to have no bet-ter and no worse chance of helping a client thando most other forms of therapy. The reasons forthis are the same as for any successful treatment.The therapist and patient share the same world-view. The patient develops confidence in the ther-apist. Along with the past life examination the ther-apist also usually uses a number of standardizedmedical and behavioral change strategies. The pa-tient expects to get well from the treatment.

Those therapists who recognize the therapeuticvalue of past life therapy, yet do not believe in pastlives have suggested that the so-called past life act-ing as a personal myth can be therapeutically ef-fective. In fact, it has been theorized that thoseunder hypnosis intuitively choose to create a pastlife scenario that will be therapeutic.

One interesting aspect of past life hypnotherapyis that very often the therapy works faster than insome other forms of therapy. This may partly bedue to the use of a past lives as very safe and ther-apeutically useful screen memories. This alsomakes past life therapy a fairly short-term therapy.

A major criticism of past life therapy is that itcan easily allow both the patient and therapist to

overlook the real cause of the patient’s problem inthis life. This might permit the patient from actu-ally dealing with his problem on the basis that hecan not change the past.

A major source for past life therapists is the As-sociation for Past Life Research and Therapy,was founded in 1980.

See also Atlantic Guild for Past Life Aware-ness; Hypnosis; Kelsey, Denys; Multiple person-alities; Netherton Method; Past life regressionand suggestibility; Placebo effect; Spiritism;Sutphen, Richard.

Past lives. This refers to the idea that the souls ofhuman beings, and perhaps animals, have lived inone or more bodies in the past. It is the same as re-birth, reincarnation, metempsychosis, and trans-migration.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Karmaand justice.

Patala. This is the collective term for the sevenHindu underworlds, inhabited by various kinds of supernatural beings. Although identified as inthe underworld, Patala has nothing to do with hell.On the contrary, each division of Patala is, for themost part, a place of wonder and delight. Somesources state that though many souls passing throughPatala may undergo some trials, it is a place ofbeneficial refreshment before their next rebirth.

Patanjali. This 4th century BCE Indian philoso-pher, who codified yoga, instructed how past livescan be recalled through meditation.

See also Past life recall meditation.

Patarines or Patarenes. This is the name for a du-alist Christian sect that believed in metempsychosisand which had spread through the Balkans andItaly in the 12th and 13th century CE before beingexterminated by the Catholic Inquisition. Theywere closely associated with the Bogomils and theCathars. Their name for awhile came to signify forthe Catholic authorities all heretics.

See also Dualism; Paulicians.

Pathological retrocognition. This is where an in-dividual becomes so obsessed with his or her pastlife memories that these memories interfere withthe person’s present-life functioning.

Patton, George S. (1885–1945). This Americangeneral, a firm reincarnationist, believed that dur-ing his many past lives he had been a soldier in var-ious wars. In keeping with the repetition compul-sion, he believed that he had been an ancient Greeksoldier fighting against the Persians, a member ofthe army of Alexander the Great, the Carthagin-

197 Patton

ian general Hannibal, a soldier in the Hundred YearWar and an officer in the army of Napoleon Bona-parte. He wrote a poem, “Through a Glass Darkly,”detailing his belief in reincarnation. The poem’stitle comes from 1st Corinthians 13:12 where theglass refers to a mirror.

See also Buddhist Poem; Hindu Poem; Mase-field, John; Poetry on reincarnation.

Paul of Tarsus (?10–67 CE?). Paul was the authorof at least seven of the New Testament Letters andwas the first known person to write anything aboutJesus of Nazareth. In that there is no known prece-dence for his views about Jesus as the Christ (Mes-siah), about the resurrection of Jesus, or about Jesusas a sacrificial victim for mankind’s sins, it has beenargued that one or more of these ideas originatedwith Paul himself and that Paul, more than any-one else, was the real founder of Christianity.Whatever else can be said about Paul, his teachingon the exclusivity of the resurrection was certainlythe major factor in preventing a serious consider-ation of reincarnation in later orthodox Christian-ity.

See also Anabios; Annihilationism, Biblicalview; Augustine, Saint Aurelius; Bogomils;Cayce, Edgar; Christian view of the afterlife;Corinthians, 1st and 2nd; Ephesians; Galatians;Gnosticism; Karma and free will; Karma versusgrace; Mark, Gospel of; New Testament; NewTestament and reincarnation; New Testamentsacrificial concept; Old Testament and the soul;Original sin, Christianity, and reincarnation;Paulicians; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Resurrection,bodily; Resurrection of Jesus; Resurrection orreincarnation; Romans; Soul; Valentinus.

Paulicians. This was a 7th to 9th century Christ-ian gnostic sect found in Armenia and Thrace (Bul-garia) which believed in reincarnation. This sectprobably had a number of its views in commonwith other dualist gnostic sects as well as withManichaeism. The first of these views was thatthere were two Gods, one was the evil creator ofthe material world (the demiurge) and the otherwas the good ruler of the world of pure spirit. Sincethe evil one had trapped human souls into materialbodies it was the Paulicians’ religious goal to in-struct mankind in how to liberate those souls fromthe world of matter. In keeping with their anti-material or body-soul dualism teaching the Pauli-cians denied the physical incarnation of Jesus, evenhis birth from a human womb. In direct oppositionto orthodox Christianity the Paulicians consideredthe Old Testament to be the revelation of the evilone. With such exceptions of the letters of Paul ofTarsus and the Gospel of Luke even other parts ofthe New Testament were unacceptable to them.

The Paulician teachings were ultimately suppressedby the orthodox Byzantine emperors, but appar-ently not before the Thracian Paulicians gave riseto the dualist Bogomils.

See also Cathars; Doceticism; Dualism; Fallof Souls; Gnosticism; Gospel of ; Patarines;Plato.

Perception and reality. While there presumablyis an objective reality or reality independent of ourobservation of it, it has also been scientifically doc-umented that our perception of reality is very muchinfluenced by the theories we create in our exami-nation of that reality. In other words, what we ob-serve is not reality itself, but reality as altered bywhat we need and want it to be. Nothing couldreflect this more than the various conflicting viewsof the afterlife in general and the conflicting viewson reincarnation in particular.

See also Science and pseudo-science.

Persephone. At least three myths were wovenaround this Greek goddess. In the first she is thedaughter of the goddess Demeter and Zeus, andthe reluctant wife of her uncle Pluto. As suchPersephone lived half of the year above ground withher mother and half the year under the earth inHades with her husband. It was said that her timespent above ground accounted for the growing sea-son of spring and summer, while her time belowground accounted for the dying seasons of autumnand winter. The second myth makes Persephonethe mother of Dionysus Zagreus by Zeus, and so sheis of importance in Orphism. A third myth makesher the daughter of Zeus and Styx, the nymph ofthe Underworld. In reincarnation symbolism Perse-phone’s dual existence represents the cycle of lifeand the interim periods between lives.

Persia (Iran) see Assassins; Babism and Bahai-ism; Gnosticism; Hashimiyya; Islam; Kan-thaeans; Khurramiyya; Manichaeism; Mithra-ism; Yarsanism; Yazidis (Yezidis); Zoroastrian-ism.

Personalists. These were a large group of early In-dian Buddhists who rejected the extreme anatman(no soul) doctrine of other Buddhists. The Person-alists pointed out that without at least a temporarysoul-like factor (S: pudgala) rebirth was put intodoubt. This Personalist view avoided most of theproblems, both metaphysical and moral, withwhich the Anatmanists had to struggle. The Per-sonalists, however, died out in India, along withall other forms of Buddhism by the 13th century.

Personality versus individuality. Although theterm personality can be difficult to precisely defineone general definition is “a unique pattern of indi-

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vidual behavior that remains consistent over timeand in a variety of circumstances.”

When it comes to the issue of personality andreincarnation the criticism has been that even if wehave past lives, not remembering them is the equiv-alent of the death of our personality and so of thedeath of self. In response to this criticism manyreincarnationists have proposed that the personal-ity that we have in any one life is not our true or es-sential self, but a mask or outfit we put over ourtrue self which is the “individual.” It is believedthat this distinction is all the more justified con-sidering the etymological origin of the words per-sonality and individual. The first comes from Latin“persona” meaning a mask an actor wears on stageand changes with each new role. The second comesfrom Latin “individus” meaning indivisible whichimplies something unchanging.

This view of personality versus individuality isactually a Western version of the Hindu distinctionbetween the ever changing mortal sheaths (kosha)around the soul and the immortal soul or atman.

See also Individuality and rebirth.

Petavatthu (P). This is a minor book in the Ther-avada Buddhist canon which describes the fate ofa certain group of the virtue-less deceased that donot immediately go on to a physically embodiedhuman or animal rebirth. The word peta in generalmeans ghost, but in the Buddhist context it meanshungry ghost. The Petavatthu consists of fifty-onestories detailing the miserable state that these ghostsmust suffer due to their unwholesome karma.

See also Pretas; Theravada Buddhism; Vi-manavatthu.

Peter, 1st and 2nd. The first of these two texts inthe New Testament gives encouragement to read-ers of the time, who were experiencing persecu-tion. They are reminded that as followers of Christthey are the heir to the glorious promise if theymerely keep faith in the resurrection of Jesus andlook forward to the Parousia (Second Coming).In particular, the faithful are to know that a new life(rebirth) into salvation is available through bap-tism (1st Peter 1:23, 2:2).

Despite the obviousness of the main theme inthis text there have been attempts to read supportfor reincarnation into 1st Peter 1:23, which reads,“You have been born again, not of mortal parent-age but of immortal, through the living and en-during word of God.” This passage, however, meansborn again in the same non-reincarnational way asthat at John 3:3–4 and in no way implies reincar-nation.

Second Peter is quite different from its prede-cessor in that its main theme is to warn againstfalse, ungodly teachers, and damnable heretics (2nd

Peter 2:1) upon whom the future judgment of Godwill fall as prophesied in the Old Testament. How-ever, as in 1st Peter there is also one passage in herethat pro-reincarnationists have focused upon. It is2nd Peter 3:8 which reads, “...with the Lord one dayis like a thousand years and a thousand years likeone day.” This is really a quote from Psalm 90:3,“For in thy sight a thousand years are as yesterday.”Considerable effort has been made to claim thatboth the Psalm and Peter verses mean that there isa thousand year cycle between embodiments.Rather than having anything to do with reincarna-tion 2nd Peter, when read in its full context, is anattempt to explain the delay of the return of Christ(Parousia) and the general resurrection of the deadas is made very clear at 2nd Peter 3:4, 9, etc.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Chris-tian view of the afterlife; Christianity and rein-carnation; Christianity, esoteric; Harrowing ofHell; Hell; John, Gospel of; Karma in the Bible?Limbo; Lucifer; Millennialism; New Testamentand reincarnation; New Testament sacrificialconcept; Psalms; Purgatory; Rebirth and moralperfection; Resurrection, bodily; Resurrectionof Jesus; Theosis.

Phaedo. The subject of this text, by Plato, is Soc-rates, who has been condemned to death. Socratesis explaining to his distressed students on the need-lessness for fear of death because of the immortalityof the soul, which includes a belief in a successionof lives. Among the arguments given in support ofsuch a belief is the cyclical aspect in nature and thatall learning is really remembering (anamnesis)from past lives. There is a strong body-soul dual-ism stated here in which the true goal in life is tohave the soul once and for all escape from theprison (phroura) that is the body. Such escape isonly possible for the more or less ascetic philoso-pher. All others will return to earthly existence insome new corporeal form. The individual who haslived at least a civil and socially virtuous life willcome back as a human being or one of the social in-sects (bees, wasps, or ants). The gluttonous individ-ual will return in the body of an ass or similar beast.The individual who has committed acts of injustice,tyranny, and other forms of violence will assumethe form of a wolf or bird of prey.

See also Orphism; Rebirth, analogies from na-ture.

Phantasmata. In occult circles this is a thought-form created by the human mind which can be-come independent enough to be able to communi-cate with its creators. It has been suggested thatsome channeled beings, including ones that sup-port the concept of reincarnation are phantasmata.

See also Channeling.

199 Phantasmata

Pherecydes of Syros (c. 550 BCE). Some ancientGreek sources claim that Pherecydes was the firstphilosopher to teach the immortality of the soul. Amuch later Byzantine source credits him with beingthe first Greek to teach metempsychosis. For thisreason at least, he is also said to have been theteacher of Pythagoras; however, most of the ear-liest sources regard Pythagoras, not Pherecydes, asthe first to teach the doctrine of metempsychosis.Pherecydes is sometimes called Terecides.

See also Greeks and reincarnation; KyklosGenesion.

Philias and phobias. These are two forms of be-havioral memory that are said to carry over fromone life to another. For example, a deep seated fearof the ocean or even swimming pools that has no discernable cause in your present life is thoughtto mean that you or someone close to you may have drowned in a former life. On the other hand,an enormous fascination with the sea may sug-gest that in the past you were a sailor, a fisherman,etc.

See also Bleed-over; Past life memory cate-gories.

Philippians see “Every knee should bend ...every tongue confess.”

Philo Judaeus or Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE–54CE). This Neoplatonic Jewish philosopher recordedin his work, De Somniis, “ The air is full of souls:those who are nearest to Earth descending to betied to mortal bodies return to other bodies, desir-ing to live in them.” In his De Gigantes he wrote,“The company of disembodied souls is distrib-uted in various orders. The law of some is to entermortal bodies and after certain prescribed periodsto be again free. But those possessed of a divinerstructure are absolved from all local bonds of Earth. Some souls choose confinement in mortalbodies because they are corporeally inclined.... Yetthose who are wise, like Moses, are also livingabroad from home because they chose this ex-patriation from heaven in order to acquire knowl-edge and so came to dwell in earthly nature. Whilehere they urge men to return to their originalsource.” It is debatable whether Philo is here speak-ing about metempsychosis, resurrection, or evenpossession.

See also Kabbalah, Old Testament and the af-terlife.

Phobias as screen memory see Philias and pho-bias; Screen Memory.

Phoenix. In Western mythology this is a greatmagical bird which, rather than laying eggs to con-tinue the species, builds a nest that engulfs the ma-

ture phoenix in flames and from the ashes in thenest a new phoenix is reborn.

The word phoenix is the Greek form of theEgyptian Bennu. In Egypt the bird, represented asa heron, was a symbol of Ra, the sun god of He-liopolis (Biblical On, Egyptian Iunu) which diedeach evening and was reborn each dawn. Becauseof this rebirth process the phoenix eventually be-came a symbol of metempsychosis as well as ofresurrection.

It is to be noted that the phoenix in EasternAsian mythology is totally independent of theWestern version and does not incinerate itself for re-birth or any other reason.

See also Phoenix card set.

Phoenix card set. This cartomancy (divination by cards) deck was designed by Susan Sheppardspecifically for past life readings. Along with thecard deck Sheppard has written Phoenix Cards:Reading and Interpreting Past life Influences with the Phoenix Deck (1990). This deck is a kind ofmodified tarot deck, only exclusively to be used tohelp people discover their past lives. Some othersimilar decks have been produced for the purpose,but most are of less quality than Shappard’s.

Phoenix Rising. This is a non-profit referral serv-ice for certified hypnotherapists that practice pastlife regression therapy as well as a group forum forthese therapists.

See also Associations and organizations.

Phowa or Phoba. This is a Buddhist Tantric prac-tice which seeks to transfer the consciousness of adying person to a more favorable realm of existencesuch as a Pure-Land rather than merely being re-born into the ordinary cycle of rebirth and re-death. It is believed that a sign of a successful trans-fer is the presence of a minute hole at the crownaperture of the deceased’s skull.

See also Pure-Land or Blissful Land Buddhism;Vajrayana Buddhism.

Phren see Soul, tripartite.

Phylos the Tibetan. In 1883 the teenager Freder-ick Spencer Oliver (1866–1899), while living nearMount Shasta, California, began to experience a se-ries of automatic writing episodes. These were saidto originate from a being named Phylos who de-scribed himself as a Lemurian spirit who had livedseveral previous lives on the lost continent of Atlantis. Oliver claimed that this channeled spirittook him to one or more secret temples within themountain to meet members of a mystic brother-hood. Oliver’s writings seem to be the origin of thenow widespread belief in the mystical and occultnature of Mount Shasta. Among Oliver’s works

Pherecydes 200

that have been republished are An Earth Dweller’sReturn (1940), A Dweller on Two Planets (1974),and Growth of a Soul (1975).

See also Channeling; I Am Movement.

Physical plane. This is the plane of existence inwhich the every-day body functions, as opposed tothe astral plane, etheric plane, and mental plane.

See also Planes of existence, names of.

Pilgrimages. It is a widespread belief in South andEast Asia that going on pilgrimages to certain holysites can significantly reduce bad karma, if noteliminate it entirely. In Buddhism, there are fourgreat pilgrimages places. These are associated withthe birth, enlightenment, teaching and death of thehistorical Buddha. These are respectively: Lumbini,Bod-Gaya, Sarnath and Kushinagara. It is believedby many Buddhists that anyone who dies while on pilgrimage to one of these places will be guar-anteed a superior rebirth. In Hinduism it is theGanges River that is the holiest of pilgrim sitesand the one most closely related to improved rebirth.

Pindar (518/22–446/38). This Greek poet wasconsidered the greatest choral lyricist of ancientGreece. Some of his odes incorporate not only el-ements from the standard Olympian religion butalso from the mystery cult and the Orphic-Pythag-orean tradition. In the latter case, this includes afamiliarity with the concept of metempsychosis.Whether or not Pindar believed in it personally cannot be determined from the odes.

See also Orphism; Pythagoras.

Pineal and pituitary gland. Both of these glandsare thought to be related to psychic powers. Thefirst of these is pea-sized and located just under themajor mass of the brain. Its main function is toproduce and secrete the hormone melatonin, whichseemingly is involved in biological rhythms and re-productive behavior in animals and humans. Thesecond gland is located just under the front midsection of the major mass of the brain and secreteshormones governing the metabolism and growthof the body.

Depending upon which authority one chooses,either the pineal or the pituitary gland, and even thethalamus in conjunction with the pineal, is associ-ated with the third eye. Among the abilities of thispsychic eye are reading one’s own past lives andpossibly those of others. It might be noted that itis in the pineal gland that the French philosopherRene Descartes (1596–1650) imagined the soul toreside.

See also Chakras.

Pistis Sophia (Greek: Faith Wisdom). The surviv-ing version of this Gnostic text is a 3rd century

translation from the original Greek into Coptic (oldEgyptian) and contains two works. The first pur-ports to be a record of the teachings of Jesus givento his disciples, including Mary Magdalene, over an eleven-year period following his resurrectionand initial glorification or investiture. It ends inthe twelfth year with a second, even more glorious divine investiture. In conversations with his elitedisciples Jesus gives a Gnostic interpretation ofsome of the Old Testament Psalms, Five Odes ofSolomon, and even esoteric interpretations of someof his own otherwise public sayings.

The second work is preoccupied with the issueof the fall into sin and the redemption from thisfall. The text teaches that those who will ultimatelybe saved are the ones who completely renounce the world and follow a strict ethic of compassionand love. The text teaches a general faith in both thesoul’s existence prior to embodiment and itsmetempsychosis. As a gnostic text two atypical el-ements of the Pistis Sophia are that nowhere in it isJesus referred to as the Christ and there is no signof antagonism towards Judaism.

See also Gnosticism; Hermetic philosophy;Nag Hammadi Texts.

Placebo effect. This is where a patient experiencesa cure simply because he is convinced that the ther-apist, contrary to reality, has applied a curative pro-cedure to the ailment. Some psychologists suggestthat this is, in fact, all that past life therapy in-volves.

Planes of existence, names of. Different New Ageand Theosophical Schools have some commonnames for the planes of existence and some that areunique to individual schools. Among the commonnames are astral plane, etheric plane, physicalplane, and mental plane. Other names are angelicplane, archangelic plane, and celestial plane.

See also Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical;Stelle Group; Theosophy.

Planet of death see Eighth sphere.

Planetary descent and ascent of the soul. Begin-ning at least as early as Plato many classical philoso-phers and religious teachers believed that duringthe original descent or fall of souls from the Og-doad (sphere of fixed stars) to the earth each soulpassed through the seven spheres of the celestialbodies taking on the negative spiritual characteris-tic of each of those spheres. When the soul wasfinally ready for release from the cycle of metem-psychosis its ascent had to retrace its descent and,in doing so, had to shed whatever negative charac-teristics it previously acquired. If it did not do soit could not complete its journey back to the king-dom of pure light (Milky Way). This theory that

201 Planetary

began with the Pythagoreans attained its most elab-orate form as it first passed on by the Greek Stoicphilosopher Posiedonius or Posidonius (about 135–51 BCE), who was considered the most learned manof his time, and then by the Neo-Pythagorean phi-losopher Numenius of Apamea (2nd Century CE).

There were at least three differing versions of thisdescent/ascent concept. The first descent/ascentversion is associated with Poseidonius (1st centuryBCE). In this version the moon gives the soul tears,Jupiter (Zeus) gives laughter, Mars (Ares) givesanger, Venus (Aphrodite) gives birth, Saturn (Kro-nos) gives speech, Sol (Helios) gives sleep, and Mer-cury (Hermes) gives desire.

The second version was named the Egyptian,which is a puzzling name since the first reference tothis particular descent/ascent concept seems tocome from a commentary on Book IV of the Aeneidof Publius Vergilius Maro, or Virgil, by the com-mentator Servius Marius Honoratus (4th–5th cen-tury CE). In the Servius version each planetarysphere is associated with one of the seven majorvices. The list is as follows: avarice from Saturn;desire for dominance and gluttony from Jupiter;violent passions or anger from Mars; pride fromthe sun; lust from Venus; envy from Mercury; andsluggishness from the moon. Some classical authorsdiffer as to which vice to assign to which planet,for example, sluggishness is often assigned to Sat-urn instead of the Moon. It should be noted thateach of these vices, which latter Christianity will callthe Seven Deadly Sins, are all psychological char-acteristics as is befitting of a soul.

The third, or Orphic descent/ascent, version comesfrom a commentary by the Neoplatonic paganGreco-Roman philosopher Theodosius Macrobius(395–423 CE) on a work called Scipio’s Dream (Som-nium Scipionis), which is found in the sixth bookof the Republic (De Republica) by Marcus TulliusCicero (106–43 BCE). This dream story is modeledon the Myth of Er by Plato in his Republic, butMacrobius has combined it with a planetary psy-chological system that goes back at least as far asthe Tyrian born anti–Christian Neoplatonist Por-phyry Malchus (234–305 CE). For Macrobius theacquired influences from the planets are quite pos-itive. Saturn offers the power of contemplative rea-son and theorizing or right judgment; Jupiter offersthe power of putting things into practice or properexercise of the will; Mars offers the power of force-ful expression or impulsiveness; the sun offers thepower of opinion, sensing, and imagination; Venusoffers the power of desire and love; Mercury offersthe power of interpreting feelings; and the moon of-fers the power of mastering the physical body andits environment. It is from this schema that someNeoplatonists justified the art of astrology.

It must be remembered that this astrologicalschema was developed when it was still thoughtthat the earth was at the center of the universe andwhen the only planets that could be seen with thenaked eye were those noted here. The Egyptianand Orphic planetary order follow that of theGreco-Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus(2nd century CE), and was based upon what wereconsidered to be both their distance from the Earthand the speed at which they moved through heaven.In these regards Saturn was both the farthest fromthe Earth and the slowest in movement, whereasthe Moon was the closest and the fastest. The Pre-Ptolemaic order accepted by Plato and Poseidoniuswas only slightly different.

Despite its close association with both pagan-ism and Gnosticism this astrological concept wasinfluential in early and medieval Christian mysti-cal systems. Here the descent and ascent of the soul,with any implication of metempsychosis, wasdropped and in place of the pagan gods several setsof angelic rulers (archons) were assigned to each ofthe seven Ptolemaic celestial bodies or spheres. Insome cases these rulers were looked upon as benev-olent, or at least neutral, but in other cases theywere thought to be malevolent. In fact, it evencame to be theorized that seven demons driven outof the woman in Luke 8:1–3 were somehow relatedto those seven archons.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Astrologyand rebirth; Celestial gates; Chakras; Heraclei-des of Ponticus; Planets, other; Pluto, theplanet; Poimandres; Pyramidology; Sephiroth;Zodiac.

Planets, other. Before the scientific understand-ing that none of the other planets within our solarsystem could have ever evolved intelligent lifeforms, some age-regression subjects would claimto have had a past life on one or more of these plan-ets. Since then many individuals have taken currentknowledge discrepancy into consideration, andas a result, any claim to have had a past life on an-other planet “within our solar system” has more orless ended. Instead, present day claimants to livesor other contacts with other planets have chosenplanets well beyond the current scientific commu-nity’s ability to challenge such a claim.

Oddly enough, a few members of UFO religionsand channelers continue to claim contact with in-telligent beings from planets Mars, Venus, Jupiter,and Saturn; but now, rather than claiming that itis the physical planets that is meant, it is said thatit is the higher spiritual plane of such planets thatare meant. The problem with this is that it opensthe entire age-regression process to denigrationfrom the public.

Planet 202

See also Aetherius Society; Ascended masters;Astrology and rebirth; Celestial gates; Channel-ing; I Am Movement; Rampa, Lobsang Tues-day; Lost continents and reincarnation; Moon;Muller, Catherine Elise; Pluto, the planet; Ram-tha; Rebirth and science; Scientology; Super-natural-in-the-gap process; UFOism; Wilcock,David.

Plants. In Theravada Buddhism plants are notconsidered sentient beings so they do not have anykarmic factor that would lead to rebirth. Later Ma-hayana Buddhism considers even the grasses andtrees as needing to attain liberation. In Jainismplants also have to participate in the round of sam-sara.

Plato (428–348 BCE). This ancient Greek philoso-pher, and possibly the first Western theologian, cer-tainly believed in the immortal soul, but he wasnot consistent in his views as to the afterlife. Fourof his dialogues, the Gorgias, the Phaedo, the Re-public (Politeia), and the Phaedrus give differentmythical versions of the soul’s fate. In the Gorgiasthree judges, Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, and Minos,probably borrowed from Orphism, examine everysoul and send the good ones, especially philoso-phers, on to the Isles of the Blessed and the evilones to Tartarus. In some of Plato’s writing he alsogives the name of Triptolemus as a fourth judge.

In the Phaedo four possible destinies await thesoul. Here the judgment occurs at the AcherusianLake. The incurably evil souls go to Tartarus for-ever. The curably evil also go to Tartarus, but onlyfor a short time, provided that they are pardonedby those they have harmed. After this they will bereborn into the world of the living as an ass or astill lower beast. The ordinary good souls will be re-born into a life somewhat improved from their lastone. The souls of philosophers, presumably includ-ing Plato’s soul, will be liberated from all future re-births. Also in the Phaedo Plato’s argument for thesoul’s immortality is based on his belief that thesoul had no parts and, therefore, could not breakapart as physical things did when they died. LaterPlato contradicted himself by teaching that the soulhad three parts—appetite, passion (spirit), and rea-son (logos).

In his Symposium Plato tells of a myth thathuman beings originally had one of three doubleforms, male-female, male-male, and female-fe-male, which the gods then split into separate halves.All souls since then have undergone metempsy-chosis in an effort to find their original other halfor soul mate for no soul will be liberated from con-tinued embodiment until it finds its other half.

In the Phaedrus, where metempsychosis is alsoacknowledged, Plato follows the lead of Herodotus

(5th century) in suggesting that there is an interimperiod of a thousand years between re-embodi-ments and only up to three lives, for a three thou-sand year maximum.

In the tenth book of the Republic the soul’s fateis described through the Myth of Er. This tells of anoble soldier named Er, the Son of Armenius, who,having been killed in battle, immediately travels toHades where he is given visions concerning the fateof the dead. The good souls, traveling to the rightand in an upwards direction are rewarded in heavenfor a thousand years, while the evil souls, travelingto the left and in a downwards direction are pun-ished in the deeper parts of Hades for an equallylong time. After a millennium the truly evil soulsare cast into Tartarus, the deepest part of Hades,forever. The redeemable souls are allowed to travelupwards, while good souls descend on a rainbow-like pillar of light, both ending up at the knees ofthe goddess Ananke (Necessity). Here the souls seethe daughters of Ananke, the three Fates (Moirai)Lachesis, Klotho, and Attropos (past or spinner ofthe thread of life, present or disposer of lots in life,and future or cutter of the thread of life). It isthrough the gift of Lachesis that the souls choosetheir future mortal life on earth.

Er is next shown how some chose their next lives.Those who had spent a thousand years being pun-ished were likely to be very careful and choosewisely, while those who had enjoyed a thousandyears in heaven often chose foolishly. In a few cases,those who had suffered grievously in their pasthuman life and wished to have nothing to do withhuman beings in their next life chose to be ani-mals. For example, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae,decided to be an eagle; Ajax, the Trojan warrior,chose to be a lion; and Thamyras, the musician,opted to be a nightingale. After making their de-cisions the souls drink from the River of Forget-fulness (Lethe). This water dissolves all memoriesof the souls’ past lives, and only then are they pre-pared to be reborn into new bodies.

The Myth of Er ends with Er being told that itis not really time for him to die. Instead, he is sentback into the land of the living where, after seem-ing to be dead for twelve days, he awakens to findhis companions preparing to cremate his body.Arising from his funeral pyre he tells his compan-ions about his vision.

It is to be carefully noted that in the Myth of Erversion of rebirth the souls have been fully rewardedor fully punished prior to being reborn. This meansthat there is no particular moral reason why somepeople are reborn into good lives and some intobad lives. In other words, there is no doctrine ofkarma in its “primary function” as there is in East-ern Asia. This lack of a full karmic concept was

203 Plato

a major weakness in the Greek metempsychosisschema. Mention of metempsychosis is also foundin Plato’s Laws (Nomoi) and Memo.

Regardless of the versions of rebirth that Plato offers us, it is certain that he was influenced byPythagoras (6th century) and the Orphic religion.However, to complicate the issue of Plato and hisafter-life views, in his Timaeus, he abandons hisearlier belief in an inherently immortal soul for onedependent on the good grace of the divine. Also, inthis he regards only the “intelligence” (nous) of thesoul as potentially immortal. From the perspectiveof the metaphysics of the soul, the Timaeus is oneof Plato’s greatest works. It is here that the meta-physic of the creation of the world, the gods, thehuman body, and the soul as found. It is also herethat Plato makes absolutely clear that he acknowl-edges the existence of a supreme creator being(God); moreover, that it is this God that firstformed the world soul (anima mundi) out of threeconstituents, those of sameness (tauton), otherness(thateron), and being or essence and not creatio exnihilo (creation out of nothingness). In fact, thiscreator (demiurge) merely formed the materialparts of the universe out of a chaotic state of pre-existent matter. It was, therefore, the inherentchaotic nature of this matter that accounted for evilin the world. Once the world soul was created itwas placed in the circles of the planets or stars sur-rounding the earth. It was from this world soul thatthe rational and immortal aspects of human soulswere created with their own tauton, thateron, andbeing constituents. The number of individual soulsthat were created was the equal of the number ofstars, for it was into celestial bodies that the soulswere first placed. The God also created the lesserdeities (traditional Greek gods and demi-gods), towhich He gave the task of fashioning the humanbody and the lower aspects of the human soul. Theindividual souls, after experiencing celestial exis-tence and gaining knowledge of cosmic reality andthe laws of destiny, were incarnated into materialbodies to learn how to master physical passions andto live virtuously. For those that succeeded in thisthey left behind all materiality and returned to theirhome star. For those that did not learn such mas-tery and virtue they were reborn time after time aswomen or worst, as beasts, until they were some-how able to reverse their condition.

During the European Middle Ages the writingsof Plato were often out of favor, partly because headvocated a belief in metempsychosis or transmi-gration, which was regarded by the church as aheresy. It was only during the Renaissance thatboth Plato and the concept of metempsychosis onceagain became a subject of renewed interest.

See also Anamnesis; Aquinas, Thomas; Archy-

tas of Tarentum; Aristotle; Body is the hell ofthe soul; Body-soul dualism; Bogomils; Cathars;Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Essenes; Genderissue of the soul; Greek afterlife, the ancient;Greeks and reincarnation; Lost continents andreincarnation; Moon; Neoplatonism; Ogdoad;Paulicians; Pherecydes of Syros; Planetary de-scent and ascent of the soul; Platonism; Plotinus;Pluto, The God; Priesthood, lack of an organ-ized; Soul, tripartite; Theophilus; Virgil.

Pleiades. This is the great cluster of stars in the con-stellation Taurus, especially the seven largest stars.The name of this cluster comes from the Greek pleinmeaning to sail, because the rising and setting ofthese stars opened and close the season for safe nav-igation on the Aegean Sea. Their rising and settingthen made them a symbol for metempsychosis.

See also Forty; Pyramidology; Satya.

Plotinus (205–270 CE). This Egyptian born Neo-platonic philosopher and mystic followed the Pla-tonic teachings that viewed mankind as having aninborn intuition about the One (God), with whichall men ultimately longed to be united. This re-quired a degree of both intellectual and spiritualcontemplation that could only bear fruit over anumber of life times.

Plotinus, unlike most of the earlier supportersof metempsychosis, came very close to affirming akarma-like law of reward or punishment. Thoseindividuals who have spent lives of stupor will findthemselves in the bodies of vegetables, while thosewho have excessively gratified the senses will be re-born as licentious beasts, while only those who havedisplayed virtuous lives will once again come intohuman form.

Plotinus apparently taught that through all suc-cessive lives it is never the soul that suffers, but theoutward shadow since it is this aspect of the selfthat acts out the plots in the world. One of the stu-dents of Plotinus was Porphyry Malchus.

See also Empedocles; Pherecydes of Syros;Plato; Priesthood, lack of an organized.

Pluralism. This is a metaphysical view that physi-cal and spiritual reality is composed of more thanone or two basic kinds of entities. Pluralism is incontrast to monism and dualism. In general, plu-ralism with its multitude of fundamentally sepa-rate souls is more compatible with the concept ofreincarnation than is monism.

Plurality of existences. This term can refer to thestandard reincarnation belief that the soul has awhole series of existences or that a soul can havetwo or more existences simultaneously. In this sec-ond case it is the same as parallel lives.

See also Rebirth, simultaneous.

Pleiades 204

Plutarch or Ploutarchos (about 46– 119 CE). ThisGreek writer mentions metempsychosis in his Onthe Delays of the Divine Vengeance. In this work thesoul of the music loving, but criminally insane,Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus German-icus (54–68 CE) was said to have been reborn intothe body of a frog so he could sing (croak) all hewanted.

Pluto, the planet. In modern astrology Pluto hassometimes been suggested as the main governingbody for reincarnation. The validity of this hasbeen challenged by the question, “What was con-sidered the governing planet for reincarnation be-fore the discovery of Pluto in 1930?” One answer isthat it would have been Saturn, since that planetfor millennia has been associated with death. Amajor source of the pro–Pluto reincarnation viewis Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of the Soul by JeffGreen (1986).

On the other hand, in mundane astrology Plutois the governing planet of organized labor groups orlabor unions. The logic of this is said to be that theorganized labor movement was only founded a fewdecades prior to the discovery of the planet.

A more chronologically secure association is withthe fact that Pluto, as the god of death, was dis-covered only 10 years before the discovery of theelement named after it, plutonium, which coinci-dentally or not turned out to be a major ingredientin nuclear bombs. Also, the start of World War II,which ended with the atomic bomb, might be at-tributed to the astrological influence of the discov-ery of Pluto. Considering this Pluto-nuclear link,it may be less of a surprising that there is even anassociation of Pluto with Jesus according to Zhen-dao. Jesus, who is just one of many gods, is said tohave helped settle on Pluto the survivors of the nu-clear war that created this solar system.

Another factor associated with this planet ac-cording to many astrologers is that of the subcon-scious, the treasure house of the psyche. This isconsidered to be supported by the fact that it wasaround the discovery time of Pluto that depth psy-chology became fashionable. Since the astrologerFritz Brunhubner gave his opinion on the matter in1934 Pluto has also been assign governance overthe pineal gland and its third eye psychic proper-ties. Again the question ought to be asked, “What,if anything, was considered governing this glandbefore the discovery of Pluto?”

As of August 2006 Pluto lost its status as a fullplanet and was reclassified as a dwarf planet. Wewill have to wait to see how astrologers deal withthis plutonian downgrading and its supposed gov-ernance of reincarnation.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Moon; Plane-

tary descent and ascent of the soul; Planets,other.

Pneumatikoi (Greek: Spirituals) This term referredto the people with the highest level of spiritual un-derstanding in some forms of Gnosticism and assuch could soon escape from kyklos genesion (cycleof birth and death). The opposite of these wereconsidered sarikoi, choikoi or hylikoi which meantcorporeal or material and so more or less earthbound. In between were the psychikoi, or those withsome degree of spiritual understanding, but notenough to escape from birth and death.

See also Seth; Trichotomy.

Poetry on reincarnation. For a very extensive sam-pling of poetry on reincarnation see Eva Martin’sReincarnation: The Ring of Return (1963). R. F.Goudey’s Reincarnation: A Universal Truth (1928)has a fourteen-page chapter on reincarnation po-etry; and Walker in his Reincarnation: A Study ofForgotten Truth (1965) has a fifty-page chapter ofpoetry on reincarnation by Western authors and asmaller chapter by Eastern authors.

See also Masefield, John; Patton, George S.

Poimandres or Pymander (Latin and Greek: Shep-herd of men). This book, produced about 200 CE,is the first text in the Corpus Hermeticum or Her-metic writings, which is why the entire corpus issometimes given this name. The full name of thetext is The Divine Pymander of Hermes MercuriusTrimegistus. In this text the god Hermes is describ-ing his vision of Poimandres and the doctrines helearns from that vision.

All that is left of the original text is seventeenfragmentary writings brought together as one work,divided into separate chapters. The second chapteror book, called Poimandres or The Vision, is possi-bly the most famous of all Hermetic Fragmentswhich is why the whole text is often given this name.The vision has at times been erroneously called TheGenesis of Enoch but that mistake is rare today. Themain character in the story is Poimandres who ap-pears as a Great Dragon, which, in turn, is said tobe the Mind of the Universe, the Creative Intelli-gence, and the Absolute Emperor of all.

Among the things the text describes is the soul’sexistence prior to embodiment in the Eighthsphere (Milky Way) from where all souls felldown, passing through the seven planetary ringsto earth and from where, after purifying them-selves, they must once again pass through in reverseorder to return once and for all to the supreme, allgood God.

Much of the language of the text is ambiguouson the matter as to whether metempsychosis, in thecommon sense, is supported because it also men-

205 Poimandres

tions evil souls being destroyed or there being asecond death in which there is no salvation. Onthe other hand, the text mentions that many soulswill have to wait until the Great Day when thewheel of the universe will stop, the souls shall befreed from their bodily sheaths, ascend to the seed-ground of the stars (Milky Way), and there await anew beginning.

See also Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn;Hermetic philosophy; Planetary descent and as-cent of the soul.

Polar star see Zodiac.

Polarities. This term describes two life times inwhich one assumes opposite roles. For example, inone life a person may be a wife then in another ahusband. Parent-Child, victimizer-victim, em-ployer-employee are also examples of such polari-ties.

See also Karma, family.

Population increase issue. A major and long-standing challenge to the concept of reincarnationis that human population has steadily increasedover the last thirty plus thousand years. This beingthe case, there would have to be either an as yetnot emptied reservoir of souls to draw from or newsouls periodically coming into being.

This population issue is more of a Western con-cern than an Eastern one because the Eastern viewis that the animal world or souls from other plan-ets or other spheres of existence (heaven, hell) formthe reservoir for rebirth and/or transmigrationhere on earth.

Western advocates of reincarnation, more oftenthan not, reject the first of these reservoir possibil-ities, while some may accept the second and/orthird possibility.

The first, or reservoir, solution tends to go alongwith the belief that there are only a finite numberof souls and as soon as the reservoir has been emp-tied the human population increase will come toan end. This solution, as logical as it may be, leadsto the question, “Until there are enough bodies forall souls to enter the cycle of birth and death dosouls rotate in embodiments or not. For example,if soul “x” has been through the rebirth cycle fortytimes and is still not ready to leave the cycle perma-nently, is there a procedure that says it can or mustleave the cycle and return to the reservoir temporar-ily to giving another soul, “y,” that has never yetentered the rebirth cycle a chance to do so? Or mustsoul “x” continue to reincarnate until it is ready toleave the cycle permanently?

The other solution to the population increaseissue is that as the population increases new soulscome into existence. This solution would gener-

ally require an ever-creative force such as God tocreate souls anew and is very acceptable to theists.

Either of these solutions to the population in-crease issue would mean that as far as embodimentsare concerned some souls have reincarnated manytimes, hence are old souls’ and some souls havemore recently started the embodiment processes,hence are new souls. This could even be used toexplain why some people remember a past life andothers do not.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy,had his own solution to the population increaseissue. He believed in a fixed number of souls, whichis to say that all the souls that would be came intoexistence at the same time. The population of hu-manity is dependent on the number of souls thatwant or need to be reborn at any time. Besides thefact that there is a large pool of souls that are stillin need of experiencing embodiment, and who aredoing whatever they can to encourage a highhuman birthrate, there is an increased number offormer embodied souls wanting to be reborn. Thereason for this is that in the past the more primi-tive conditions under which many souls had to livemeant that they were not as eager to immediatelyreturn to embodiment. This has become less andless true as humanity has progressed materially, sothere has been a gradual population increase overthe past few millennia.

The population increase issue is a particularlysensitive question for Buddhism, since Buddhismteaches that it is very difficult to attain the privilegeof a human birth.

See also Akashic Record; Animals and rebirth,non–Western view; Animals and rebirth, West-ern view; Bhavachakra; Fall of Souls; Cleopa-tra Syndrome; Interim period; Fixed number orvariable number of souls; Kabbalah; Karma andrebirth; Ontological leap or ontological discon-tinuity; Planets, other; Population increase issueand a theistic solution; Privilege of a humanbirth; Rebirth and science; Soul Darwinism;Soul-fission; Soul, origin of the; Tertullian.

Population increase issue and the theistic solu-tion. If, due to Western objections to cross-speciestransmigration, the possibility of animals being re-born into human bodies is not an acceptable answerto the increasing population problem nor is thereany enthusiasm for a huge reservoir of souls, thenthe easiest solution would seem be to accept a cre-ator God as the source of soul increase. In this so-lution God originally created all souls as immatureentities, and He continues to create new, but im-mature, souls. This He does for an increasing pop-ulation both to supply souls for any bodies not ableto receive an old soul, or even for a stable popula-

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tion to replace souls that spiritually grow out of thecycle of rebirth. The majority of the population,however, in both cases continues to have a previ-ously existing soul.

This theistic solution could also accommodatekarma; but first it needs to be asked, “What if somefirst time ensouled persons were born into a suf-fering environment, would this not amount to thesuffering of an innocent person since the sufferingwas not related to any past karma?” The easiest an-swer to this would be that God might only putthose first time ensouled persons in an appropri-ately just environment in which to begin therekarmic journey.

Of course, this theistic solution depends uponGod really existing; yet, as noted in argumentspro and con on an afterlife in general (7 and 8)it is very weak logic to try to argue for the truth orreality of one thing (an afterlife) on the basis of thetruth or reality of another thing (God) which itselfis unproven.

See also Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism;Fixed number or variable number of souls; Kab-balah; Karma and God.

Porphyry Malchus (234–305 CE). Among thewritings of this ancient Greco-Roman Neoplaton-ist philosopher and supporter of metempsychosiswere On Abstinence from Animal Food, a treatise onvegetarianism; Life of Pythagoras; and Against theChristians. Porphyry was the student of Plotinus,and Iamblichus was one of the students of Por-phyry.

See also Celestial gates; Julian, Flavius Clau-dius; Karma and free will; Neoplatonism; Plan-etary descent and ascent of the soul.

Possession. In its broadest meaning possession isthe act of a spiritual entity taking command of aphysical body. In this broader sense reincarnationis a form or subset of possession. On the otherhand, in its narrower and more common meaningpossession is where a spiritual entity (soul) of a de-ceased person or other supernatural entity invadesa body that “already has its own soul”; therefore,in this narrower sense possession must clearly bedistinguished from reincarnation.

In what is assumed to be possession, the personbeing invaded is usually aware that an alien per-sonality is trying to take over him or her and mostoften there is also a violent aspect of this invasion.If the invasion is successful the invading personal-ity may so overwhelm the person invaded that theinvaded person’s own personality will seem to beradically replaced by the alien one. Possession ofthis kind, using the terminology of the Americanoccultist Paschal B. Randolph (1825– 1875), is atril-ism.

According to the researcher H. N. Banerjeesome of the signs of this kind of possession are thatthe top register of the normal voice of the possessedperson is displaced; the invading entity usually re-veals a vulgar attitude, fundamentally opposed toaccepted ethical and religious norms; the possessedvictim usually becomes irritable, if not violent; andthe possession itself lasts for only brief periods,which are marked by an alarmingly sudden enter-ing and exiting of the possessing entity.

It is to be noted that the preceding descriptionof possession emphasizes the involuntary nature ofthe possession; however, there is also a voluntary or“invitational” possession, one form of which goesunder the name of channeling, while another formwould be deity possession. In the latter case, ex-amples of this would range from possession ofshamans by divining spirits, various gods in Afro-American religions, and possession by the HolySpirit in Pentecostal Christian churches. In some re-ported cases of possession, especially in Brazil, it isthought that the possessing entity had some pastkarmic connection with the possessed person. InRandolph’s terminology the more voluntary posses-sion is called “blending,” in that the alien entitydoes not interrupt the host’s self-awareness or men-tal activities.

From a Western monotheistic position the great-est weakness in the theory of reincarnation is thatit is impossible to separate that theory from posses-sion. Past life practitioners, however, consistentlypoint out that in the experiencing of a genuine pastlife the current personality, while remembering thatit has lived before, continues to be aware that thepast personality is not identical to the current per-sonality.

While many reincarnationists entirely reject theconcept of possession as an out-dated belief, otherreincarnationists do accept that some past lifememories are due to being possessed by an aliendisincarnated spirit, rather than due to genuinememories of one’s own past life. Also, it must be re-membered that many conservative Western reli-gious authorities consider most cases of non-fraud-ulent past life recall to be the result of possession bymalicious supernatural entities. As proof of the re-ality of such possession they tend to cite such NewTestament passages as Matthew 8:28–32, Luke4:33–36, Acts 16:16– 18, and 19:11–16. In fact, someChristian fundamentalists go as far as stating thatthe entire concept of past lives is due to the work-ing of demons who are trying to sabotage Christ-ian resurrection teachings. Obviously, this impliesthat these Christians believe that all of South andEast Asia has been thoroughly deceived by and per-haps lost to demonic forces.

Possession, however, need not be thought of as

207 Possession

totally separate from reincarnation. For example,if a possessing entity were to take possession of aninfant’s body well before the infant had a chanceto develop any independent personality of its own,for all practical purposes this could be consideredthe equivalent of reincarnation. In fact, leavingaside the hostile Christian attitude of reincarna-tion as possession, it might be suggested that withor without universal reincarnation this possession-reincarnation might be very characteristic of soulsof those who died prematurely or with majorunfinished business.

The concept of incarnated lamas offers anotherpossible blurring of possession and reincarnation.For example, among most Tibetans it is believedthat the Dalai Lama is an “incarnation” of theAvalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion.When one Dalai Lama dies his divine spiritualessence (the bodhisattva) takes possession of a newbody. The question then becomes does the selectedfetus or new born infant lack its own human or non-divine soul and only the divinity enters it, or doesit have its own human soul which either mergeswith the divinity or is completely and permanentlysuppressed by the divinity? If suppression is thecase, what happens to that soul after the death ofthe body it shares with the divinity? Does it con-tinue in rebirth association with the divinity ordoes it go its own way. If it goes its own way is itkarmicaly responsible for the actions of the divin-ity or free of such responsibility? Clearly, in this casethe possession versus rebirth issue is very complex.

It should be further noted that even Ian Steven-son, in his Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation(1996), acknowledges that there is a continuousprogression between mere possession and authen-tic reincarnation. In this continuum Stevenson listspartial temporary possession, complete temporarypossession, complete permanent possession begin-ning years after birth, complete permanent posses-sion occurring a day to several weeks after birth,complete permanent possession after conception,complete permanent possession at conception.Stevenson regards the last two forms of possessionas constituting true reincarnation. In other words,he says that if a possessing personality is associatedwith a body either at conception or sometime dur-ing embryonic development it is reincarnation,while any later association is true alien possession.Since some authorities allow for the reincarnatingentities to embody themselves at the moment ofbirth or very soon after that Stevenson’s view of au-thentic rebirth might have to include the last threerather than just the last two categories of possession.

One question that is rarely asked in studyingchildren’s recall ability is whether or not they, asjust starting to develop their own wills, are more

prone to possession than are adults, and that as thechildren mature is the possessing entity that isbeing mistaken for a past life scenario forced togradually abandon its host? Another question iswhether or not individuals in cultures that stronglybelieve in reincarnation are more susceptible to pos-session than are individuals in cultures that do notbelieve in reincarnation?

Modern psychology offers several explanationsfor what it considers so-called malevolent posses-sion. Among these are mental illnesses, epilepsy, orconscious or unconscious deception. In the last casepsychologists and anthropologists point out thatthe conviction or pretence that an alien entity hastaken control of a person has given that person (vic-tim) the freedom to act in ways that would nor-mally be denied by society. Hence subconsciousdesires and fantasies can be acted upon without theso-called possessed person having to take personalresponsibility for the actions.

See also Africa; Attached entity; Automaticwriting; Children remembering past lives; Eli-jah; Etheric body; Guenon, Rene; John the Bap-tist; Kabbalah; Karma and rebirth; Karma asunfinished business; Multiple personalities; Re-birth, alternative explanations to; Walk-ins;Xenoglossy.

Prabhavananda, Swami (1893– 1976). This disci-ple of Vivekananda continued to work for thespread of his master’s teachings via the VedantaSociety. It was under Prabhavananda that the so-ciety attracted the support of such men as AldousHuxley and Christopher Isherwood. Members arenot required to believe in either reincarnation norkarma; nonetheless, they are included in the teach-ings of the Society.

See also Atman; Monism; Yogananda, Parama-hansa.

Prakriti (Mature, matter, physicality). In theSamkhya Yoga School this term is contrasted withpurusha, meaning (essential) person or, in otherwords, the soul. In Advaita Vedanta prakriti is synonymous with the illusory characteristic ofmaya versus the exclusive reality of the atman(soul). In both of these religious systems attach-ment to prakriti, either through sensuality or ig-norance keeps one trapped in the round of rebirthand re-death. In Tantric Hinduism, prakriti isequated with the divine magical creative powercalled Shakti and is viewed in a more positive man-ner than in the other two schools.

See also Monism.

Prana (Breath) see Aetherius Society; Ethericbody; Kosha; Soul and spirit levels, Theosoph-ical.

Prabhavananda 208

Prarthana. This Sanskrit term means a formalwish for rebirth.

Pratitya-samutpada/Paticha-samuppada (De-pendent Causality). Buddhism teaches that a closeexamination or analysis of one’s psychophysical de-velopment can demonstrate the complete non-ne-cessity for any supernatural or metaphysical conceptsuch as God or Brahman as a determining factorin one’s development. Instead, Buddhism says thatthe entire psychophysical development of a personcan be understood as a process of natural causalityin which one stage of development is dependentupon an earlier stage of development.

While the sutras (holy texts) supply a number ofdifferent examples of the dependent originationschema the most developed one is that which hastwelve factors or twelve or links (nidanas). Thischain begins with ignorance (S: avidya); whichcauses or conditions volitional activity (samskara);which causes or conditions consciousness (vijnana);which causes or conditions the psychophysical or-ganism of name and form (nama-rupa); whichcauses or conditions the six senses (sad-ayatana);which causes or conditions contact (sparsha); whichcauses or conditions sensation (vedana); whichcauses or conditions craving (trishna); which causesor conditions clinging (upadana); which causes orconditions becoming (bhava; which causes or con-ditions birth (jati) which causes or conditions oldage and death (jara-marana) and hence dissatisfac-tion in life.

At some point in its development this twelve linkschema came to be used to explain the rebirthprocess without having to postulate a permanentsoul. Yet, for a variety of reasons, some scholars be-lieve that this twelve factor chain is a later develop-ment of an earlier and simpler causal or conditionalscheme that had nothing to do with rebirth. In-stead, they believe that it was originally an expla-nation of the process by which the mind comes tocling to, or grasp after the self, others, and thingswhich Buddhism teaches is the root of our duhkha.

Besides dependent causality pratitya-samutpadahas been variously translated into English as de-pendent origination, conditioned genesis, condi-tioned co-production, causal genesis, and some-times simply as causation.

See also Anatman; Psychophysical aggregates;Rebirth in Buddhism.

Prayers for the dead. In many religious traditionsintercessional prayers are a standard practice. Suchprayers have even been accepted in some of thosetraditions where the future of the deceased is deter-mined by the impersonal power of karma ratherthan a personal interceding deity. In TheravadaBuddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, giving do-

nations to monks in the name of the deceased isbelieved to aid in a better rebirth for both the de-ceased and the donor. Also, in Mahayana Bud-dhism prayers to the various bodhisattvas on be-half of the dead can achieve the same result. SomeNew Age channeled entities have also supportedthe idea of such prayers as providing reincarna-tional benefits for the deceased.

See also Ancestor worship.

Precession of the equinox and rebirth seeSteiner, Rudolf.

Pre-conception or post-conception, pre-birth orpost-birth rebirth see Embodiment, momentof; Hovering of the soul.

Predestination. In general, this is the teaching thatthe fate of the soul has been determined well in ad-vance of physical death or even prior to birth. In aChristian sense it means that due to the absolutesinfulness of “fallen mankind” no one by there owneffort can do sufficient good works to make them-selves worthy of salvation as far as God is con-cerned. Therefore, it is only by the arbitrary choiceof God that some have been predestined to benefitfrom the saving power of Christ’s sacrifice (singlepredestination); and others, as reprobates, havebeen predestined not to be saved (double predes-tination). This is also called “salvation of the elector chosen of God.”

There are a number of passages in the Old Tes-tament that tell of God’s foreknowledge which im-plies predestination. As for the New Testament, thepredestination sources include Matthew 20:23 and24:31; 25:35; John 10:29; Romans 8:28, and9:10–24; Ephesians 1:4–5, and 9; 2nd Timothy1:9; Titus 1:1–2; Jude 1:4; and in the most extremeversion of such predestination the exact number ofthe saved souls is given as 144,000 according to theRevelation of John 7:4–8.

In light of these Christian predestination pas-sages, there should be no reason to believe that earlyChristianity had any belief in metempsychosis.

See also Apocatastasis; Fall of Souls; Karmaand free will; Karma versus grace; Limbo; NewTestament and reincarnation; Purgatory; Res-urrection of Jesus.

Pre-existence of the soul see Soul’s existenceprior to embodiment

Pre-existiani. This is the word used in ancientRoman sources for a believer in the soul’s exis-tence prior to embodiment.

See also Clement of Alexandria; Origin.

Presley, Elvis. Considering the near religious iconicstatus Presley achieved after, if not before, his death

209 Presley

it should be no surprise that sooner or later heshould be identified as a candidate for reincarna-tion. According to an article by Michael Logan inSpirit Guide (2004) the Hollywood psychic KennyKingston believes that Presley has to have been re-born in December of 2007 and is to become a ho-listic healer who is “almost Christ-like.”

See also Wilcock, David.

Pretaloka. In Hinduism this is the place wherethe deceased reside for a year while waiting for theshraddha (supplementary funeral rites) to be com-pleted. From here the deceased will move on totheir next rebirths. This place is not to be confusedwith the Pritiloka.

Priesthood, lack of an organized. Consideringthe familiarity with the concept of metempsy-chosis found in the classical Greco-Roman periodit has often been questioned why this concept neverbecame the dominant ideology in the West. Amongthe reasons that have been suggested is that whileboth the Greeks and Romans had priests therenever developed an organized pro-reincarnation-ist priesthood to push forward a reincarnationistagenda, as was the case with the Brahmins in India.

In contrast to this pagan Greco-Roman lack ofpriestly organization, the Christian clergy in thelater Roman Empire developed a strong, well-dis-ciplined, hierarchical priestly organization that ag-gressively propagated its resurrectional belief. ThisChristian organizational superiority must partly beattributed to the sense of religious urgency that wascreated by a belief that only one lifetime meant onlyone chance for salvation. Furthermore, it was thedisciplined organizational ability of the Christianclerical authorities which attracted the rapidly dis-integrating late Roman State as a possible organi-zational tool to stop its disintegration and maybeeven reverse it. Thus, with the official adoption ofChristianity as the Roman state religion the teach-ing of multiple lives through metempsychosis wasrepressed in favor of a belief in a single life and theeventual resurrection of the dead.

See also Ethicalized or karmic rebirth; Karmain the ancient and modern west; Neoplatonism;Plato; Platonism; Pythagoras; Resurrection,bodily.

Priscillian (died 385 CE). This Christian bishopof Avila, Spain was known to support extremeviews on the need for clerical celibacy and even onthe ungodliness of lay marriage. These views broughthim under suspicion of being a gnostic or Mani-chaean heretic, and hence a believer in metempsy-chosis. His church enemies had him tried, not asa heretic, but as a practitioner of magic, and byorder of the Western Roman emperor Magnus

Maximus he was executed. The majority of church-men, however, condemned the emperor’s actions.The execution of Priscillian was the first executionon grounds related to heresy in Christian history.While there is still some debate as to Priscillian’sorthodoxy, at present the majority opinion seems toregard him as having been innocent.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Manichaeism.

Pritiloka. In Sanskrit this means the world (loka)of the ancestors (priti) and it is considered a rest-ful place in Hinduism were virtuous souls tem-porarily dwell, but once their accumulated merithas been exhausted they must return to earthly re-birth to continue their goal of ultimate liberationfrom rebirth and re-death. The pritiloka is not tobe confused with the pretaloka, which is the realmof the deceased in general and in some cases can betranslated as realm of the hungry ghosts.

See also Linga Sharia; Moon; Reincarnation,origins of; Surya-marga.

Privilege of a human birth. In Buddhism it is be-lieved that only in the human state can a being havea chance to gain liberation from the round of birthand death (samsara). This is because the beings inthe other realms of existence (bhavachakra) aretoo ignorant, too involved in their suffering, or toointoxicated with their temporary state of bliss forthem to seek liberation (nirvana). Only in the hu-man realm are the pleasures and pains of existencebalanced sufficiently for there to be the freedom tochoose whether to stay or leave such existence. Be-cause of this privileged situation, Buddhism alsoteaches that it is very difficult to be born intohuman existence. This may seem to be contradictedby the huge number of people in the world at pres-ent, but Buddhism would answer that comparedto the number of beings in the other realms of existence the human realm is under-populated.Nonetheless, modern Buddhism is faced with thepopulation increase issue.

Proclus (411–485 CE). This Neoplatonist teacherbelieved that he was a reincarnation of an ancientPythagorean and so studied all the religions andphilosophies available to him. However, he appar-ently argued against the human soul being rebornas an animal.

See also Plato; Pythagoras; Transmigration,regressive.

Procrastination, charge of. A major criticism ofreincarnation by Christianity is that it leaves thebeliever of multiple lives ample opportunity topostpone any real effort at the moral purificationnecessary for spiritual salvation, whereas the Chris-tian belief in a single life time makes such effortimperative. This charge might have some validity

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for the Western believer who tends to think of re-birth in very positive, if not adventuresome, terms;but for the south or central Asian believer the un-adventuresome monotony implied in repeatedbirths and deaths is no more or less a motivation forattaining spiritual perfection than is the Christianview.

See also Rebirth, East and West.

Progression therapy. This is the process wherebyone experiences aspects of a future reincarnationunder hypnosis. It is the opposite of past life or re-gression therapy.

See also Future-lives; Over-soul, personal;Time and the simultaneous past, present, andfuture.

Promise of the cycle. This phrase expresses aWicca belief that the cycle of rebirth is a phenom-enon more of progression to better conditions thanof digression to lesser conditions.

Proof for and against reincarnation argument.The sheer number of cases of reported past life re-call, which includes those both well investigatedand those taken on face value, might normally leadto an easy belief in past lives; however, the over-whelming disagreement about who or what reincar-nates, and how, when, why, and where reincarna-tion takes place makes for major complications inany easy acceptance or an otherwise wide spreadreincarnational belief. When all the disagreementsabout the interim period, including whether thereis even such a period, the justification for any ac-ceptance is still further undermined. Finally, whenall the possible alternative explanations, both psy-chic and non-psychic, are taken into considerationthe reason for believing in reincarnation seems toshift too significantly to that of faith alone, whichis beyond logical argument. In the name of suchfaith some rebirth advocates have simply taken theposition that absence of proof for reincarnation isnot proof against reincarnation. This argument, ofcourse, has been used for centuries to challenge adisbelief in God, and just as it is a very weak anddubious theistic argument it is equally weak as areincarnation argument.

According to Woolger, in his Other Lives, OtherSelves (1988), a further difficulty in proving reincar-nation through hypnotic recall is that it doesn’tmatter whether the hypnotized subject believes inreincarnation or not. The unconscious mind will al-most always produce a past life story when invitedin the right way. This is the case even if the con-scious mind is highly skeptical; in short, the uncon-scious is a true believer.

Yet another problem with trying to prove rein-carnation is that to do so one would first need to

eliminate as inapplicable all of the other possiblenon-psychic and psychic alternative explanationsfor past life recall such as the akashic record; lead-ing questions; possession; retrocognition; telepa-thy with the living; and telepathy with the dead,etc.

See also Rebirth, alternative explanations to;Rebirth and the preponderance of evidence.

Proof of rebirth, criteria see Rebirth, criteriafor proof of.

Proof of rebirth (Western Buddhist) see Re-birth, proof of (Western Buddhist).

Proof text. This is a scriptural passage offered asproof for a theological doctrine or principle, whichin most cases is taken out of the larger context inwhich the passage is found and once taken out ofits proper context it can be used to prove any num-ber of views contrary to the original in contextview. There are two kinds of proof texting, the pas-sive and the active. Passive proof texting is the de-liberate searching of the scriptures to find some-thing that seems to match a later condition. Activeproof texting is the deliberate molding of a latercondition to match an earlier scriptural one. Prooftexting is heavily used by many Western reincarna-tionists to prove that various passages in the Bibleimply reincarnation.

See also Augustine, Saint Aurelius; Book ofthe Dead; Jesus; Jung, Carl; New Testament andreincarnation; Old Testament and the afterlife;Resurrection of Jesus.

Protology. This is the study of metaphysical viewsdealing with the birth or pre-birth of the world,the soul, etc. The biblical myth of the Garden ofEden would be an example of this, especially sinceit is said to record the birth of sin and death due tothe fall of mankind. Protology is the opposite ofeschatology. One of the advantages to the conceptof reincarnation, especially in its Eastern forms, isthat the origin of the world and the soul can bepushed far enough back in time that the origin be-comes almost irrelevant. The nature of biblicalmythology requires that it must find a much morerecent origin, which obviously has lead to the de-bate between biblical creationism and Darwinianevolutionism.

Proverbs. At least the following two out of themany proverbs in the Old Testament have beencited as suggesting a doctrine of reincarnation.Proverbs 17:5 reads, “A man who sneers at the poorinsults his Maker, and he who gloats over another’sruin will answer for it.” That this might imply adoctrine of post-mortem punishment is reasonable,but the suggestion that this post-mortem is of a

211 Proverbs

reincarnational type is clearly reading into the pas-sage what is not there.

The second passage is Proverbs 8:22–31. It reads,“The Lord created me the beginning of his works,before all else that he made, long ago. Alone, I wasfashioned in times long past, at the beginning, longbefore earth itself.” Despite some attempts to claimthat this passage is referring to the soul’s existenceprior to embodiment, and in particular of the soulof King Solomon, the passage, without the slight-est doubt, describes in anthropomorphic form thepre-existence of Divine Wisdom (Hebrew: Chok-mah or Hohhma), not any ordinary soul. In fact, theproverb continues on for eight more verses, mak-ing its subject very clear.

See also Karma in the Bible?

Proximity burial. This refers to the belief that thecloser the deceased is buried to his or her kinfolk thegreater is the chance of the deceased being reborninto the same family (consanguineous rebirth). TheIgbo of Nigeria are especially known for this be-lief.

See also Africa; Akan; Rebirth, consangui-neous; Yoruba.

Proximity reincarnation see Rebirth, proxim-ity.

Psalms. In general the theme of these Old Testa-ment poems is to praise and give thanks to God,and/or to lament a personal situation; nonetheless,a number of Psalms have been cited as implying adoctrine of reincarnation. The first of these is Psalms81:4–5 which is sometimes cited as a proof textthat the Old Testament taught that King Davidwas the reincarnation of both the Joseph of Gene-sis and of Moses. The passage reads, “This is the lawfor Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob, laid asa solemn charge on Joseph when he came out ofEgypt.”

In trying to fathom such an identity we first needto remember that traditional biblical legend saysthat all the Psalms were written by King Davidunder divine inspiration. The next thing we needto remember is in Exodus 13:19 when Moses leftEgypt he took the bones (presumably the mummi-fied body) of Joseph with him. In other words, theclaim is being made that Moses was taking his for-mer body with him out of Egypt. This act, from areincarnationist view, was thought to be very sym-bolic in that the soul of the man, who brought theIsraelites into Egypt now, in a different body, deliv-ered the Israelites out of Egypt.

A second Psalm removed from its context andgiven a reincarnationist reading is Psalm 90. Indeed, this psalm is used twice for this purpose.Psalm 90:1 reads, “Lord, thou hast been our refuge

from generation to generation.” This in its propercontext refers to biological generations, not a series of embodiments of the same soul. Then two verses below this is 90:3 which reads, “...for in thy sight a thousand years are as yesterday.” This has been used to claim that there is a thousandyear interim period between rebirths. Psalm 102:26–27 uses the metaphor of the body as a meregarment of the soul that is cast of at death to be replaced with a new garment. Reincarnationistsclaim that this garment is a new body. The passagereads, “They shall pass away, but thou endurest:like clothes they shall all grow old; thou shalt cast them off like a cloak, and they shall vanish;but thou art the same and thy years shall have noend; ...” The reason this passage otherwise fails to have such a meaning is that the verse just before it makes it perfectly clear that what is beingreferred to are the earth and heaven and in no way should be interpreted as involving a humanbody.

Some supporters of “Jesus is David reborn” haveused Acts 2:25–36, which in turn is quoting Psalm16:9– 10 which reads, “... my body too rests un-afraid; for thou wilt not abandon me to Sheol norsuffer they faithful servant to see the pit.” There isno question that this passage is referring to a “res-urrection,” not a reincarnation.

A Psalm much ignored by reincarnationists, andfor obvious reasons, is 78:39, which is actually oneof the annihilationist passages in the Old Testament.

See also Akashic (Akashik) Record; Annihila-tionism; Aquinas, Thomas; Corinthians, 1st and2nd; Harrowing of Hell; Karma in the Bible?Melchizedek; Millennialism; Old Testament andthe afterlife; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Pistis Sophia;Resurrection of Jesus.

Pseudepigrapha. These are writings that do notcome from the author to whom they are attributed.Many ancient and not so ancient works dealingwith reincarnation are pseudepigrapha.

Psychic archaeology. This is the belief that onecan uncover facts about lost civilizations throughpsychic means. Many who write about ancient pastlives claim that they can offer information aboutthe cultures of those ancient times that can not bediscovered through ordinary archaeological means.

See also Cummins, Geraldine.

Psychic cord see Silver Cord.

Psychic powers. Historically, in the reincarnation-ist community there is some debate about howmuch talk of psychic powers should or should notbe publicly associated with the advocacy of rein-carnation. Since the two subjects do not necessar-ily overlap the more conservative approach is to

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separate them on the basis that psychic powers arefar more open to scientific criticism then reincar-nation. In the present, however, the majority ofpro-reincarnation writers have favored a more lib-eral willingness to associating psychic powers withreincarnation.

See also Abhijna; Cayce, Edgar; Esotericismversus Occultism; Lost continents and reincar-nation.

Psychic psychodrama. This is a technique in psy-chotherapy in which, through spontaneous imper-sonations of the patient’s problems, the patient isprovided an opportunity to act out the conflictswhich are at the core of his mental problem. It hasbeen proposed that hypnotic age-regression to pastlives is a form of psychodrama. It is possible thatsome elements of the subconscious take on the roleof a fictitious personality in order to gain insightinto the otherwise hidden aspects of that person’sreal personality.

Psychic recycling. This is a term used in someWicca groups as a synonym for reincarnation.

Psychical Research Foundation. This Foundationwas established in 1960 to support research on sur-vival after death. The bulletin of the Foundation isTheta (1). The name of the bulletin comes from theGreek letter name of the first letter of the wordThanatos (Greek: Death).

See also Associations and organizations.

Psychics supportive of rebirth see Cayce, Edgar;Cooke Grace; Eady, Dorothy; Grace-Loehr;Grant, Joan Marshall; Kingsford, Anna Bonus;Leek, Sybil; Montgomery, Ruth; Rosemary case;Steiner, Rudolf.

Psychoanalysis see Free-association; Id, ego,and superego; Electra/Oedipus Complex and re-birth; Jung, Carl; Unconscious, the.

Psychography see Automatic writing.

Psychokinesis see Maternal impressions or ma-ternal psychokinesis.

Psychology, abnormal. According to MasterDjwal Khul, one of the ascended masters, many of the maladjustments of people in the presentworld are due to the fact that souls are not spend-ing sufficient adjustment time in the interim periodand thus are being reborn far too soon after death.The reason for this premature rebirth is that thematerial world’s overpopulation has resulted in alike overpopulation of the post-mortem realm.

See also Arcane School; Church Universal andTriumphant; Population increase issue; RudolfSteiner

Psychomancy see Sciomancy.

Psychometry. This is the purported psychic abil-ity to perceive the history of objects by havingsomeone (the psychometer) touching or handlingthe object. It has been theorized that this psy-chometrizing of an object is what actually happensin some rare cases that are otherwise assumed to bepersonal memories of a past life.

See also Rebirth, alternative explanations to.

Psychopannychism. This Greek derived termcomes from the words soul (psyche), all (pan), andnightly (nychios); and refers to the soul, upon cor-poreal death, entering into a kind of sleep or hi-bernation until a future awakening at their resur-rection.

Psychopannychism has been accepted at times byvarious Christian traditions, in contrast to the ideathat the soul entered heaven or hell immediatelyafter death. The Catholic Church, however, at theChurch Council of Lyons (1274) and Council ofFlorence (1439), declared psychopannychism a heresy,partly because it conflicted with the cult of thesaints in heaven. This declaration was reaffirmedat the Fifth Lateran Council in 1513.

The fact that some Old and New Testament pas-sages could be interpreted to support psychopanny-chism was countered by the church’s view that allsuch passages were simply metaphorical. WhileJohn Calvin and his Presbyterian followers alsowere opposed to psychopannychism Martin Lutherand a number of other Protestant reformers weremore favorable to it.

Among the biblical passages that speak of deathas sleep are Daniel 12:2; Matthew 27:52; John11:11–14; Acts 13:36; and I Thessalonians 4:14. Also,while John 5:25–30 does not mention sleep, it doessay that all who are dead and in the grave “shallhear the voice of the Son of God, and all who hearshall come to life.” These will be judged and rise to[eternal] life or rise to hear their doom. It has beenthis biblical support for psychopannychism that isused as a reason to reject the concept of reincarna-tion.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Chris-tian view of the afterlife; Judgment of the Dead; Resurrection, bodily; Resurrection ofJesus.

Psychophore (Mind-carrying). This term wascoined by Ian Stevenson to describe the factor thatcarries memory from one life to another. It replacesthe common term “soul.”

See also Diathanatic; Psychoplasm; Scientol-ogy.

Psychophysical aggregates see Skandha/Khan-dha.

213 Psychophysical

Psychoplasm. A term found in Paul von Ward’sThe Soul Genome (2008) to refer to the nonmate-rial template that carries the cognitive, behavioral,and even physical pattern from one life to another.

See also Psychophore.

Psychopomps. (Greek: Soul conductor). This termrefers to a conductor of souls to the afterworld.While throughout the world the most commonpsychopomp is the dog, in ancient Europe andparts of Asia the horse and/or cock (rooster) alsoserved this function.

See also Greek afterlife, the ancient; Hermes;Rescue circles.

Psychosomatic illnesses. It is believed that a vari-ety of psychosomatic illnesses that seem to have nopresent life explanation can be attributable to a pastlife. During hypnotic age regression proceduressometimes a past life explanation is offered for theillness. It has even been proposed that certain formsof mental illness, such as schizophrenia, are the re-sult of a soul that has not fully embodied itself, soit exists in two separate worlds which accounts forits so-called split personality.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Cryptomnesia; Irrational fears; Karmic diseases;Multiple personalities; Screen memories

Psychostasis. (Greek: Weighing of the soul). Anumber of cultures, past and present, have depictedthe judgment of the soul after death as being weighedupon a scale against some symbol for truth.

See also Egypt; Hell, the Chinese.

Punar-janman/puna-bhava (Again birth or re-becoming) see Bhava; Rebirth factor; Rebirth,simultaneous; Reincarnation, origins of.

Puranas (Stories of Old). These Hindu works aremostly in verse and deal with the creation, history,and destruction of the universe, the genealogies ofthe gods and patriarchs, the reign of the 14 Manus(supernatural men), and the history of the solarand lunar dynasties. The puranas can be dated fromthe 2nd century CE and onwards. There are 18major works (mahapuranas) and an equal numberof minor or auxiliary ones (upapuranas). One ofthe major stories is the Garuda Purana which dealswith funeral rites, the recreation of new bodies forthe preta, the judgment of deeds and misdeeds,and the various stages between death and rebirth.This particular Purana also presents the unique the-ory that the consciousness of the father at the timeof impregnation will, through his semen, affect thenature of his offspring.

See also Hinduism; Karma, parental.

Pure-Land or Blissful Land Buddhism. (Jingtu/Ching-t’u, Japanese: Jodo). This Mahayana Bud-

dhist afterlife realm is also called happiness or bliss-ful land (S: Sukhavati) or even Buddhaksetra (Bud-dha Field). While each celestial Buddha has a par-adise or Pure-Land that has been created by hisastronomically great merit, most of these have notbecome of any cult significance. It is only the West-ern Sukhavati of Amitabha Buddha, which over-shadowed all the others, to become of culticsignificance.

A Pure-Land is to be clearly distinguished froma heavenly state. The latter is one of the bhava-chakra realms into which one can be reborn as agod (deva) entirely due to one’s own merit. Thusheaven is exclusively dependent on the law ofkarma. One is reborn into a Pure-Land, especiallyAmitabha’s, due less to one’s own merit than tofaith in the saving grace of this Buddha; hence birth into the Pure-Land is not karmicaly depend-ent.

In Amitabha’s Pure-Land all souls are said to bereborn as male, in order for there to be no distrac-tions from the task of final liberation. So while fe-male devotees can enter the Pure-Land, either ontheir way there or immediately upon reaching thePure-Land their rebirth factor must change gen-ders. In particular, it is to facilitate the change froma this-world female body and rebirth factor to amale one that women pray to Bhaishajyaraja-guru.

Among many Pure-Land believers a process ofconscious dying is encouraged whereby the dyingperson tries to visualize Amitabha greeting him orher at the entrance to the Pure-Land.

See also Bodhisattva; Chinese religion andreincarnation; Gender issue of the soul; JatakaTales; Karma versus grace; Merit, transfer of;Nine doors; Phowa.

Pure Mind Foundation. According to the websiteof this organization it was formed under the directsupervision of the In-Perpetuum reincarnate MahanAgass, whose purpose is to explain Universal Na-ture’s veritable pathway to Pure Mind, a spiritualpractice that empowers perpetual reincarnation;hence a self-creation process leading to eternal life.

The Foundation’s mission is to support all spir-itual meditative practices, in particular the Paththat leads to Pure Mind as detailed for the first timein the book Beyond Forever: Unlocking the Door toEternal Life. (Manhattan, Kansas: WheelbarrowPublishing, 1998).

The website further states that “reincarnation isnot automatic and must be attained, vigorouslymaintained, and its movement controlled by livingvirtuously the Pure Mind Wheel.”

Purgatory (Latin: Purgatorium). This is usuallythought of as a temporary place of punishment forthose who have not been bad enough to deserve

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eternal hell, but not good enough to go to heavenright after death.

Purgatory is not specifically mentioned in theBible; nonetheless, 1st Peter 3:19; 4:6 and 1st Peter4:6 have in some cases been interpreted to refers topurgatory rather than hell and/or limbo. Also, John14:2 and Matthew 12:32 have been used at times tosuggest the possibility of purgatory. These andother even less specific biblical passages allowed theconcept of purgatory to be an officially accepteddoctrine in the Roman Catholic Church since the13th century Church Council of Lyon (1274) andthe Council of Florence (1439). This was againconfirmed in 1562–63, the last two years of theCouncil of Trent. This original acceptance of pur-gatory may have been part of the response to thethreat of the so-called heretical reincarnation teach-ings of the Cathars.

The Roman Catholic Church specifically definespurgatory as the state in which the souls of thosewho have sinned after baptism and having repenteddie in grace (God’s forgiveness) but before makingsatisfaction for their sins through worthy acts ofpenance. Such souls are then purged by a limitedafter death punishment or purification. From thisdefinition it is clear that, at least, Catholic purga-tory is not some half-way state between heaven andhell for general mild sinners. Nonetheless, a conceptof purgatory has appealed to some Christian rein-carnationists.

Geddes MacGregor in chapter ten, “Reincarna-tion as Purgatory,” of his Reincarnation and Chris-tianity (1978) tries his best to imply that Christianpurgatorial teachings are proto-reincarnational, buthis argument is unconvincing. Instead, what seemsclear is that both Christian concepts of purgatoryand hell work against any early or late Christianacceptance of reincarnation.

It might further be noted that while Judaismdoes not have a formal purgatory, the Jewish hellacts as one to the degree that Judaism does no ac-cept that anyone is sent to hell for all eternity, nomatter how bad they have been. This is because asbad as a person may be there is always some tinygood that they have done to someone, so this willin time free them from hell, at least according toRabbi Gershom in his Beyond the Ashes (1992).

Most standard Protestants denominations eitherdo not accept purgatory or leave it to be an openquestion.

See also Eighth sphere; John, Gospel of; Kab-balah; Karma versus grace; Naraka; Predestina-tion.

Purusha. This Sanskrit term originally referred toa mythical cosmic man who sacrificed himself tobring about creation. It later took on the meaning

of the essential element (soul) of every being, espe-cially in Samkhya Yoga.

See also Jiva; Prakriti.

Purvanivasanusmrti/pubbenivasanussati (S/P).This term means “remembering of former births.”It is said to be a one of the psychic or supernaturalattainments of a bodhisattva upon realizing Bud-dhahood. Thus the Buddha, Gautama, is said tohave gained this ability at the time of his enlight-enment.

For those who regard the spontaneous past life re-call of young children as good evidence of rebirthit must be wondered why such spiritually underde-veloped minds have a power otherwise mainlycredited to fully awakened beings. To add to thisquestion, why would the children be so prone tolose such memories and even memories of havinghad any past life recall as they become older? Dofully enlightened beings return a child-like mind?

See also Abhijna; Memories, reasons for loss ofpast life; Rebirth in Buddhism; Samma Sam-buddha.

Pyramidology. This is the belief in the spiritualor psychic power inherent in pyramid shapes, espe-cially those with the shape of the great Egyptianpyramids of Giza.

According to some New Age religions what havetraditionally been called the air shafts in the KingsChamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu)represent two possible destinies for the deceased.The shaft that is inclined to the celestial pole to thenorth represents liberation into the eternal stars ofthe circumpolar region. The shaft that is inclinedsouth to the constellation Orion, which is associ-ated with the mummified god of the dead Osiris,represents reincarnation into the constantly beingborn (ascent) and dying (descent) of the zodiac.

Sitting in a pyramidal shape or even having a smallpyramidal shape over or on the head is believed bysome New Agers to enhance past life recall.

See also Agasha Temple of Wisdom; Egypt;Cayce, Edgar; Fluorite; Past life recall medita-tion; Pleiades; Planetary descent and ascent ofthe soul; Ramtha; Sirius; Solar Temple, Order of.

Pythagoras (570–500 BCE). The first known men-tion of metempsychosis in Western literature islinked to this ancient Greek religious philosopher.In a satiric poem by the later Greek philosopherXenophanes (about 560–478) it is stated that oneday Pythagoras, while walking past a dog beingbeaten told the beater to stop hitting the dog be-cause he [Pythagoras] recognized the voice of anold friend in the cries of the dog. Regardless of how true this statement is, it is almost certain thatPythagoras was the first Greek teacher to systemat-

215 Pythagoras

ically teach that souls go through a series of lives.According to Pythagoras the soul seeks liberationfrom the body and this requires the soul to firstgain a deep knowledge of philosophy. This knowl-edge probably included an understanding of themystical nature of numbers, especially as suchnumbers were related to music, an essential part ofPythagoras’s teachings seem to have been based onthe concept of the “Music of the Spheres.” It is be-lieved that Pythagoras taught that the heavenlybodies (stars and planets) move in accordance withone another in such a manner that they producecelestial music. This music could only be heard bythe soul, which upon liberation from metempsy-chosis, ascended into the heavens. In fact, it wasprobably the ability of the soul to eternally be en-raptured by this music that was the supreme spir-itual goal in the early Pythagorean religion. Muchof this may explain the Pythagorean preference forthe worship of Apollo, the god of music, and hisdaughters, the Muses.

A second Pythagorean liberating requirementwas a vow to live a communal life in which all goodswere shared. It is known that a number of suchcommunal Pythagorean communities, some withconsiderable political clout, were established inMagna Graecia (Southern Italy), especially in thecities of Kroton (Croton), Metapontion (Meta-pontum), and Tarentum (Taranto) from the 6th–4th century BCE.

A third requirement for the liberation of the soulfrom the body was a vegetarian diet, perhaps in afashion similar to that of the later Empedocles ofAcragas.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagorasbelieved that he had been given by the god Hermesthe gift of seeing his own past lives as well as thoseof others. This ability to remember a previous life(mathesis) was for Pythagoras a primary functionof life. He believed that he could identify as someof his past lives Aethalides, son of Hermes; the Tro-jan Euphorbus, son of Panthus; Hermotimus, aprophet of the Ionian city of Lazomenae; a hum-ble fisherman; and the philosopher of Samos.

Present day Theosophy, believes that the as-cended master Kuthumi of the Great WhiteBrotherhood was a re-embodiment of Pythagoras.

See also Anamnesis; Archytas of Tarentum;Bruno, Giordano; Greeks and reincarnation;Herodotus; Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey; Mar-lowe, Christopher; Orphism; Pherecydes ofSyros; Plato; Porphyry Malchus; Priesthood,lack of an organized; Y.

Qabbalah see Kabbalah.

Qiyamah (Arabic: Judgment Day) see Islam;Judgment of the Dead.

Qlippoth/kelipoth (Hebrew: shells or husks). Inthe Kabbalah this term has a general meaning ofevil or demonic entities. In the writings of the greatKabbalic teacher Isaac Luria (1534– 1572) theQlippoth are given a Neoplatonic meaning and usedin the Lurianic creation. In this story during thecreation of the universe by God the vessels (Qlip-poth) carrying seven of the ten sephiroth whichemanated out from God were too weak to containtheir contents and shattered. The shards of thesevessels were animated by the particles of divine lifelight still attached to them. Those shards becamephysical bodies and the particles of light becamesouls trapped in the shards of the Qlippoth. Thosesoul particles of light yearn to be free and to returnto their divine source. These particles must un-dergo transmigration (gilgul) until they can be re-stored or redeemed (tiqqum or tikkum). Thisrestoration is achieved by intense mystical concen-tration on God, following the Law (Torah), andthrough unceasingly struggling against evil. It isthis Lurianic restoration process that has greatlyinfluenced Hasidism and its interpretation of theKabbalah. It is obvious that the fall of divine lightinto non-divine matter was borrowed from the verysimilar teachings of a number of sects of Neopla-tonic Gnosticism.

See also Fall of the Soul; Samael.

Questions of King Milinda see Milinda Panha.

Quetzalcoatl see Kulkulcan.

Quimby Center. Founder by Dr. Neva Dell Hunter(d. 1978) in 1966 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, thepurpose of the Center is to promote the concept of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of mankind. Also, like its namesake, Phineas P.Quimby, the founder of New Thought, the Cen-ter teaches that mankind, as a direct expression ofGod, can gain self-mastery by applying the Cen-ter’s metaphysical teachings to human illness. TheCenter also accepts a belief in reincarnation, lifeon other planets, and that present upheavals are apreparation for entering into the Aquarian Age.

Quran see Doceticism, Islam; Kiramu-l-Katin.

Ra (1). This was a channeled entity through DavidWilcock.

Ra (2). This entity was channeled through CarlaRuecket from 1981– 1984. It described itself as a“Social Memory” or a group of completely inte-grated souls (group soul). The teachings of thisentity became the basis of the book by Don Elkins,The Law of the One. (Louisville, KY: L/L Research,1981).

See also Channeling; Egypt; Equinox; Franklin,

Qabbalah 216

Benjamin (2); Hilarion; Lazaris; Mafu; Homo-sexuality; Ramtha; Ryerson, Kevin; Satya; Seth;Torah (2).

Race and rebirth see Caste system; Himmler,Heinrich; Karma, racial; Lost continents andreincarnation; Metagenetics; Rastafarians; Re-birth, ethnic.

Racial karma see Karma, racial.

Racial memories see Ancestral Memories; Ar-chetypes; Collective Unconscious.

Rain. In some late Vedic Religion literature it wastaught that deceased souls returned to the earthfrom the moon for rebirth through rain, as a kindof lunar semen.

Rajneesh see Osho Movement.

Ram Dass, Baba (1931–present [2009]). BornRichard Alpert, this former Harvard Universityprofessor, after abandoning some experimentationwith psychedelic drugs in the early 1960’s, jour-neyed to India where he adopted various Hindubeliefs, which included reincarnation. His bookRemember, Be Here Now (1972) furthered a popu-larization of the concept of reincarnation.

See also Body-brain (mind) dependency; Out-of-the-body experiences and near-death-expe-riences (NDEs).

Rampa, Tuesday Lobsang (1910– 1981). This is thepseudonym of the author of the immensely popu-lar book The Third Eye: Autobiography of a TibetanLama (1956). In this book the author claimed thathe was a Tibetan lama who as a novice monk hadundergone a mysterious secret surgery in Tibet toopen the psychic or third eye which enhanced hisalready natural psychic powers. Upon investigationit was discovered that the writer, far from being alama, much less Tibetan, was an Irish ex-plumbernamed Cyril Henry Hoskins who also had recentlypresented himself under the name of Dr. Kuan-Suo. As a result of this revelation Mr. Hoskinschanged his claim from being a lama in this life tohaving been one in his most recent past life. Ac-cording to him, in 1949 the original personalitycalled Hoskins voluntarily left his physical body sothat it could be taken over (possessed) by the dis-embodied personality of Rampa, whose physicalbody was likely to soon die.

Despite the exposure, Hoskins went on to au-thor nineteen more books about his life as a lama;auras; the law of karma; the lost years of Jesus; fu-ture wars; and extraterrestrials. Most of these bookswere not outside of what psychic power aficionadoscould accept as possible. However, his later claimsthat he had journeyed to the hollow center of the

earth and that he had traveled on an alien spaceshipto Venus were more than even his most ardent read-ers could accept.

See also Planets, other; Possession; UFOism.

Ramtha, the Enlightened One. According to J.Z. Knight this channeled entity is a high spiritualbeing that first appeared to Knight in 1977 in a tenfoot bodily form as a result of her experiments with pyramid power (pyramidology). By the nextyear Ramtha was channeling through Knight whileshe was entranced. Ramtha claims to be a 35,000year old being that lived on the lost continent ofLemuria. His people, the Lemurians, originally arrived on earth from a world beyond the NorthStar. At the early age of 14 Ramtha led an armyagainst the oppressing forces of the lost continentof Atlantis which regarded the Lemurians as soul-less. His defeat of this enemy made him a greatwarlord. Eventually he evolved into an androgy-nous god-like being of light. As in a number ofNew Age religions, the teachings of Ramtha in-clude both the idea of reincarnation and of soulmates.

See also Aetherius Society; Channeling; Egypt;Equinox; Fall of Souls; Franklin, Benjamin (2);Mafu; Michael (2); Lazaris; Planets, other; Ra(1); Ra (2); Ryerson, Kevin; Seth; Torah (2);Wilcock, David.

Ransom Report see Ian Stevenson.

Rastafarians. This is the name adopted by the fol-lowers of an Afro-Caribbean religion founded inJamaica in the first half of the 20th century. Rasta-farian beliefs arose out of a prophecy by “the re-turn to Africa advocate” Marcus Garvey (1887–1940). The prophecy was that salvation would cometo the Black people of the Americas from Africawith the crowning of an African king. The corona-tion of the Ethiopian prince Ras Tafari as the em-peror Haile Selassie in 1930 convinced some Ja-maicans that this was the fulfillment of Garvey’sprophecy. The basis of this conviction was that theEthiopian emperors held the titles of the “King ofKings” and the “Lion of Judah” because of a con-nection to the legendary son of the biblical KingSolomon and the Queen of Sheba. The Rastafari-ans were further convinced that the emperor him-self was, in fact, the (re)-incarnation of Jesus, and,hence, of God.

Also, the Rastafarian movement came to believethat the black Africans were the original Israelitesand, according to Rastafarian theology, the soulsof the original Israelites have always been rebornas black people.

See also Afro-American religions; Karma,racial; Metagenetics; Rebirth, ethnic.

217 Rastafarians

Rawandiyah. This was the name of an obscureMiddle Eastern (Iraqian) religious group who heldpre–Islamic beliefs which included reincarnation.They were suppressed by the Caliph al-Mansur in757–758.

See also Hashimiyya; Kanthaeans; Khur-ramiyya; Yarsanism.

Rawat, Kirti S. (dates not known). A retired pro-fessor from the University of Rajasthan, Rawat is thedirector of the International Center for Survivaland Reincarnation Research and the author ofRaghunath Remembered: A Case Suggestive of Rein-carnation (1985).

Reap what you sow see Karma; Karma in theBible?

Rebirth or rebecoming. Rebirth is the most gen-eral and most inclusive term for what is also calledreincarnation, transmigration, metempsychosis,and palingenesis.

Although lengthy, one standard definition forrebirth is “the process in which some core aspectof a person or animal which, upon bodily death,manifests itself as the core in a new body, the exis-tence of which has not overlapped in time with theformer body.” The last part of this definition is re-quired to distinguish rebirth from possession. Also,usually included in the definition of rebirth is a re-quirement that the core aspect, having manifesteditself in the new body, ceases to exist beyond thenew body; however, this supplementary part of thedefinition can not be considered an absolute re-quirement because some peoples in Africa, and inTibet, while believing in rebirth in accordance withthe first part of the definition also believe in thepossibility of simultaneous multiple rebirth.

To further clarify the meaning of rebirth, in-cluding its near synonyms metempsychosis, palin-genesis, reincarnation, and transmigration, the fol-lowing three conditions are normally expected to bepresent. First, rebirth only refers to the continuedexistence of some factor (i.e. a soul or its equiva-lent) of a living being which, after physical death,is re-embodied in an infant prior to or very shortlyafter its leaving the maternal womb. Second, thebody of this infant must not have received a previ-ous re-embodied factor. If a previous re-embod-ied factor is already present in the infant the newfactor would be considered an attached entity,which would qualify as possession rather than re-birth. Third, in the case of a human being, the con-tinuing factor must be regarded as an essential as-pect of the infant’s being, one without which theinfant would not have a chance at becoming a com-plete functioning rational, and eventually socially,responsible being. The second and third conditions

are needed because some proponents of rebirth havebroadened the concept of rebirth to include a re-cently disembodied soul entering and reanimatingthe body of an infant or adult who has just diedand whose soul has left that body. This situation iscloser to possession or to a walk-in. Also, the sec-ond condition, while allowing for only one soulper person, does not excluded the possibility thata soul may be a complex phenomena, the parts ofwhich may have diverse origins. In such a case,those parts would be in a necessarily complemen-tary relationship. Finally, the third condition isneeded to differentiate an individual human soulfrom the rebirth of a collective soul of an animal.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Par-allel lives; Plurality of existences; Rebirth factor;Rebirth in Buddhism; Rebirth, simultaneous.

Rebirth, alternative explanations to. In trying toexplain various claims to memories of past liveswithout invoking the concept of a soul passingfrom one body to another, a number of alternate ex-planations have been proposed. These alternativeexplanations fall into two groups, the non-psychicand the psychic (extrasensory). In the first groupare found cryptomnesia; déjà vu; (lucid) dreams;fraud; honest lying; memories, ancestral or ge-netic; Multiple personalities; personal myth inpast life therapy; psychic psycho-drama; rebirthand cultural conditioning; role-playing fantasy;and screen memories. In the second group there areakashic record reading; attached entities and/ orpossession; channeling; clairaudience; clairvoy-ance; a group soul; passing-memories adoption;psychometry; retrocognition; telepathy with theliving; and telepathy with the dead. All of theitems in the first group have the characteristic ofbeing an ability of a living or embodied conscious-ness, not of a disembodied one. The second groupof alternative explanations requires a considerableamount of psychic ability. The fact is, however,that most subjects that sincerely believe that theyhave remembered their past lives, in general,demonstrate no more psychic abilities than thosewho have no such memories.

Rebirth proponents argue that no single itemabove, by itself, can account for what they believeare multiple lives. They further argue that any thor-ough alternative explanation would require most,if not all, of the above alternatives. Rebirth propo-nents then point out that simple rebirth is a betterexplanation than the complex mixing of those al-ternatives because a simply explained rebirth processwould not violate the law of parsimony which saysthat the simplest, or least complex, explanation forany phenomenon is the best explanation for it.

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See also Bleed-through of lives; Extrasensoryperception; Fantasy versus past life regression;Memories, ancestral or genetic; Possession; Re-birth and cultural conditioning; Time and the si-multaneous past, present, and future.

Rebirth, analogies from nature. Analogies fromnature mean that the various cycles of birth anddeath existing in nature support the concept of re-birth. Among these cyclical processes are those ofthe moon, the seasons, the metamorphosing but-terfly, deciduous trees, seeds, serpents, stags, andeven the comings and goings of migratory birds.The “analogies from nature” argument is very pop-ular in the Neo-pagan and Wicca communities,but it seems to have more to do with poetic meta-phors than any possible proof of the rebirth of asoul.

See Arguments supportive of rebirth; Gods,cyclically dying and rising; Old Testament andthe afterlife; Phaedo; Reincarnation, origins of;Similes and rebirth.

Rebirth and abortion. The whole Western reli-gious argument against the abortion of a fetus pri-marily rests on the issue of when a soul becomes im-planted into the fetus. By the time of AureliusAugustine, Bishop of Hippo (354–430), it wascommonly thought that the soul was added to thefetus by God forty days after conception. In moremodern Christian views the soul is thought to beinserted into the embryo much sooner, which iswhy many church groups are opposed to abortion.Since Western monotheists believe that an ensouledbeing has only one life in which to attain salvation,it is completely logical for believers to display strongopposition to abortion.

In those religions that accept rebirth of somekind, no such single life restriction on salvation isnecessary. This is the main reason that such reli-gions have been far more accepting of abortion thanhas Western religion. This does not morally justifyabortion, especially if it is assumed that the re-birthing entity or factor is present upon or shortlyafter embryonic conception, but it does permitboth the non-reincarnationists and the reincarna-tionists to better understand the other’s religiousperspective.

See also Deaths, violent and premature; Em-bodiment, moment of; Embryo and Fetus; Hu-man embryo stem cell uses and rebirth; Reincar-nation and artificial insemination; Reincarnationand Suicide; Resurrection and the aborted fetus.

Rebirth and artificial insemination. The mod-ern technology of artificial insemination in a med-ical laboratory creates certain obvious problems forany kind of rebirth concept. Since there is presum-

ably no sexual copulation, then what would attracta rebirth entity to enter a womb, at least at thisstage? Several possibilities have been suggested.First, all souls come directly from God and, as om-nipresent, He is even in fertility laboratories. Sec-ond, there are now very sophisticated rebirth enti-ties that check out fertility clinics. Third, onlyembryos produced in the normal sexual manner re-ceive a re-embodied entity. Fourth, embodimentof a soul occurs sometime after conception and thewoman leaving the clinic.

Although no one has yet cloned a human being,it is only a matter of time before this happens, andwhile any of the above possibilities could be true,there is now the added question of whether or notthe soul of the body being cloned is also cloned?

See also Child as its own reborn father ormother; Electra/Oedipus Complex.

Rebirth and cultural conditioning. The fact thatthe great majority of cases of spontaneous past lifememories have occurred in cultures where the be-lief in rebirth is widespread have lead to the suspi-cion that such past life claims are more due to cul-tural conditioning than to anything else.

One response to this suspicion is that the soulsof some individuals from cultures that thoroughlyaccept rebirth are more likely to retain their mem-ories of a former life than individuals from culturesthat do not accept rebirth. This failure to remem-ber past lives may be especially the case in culturesthat regard rebirth as dogmatically unacceptable.

See also Children remembering past lives;Druzes; Uttar Pradesh.

Rebirth and cyclical time. One thing that distin-guishes all south and east Asian religions from theJudeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is their respec-tive understanding of time. Buddhism, Hinduism,and Jainism all believe in the cyclical, or ever re-peating, nature of the birth and death of the uni-verse. Even Daoism and Confucianism, in theirown way, see the universe as a never beginning andnever ending interplay of Yin and Yang forces.

Western religious traditions, on the other hand,teach a linear concept of time in which the uni-verse had a unique historical beginning with its cre-ation by God and will have an equally unique his-torical end with the coming of the Messiah and theKingdom of Heaven. The difference in these twounderstandings of time has an important implica-tion for a belief in rebirth, as well as for the issue ofsocial justice.

First, cyclical traditions can integrate the con-cept of rebirth more easily than can linear tradi-tions. This is one reason that orthodox Westerntraditions are more favorable to a single future res-urrection of the dead.

219 Rebirth

Second, the concept of rebirth tends to bettermatch cultures where the connection to the past, asin justifying the present by the past, is more impor-tant than the present or future. This is the case forthe Indian caste system and the Chinese emphasison the ancestors as the best model. Western cul-ture, under the influence of Judeo-Christian mes-sianic thought, values the future more than the pastor present.

The difference in these two understandings oftime has important social implications. In tradi-tions of cyclical time human society is thought togo through cycles of good and bad periods no matter what mankind does or does not do. The result of this is that these traditions, see only a min-imum reason to expend time and effort on im-proving the world materially, socially, or scientifi-cally because since ultimately none of this will helphumanity escape the brutal round of birth anddeath. In other words, if the nature of the universeis such that all human efforts will eventually be de-feated by a future bad period, why expend time andeffort futilely? Instead, the goal of cyclical time re-ligions has been to escape from the whole miserablecycle as quickly as possible. This has naturally ledto the general Western charge of “rebirth pes-simism.”

A Western pro-reincarnationist effort to chal-lenge this charge of pessimism was first popular-ized in the late 19th century by the development ofTheosophy and its related schools. It was the viewof these schools that a more modern view of re-birth and karma, one that was free of Asian pes-simism, could support human progress. This West-ernized version of rebirth was characterized by arejection of human to animal rebirth and replace-ment of an emphasis on punishment with an em-phasis on purification and reform. This was clearlyan attempt to merge Eastern personal cyclical timewith Western social lineal time. Whether thismerger is logically satisfactory is open to question.If everyone’s karma is his own, than all anyone canbe held responsible for is his or her own progress.As long as a person works to keep his karma mov-ing towards perfection he is doing his part.

Perhaps the greatest problem with the Western“rebirth as a process of spiritual progress” is thatwithout a memory of past successes and failures theindividual must keep restarting his growth fromthe very beginning as a memory-less infant.

See also Finite or infinite number of rebirths;Fixed number or infinite number of souls; Hell;Individuality and rebirth; Karma and justice;Karma in the ancient and modern west; Night-mare of eastern philosophy; Rebirth, East andWest; Resurrection, bodily; Theosophical Soci-ety.

Rebirth and famous supporters. The fact thatmany famous people have believed in rebirth isoften used as an argument in favor of it. For ex-ample, among the philosophers that have believedin rebirth are such luminaries as Pythagoras, Plato,and Voltaire. As for scientists, there are Sir OliverLodge (English physicist and President of theBritish Association for the Advancement of Sci-ence), Alfred Russell Wallace (co-discoverer of the theory of evolution), Thomas Edison, and SirHumphrey Davy (renowned English chemist).Added to these names could be many well-knownartists such as W. B. Yeats, and actors such asShirley MacLaine.

There are several reasons for questioning this as-sociation as a valid argument for rebirth. First, thereare far more philosophers and scientists who haverejected the belief. In the case of the philosophersand scientists just mentioned who support rebirth,there is no evidence in their writings that they evercarefully examined the pros and cons of the subject.It seems that for personal reasons they accepted itat face value. In all fairness, it is probable that manyof the philosophers and scientists that have rejectedthe view have done so equally for personal reasonsand at face value. This, by itself, would simply neu-tralize any dependence on philosophers and scien-tists for or against the belief.

On the other hand, there are such researchers asElizabeth Kubler-Ross, Satwant K. Pasricha, IanStevenson, and Helen Wambach who have triedto prove rebirth, but so far their data has been opento considerable criticism by a number of other re-searchers who have closely examined that data.

It is one thing to accept the personal opinionsof famous names of important secular persons, andanother to accept the personal opinions of thosethat are regarded as having reached what might bethe highest state of consciousness. The opinion ofthese enlightened individuals should count for farmore than that of any unenlightened persons. In-dividuals such as Mahavira of Jainism, the disciplesof the Buddha of Buddhism, and Shankara ofVedantism fall into this group. But their opinionsare countered by the views of what most in theWest regard as sources of divine truth. These in-clude the prophets of the Old Testament, the dis-ciples of Jesus, many Christian mystics, Mo-hammed, and various Islamic mystics, all of whomhave supported a single life concept.

See also Aristotle; Arguments supportive ofrebirth; Logic and pseudo-logic and rebirth;Widespread and multi-cultural belief argument.

Rebirth and general morality. One of the argu-ments for rebirth is that the rebirth concept en-courages general morality and does it better than a

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belief in a future resurrection. The first factor thatseems to be constantly overlooked in all moral ar-guments for a post-mortem existence is that trulyevil people do not appear to be in the least both-ered by threats of being deprived of heaven and/orcondemned to hell; second, there is no substantialproof that the majority of unbelievers in an after-life lead any less moral lives than do believers.

In response reincarnationist advocates haveclaimed that while the issue of general moralitymay not be any better served by a belief in rebirththan in a belief in resurrection, holding to rebirthis a superior way to overcomes social class, racial,national, and religious prejudice by teaching thatany one person may be reborn into any social class,race, nation, and religion. In one rebirth view it iseven stated that hatred towards another groupworks as a magnet to draw one into being reborninto that group. As reasonable as this sounds, ifIndia with its caste system is any example of a lessprejudiced society, this argument is not so easilysustained.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Karma in the ancient and modern west; Rebirthand moral perfection; Rebirth and religious tol-erance; Resurrection, bodily.

Rebirth and logical symmetry. In the context ofrebirth the argument for logical symmetry statesthat what has a beginning should have an end whatwas created should experience eventual destruc-tion. If the human soul is thought to have an end-less life it ought to have never been created, but tohave always existed. The Western concept thatevery soul is newly born out of nothing but be-comes immortal after its birth has no logical sym-metry to it. To give it symmetry one would have toassume that what was born out of nothing shouldgo back into nothing upon death. For something tobe truly immortal it should be without a begin-ning. In Western religion such without a begin-ning and without an end is accepted as a logicalstatement about God, but not about human souls,which are considered a product of divine creation“in time.” In rebirth, on the other hand, the pre-embodiment of souls and the post-embodiment ofsouls balance each other creating a logical symme-try; therefore, rebirth is said to be logically sym-metrical while other post-mortem views, such asresurrection, are logically asymmetrical.

Based on the idea that symmetry is somehow su-perior to asymmetry, pro-reincarnationists have ar-gued that a theory of a beginningless and endless se-ries of lives is superior to a theory of a single life.A challenge to this symmetrical argument has beenthat while symmetrical rebirth may be mathemat-ically more logical than asymmetrical resurrection,

nonetheless, it merely demonstrates that one im-provable immortality theory may be better thananother improvable immortality theory.

The argument for rebirth from logical symme-try has more validity in Hinduism than in Bud-dhism. In Hinduism this symmetry takes the formof the soul arising out of God and returning intoGod. In this sense, Hinduism offers a beginning-less and an endless existence of souls. In Buddhism,however, without knowing the origin of the re-birth factor, it is impossible to judge whether or notit is symmetrical or asymmetrical. Moreover, whilein Buddhism the rebirth factor may be given avaguely indeterminate long rebirthing past that, ona practical level more or less amounts to an eter-nity, it then teaches that in the distant future the re-birth factor will cease to be reborn due to its en-trance into nirvana, which technically destroys anysymmetry once and for all.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Im-mortality; Karma and the moral structure of theuniverse.

Rebirth and maturity. One argument made insupport of rebirth is that many people who do notbelieve in rebirth and karma blame their misfor-tunes on outside factors, and as a result there is agreat deal of childish self-pity in the world. Beliefin rebirth and karma holds people fully responsi-ble for their misfortune and so encourages greatermaturity and less self-pity.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Blaming the victim vs. illusion of innocence;Dehiscent or Seed-pod Principle; Noble lie.

Rebirth and moral perfection. Many religionsteach that the goal of humanity is to attain to moralperfection. For advocates of rebirth this can not bedone in one lifetime and so they argue that a heav-enly existence in a religion that allows for only onelife would be full of imperfect entities, which is avery contradictory heaven. Of course, Christian-ity is, in one sense, one of those “perfectionist” religions in so far as it accepts the words ascribed to Jesus “to be perfect as the heavenly Father” (Mat-thew 5:48; 19:21) or even more so as in the theosisimplied in 2nd Peter 1:4b, “Through this might[divine power of Christ] and splendor he has givenus his promise, great beyond all price, and throughthem you may escape the corruption with whichlust has infected the world, and come to share in thevery being of God.”

It is clear from Peter and similar citations thatChristianity teaches that any perfection a personcould attain has been has already been achievedthrough Christ’s atoning sacrifice and/or has beenmade possible by the three elements of faith, bap-tism, and the Eucharist. This teaching is either for-

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gotten or ignored by Christian reincarnationistswho use the argument that multiple lives alone givesufficient time for moral perfection.

Also, opponents of rebirth point out that theproblem for all reincarnationists is that it is difficultto justify how a series of lives could lead to moralperfection in the absence of some sort of memoryof a past life. The perfecting of anything requiresa building up from what came before, but withouta memory of what came before there is nothingupon which to build.

A variation on the moral perfection argument isthat all souls must gain a sufficiently great enoughvariety of experiences to eventually leave the cycleof birth and death, but such variety is almost im-possible for the average person to experience in onelife-time. This, however, is also open to the ab-sence of memory criticism.

See also Altruism and rebirth; Arguments sup-portive of rebirth; Karma and justice; Karma inthe ancient and modern west; Karma versusgrace; New Testament sacrificial concept; Peter,1st and 2nd; Rebirth and general morality;School of Life.

Rebirth and original sin see Original sin versuskarma.

Rebirth and religious tolerance. One of the bestarguments for a belief in multiple lives versus in asingle life followed by an eventual resurrection isthat the former is associated with far more “reli-gious” tolerance than the latter. While there havebeen violent power struggles between the followersof such religions as Hinduism and Buddhism overthe centuries these have rarely been justified on thebasis of saving any souls. In other words, there havebeen few crusades or jihadist like activities, and no official inquisitional murdering of heretics byreincarnationists. Such killing has always beenreligiously justified on the basis that there is only one life and one chance to be saved from eternaldamnation and any methods necessary to insurethat a majority of souls are saved have been sancti-fied by God. The religious history of Christianityand Islam is infamous for the amount of blood thathas been spilled in the name of saving souls. Incontrast to this, if it is believed that if there is anindefinite number of opportunities to be saved,there can be far less justification, much less divinesanction, to force a person to believe the “true re-ligion” or be killed so that the unbeliever does notcontaminate others.

The belief in rebirth and karma, especially with-out a belief in God, has actually been one of themain reasons that Buddhist and Jain monks andnuns have historically been so reluctant to even de-fend themselves against aggression by the followers

of theistic Islam. The absence of any belief in asupreme deity has meant that there is no God whocould override or neutralize the detrimental karmicconsequences of intentionally killing others; there-fore, one can not escape from the karmic conse-quence of intentional violence in a future rebirth,even if it is in self-defense.

See also Belgi Dorje; Karma and God.

Rebirth and science. One major criticism madeabout many people who believe strongly in rebirthis that they have no interest in, and sometimes evenno toleration of, modern scientific knowledge. Ex-amples of this may be the refusal to even acknowl-edge the body-brain (mind) dependency evidenceor population problem issue, the tendency toadopt the supernatural-in-the-gap pro-cess, the continued attachment to lost continents,and various aspects of the inconsistent views ofrebirth.

Since a great many people who have no belief inrebirth also subscribe to a number of those un-sci-entific views there is no way of telling if reincarna-tionists are any more or less anti-science.

See also Arguments pro and con on an after-life in general (9); Arguments supportive of re-birth; Rebirth and the scientific theory of bio-logical evolution.

Rebirth and suicide. Monotheistic religions thatteach that there is only a single life in which to gain salvation are generally opposed to suicide onthe basis that since it was God alone who gave a person his or her soul, it should be God alonewho determines when to surrender up that soul indeath. In contrast, religions that advocate a beliefin rebirth are in considerable disagreement withone another on the issue of the right to take one’sown life. Those that are opposed to it generally saythat it is a self-defeating act, since whatever theperson left undone in one life will only have to be resolved in the next life, possibly under moreunpleasant conditions than exist presently. On the other hand, many reincarnationists have no ob-jection to the taking of one’s own life under suchcircumstances as an extremely debilitating illnessthat may not only have destroyed all of one’s ownquality of life, but has become such a burden onone’s loved ones that it is destroying their qualityof life.

When it comes to religiously sanctified suicide,it is above all the Jains that come to mind. In Jain-ism it is both a permitted and an honored act forgreat holy men and women to commit ritual sui-cide by slow self-starvation (sallekhana). This verypainful ascetic ritual is said to burn off the last ves-tiges of karma of the saint, which upon death willfree him or her from further rebirth.

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The Mahayana Buddhist canon also contain sto-ries of religiously sanctified suicide; in particular itis sanctioned by the Lotus Sutra.

See also Annihilationism, Buddhist view;Cathars or Cathari; Ganges; Heaven’s Gate; Re-birth and abortion; Return and serve argumentfor reincarnation; Solar Temple, Order of.

Rebirth and the preponderance of evidence. Likethe belief in an afterlife or even in the existence ofGod, the belief in rebirth is a metaphysical issueand as such cannot be scientifically disproved orproven. The most any challenger to any such meta-physical issue can offer is whether or not the “pre-ponderance of evidence” against such an issue isgreater than the preponderance of evidence for theissue. The preponderance of evidence would seemto be against all forms of afterlife theories, in whichcase the belief in an afterlife must be based exclu-sively upon an “act of faith.”

See also Arguments pro and con on an after-life in general; Proof for and against reincarna-tion argument.

Rebirth and the scientific theory of biological evo-lution. Rebirth is said to both support and to be sup-ported by the scientific theory of biological evolu-tion. The teaching that there is a parallel spiritualevolution is said to reflect this. There are three prob-lems with this claim. First, very few scientists addteleology to the evolutionary process. This meansthat science assigns no forethought to nature suchthat it is purposely striving to develop higher andhigher life forms. Parallel to evolution in nature isdevolution. This is where a formerly more complexorganism has become less complex as a way of surviv-ing. Formerly free living organisms, which have be-come internal parasites, are just one example of this.

Second, physical evolution has been generatedby the law of the survival of the fittest. If there is aparallel spiritual level of biological evolution itshould also follow a spiritual tooth and claw survivalof the fittest law. Most reincarnationists would findsuch a law of spirituality as unacceptable.

Third, any evolutionary system of the soul thatparallels bodily evolution has to deal with the prob-lems related to the ontological leap issue.

The belief in spiritually parallel evolution is farmore the product of Western rebirth beliefs thanit is of Eastern beliefs. This is because of the re-birth and cyclical time factor.

See also Arguments pro and con on an after-life in general (9); Arguments supportive of re-birth; Karma in the ancient and modern west;Rebirth and cyclical time; Rebirth and science;Resurrection, bodily; Soul Darwinism; Teleo-logical presumption.

Rebirth and unilinear descent. In folk societiesthere appears to be a strong statistical relationshipbetween a belief in rebirth and a line of descentthat gives greater value to either the maternal orpaternal kin. Such a relationship is far less com-mon in bilateral descent society, which is whereboth the maternal and paternal kin are given equalvalue.

If the concept of karma is added to the belief inrebirth the unilateral descent factor is over-riddenby moral considerations and so tends to weakenany kinship element in rebirth.

See also Ancestor worship; Karma and justice;Proximity burial; Rebirth, consanguineous; Re-birth, obligatory; Rebirth, proximity; Reincar-nation, origins of.

Rebirth, artificial see Artificial rebirth.

Rebirth as tedium see Duhkha; Rebirth, Eastand West; Rebirth, compensation and life fulfill-ment.

Rebirth as the natural order of all living things.One of the arguments made in support of rebirthis that physical birth exists to replace that whichhas physically died; therefore, the rebirth of a soulin a new body is merely the spiritual side of thisnatural physical order. The problem with this view of soul re-embodiment is that for a spiritualcomponent to truly parallel the bodily process there should be the death of the spiritual body after it has insured, through spiritual “reproduc-tion,” its replacement. The closest to this repro-duction would be traducianism; but even here rein-carnation is a separate issue.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Generationism and Traducianism; Rebirth andscience; Rebirth and the scientific theory of bi-ological evolution;

Rebirth, compensation and life fulfillment. Formany people the prospect of rebirth allows themto believe that they will be rewarded or compensatedin some fashion for any of the sacrifice of selfishdesires they have made in order to live a responsi-ble life. It can also allow them to believe that selfishpeople will be deprived or punished for havinglived irresponsibly. This is also true of the West-ern concept of the resurrection of the dead and ofheaven. So, rebirth does not have a stronger argu-ment here than does final resurrection. On theother hand, this hope for compensation ignores thevery realistic Eastern religious view of rebirth as te-dium more than anything else.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Duhkha; Rebirth and moral perfection; Rebirth,compensation and life fulfillment; Rebirth, Eastand West; Resurrection, bodily.

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Rebirth, consanguineous. Consanguineous re-birth would occur when a person is reborn into thesame family or kinship group as in a previous life.Investigators of rebirth consider claims for rebirthsback into the same family to offer the weakest ev-idence for rebirth since the amount of informationabout the life of the former family member is likelyto be readily available through natural means tothe supposedly reborn child.

See also Akan; Cannibalistic reincarnation;Karma, family; Leland, Charles Godfrey; Para-macca Maroons; Rebirth and unilinear descent.

Rebirth, control of. This is the concept that thesoul can determine to a large degree the kind ofbody into which it will be reborn.

Rebirth, criteria for proof of. Most modern ad-vocates of reincarnation acknowledge that manyclaims to a past life are more purposefully fraudu-lent than authentic. For this reason there have beenattempts to develop some criteria for sincere claimsto reincarnation. One such attempt at a set of cri-teria has been developed by the past life therapistRaymond A. Moody in his book Coming Back: APsychiatrist Explores Past life Journeys (1991). He hassuggested twelve traits that are present in sincereclaims of having remembered a past life. He statesthat it is not necessary to manifest all twelve, but asignificant number of these should be present.These are: (1) a past life experience usually involvesvisual images; less often they are just thoughts; (2)a genuine past life regression seems to have a life ofits own; (3) the images have an uncanny feeling offamiliarity; (4) the subject having the experienceidentifies with one of the characters in the scene; (5)past life emotions may be experienced during re-gression; (6) past life events may be viewed in twodistinct perspectives; (7) the experience often mir-rors present life issues in the experiencer; (8) re-gression may be followed by genuine improvementin the mental state; (9) regression may affect pres-ent medical conditions; (10) regression develops ac-cording to meanings, not a historical timeline; (11)past life regression becomes easier with repetition;and (12) most past lives are mundane, not famous,infamous, or heroic.

The reincarnation researcher Ian Stevenson(1918–2007) has offered the following characteris-tic that he feels would prove a case of reincarna-tion: (1) the subject should be able to have consid-erably detailed recall; (2) a written report of thepast life memories should be made before trying toverifying them; (3) the verification should be accu-rate; (4) besides just memories the individualshould manifest some behavioral habits identicalto the previously living individual; (5) some phys-ical evidence, such as a birthmark, should relate

the two lives; and (6) the reincarnated individualshould demonstrate linguistic compatibility withthe previous life.

Another researcher, Jonathan Venn (1986), hasoffered the following as an ideal set of criteria forcases of hypnotic recall: (1) the hypnotist wouldcollect considerable data from multiple hypnoticsessions; (2) the data must pertain to a time andplace for which historical documentation is avail-able for individual lives; (3) the hypnotic sessionsmust be auditorily and/or visually recorded; (4) toprevent any contamination of the original data allhypnotic sessions would be recorded before an at-tempt to historically document the data; and (5)both positive and negative documentation would beoffered in judging the likelihood of an authenticpast life.

Since a human being is so complex, the ques-tion has been asked, mainly by Westerners, “Howmuch of that complexity would need to carry overfrom one life to another?” Even without a body ahuman personality would still consist of memories,disposition, habits, talents, likes and dislikes. Somereincarnation advocates would add karmic meritsand demerits. Ideally, the person in the so-callednext life should lack as few of these as possible toconsider that person to be the same as the one in theso-called former life. However, both critics andsupporters of reincarnation have been willing tosettle for far less. Most Western critics will reluc-tantly settle for memory alone as the absolute min-imum for proof that reincarnation is a valid concept.This contrasts greatly with Hindus, Buddhists, andJains who require only karmic merits and demer-its to be reborn and since there is no way to meas-ure such karma, or prove that it even exists, criticsmust regard the Indian view as extremely question-able.

The main problem with trying to prove reincar-nation is that one has to deal with a catch-22 sit-uation. If the life of a now deceased person is toowell documented, then any claims by a currentlyliving person to have been that deceased person ina past life is suspect as either cryptomnesia, hon-est lying, role-playing fantasy, or even outrightfraud, on the grounds that the currently living per-son could have knowingly or unknowingly ac-quired any knowledge of the deceased throughcompletely normal channels. On the other hand,if the life of a now deceased person is not docu-mented well enough to check facts supposedly re-called by the currently living person then there isnot sufficient evidence for reincarnation, so onceagain the recaller can be suspect of honest lying,role-playing fantasy, or fraud.

See also Fantasy versus past life regression;Jewish Holocaust; Language inconsistency;

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Leading question; Memory alone critique; Pastlife fakery.

Rebirth, cross-species. This refers to the abilityof animals to reincarnate as human beings and viceversa. It is synonymous with progressive and re-gressive transmigration.

See also Africa; Animals and rebirth, Westernview; Basilides; Christianity and reincarnation;Metempsychosis; Rebirth, non-backsliding;Transmigration, progressive; Transmigration,regressive; Yazidis (Yezidis).

Rebirth, East and West. A major difference be-tween Eastern and Western believers in rebirth isthat the Westerners almost always perceive rebirthas a mainly positive prospect. A good example ofthis optimism is in the number of past life therapyresources available, where the clearly stated pur-pose of discovering past lives is to ensure a morepsychologically healthy or satisfying present life.Such a positive view ignores the more pessimisticEastern implications of reincarnation.

Because of the usual translation of duhkha assuffering, the common Western perception is thatIndian religions consider life to be essentially suf-fering. However, Indian religions, whether Hin-duism, Buddhism, or Jainism, have been just asaware of life’s pleasures as have people of other re-ligions. Indian rebirth traditions teach that life’sdissatisfaction is not derived so much from pain asit is from the sheer boredom or the perceived mean-inglessness of multiple life times.

Western advocates of rebirth tend to focus onthe positive concept that rebirth means that in theend no one will ever be cheated of opportunitiesto gain what they believe was their due. Rebirthimplies that if one did not gain what one wanted inthis life, one had a second, a third, a fourth, or morechance to do so. On the hand, what if in this life onefailed to get all one wanted for good karmic rea-sons, is it not possible that one will be equally, if noteven more, frustrated in any succeeding life or lives?In other words, if life has not been kind to one inthe present existence, can anyone be sure that fu-ture rebirths will be any kinder? Can anyone, afterone or two more of these unhappy lives, simply say,“No More”? The reincarnation-karmic system isemphatic in saying “No.”

The Eastern view goes still farther in that it askswhat if this life was a very happy one; can anyoneexpect that enjoyment will be repeatable in thoselives that follow? Even if the answer were yes, itneeds to remember that rebirth implies that a per-son has to go through thousands, hundreds ofthousands, even millions of lives. With numberslike these how much variation of happiness canthere be? Sooner or later we must repeat over and

over again all of our successes and joys, and as wego from births, through aging, to deaths. Can thisbe thought of as anything more than a pessimisticweariness and tedium? So even without having torepeat any undesirable physical and mental condi-tions rebirth becomes a repeated form of tedium,which is duhkha.

The Indo-Buddhist view of suffering is ulti-mately circular. The ordinary stresses and strainsof life are objectively forms of dissatisfaction andthey may or may not make life seem meaningless orworthless. But the moment the metaphysics of re-birth are added to this condition the “may not” dis-appears. Life is suffering because rebirth makes it avicious circle. With this in mind it can be under-stood why rebirth in the Eastern view is never anend in itself, but a means to the end of being lib-erated from future rebirths. In the more naivelyoptimistic West the more satisfactory view of life al-lows the believer in multiple lives to perceive re-birth as an end in and of itself.

A final difference between the East and West isthat in those cultures in which the belief in rebirthhas a long tradition, that belief is significantly in-tegrated into most, if not all, other aspects of thatculture. Thus the belief, both positively and neg-atively, affects the economic, social, political, andartistic aspects of the culture. This is not the casein the West. Here most religious concepts are com-partmentalized and thus have much less effect on thematerial culture.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Castesystem; Finite or infinite number of rebirths;Fixed number or variable number of souls; Hell;Individuality and rebirth; Karma and justice;Karma, developmental; Karma in the ancientand modern west; Karma, retributive; Karmaversus grace; Mental plane; Neo-pagan reli-gions; Original sin versus karma; Procrastina-tion, charge of; Rebirth and cyclical time; Re-birth in the modern West; Rebirth in Zen;Rebirth, qualifications for; Rebirth or rebecom-ing; Theodicy; Transmigration.

Rebirth eschatology. Eschatology is the study ofmetaphysical views dealing with death, the afterlife,judgment, heaven, hell, and even the end of time.The term rebirth eschatology refers to any escha-tology that emphasizes rebirth or reincarnation,but without the doctrine of karma; therefore, re-birth eschatology is in contrast to the more complexkarmic eschatology. Rebirth eschatologies havebeen far more common throughout human historythan have karmic ones.

Eschatology is not to be confused with thanatol-ogy (study of death), which is the study of bodily

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death. Eschatology is closely related to soteriology(study of salvation).

The opposite of eschatology is Protology.See also Judgment of the Dead; Karma in the

ancient and modern west; Millennialism; On-tology.

Rebirth, ethnic. This is the belief that a particu-lar racial group will always have the same set ofsouls born into it. If this occurs for some karmic rea-son than it is usually called ethnic or racial karma.

See also Dor deah; Druzes; Jewish Holocaust;Karma; Karma, racial; Metagenetics; Proximityburial; Rebirth Proximity; Rastafarians.

Rebirth, expectational. This refers to the occur-rence of reincarnation only for individuals who areexpected to reincarnate and/or reincarnation in cul-tures were it is expected to occur. In other words,souls are more likely to reincarnate in India than inthe United States.

See also Rebirth, obligatory; Rebirth, selec-tive.

Rebirth factor. This term is used as a substitutefor the word soul when in a full Buddhist context.It serves as a reminder that Buddhism rejects thesubstantiality implied in the term soul.

See also Anatman; Karma with minimal re-birth; Manas; Rebirth; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Rebirth, general. This is the belief that the over-whelming majority of souls are assumed to rein-carnate. It is the opposite of selective or special re-birth in which only a selective minority of soulsundergo rebirth.

See also Rebirth, selective.

Rebirth, group. This is the processes whereby thesame sets of souls are reborn more or less simulta-neously due to karmic ties which necessitate a con-tinued interaction with each other. According toHelen Wambach 87 percent of her regressed clientsreported knowing people in a past life that theyalso know in the present-life.

See also Dor deah; Guirdham, Arthur; Kab-balah; Karma, family; Soul groups.

Rebirth in Buddhism. Standard Buddhism teachesthat if a person has not been liberated by enlight-enment then upon death that person will be reborninto one of the six bhavachakra realms which arethose of human beings, animals, hungry ghosts,denizens of hell, anti-gods (asura), and denizens ofheaven (devachan).

On the surface, the issue of rebirth in Buddhismcan at times seem rather simple and uncontrover-sial, but as soon as the issue is explored more deeplyit becomes complex and controversial. There are

two reasons for this. The first reason centers on theproblem of having to reconcile the Buddhist doc-trine of rebirth with the Buddhist doctrine of anat-man which is that there is no-self/-soul (atman)that passes from one life to another. Indeed, it isthis no-soul teaching that explains the Buddhistreluctance to use the term reincarnation, since thisterm implies some concrete entity (a soul) thatpasses from one body to another. In place of rein-carnation Buddhists prefer to use the more gener-alized term rebirth or re-becoming (bhava) as lesslikely to imply any transmigrating soul-like entity.

As might be expected, throughout the history ofBuddhism the subject of a soulless rebirth has beenmost controversial issue for Buddhism. If there isno-soul, what, if anything, can go on to anotherlife? If something does go on, is this not the same,or equivalent, of a soul? If it is not a soul, then whatis it?

Because of the denial of a soul, yet with itsaffirmation of rebirth, orthodox Buddhism hasoften had to resort to saying that while no personpasses from one life to another the karma of eachperson does pass from life to life. This then requiresa carrier of karma of some kind to pass from deathto birth or, more specifically, to conception.

In some scriptures (S/P: sutras/suttas) the Buddhais quoted as saying that for a human conception totake place the following factors are required: amother who is in her fertile period, a father, sexualcongress, and the presence of a gandharva. Thelast factor is nowhere further explained in the su-tras, but in the commentaries gandharva has beeninterpreted as a rebirth (linking) consciousness(patisandhi vinnana).

When the term gandharva is not being used, stillother sutric terms are used for the so-called rebirthlink or karmic carrier in the early Buddhist canon.Among these links are the samskara/sankara (voli-tional activities, also translated as past karma),chitta/citta (mind), and vijnana/vinnana (con-sciousness). A non-sutric or commentarial candidatefor the karmic carrier is bhavanga, which is definedas subliminal consciousness; and still another termis samtana/santana, which means a continuity ofconsciousness. In other words, no “consistent”technical term, nor phenomenon, is found any-where in the early Buddhist canon to unquestion-ably account for the rebirth process.

What is most paradoxical in all of these terms isthat they openly state that it is “consciousness” insome form that carries the karma and yet there arepassages in the same canon that categorically statethat consciousness (vinnana), or at least personalconsciousness, does not pass on from life to life butdisintegrates like the rest of the psychophysicalaggregates (skandha/khandha).

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The second reason for the complexity and con-troversy regarding rebirth in Buddhism is that in theearly Buddhist canon there are numerous conflict-ing statements about an after-life in general. Beloware some major examples of these conflicts takenfrom the Pali canon. The suttas say that the Bud-dha told his fellow monks that to ask whether youlive or die in the past or do not live or die in the pastor will or will not live or die in the future are un-wise questions that interfere with realizing nirvana/nibbana. [Tripitaka, Suttapitaka (T, S) MLS I, 10–11; DN III, 130; AN II, 90; SN III, 88] Further-more, the suttas say that a truly Enlightened One(Buddha) makes no lamentation over the past, noryearns not after the future. [(T, S) SN I, 8] Thesesutta words, at the very least, would support a re-luctance to indulge in the metaphysics of rebirth.

On the other hand, other suttas say that the Bud-dha taught how to meditate to ensure a good futurebirth and avoid a bad one. [(T, S) MLS III, 139]Elsewhere, the heavens and hells are defined asbeing the six senses. What is sensed as ugly is helland as beautiful is heaven. [(T, S) SN IV, 81] Thismay or may not be related to another saying at-tributed to the Buddha, namely that a person’spresent physical beauty or ugliness depends on theirpast life disposition.

In still another sutta it is implied that a belief ornon-belief in an after-life is optional. The Buddhais quoted as saying that what is important is to livethe Brahma faring (celibate) life; that this is all thatis necessary to realize nibbana (nirvana). The suttareads, “If there be no world beyond, no fruit(vipaka) and ripening of deeds done, well or ill,yet in this very life I hold myself free from enmityand oppression, without sorrow and well, this isan Aryan (noble) discipline’s bliss of Brahma (com-fort).” [(T, S) AN I, 175] In other parts of the sut-tas rebirth is again affirmed by applying it to thefour Buddhist stages of liberation. Lastly, theBuddha, himself, is said to have claimed to remem-ber numerous past lives (purvanivasanusmrti). Infact, the wording in the suttas reads, “In that life,at that time I was (then a name follows).”

The various conflicting statements about rebirthattributed to the Buddha lead to the followingquestions. If he did not believe in a cyclical pass-ing from one life to the next, why did he talk ofrebirth? If he believed in something, whether calleda soul (self ) or not, yet still soul-like, why did hetalk of no-soul/-self? If it is not a soul or self, whydid he not say what it is? If something went on thenwhy say it was not necessary to believe it? Why saythat consciousness (vijnana) does not go on andthen allow for the possibility that it does? Why didhe say it was unwise to talk or even think aboutpast or future lives, and yet say that there was an af-

terlife heaven and hell? Is it possible that only aBuddha can understand this mystery, which beingso profound can not even be communicated to theunenlightened? If this last is the case then why, inanother part of the canon, in the Kalama Sutta, arewe advised not to believe something just becausetradition or even the Buddha says it is true? Yetfrom the canonical view point the only proof orreason for believing in rebirth is that according tothe canon the Buddha says that it is true. In fact,the only reason the canon can give to justify thedoctrine of rebirth and post-mortem karma is tosay that the Buddha experienced the validity ofthese through the supernatural powers (abhijna) hegained at the moment of his enlightenment.

Ultimately we can not be sure that the Buddhataught or did not teach the doctrine of rebirth. Wecan only be sure that the authors of the canon hadvarious views on what he said or did not say on thesubject. But for such various views to exist in thefirst place suggests that the Buddha did not teachhis disciples a single very well defined view aboutrebirth, and/or that realizing the obvious conflictbetween doctrines of no-soul/-self and rebirth thecompilers of the early canon had little choice but tovacillate on the subject of rebirth. In either case, ifthe earliest Buddhist movement emphasized en-lightenment in this very life then there would be farless need to be concerned with rebirth since it isentirely future life oriented. If this is true then alimited interest in rebirth could have been remem-bered sufficiently enough by at least some of theBuddha’s successors to be preserved in the earliestsuttas. An argument can thus be made for the ideathat the contradictions in the canon represent alater time when the extremely spartan nature of theBuddha’s teachings needed to be greatly elaboratedand metaphysicalized to become part of a popularreligion. In other words, there are clearly enoughinklings in the earliest canon to suggest that whatthe Buddha did say about rebirth was different fromwhat later dogmatic Buddhism claimed he said.

It is important to note that any lack of consis-tency with regards to rebirth does not necessarilysuggest a lack of concern with regards to karma.On the contrary, the concern for karma on the partof the Buddha and the earliest Buddhist commu-nity is reinforced by many canonical statementsthat uphold the absolute efficacy of karmic actions(kiriya) for spiritual training. Indeed, according tothe suttas, those ascetics who had practiced underone or more teachers other than the Buddha andwho then wished to join the Buddhist order wereallowed to do so without a probationary period ifthey were believers in karma (kiriyavada).

This concern about karma, however, seems tohave had less to do with an ontological view, which

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included post-mortem existence (rebirth), than ithad to do with a moral view. In other words, theBuddha’s interest in rebirth may have been no morethan what was absolutely necessary to avoid beingmisunderstood as a materialist-annihilationist (anucchedavadin) or as one who claimed that karmicproducing behavior was not necessary for libera-tion (an akiriyavadin). If a disbelief in a post-mortem existence did not undermine a person’scommitment to living a moral life then such disbe-lief may have been perfectly acceptable. If disbeliefdid undermine morality it was not acceptable. In-deed, this possibility has led some scholars to sug-gest that the Buddha may even have looked uponthe concept of rebirth as an expedient means ornoble lie.

Despite all the canonical inconsistencies on thesubject of rebirth, from the earliest Buddhist be-ginnings in India, the belief in rebirth was acceptedby lay Buddhists and most clerics without muchquestioning. The reason for this was that the re-birth doctrine was never a mere religious belief inIndia, but a social belief. This is to say that the en-tire sociopolitical structure (caste system) of Indiadepended on it. Whatever else an average Indianmight have questioned in his or her culture theconviction of the truth of rebirth was rarely one ofthese. Thus, any explanation that Buddhism wouldhave given to account for rebirth would probablyhave been accepted by the masses. Furthermore, inspite of the official doctrine of rebirth without areal soul, all but a very few academically orientedBuddhists ignored the no-soul aspect and thoughtof rebirth in terms of a very real soul. Even the ac-ademic attempt to replace the soul with the conceptof a rebirth consciousness has some of the aspectsof trying to reinstate the soul indirectly or througha back door.

In modern times some Buddhists have suggestedthat western science may offer a solution to theproblem of rebirth without a permanent soul inthe form of the catalytic process. A catalyst is a sub-stance or element which, while necessary to pro-duce a chemical reaction, does not become a partof the final product. Thus the gandharva could,rather than being a substitute soul, be a karmictransferring catalytic agent that once the transfer-ence took place and the embryo was conceived, thegandharva itself then ceased to exist. Of course,this still leaves the problem of how to have suchcatalytic activity passing from one body (the dead)to another (the one being conceived) without somesort of physical contact. The obvious solutionwould be some psychic phenomena, a disembod-ied something which, with the exception of Ti-betan Buddhists, most Buddhists prefer not to con-cern themselves with.

Regardless of the process by which rebirth is saidto occur, it must always be remembered that a pri-mary purpose for the belief in rebirth is to say thata person’s existence is not just due to the sexual de-sire and action of that person’s parents, but thateach person is at least partly responsible for his orher own coming into being. What this means isthat Buddhism, or for that matter Hinduism andJainism, is opposed to any person thinking, “I didnot ask to be born, I am an innocent victim of myparents’ desires.”

See also Alayavijnana; Annihilationism, Bud-dhist view; Arguments supportive of rebirth;Buddha; Buddhism, folk; Buddhist stages ofliberation; Interim period; Karma and justice;Karma and rebirth; Karma in the ancient andmodern west; Karma, origins of; Karma withminimal rebirth; Milinda Panha; Personalists;Pratitya-samutpada; Psychophysical aggregates;Punar-janman; Rebirth and cultural condition-ing; Rebirth in Zen; Rebirth in the West; Re-birth, qualifications for; Reincarnation, originsof; Skandha.

Rebirth in the modern West. According to a 2000Harris Poll 27 percent of the general population inthe United States believes in reincarnation. Fur-thermore, among those in the population that are20–30 years old this percentage rises to 40 percent,while among those over 65 years old it drops toonly 14 percent. Similar percentages have beenfound in Europe.

A number of reasons have been suggested for thisgrowing acceptance for rebirth. One major reasonis that many Westerners have lost the belief in theconcept of a future miraculous bodily resurrection.However, rather than abandon all hope for a lifeafter death they have adopted the far less miraculousseeming belief in rebirth. Another major reason isthat many people can not harmonize the idea of ajust and loving God with the resurrection relatedidea of an eternal hell. A third reason is the still verystrong idea of the spiritual superiority of the East.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; ExOriente Lux; Rebirth, East and West; Resurrec-tion, bodily.

Rebirth in Zen Buddhism see Zen Buddhism,rebirth in.

Rebirth, instantaneous. This refers to any rebirththat occurs immediately after a death with ab-solutely no interim period between death and re-birth. Technically, Theravada Buddhism, in deny-ing any interim period supports instantaneousrebirth. What complicates the Theravada positionis that all rebirths are not necessarily corporeal. Infact, only two out of the six sentient states of being

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of the bhavachakra (Wheel of Becoming) are cor-poreal, namely the human and animal realms. Theother four realms (the heaven (devaloka), asuras(anti-gods), hungry ghosts, and denizens in hell) arefor all practical purposes serve as a kind of non-corporeal interim period realm.

See also Child as its own reborn father ormother; Corporeal versus non-corporeal after-life; Druzes.

Rebirth, intra-cultural versus inter-cultural seeRebirth, proximity.

Rebirth, lateral see also Transmigration, lateral.

Rebirth, minimal see Karma with minimal re-birth.

Rebirth, minority see Rebirth, selective.

Rebirth, moment of see Embodiment, momentof.

Rebirth, natural concept of. This is the conceptof reincarnation without any particular moral prin-ciple involved such as karma. It must be noted thatoutside of the Indian cultural sphere of influencemost concepts of reincarnation have been of thisnatural type.

See also Karma and faith; Reincarnation, ori-gins of.

Rebirth, non-backsliding. This is the concept thatwhile a higher animal soul might evolve into a hu-man soul and attain human rebirth, once human itcan never revert to an animal soul or be reborn inan animal body. This is accepted by some who oth-erwise oppose the concept of regressive transmigra-tion. This can also be called single-direction rebirth.

In Buddhism it is taught that once a person sin-cerely takes and never renounces the three refuges(the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha) andfive Buddhist lay moral precepts he or she can neveragain fall into a less than human birth.

See also Bhavachakra; Rebirth, cross-species;Transmigration, lateral; Transmigration, regres-sive.

Rebirth, obligatory. In certain cultures the de-ceased are obliged to reincarnate within the sameclan or family to which they formerly belonged(consanguineous rebirth).

See also Rebirth, consanguineous; Reincarna-tion, Expectational.

Rebirth, partial. This is the idea that the soul is nota single entity, but a compound one. Thus onlypart of a soul may be reborn while the other part orparts exist in some other state.

See Africa; American Indians; Chinese Religionand Reincarnation; Egypt; Soul fragmentation.

Rebirth pessimism see Nightmare of easternphilosophy; Rebirth and cyclical time.

Rebirth, proof of (Western Buddhist). The grow-ing Western interest in rebirth has lead to a veryun-traditional attempt to “scientifically” prove re-birth. This has even encouraged many Eastern re-searchers to join in this effort. Finding such proofis difficult enough if one accepts the idea of a soul,but to try to find proof of, much less make logicalsense of, a soulless rebirth, as Buddhism expects,is truly taking on a heroic challenge.

To begin with, the investigators have obliviouslytrapped themselves in at least three major and inter-related contradictions. The first of these comes froma number of attempts to explain so-called past lifememories as proof of a continuity of identity fromone life to another. But what these Buddhists, West-ern or Eastern, seem to over look is that if such amemory could be scientifically proven to be genuinethis would be detrimental to the Buddhist doctrineof no-soul (self ) or anatman. An authenticated con-tinuity of memory from a past life to a present oneis in itself a sufficient definition of a soul. This wouldthen give more support to the Hindu-like conceptof a soul (kosha-atman) reincarnating from onebody to another than it would to a Buddhist denialof such a reincarnating soul. Of course, the truthis that most Buddhists have always favored the con-cept of a soul despite the standard denial of it.

See also Karma in the ancient and modernwest; Rebirth, East and West; Rebirth in Bud-dhism; Rebirth, qualifications for; Resurrectionor reincarnation.

Rebirth, proximity. This occurs when the soulseeks rebirth within a relatively small geographicarea. For example, in some American Indian cases itis expected that people will be reborn into some fu-ture generations of their own or closely related fam-ilies (consanguineous rebirth). Among the Balla ofZimbabwe this recycling of ancestral souls is evenmore specific. Here the first born son is considereda rebirth of his deceased grandfather, while all latersons are reincarnations of deceased grand uncles.Daughters, in turn, are believed to be reincarna-tions of paternal great aunts (grandfather’s sisters).

In the cases reported from south Asia and Leba-non by Ian Stevenson the presumed rebirth, whileusually happening outside of the same family, mostoften happens in another local community that israrely more than one hundred miles away, whichis still within the same cultural boundaries. Also, thetime between death and rebirth in these separatecommunity rebirths ranged from only a few weeksto up to nine years. Thus, there is rarely ever anyclaim to have been some person who lived far awayand long ago.

229 Rebirth

Rebirth, distant in place and in time, is morecharacteristic of Western claims. Although mostWesterners usually claim former births as Western-ers, many do not. The greater mobility of modernWestern people could account for this willingnessto at least accept geographically distant reincarna-tion while the greater awareness by educated West-erners of past cultures might make for a greater ac-ceptance of rebirth relating to those historicallydistant cultures.

Some rebirth skeptics consider proximity orintra-cultural rebirth as part of the proof that rebirthis simply a cultural supporting fantasy. They saythat this is because the place and time of rebirthstends to follow the expectation of a culture. Whileit can not be denied that part of this is true at thesame time such proximity rebirth is very logical.Presumably, most souls would not be any more ad-venturesome than most living people are. Theywould naturally be drawn back to a location and topeople that were familiar to them.

Whatever the proposed reasons for proximity rebirth they certainly can add to the problems forstrong supporters of rebirth. Rebirth of a persontoo close to a presumed former home makes itmuch easier for the claimant to have consciouslyor subconsciously heard and seen clues regarding arecently deceased person. These then could be usedby the claimant to create a past life scenario. Forthis reason there might be far less suspicion if a per-son from Lebanon was able to describe a past life asan Inuit hunter.

Considering the unlikelihood of children, espe-cially of very young ones, having any opportunityto acquire any real information about foreign cul-tures, especially ones long past, it would give con-siderable support to the rebirth theory if a five-year-old Zulu claimed to have recently lived as amodern Japanese or even more astonishingly as asixteenth-century Aztec.

It must be noted that proximity rebirth is moreoften than not found in societies that lack ethical-ized or karmic rebirth.

See also Africa; Ancestor worship; Fantasy ver-sus past life regression; Incremental change ofidentity; Karma, racial; Proximity burial; Rebirth,consanguineous; Rebirth and unilinear descent.

Rebirth, qualifications for see Arguments sup-portive of rebirth; Children remembering pastlives; Karma with minimal rebirth; Memory,Episodic; Memories, ancestral or genetic; Mem-ories, reasons for loss of past life; Mental plane;Past life memory categories; Rebirth, criteria forproof of.

Rebirth, restricted. From a human perspective anyrebirth that is not assumed to eventually lead to a

human one must be considered restricted. For ex-ample, a number of tribal people believe that upondeath a human soul will be reborn into an animalbody of some kind, but what happens to the soulafter that is unspecified. This is not to be confusedwith selective reincarnation.

See also American Indians; Aztecs; Dayaks;Finite or infinite number of rebirths; Rebirth,selective.

Rebirth, selective. This is the belief that only a se-lective minority of souls undergo rebirth. One ex-ample of selective rebirth would be that only soulsunder certain conditions, such as experiencing aviolent or otherwise pre-mature death or because ofhaving committed certain extremely vile sins, are re-born while all other souls upon death go to heavenor hell. A second example would be that only anelite few souls are reborn while all others face an-nihilation.

Selective rebirth is sometimes called special re-birth. Under either name it is in contrast to generalrebirth in which the overwhelming majority ofsouls are assumed to be reborn. The earlier Kab-balah literature, in particular, viewed rebirth as se-lective in the first sense, while some sects of Gnos-ticism viewed rebirth in the second sense. Selectiverebirth is not to be confused with restricted rebirth.

See also Andaman Islanders; Deaths, violentand premature; Finite or infinite number of re-births; Rebirth, general; Rebirth, restricted.

Rebirth, simultaneous. This is a belief found inTibet and a few other places such as among theInuit and Northwest Pacific Coastal American In-dians. According to this belief it is possible for asoul to be reborn into two or more entities at thesame time. Another version of this simultaneousrebirth does not require that any double rebirth beat the same time; for example, a single soul may beshared by one person living from 1940—2015 anda second person living from 1955—2030.

See also Africa; Grant, Joan Marshall; Paral-lel lives; Plurality of existences; Rebirth, par-tial; Rebirth or rebecoming; Souls, multiple;Swarm of bees theory; Zhendao.

Rebirth, two logical views of. There are two pos-sible logical beliefs about rebirth. The first is thatthere is an immortal soul, or its equivalent, whichgoes from birth to birth until it attains salvation,which ends the rebirth process. The second is thatthe immortal soul is reborn eternally with no end-ing of rebirth. This view is found in many tribal so-cieties where there is no concept of wishing to es-cape from rebirth since that would mean the end ofthe ancestors and eventually of their descendents.

Rebirth versus possession see Rebirth.

Rebirth 230

Rebirth versus resurrection see Resurrection orreincarnation.

Rebirths, number of see Finite or infinite num-ber of rebirths.

Redivivus. This is the Latin word for living again;but it can cover concepts as diverse as revival, res-urrection, and reincarnation.

Re-embodiment see Incarnation versus reincar-nation.

Reincarnation. The earliest recorded use of thisterm in English to signify a renewal or rebirth of anindividual life was in 1858. It is composed of re-(again) -in- (into) -carna- (flesh) -tion (noun suf-fix). In other words, it means re-infleshment andrefers to the surviving soul or some other spiritu-ally significant aspect of a deceased being assuminga (new) “un-souled body” and, hence, having an-other life. It is important to emphasize the idea ofun-souled, because any soul that was said to entera body that already had a soul of its own would becalled possession.

Some modern authorities restricted the termreincarnation to inter-human (non-animal) rebirthand, therefore, do not consider it synonymous withtransmigration or metempsychosis which areoften reserved for cross species multiple embodi-ments. This is particularly true among Westernreincarnationists who believe that the purpose ofreincarnation is to help the soul evolve to a higherstate of being. In this case, an animal rebirth wouldbe regarded as devolution of the soul, not evolu-tion.

In this encyclopedia the term reincarnation ismainly used in reference to the issue of exclusivelyhuman multiple embodiments.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Ani-mals, domesticated; Evolutionary transmigra-tion of souls; Ontological leap or ontologicaldiscontinuity; Rebirth, cross-species; Rebirth;Rebirth, non-backsliding; Rebirth and the sci-entific theory of biological evolution.

Reincarnation (Periodical). This is the title of amonthly periodical, edited by Weller Van Hookand C. Shuddemagen, which was published as theofficial organ for the Karma and Reincarnation Le-gion (Chicago) from 1914 to 1931. For a time VanHook was the General Secretary of the AmericanSection of the Theosophical Society. According to a statement by Annie Besant in the first issue of Reincarnation the purpose of the Legion, asfounded by Van Hook, was to spread the doctrineof karma and reincarnation among the masses ofthe American people.

Reincarnation and divine grace see BhagavadGita; Bhakti Yoga; Grace; Karma; Karma ver-sus grace; Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism.

Reincarnation bibliographies. There are at leasttwo significant, separately published, reincarnationbibliographies, both of which were published in1996. The first is Reincarnation: A Bibliography byJoel Bjorling. It lists 1,612 items in ten categories:Eastern Religions and Reincarnation, Reincarna-tion in Comparative Religions and Philosophy;Reincarnation in Occult Traditions; Reincarnationin Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; Cases Suggest-ing Reincarnation; Past Life Therapy; Astrologyand Reincarnation; Popular Works on Reincarna-tion; reincarnation in World Literature; and Ref-erence Works. It includes an Author Index.

The second bibliography is Reincarnation: A Se-lected Annotated Bibliography by Lynn Kear. It lists562 works by author; but unlike Bjorling’s book,it annotates each entry. It also lists some 17 organ-izations in an appendix. Both are indispensable re-sources for anyone interested in the subject of rein-carnation and karma.

While not a separately published bibliography,the book Karma and Rebirth in Classical IndianTraditions, edited by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty(1980) has an excellent scholarly bibliography onrebirth and karma.

Reincarnation, ethnic see Karma, racial.

Reincarnation International Magazine. This pe-riodical was published by Roy Stemman in Lon-don from 1994 to at least 1999 before its name waschanged to Life and Soul Magazine. The currentstatus of the periodical is not known.

Reincarnation, origins of. In the book Birth ofthe Gods: The Origin of Primitive Beliefs by Guy E.Swanson (1960), the author uses a sociological the-ory to explain the origin of reincarnation beliefsamong pre-industrialized or folk societies. He doesthis by statistically correlating the belief in reincar-nation among folk religions with a particular so-cial structure. He notes that reincarnation has beenstatistically shown to correlate to such settlementpatterns as stable physically or socially isolatedneighborhoods, nomadic bands, and extended fam-ily compounds. In fact, even the Indian caste sys-tem, which on the surface may not seem to supportthis correlation, when carefully examined does ap-pear to fit this pattern. This is to say that in tradi-tional caste society there is little social, or eventravel, mobility; each village is divided into caste-like or sub-caste like neighborhoods; marriage be-tween these is forbidden; therefore, there is a needto intensify social bonding within tiny endoga-

231 Reincarnation

mous groups. This need can be met by the beliefthat one’s ancestors are born into later generationsad infinitum.

Peter Fab, in his Man’s Rise to Civilization (1969),using Swanson’s theory comes to the same conclu-sion. However, a problem with Swanson’s socio-logical theory, especially as stated by Fab, is thatSwanson makes the rather peculiar statement that,“Reincarnation is considerably different from themere belief in spirits that the Eskimo and the Sho-shone have.” This statement, as least as it applies tothe Eskimo (Inuit), is in complete conflict with thestudies found in Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarna-tion Belief among North American Indians and Inuit(1994), edited by Antonia Mills and Richard Slo-bodin. Also, the belief in reincarnation among aculture such as that of the early European Druidswould also seem to weaken Swanson’s theory.

Competing with this sociological theory aboutthe origin of reincarnation is speculation that con-nects reincarnation to the need for a totemic lifeforce to be recycled from one generation to another,as among Australian Aborigines. Still another the-ory, specific to South Asia, is that the reincarna-tion concept is related to rice cultivation. Rice isplanted twice, first as a seed and then as a seedlingthat is replanted. Rice is also harvested more thanonce a year. This multiple life cycle may have madeit a natural symbol for multiple lives.

Some East Indian scholars prefer to find an au-tonomous Indian origin for that sub-continent’sbelief system. These scholars note that in middle tolate Vedic thought there appears the concept thatthere were two paths to heaven. One of these wasthe path of the gods (S: deva-yana) and the otherwas the path of the fathers (S: pitr-yana). The firstwas attained through religious austerities of theBrahmins and lead to a permanent dwelling in theheavenly world of Brahma. The second was at-tained through ordinary sacrificial means, but leadto a temporary lunar existence. Eventually, thesepitr-yana would require a re-death (S: punarmr-tyu) or return (S: punaravrtti) through the rainwhich would be absorbed into plant life that wouldbecome food for animals and men. Entering intosemen the souls would be reconceived in a womb.Even without the idea of two separate paths toheaven, it has been thought that the phases of themoon, in which it seems to be continuously dyingonly to be continuously reborn, might have sug-gested to the pre-scientific mind in India, and pos-sibly outside it, the idea of reincarnation.

See also Ancestor worship; Jainism; Karma,origins of; Pritiloka; Rebirth and unilinear de-scent; Rebirth, Buddhist; Rebirth in the West;Reincarnation, origins of ; Upanishads; VedicReligion.

Reincarnation Report. This was a monthly mag-azine published for Reincarnation, Inc. by Valley ofthe Sun Publishing Company, Malibu, California,from 1982 until 1987.

See also Sutphen, Richard (Dick).

Renaissance. The European Renaissance (14th to17th century) was a time in which classical Greekand, to a lesser degree, classical Roman culture wasonce again glorified by both the secular and reli-gious authorities. Some reincarnationists believethat, in line with national character reappear-ances, this was due to a large number of souls fromthe classical period being reborn into that later era.

See also Aristotle; Bruno, Giordano; LostContinent(s); Platonism; Theosophy.

Re-occurring patterns of behavior. Some rein-carnationist believe that certain behavior patternsto which people are more or less addicted andwhich have arisen from no seemingly rational causein the present life can be explained as behavior pat-terns developed in a past life and which continue toexist as unfinished business.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Dreams; Repetition compulsion.

Repeater children (Ogbanje). This refers amongthe Igbo of Nigeria to two or more successive infantdeaths occurring in the same family. It is believedthat for some unknown reason the same soul is pur-posely seeking rebirth in that family, only to de-cide to die. To end this unpleasant situation thebody of the last deceased child is mutilated as amessage to the soul that it either stop trying to rein-carnate into that particular family or to success-fully be reborn into and grow to adulthood in thatfamily.

See also Africa.

Repentance see Karma as absolute or relative;Restitution negates retribution.

Repetition compulsion. This refers to a subcon-scious drive to repeat the same life patterns overseveral life times.

See also Karmic boomerang effect; Patton,George S; Re-occurring patterns of behavior.

Republic (Politeia) see Plato.

Researchers of rebirth. Among major researchersof rebirth are Banerjee, H. N.; Bowman, Carol;Chari, Dr. C.T.K.; Ivanova, Barbara; Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth; Rhine, Joseph Banks; Steven-son, Ian; and Wambach, Helen.

Rescue circles. These are said to be mature soulswho meet with those who have died suddenly andwho are very confused about their new state.

Reincarnation 232

See also Deaths, violent and premature; Psy-chopomps.

Residue karma see Jivanmukti; Karma, Prarab-dha.

Restitution negates retribution. In general mostteachings that include a belief in karma acknowl-edge that restitution can counter the bad karmaone might have otherwise earned from a certainunskillful action. From a Buddhist perspective suchrestitution should be a part of genuine repentancefor the negation to be as complete as possible.

See also Karma as absolute or relative.

Resurrection and the aborted fetus. One longstanding issue for those who defend or criticizesthe Christian theory of the resurrection is whetheror not an aborted fetus would partake of the finalresurrection. Of course, this issue is bond up withat what stage in the conception and gestation pe-riod God is thought to infuse a soul into the fetus.If such infusion is early on and the mother spon-taneously aborts what happens to the soul of thatfetus? If it resurrected, would it do so in the partiallydeveloped form in which it died or would Godmiraculously bring it to its full normal develop-ment?

Reincarnationists see the aborted fetus issue asone of the weaknesses of the resurrection concept,and point out that the concept of reincarnation candeal with the issue in a less questioning fashion.

See also Rebirth and abortion.

Resurrection, bodily. This is the belief that in amessianic future God will, in some highly disputedmanner, reunite the souls of all the deceased witheither new bodies or their former bodies. Such bod-ily resurrection is held as orthodox in Judaism,Christianity, and Islam; however, many reincarna-tionists find major logical problems with the resur-rection concept. While each of the three traditionshas a different understanding of resurrection, froma reincarnationist perspective, these differences areslight enough that the Christian version shouldsuffice for listing the problems reincarnationistsfind in it.

Since the New Testament is ambiguous on theexact manner in which the souls of the deceasedwill attain resurrectional re-embodiment the exactmanner has been a widely discussed and debatedsubject from early Christian times to the present.Paul of Tarsus implies at 1st Corinthians 15:42–45that the resurrected body is a new imperishablespiritual one, not an old flesh and blood physicallyperishable one. At 2nd Corinthians 5:3–4 Paulrefers to the heavenly (new) body put over the old(the one in which we groan) rather than findingourselves first stripped naked of the old one and

then put in the new body. On the other hand, inthe Latin form of the Athanasian Creed (5–6thcentury CE) it is stated that all men shall rise againwith “their” bodies (resurgere habent cum corporibussuis). This was reaffirmed more specifically, as a rising in “their very own present bodies” (omnescum suis propriis resurgent corpoibus, quae nunc gestant) by the Roman Catholic Lateran Council(1215) and Church Council of Lyon (1274), bothof which were deliberately convened to counter themetempsychosis belief of the heretical Cathars.

The “very own present bodies” view, in contrastto Paul’s view, was regarded as being supported bythe New Testament claim that the tomb, in whichthe corpse of the crucified Jesus had been laid, wasempty. This meant that the resurrected Christ musthave had the same body as the one that died. Fur-thermore, in Luke 21:18, it is stated, “But not a hairof your head shall be lost.” This Lucian statementobviously did not take into consideration that all themolecules in all the bodies that have died and beenburied or cremated eventually get recycled innu-merable times into other bodies, be these plants,animals, or other human bodies; therefore, it wouldbe impossible to resurrect all human bodies withtheir original molecules. That the author of thegospel of Luke did not take into account this recy-cling fact is certainly due to the assumption of theauthor that the messianic era, and hence the gen-eral resurrection, was only a short time away. Bythe Middle Ages such naiveté could no longer be ac-cepted. By that time, holding on to the idea that theresurrected body must be the exactly same one thatdied led to the following scholastically interestingquestions. “If one person kills another person andeats the flesh of that person, part of the body of theeaten person will be part of the body of the eater.When the resurrection comes, how can all of theflesh of both persons be equally resurrected in theirsame flesh?” “Also, if not a hair is lost, does all thehair lost in a life time, as well as finger nail clippings,decayed teeth, etc. once more become part of theresurrected body?”

Despite such questions as these the Church con-tinued to hold to the identical body belief. One ofthe main reasons for this was popular piety whichwas based around the veneration of the bodily relicsof saints. It was thought that the soul of the saintin heaven would pay no attention to the veneratorof its bodily relic if that relic was not going to bepart of the saint’s future body. Support for this ven-eration of saints, in fact, must have been a majorreason for the church’s rejection of psychopanny-chism, for if the saints were asleep in their gravesthey could hardly be of assistance to anyone. How-ever, this also led to a set of questions. If psychopan-nychism is rejected and souls, both saintly and more

233 Resurrection

ordinary, go directly to heaven or hell after deathwhy would there even be a need for a future bod-ily resurrection? Do those previously embodied inheaven and hell exist in these realms in a still incom-plete state which only a bodily resurrection cancomplete?

In accordance with modern science, for bodilyresurrection to occur God would have to keep arecord of every person’s genetic code as well as arecord of all of their memories, which brings up afurther question. Would God first repair any ge-netic defects with which a person had been born,and/or would He mercifully eliminate all traumaticmemories with which people suffered before theirdeaths? Christian reincarnationists point out that ifeveryone, except Jesus, passes through many livesbefore the final resurrection then only the bodyeveryone earned karmicaly at that finality wouldbe of any concern.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Body-brain (mind) dependency; Body-soul du-alism; Christian view of the afterlife; Christian-ity and reincarnation; Christianity, esoteric;Creationism, soul; Essenes; Egypt; Gnosticism;Kabbalah; Millennialism; New Testament andreincarnation; Old Testament and the afterlife;Purgatory; Rebirth in the West; Resurrection,bodily; Resurrection of Jesus; Rebirth and cycli-cal time; Sacred Bone; Zoroastrianism.

Resurrection cultural and technological age dis-crepancy issue. This refers to the presumed situ-ation that re-embodied souls of very different cul-tural and technological periods would all be foundliving side by side at a future resurrection. Rein-carnationists noting this have asked the followingquestions. Could a 1st century re-embodied soulbe expected to understand the technologically ad-vanced 21st century re-embodied soul, or could the21st century re-embodied soul understand the dis-tant future re-embodied soul? Even if there are notelevisions and spaceships in the kingdom of heavenon earth, will not the 1st century re-embodied soulhave to learn about these technologies if they are tobe equal, and not inferior, to the most technolog-ically sophisticated re-embodied souls? It must beremembered that the early Christian movement didnot know that there were still stone age tribes ex-isting in the world and so this problem would nothave occurred to them; moreover, those Christiansoriginally expected the resurrection of the dead andsubsequent arrival of the kingdom of God to occurwithin no more than one or two generations fromthe death of Jesus.

Since bodily resurrection implies having vocalcords and a tongue it might be assumed that theonce-again living would be using those for com-

municating with one another. So besides techno-logical differences, might it logically be thoughtthat there would be enormous language problems,unless in the kingdom of heaven all languageswould be miraculously “un-babel-ed”? Also, for thelinguistically curious, which language would thateveryone speak? Would it be Old Testament He-brew, the Aramaic spoken by Jesus, the Greek ofthe New Testament, or some specifically revealedlanguage of angels? Perhaps, although having phys-ical vocal abilities, the once again living would alsobe able to communicate telepathically.

As proponents of reincarnation point out, hav-ing multiple lives avoids this cultural and techno-logical age discrepancy issues because all souls areperiodically recycled into more modern culturaland technological conditions and the language issuein this multicultural world does not require a sin-gle intercultural language.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Res-urrection, bodily; Resurrection individual agediscrepancy issue.

Resurrection individual age discrepancy issue.Another question asked by reincarnationists aboutresurrection is based on this discrepancy. Accord-ing to Christianity all souls that have either beenbaptized and or have accepted Christ over the pasttwo thousand years, and will accept Christ in thefuture will share in the kingdom of heaven onearth. This ought to mean that many of the resi-dents in the kingdom will be the souls of new bornbabies and young children who have prematurelydied. If they are give new immortal bodies as Chris-tianity teaches will they have to remain their deathage for eternity? Immortality implies not only neverdying, but never growing or aging, since growingand aging is the process of cellular birth and death.Obviously, reincarnation avoids this issue by givingevery soul the opportunity to completely matureprior to any freedom from the reincarnationalround.

See also Age factor and rebirth; Argumentssupportive of rebirth; Resurrection cultural andtechnological age discrepancy issue.

Resurrection of Jesus. Most of the Christian op-position to the doctrine of rebirth has been basedon its core belief in the doctrine of the resurrectionof the dead. This focus on resurrection is, in turn,based on the conviction that Jesus arose from thegrave after his death on the cross. This is mostclearly stated in 1st Corinthians 15:14– 15, “If therewas no resurrection, the Christ was not raised; andif Christ was not raised, then our gospel is null andvoid, and so is your faith; and we turn out to belying witnesses for God.” There is, however, a log-ical problem with basing a general belief in resur-

Resurrection 234

rection upon that of Jesus. In the case of Jesus weare not talking about someone who resurrectedafter being long dead as with the general resurrec-tion theory. The gospels say that Jesus was in thetomb for no more than a day and a half or 36 to 40hours. This number comes from the gospel state-ment that the dead Jesus had to be removed fromthe cross and at least temporarily entombed beforethe beginning of the Sabbath at sundown on Fridayand that the tomb was supposedly empty by earlySunday morning.

It is because of this time factor that many Chris-tian reincarnationists believe that the issue of theresurrection of Jesus should to be dealt with sepa-rately from that of any general resurrection con-cept. On the other hand, from an orthodox Chris-tian point of view any separation of the specific andgeneral resurrections would weaken the Christianwhole belief in both resurrections.

See also Ahmadiyya; Arguments supportive ofrebirth; Christianity and reincarnation; Daniel,Book of; Irenaeus; Islam; Judgment of the Dead;Luke, Gospel of ; Mark, Gospel of ; Matthew,Gospel of; Millennialism; Moon; Old Testamentand the afterlife; Psychopannychism; Rebirth,analogies from nature; Resurrection, bodily;Resurrection versus Resuscitation.

Resurrection of Jesus as circular thinking. Oneof the responses to Christian challenges to reincar-nation is for reincarnationists, at least non–Chris-tian ones, to point out the circular nature of resur-rectional thinking. It goes as follows. (Supporter)“The resurrection of Jesus is true because the NewTestament says it is.” (Questioner) “But why be-lieve the New Testament?” (Supporter) “It shouldbe believed because it was written (dictated) byGod.” (Questioner) “How do you know it waswritten by God?” (Supporter) “We know it becausethe church says so.” (Questioner) “How do youknow the church is right?” (Supporter) “We knowit is right because the church is the body of Christ.”(Questioner) “How do you know the church is thebody of Christ?” (Supporter) “We know it becausethe New Testament says so.”

In logic this is obviously the process of “bothcircular reasoning and begging the question”; andthis is why standard Christianity declares that theresurrection of Jesus and future resurrection of allChristians must be accepted on the basis of blindfaith.

See also Logic and pseudo-logic and rebirth.

Resurrection of the dead see Resurrection, bod-ily.

Resurrection or reincarnation. Both these con-cepts have conceptual advantages and disadvan-

tages. An advantage to reincarnation is that it doesnot depend on a belief in an indeterminate futuremiraculous and apocalyptic event. Instead, it is putforth as a simple universal and natural law of causeand effect. The disadvantage to reincarnation isthat as such a natural law it ought to be clearly dis-cernable or provable, which currently it is not.

The advantage to resurrection is that, being afuture miraculous event, it can never be the subjectof scientific inquiry and possible disproof, unlikereincarnation. The disadvantage to resurrection isthat it must be believed in on the basis of blindfaith and when some of the logical problems con-cerning it are examined faith must include a com-plete suspension of critical thinking.

While the two post-mortem concepts of resur-rection or reincarnation may seem in opposition toone another, some Christian supporters of rebirthbelieve that it is possible to harmonize them. Inthis harmonized version people will remain in thecycle of rebirth only until a future point when somedivine intervention will bring the cycle to an endthrough a general resurrection.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Christianity and reincarnation; Christian viewof the afterlife; Creationism, soul; Infusionism;Judgment of the Dead; Karma as natural law;Millennialism; New Testament and reincarna-tion; Old Testament and the Afterlife; Rebirthand religious tolerance; Resurrection, bodily;Resurrection cultural and technological age dis-crepancy issue; Resurrection individual age dis-crepancy issue; Sikhism.

Retroactive inhibition see Children remember-ing past lives.

Retrocognition. This is a supposed psychic abilitythat is said to allow one to perceive past events asthough the perceiver was a present observer. Whilethere have been a number of reports of such retro-cognition that clearly have nothing to do with ex-periencing a past life, some reincarnation criticsbelieve that some past life recalls may actually beretrocognition experiences. These critics argue thatcognition of the past does not automatically implythat the experiencer lived that life in the past.

Committed reincarnationists argued that retro-cognition alone is an inadequate explanation forpast life memories in that such retrocognition canoften focus both on present and past lives, some ofwhich may overlap in time; but reincarnationmemories focus in on only the past, and if on morethan one life, they are generally non-over-lapping.Retrocognition shares with the akashic record the-ory the problem of frozen or unedited memories.

See also Chronoportation; Katsugoro case;Possession; Psychometry; Rebirth, alternative

235 Retrocognition

explanations to; Telepathy; Time and the simul-taneous past, present, and future.

Retrofitting. Retrofitting occurs when either spon-taneously, or through hypnosis, a person makes ahighly generalized statement about a presumed pastlife element that can be easily manipulated to fitlater more specifically acquired information. Forexample, a person might state that in his most re-cent past life he died near water. If it is later foundthat a previously living individual that is thoughtto have reincarnated into that presently living per-son died even remotely near a stream, lake, ocean,swimming pool, or even water tower, that morespecific data can be fitted to match the original overgeneralized statement. This seems to give legiti-macy to the original statement that it may not de-serve.

Return and serve argument for reincarnation.According to this argument reincarnation is just anatural extension of the desire for people to have anopportunity to return and serve one’s country, one’sreligious community, or all humanity. This argu-ment was especially used by the Japanese govern-ment in World War II. The Japanese soldiers wereencouraged to believe that dying in the war serviceof the emperor would guarantee them the right tobe reborn seven more times to serve future emper-ors. This argument was particularly directed atthose kamikaze soldiers that were making suicide at-tacks against the enemy. This was epitomized bythe white headband (hachimaki) they wore whichhad the words “Shichisho Hokoku (Serve the Nationfor Seven Lives)” written on it. The most modernrepresentation of this same dedication was seen inthe life of the prize winning Japanese author YukioMishima. Not only did many of his stories includereincarnationist themes, but at the time of his na-tionalism motivated suicide he wore the ShichishoHokoku hachimaki. The reason for the choice ofseven lives may be due to the fact that there areseven gods of luck in the Shinto pantheon or thatbecause, in accordance with the Buddhist stages ofliberation, anyone who attained to the first orstream enterer (S: shrotapanna) stage of enlighten-ment was guaranteed that full liberation would beattain within a maximum of seven lifetimes. Sincethe Japanese Buddhist clerical hierarchy had notonly indorsed the war effort, but had declared it asacred duty of the soldiers to defeat the enemy,from the point of view of the common soldier thatsoldier was on the first sage of liberation.

It might be thought that the obvious militaris-tic nature of this argument should disqualify it asa reincarnation argument; however, this would bean inappropriately hasty reaction. This return andserve argument is, in fact, a simple modification of

the standard Mahayana Buddhist bodhisattva vowto sacrifice nirvana and loyally return to samsarabodhisattva-like in the service of the suffering Japa-nese nation.

Before judging the Japanese as having pervertedhigh spiritual values, it should also be noted that ac-cording to the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, a warriorhas a spiritual right to kill, as long as he does soimpersonally as part of his duty. In fact, the Gitateaches that if a warrior is absolutely faithful in fol-lowing his duty it will free him from further rein-carnation. This is the basis of the karma yoga ofthe Indian warrior in the caste system.

Finally, we need to remember that this “die forduty” is not confined to religions that believe inreincarnation, they are the exact equivalent of theChristianity and Islam “die for duty” Crusades andJihads.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Re-birth and suicide; Karma yoga.

Revelation of John (also, Apocalypse of John). Notonly in order of books is this the last book in theNew Testament, but it was the last book of thatcollection to be accepted as canonical. Its late ac-ceptance was largely due to its profound and evennearly incomprehensible strangeness, visions, alle-gories, and symbols.

To say the least, with a text as open to interpre-tation as is this one, is it is to be expected that rein-carnation might be read into it. In fact, there aretwo main passages in this book that reincarnation-ists favor. The first is Revelation 3:12 which reads,“He who is victorious—I will make a pillar in thetemple of my God, and he shall never leave it.”Some translations replace “leave it” with “go nomore out of it” and use of this replacement word-ing has suggested to some reincarnationists that itmeans that only when a person is completely vic-torious over sin, which will take more than onelife-time, will the soul no longer go out of the bodyinto another body but will be allotted an eternalplace in paradise.

The second favorite reincarnationist passage inthe book is Revelation 20:12– 15 which reads, “Icould see the dead, great and small, standing beforethe throne; and books were opened. Then anotherbook was opened, the roll of the living. From whatwere written in these books the dead were judgedupon the record of their deeds. The sea gave up itsdead, and Death and Hades gave up the dead intheir keeping; they were judged, each man on therecord of his deeds. Then Death and Hades wereflung into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is thesecond death and into it were flung any whosenames were not to be found in the roll of the liv-ing.” It takes some imagination to read reincarna-

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tion into these passages, but this has been done byfocusing on the concept of books of names and asrepresenting multiple lives.

See also Akashic (Akashik) Record; Crowley,Edward Aleister; Genesis; Heaven’s Gate; Karmain the Bible?; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Millenni-alism; Predestination; Redivivus.

Reverie recall. This is a method used to recall apast life. Here the subject does not enter a tranceor hypnotic state, but is encouraged by the moni-tor to first relax and then to describe any scene that comes into the subject’s conscious mind. Atfirst a great deal of both relevant and irrelevant information will present itself which must be sorted out by the monitor. This is done by cross-checking which information more consistentlykeeps arising and by evaluating what informationseems directly related to the subject’s problem andseems to offer a solution. While this is a relativelysimple method, it is also a rather long drawn outone.

See also Artificial (past life) recall; Déjà vu;Hypnotic age regression; Past life recall; Nether-ton Method; Spontaneous recall.

Reynaud, Jean see Spiritism.

Rhine, Joseph Banks (1895– 1980). Rhine was theformer head of the Institute for Parapsychologyat Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.According to Rhine hypnotic age regression can-not prove reincarnation until it can be proven thatthere is a psychic factor capable of existing sepa-rate from the body, even if only for a very shorttime.

Richardson, Alan (1951–). Richardson is author ofDancers to the Gods (1985). This book includestranscripts of reincarnational memoirs of Charles R.F. Seymour (1880– 1943) and Christine Hartley(1897– 1985), who were two members of the Frater-nity of the Inner Light of Dion Fortune.

Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich, also called JeanPaul (1763– 1825). This German novelist and hu-morist was very favorable to the idea of reincarna-tion, although he rejected regressive transmigra-tion and was critical of some of the Kabbalic ideasconnected to the concept.

See also Transmigration, regressive.

Right-hand path and left-hand path. Amongsome Pythagorean groups the right-hand path wasthe one of remembrance of former lives due to notpartaking of the Drink of Forgetfulness. This thenbecame the path of liberation from metempsy-chosis or the road to paradise (Elysium Fields).The second, or sinister, path was that of forgetful-

ness due to partaking of the drink. Naturally, thismeant that the soul would once again have to enterinto embodiment.

See also Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Greekafterlife, the ancient; Orphism; Plato; Pythago-ras; Tantrism.

Ring pass not. This is said to be a circle withinwhich all are confined (trapped) who still are de-luded by a sense of separateness from the whole.In other words, it means a barrier to release fromreincarnation.

Ringu jukai or Rinju shukke. Both of these termstranslate as “deathbed tonsure” and refer to a for-mer Japanese Buddhist practice of having one’shead shaved and taking monastic vows on one’sdeathbed to gain the merit and better rebirth dueto dying as a monk or nun.

Roberts, Jane see Seth.

Romans. As in his earlier Galatians, the apostlePaul of Tarsus, in this New Testament letter, re-peats the theme that humanity is so deeply con-taminated by and trapped in sin that not even ascrupulous keeping of the moral Law (Torah) of theOld Testament or doing good works “in the hopeof salvation” can save one. Because of this inabilityof mankind to save himself God has sent Jesus, Hisson, to pay the necessary price for mankind’s sal-vation by His sacrifice on the accursed cross andHis subsequent resurrection. Having paid the pricefor mankind’s sins (ransomed him from sin) thebeliever who identified with and was baptized inJesus’ death was himself dead to sin and so (re-)born into eternal life in the kingdom of God, whichPaul expected to arrive very soon. Also in Romans,as in 1st Corinthians, Jesus is again called the sec-ond Adam, based on the idea that as Adam broughtsin and death into the world, the second Adam wassent into the world to overcome sin and death.

Any attempt to read the idea of reincarnationinto this letter requires a great deal of creativethinking. Nonetheless, attempts at this have stillbeen made as with Romans 9:10– 13 and Romans14:8–9. The first of these passages describe how inGenesis God favored Jacob over his brother Esaueven before they were born. The concept of “beforethey were born” is interpreted by some reincarna-tionists to mean that the soul’s existence prior toembodiment, and from this that the two brothershad past lives. When this passage is read in the con-text of the thought of Paul it becomes clear that itis referring to Paul’s belief that God as the creatordoes not need to explain his preferences and thatpredestination is perfectly within keeping of God’splan for this world. Romans 14:8–9 reads, “If welive, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for

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the Lord. Whether therefore we live or die, we be-long to the Lord. This is why Christ died and cameto life again, to establish his lordship over the deadand the living.” Some reincarnationists haveclaimed that “Lord of the dead” refers to the in-terim period and “Lord of the living” refers to theembodied life.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Annihila-tionism; Apocatastasis; Christianity and rein-carnation; Christian atonement theories; Eph-esians; “every knee should bend ... every tongueconfess”; Gnosticism; John, Gospel of; Karma inthe Bible?; New Testament and reincarnation;Peter, 1st and 2nd; Predestination.

Romans, Ancient. The Romans essentially bor-rowed their view of the afterlife, including that ofmetempsychosis, from the Greeks. While mostRoman citizens did not pay much attention to thebelief, a number of emperors apparently found itappealing. For example, the emperor Commodus(161– 192 CE) imagined himself to be either a “re-born” or an “incarnation” of Hercules. With thisin mind he would dress as such and with club orbow and arrows enter the circus arena to slay ani-mals. Also, at least two emperors, Caracalla (188–217 CE) and Flavius Claudius Julian (reign 361–363CE), believed themselves to be Alexander the Greatreborn.

See also Anamnesis; Dweller on the Thresh-old; Egypt; Ennius, Quintus; Greek afterlife,the ancient; Julian, Flavius Claudius; Incarna-tion versus reincarnation; Lethe; Lucretius;Mithraism; Pluto, The God; Porphyry Malchus;Pre-existiani; Priesthood, lack of an organized;Redivivus; Virgil.

Rosemary case. In 1931 a British spiritualistmedium named Rosemary, the pseudonym for Ivy Carter Beaumont, began to speak what wasthought to be authentic ancient Egyptian. Rose-mary, through a control (disincarnated spirit)named Nona, supposedly learned that she had for-merly lived as an Egyptian temple dancer during thereign of the 18th dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III(1406– 1370). This case was published under thetitle Ancient Eg ypt Speaks: A Miracle of Tongues,(London: Rider & Co., 1937), by A.J.H. Hulmeand F. H. Wood. The case began to lose credibil-ity when Hulme, who claimed to be a qualifiedEgyptologist, was found to have no suchqualifications. Moreover, the so called transcribedancient Egyptian was found to be a mixture ofmiddle and late Egyptian which are about as dif-ferent as Latin is from Italian. Further inconsisten-cies such as the reported presence of camels inEgypt centuries before their introduction furtherdiscredited the case.

See also Current knowledge discrepancy; Lan-guage inconsistency; Xenoglossy.

Rosicrucians. This is the name for several groupsthat have claimed to teach an esoteric religious phi-losophy. The name literally means rose cross or rosycross. The earliest known mention of this name isfrom a German source of the early 17th century.Although Rosicrucianism claimed to be a revivalof Near Eastern (Arabian, Syrian, Egyptian, or Mo-roccan) gnosis (occult knowledge) it seems to havebeen more closely related to the Kabbalah and Eu-ropean Renaissance alchemy. This version of Rosi-crucianism actually had a not too disguised anti–Catholic and pro–Lutheran Protestant agenda andwas very short-lived. Despite some of its Kabbalicelements, however, it did not include any belief inreincarnation.

There was a brief, but not too successful, revivalof Rosicrucianism and pseudo-Rosicrucianism inthe 18th century which early 20th century Rosi-crucianism has used to try to bridge the gap be-tween itself and the original movement.

Today, there are a number of competing Rosicru-cian groups in the United States that claim an un-broken descent, not only from the 17th century,but from much farther back in time. Only some ofthese, however, include reincarnation and karmain their teachings and of these four are notewor-thy. The oldest is the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis,which was founded in 1858 by an African-Ameri-can, Paschal Beverly Randolph (d. 1875). The“inner teachings” of the FRC included a system ofoccult sexuality called Eulistic, a word derived fromthe Eleusian mysteries. Randolph’s teachings had amajor influence on the sex magic of the Ordo Tem-pli Orientes of Aleister Crowley. Unfortunately,in contrast to Randolph’s teaching Crowley triedto channel those teachings into black magic. Act-ing as an outer order of the FRC is the Church ofIllumination which is open to the public unlike theinner order with its Aeth Priesthood. The FRCheadquarters is in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

The second is the Ancient and Mystical OrderRosae Crucis (AMORC), founded in 1904 by Har-vey Spencer Lewis (1883– 1939) under the name ofthe Rosicrucian Research Society or the New YorkInstitute for Psychic Research. This group seemsto have been derived from the German occultOrder of the Temple of the Orient (Ordo TempliOrientis). The AMORC took its present name in1915 or 1916. Like a number of other modern Rosi-crucians groups the AMORC have continued tobelieve that their teachings have a Near Easternlink, only they trace this link all the way back to an-cient Egypt. For example, the AMORC claims tohave been originally founded in 1489 BCE by order

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of the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III. From himthe order was passed on through other members ofwhat became known as the Great White Brother-hood. Among the later members of this brother-hood were the Pharaoh Akhenaton, King Solomon,Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Ammonius Saccas,Jesus, and the followers of Hermes Trismegistus.The AMORC headquarters has been located in SanJose, California since 1927.

The third Rosicrucian group is the Societas Rosi-cruciana in America which was founded in 1907by Sylvester C. Gould and George Winslow Plum-mer. The S.R.I.A. was created to offer non–Ma-sons access to a Masonic Rosicrucian order. Itsteaching include a belief in a single infinite intelli-gence and the need for the spiritual evolution ofeach soul through reincarnation.

The fourth major contemporary Rosicruciangroup to include reincarnation in its teachings isthe Rosicrucian Fellowship founded in 1909 byMax Heindel, also known as Max Grashof (1865–1919). This group grew out of the Theosophy ofHelena Blavatsky and the anthroposophy ofRudolf Steiner. According to Heindel, the Fellow-ship was founded under the guidance of highlyspiritual beings, which along with their 17th cen-tury master Christian Rosenkreuz (German, Chris-tian Rose-Cross), were hierophants of the lessermysteries and were called the Elder Brothers of theRosicrucian Order. The Fellowship regards itselfas a form of esoteric Christianity. Since 1910 itsheadquarters have been in Oceanside, California.

See also Ankh; Ascended masters; Cayce,Edgar; Christianity, esoteric; Esotericism ver-sus Occult; Egypt; Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn; Hermetic philosophy; Lost con-tinents and reincarnation; Open Court; SaintGermain; Mount Shasta.

Rosicrucian’s cycle see Interim period.

Roy, Raja Ram Mohan (1772– 1833). This Hindureformer and founder of the Brahma Sabha in 1828,later renamed the Brahmo Samaj, advocated a pureUnitarianism, without images, priests (Brahmans),or sacrifices. Roy also rejected the caste system andthe belief in reincarnation that sustained the castesystem.

Ruah or Ruach (Hebrew: Spirit) see Kabbalah;Nafs and Ruh; Old Testament and the soul;Original sin, Christianity, and reincarnation;Spirit.

Ruh (Arabic: Spirit) See Nafs and Ruh.

Russia, reincarnation in. While various individu-als in pre-soviet Russian may have believed in rein-carnation, with the exception of Helena Blavatsky,

none of them seemed to have made any great at-tempt at developing any kind of successful organ-ization to further the belief. For the most part, abelief in rebirth was mainly associated with thenon–Christian and non–Islamic native peoples ofthe country. Of these the most well known havebeen the various Altaic Buddhists the majority ofwhich belong to the Gelupa school of VajrayanaBuddhism. This form of Buddhism is practicedby the Mongol-speaking Buryats of South-centralSiberia, east of Lake Baikal; by the Turkic-speak-ing Tuvinians of Siberia adjacent to NorthwestMongolia; and by the Mongol-speaking Kalmyks(Kalmucks) of the area on European Russia on thewest side of the lower course of the Volga River,along the northwest shore of the Caspian Sea.

See also Artificial rebirth; Dalai Lama; Gurd-jieff, Georgi Ivanovitch; Heschel of Opatov,Abraham Joshua. Notovitch, Nicholas.

Ryerson, Kevin (1953–). This channeler has beenthe medium through which a number of formerembodied souls are said to have made contact withthe present. Among these are a former orientalstory-teller named Japu, who has a particular inter-est in reincarnation; John, a member of the Es-senes; Tom McPherson, from Elizabethan Ireland;Obadiah, and a Haitian.

According to Walter Semkiw, in his Return of theRevolutionaries (2003) and Born Again: Reincarna-tion Cases Involving International Celebrities ...(2006), Ryerson’s most currently main entity isAhtun Re. Ahtun Re is said to be of Egyptian orNubian origin, who has evolved through a seriesof human lives, the last of which was as a highpriest of the Pharaoh Akhenaton (1379– 1362 BCE).Ahtun Re identifies the past lives of various wellknown modern individuals for Semkiw.

See also Channeling; Egypt; Equinox; Facialarchitectural consistency; Franklin, Benjamin(2); Hilarion; Kevin; Lazaris; Mafu; Michael (2);Ra; Ramtha; Satya; Seth; Torah (2).

Saint Germain (1691/6?–1785?). This is the mys-terious alchemist and occultist who, among otherpseudonyms, called himself Le Comte de SaintGermain. Thought by some of his contemporariesto be either a Freemason or Rosicrucian he wasprobably neither. Saint Germain in his later lifeclaimed that he was Prince Rakoczy, the son andheir of the last independent ruling prince of Tran-sylvania. Also claiming to have discovered the elixirof life (immortality), Saint Germain ingratiatedhimself in various European courts, but never onefrom which he did not eventually have to flee. SaintGermain died in Schleswig some time between1780 and 1785, but under what circumstances it isnot known. Although condemned by many in his

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time as a charlatan, he has become one of the as-cended masters or dhyani chohans in Theoso-phy and some of its offshoots.

Guy Warren Ballard, founder of the I Am Move-ment, claimed that Saint Germain had previouslives as the prophet Samuel and Francis Bacon. Themodern writer Chelsea Quinn Yarbro transformedSaint-Germain into a heroic vampire, first in thenovel Hotel Transylvania, (New York: St. MartinPress, 1978), and then in a series of following nov-els. This is the same Yarbro who has documentedthe teachings of the channeled entity Michael.

See also Church Universal and Triumphant;Dweller on the Threshold; Michael (2); Rosi-crucians; Mount Shasta.

Saintly versus diabolical persons argument. Thisargument in favor of an afterlife is that if, insteadof an after-life, there is only extinction then oneminute after the deaths of people like Gandhi andAlbert Schweitzer they will have the identical moralstatus as people like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.There will be nothing to tell us which of these toemulate and which to shun. History will immortal-ize both the monstrously evil and the saintly good,giving each of them an equal value. The naiveté of this argument should be obvious in that it mis-takenly ties human moral reasoning to the survivalissue. With or without an after life, it is obviousthat saintly figures will be judged as better than di-abolical ones in all but the most diabolical soci-eties.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth.

Sallustius (Greek, Saloustios) the Neoplatonist(4th century CE). This philosopher was a student ofIamblichus and a member of the PergamumSchool. Sometime between 363 and 394 Sallustiuswrote a compendium of the (pagan) doctrines ofthe Pergamum School called On the Gods and theWorld (Universe). This most likely was written, notonly in defense of the classical paganism that wasbeing attacked by the newly empowered Christianmovement, but in posthumous support of the at-tempt by the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate(331–363) to reinstate paganism as the official re-ligion of the empire. The work has a chapter thatpromotes a concept of transmigration.

According to Sallustius a rational soul that trans-migrates into a human body becomes the soul ofthat body. On the other hand, a rational soul thatbecomes associated with a non-rational creatureonly accompanies that creature from outside thebody much as a guardian spirit does for a rationalbeing. In the view of On the Gods and the Worldthere are a limited number of souls which are borninto miserable conditions in this world or in Hadesif in the past they have failed to live virtuous lives.

At the same time virtuous persons are purified ofbodily existence and are united with the gods andshare with them the governing of the world.

See also Greek afterlife, the ancient; Hermeticphilosophy; Neoplatonism; Priesthood, lack ofan organized.

Samkhya or Sankhya Yoga. This is an ancientschool of Indian philosophy that teaches that lib-eration of the soul (purusha) can only be attainedthrough karmicaly purifying ascetic practices(yoga) and the uncompromised realization of thefundamental distinction (viveka) between purushaand prakriti (the material body).

See also Dualism.

Samma Sambuddha (P). 1. The standard Bud-dhist meaning of this term is Supreme WisdomBuddha. 2. In Theosophy this term is sometimesinterpreted to mean the miraculous ability to re-member one’s own past lives (Purvanivasanusm-rti), something every Buddha is believed to be ableto do.

Samsara (S. Journeying). In Buddhism this refersto the world of dissatisfaction (duhkha) and imper-manence (S: anitya) through which we travel.Nothing is thought to manifest this more than therepeated cycles of rebirth and re-death, which arebrought about through craving, hatred, and igno-rance. Samsara is the opposite of nirvana andparinirvana.

See also Bhavachakra; Bodhisattva; KyklosGenesion; Shunya; Three Roots (Mulas) of Sam-sara.

Samskara/sankara (volitional activities). Theseare impressions left from past actions, so the termhas also been translated as past karma.

See also Pratitya-samutpada; Psychophysicalaggregates; Rebirth in Buddhism; Skandha;Vasanas.

Samuel, First Book of see Old Testament andthe afterlife; Old Testament and the soul;Sciomancy.

Samvara. In Jainism this term refers to prevent-ing karma from adhering to the jiva (soul), whichif successful will lead to liberation from birth anddeath.

See also Moksha; Nirjara.

Sanskrit language. This is the old Indian classicallanguage that was used to for both Hindu religioustexts and various secular works. It was not used torecord Buddhist teachings until the rise of Ma-hayana Buddhism. A sister language of Sanskritis the Pali language of the Theravada Buddhistcanon.

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Many Western esoteric sources that deal withreincarnation prefer to retain Sanskrit, or in rarecases, the Pali, vocabulary rather than translating aword into a Western language; for example,akashic record, linga-sharia, samskara

Santeria (Santerismo). This is a Cuban Afro-American religion that was developed during thedays of slavery by the Lucumi (people of Yorubaancestry). In Santeria one of the most importantdeities (Orishas) is Orunla (Orula or Orunmila).This is the deity of divination (awo). For this rea-son he is also called Ifa (oracle). As Ifa he is consid-ered the spiritual father of those priests (santeros,saints) that will become high priests (babalaos,(baba, father of—l’awo, mystery). When it comestime for a soul (ori) to choose its earthly destiny(iwa), Orunla is present as a witness. If the soul inits first incarnation does not fulfill that destinyOrunla will require it to reincarnate until it does so.During the slavery period, when it was necessary todisguise slave deities as Catholic saints (ocha),Orunla was identified with Saint Francis of Assisi.In the late 19th century Santeria was greatlyinfluenced by, and absorbed elements of, theSpiritism of Allen Kardec. Many Santerians referto their religion as the Regla de Ocha or Religion ofthe Saints.

See also Africa; Kardecismo; Possession; Um-banda.

Satan see Lucifer (1).

Sathya Sai Baba. Born Sathya Narayana Raju in1926, Baba left home at the age of 13 or 14 declar-ing that he was the reincarnation of a Shiridi SaiBaba from the village of Shiridi, who was a Moslemsaint who died in 1918. According to the presentSai Baba he will voluntarily disembody at the ageof 96, and will, eight years later, reincarnate in histhird and last Sai Baba embodiment under thename of Prema Sai Baba in a village in Kerala(Southern India). Some of Sai Baba’s disciples re-gard him as a reincarnation of Jesus.

Saturn, the planet. Saturn is the Latin name for theGreek Kronos, which early on was identified withChronos (Greek: time) and as such, in traditionalWestern astrology, it came to be considered theGreat Malefic, with Mars (Ares) being the lessermalefic. This malefic nature is thought to be espe-cially strong when Saturn is found in the eighth as-trological house which governs death. It is also tobe noted that in Hindu astrology Saturn (Hindi:Shani) likewise has a connection to destructive sit-uations.

One of the original reasons for the maleficentreputation of Saturn was originally due to the factthat, with its 29.5 year revolution, it was for the

ancients the slowest moving visible planet; there-fore, it represented old age, finality, and endings. Infact, its slowness made it the prototype for our Fa-ther Time.

The astrologer Robert Powell (1947–), in hisHermetic Astrology: Towards a New Wisdom of theStars, (Kinsau, Germany: Hermetika, 1987) be-lieves that Saturn is a major factor in the rebirthprocess. Powell takes exception with the majorityof astrologers in that he considers only the siderealzodiac and the heliocentric chart, as opposed to theolder and more traditional imaginary zodiac andthe geocentric chart, to be useful in gaining insightinto reincarnation from the astrological view.

Another well known astrologer, Jeanne Avery,has published Astrology and Your Past Lives: Rein-carnations through Saturn’s Placement in Your Chart.(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).

See also Angels and reincarnation; Astrologyand rebirth; Dweller on the Threshold; Lordsof Karma; Mann, Tad; Moon; Planetary descentand ascent of the soul; Pluto, the planet.

Satya. According to the channeler Barbara Marci-niak, this is an entity from the Pleiades cluster ofstars in the constellation of Taurus that has beenchanneled through her since 1988. The entity sup-ports the concept of reincarnation, karma, and pastlife exploration. Whether by design or coincidencethe word “Satya” is also Sanskrit for Truth.

See also Channeling; Equinox; Franklin, Ben-jamin (2); Hilarion; Lazaris; Mafu; Ra (1); Ra(2); Ramtha; Ryeron, Kevin; Satya; Seth; Torah(2).

Schiller, Friedrich von (1759– 1805). This Ger-man poet and dramatist, in his early writings,seemed to strongly favor the idea of reincarnation,but this interest waned in his later works.

School of Life. There is a very old adage that says,“Life is a school in which through suffering and joywe must learn as much as we can before we die.”Most people simply accept this adage as it is with-out asking, “Why we are supposed to learn as muchas possible?” The orthodox Christian answer mightbe because God appreciates such learning and/orit improves our chances of going to heaven and/orit makes us more educated denizens of heaven. Thereincarnationist, on the other hand, will point outthat the overwhelming majority of people do nottake the opportunity to learn much in this or anyone life and so heaven must either be very under-populated or very full of unschooled inhabitants. Itis only by proposing a series of lives (rebirths) thatmost people could learn most of what they shouldlearn. In this sense the School of Life argument forrebirth is basically the same as the rebirth and

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moral perfection argument and as such is opento the same weakness or counter argument as thatposition.

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788– 1860). This Ger-man philosopher was highly influenced by Bud-dhism. He interpreted the Buddhist concept ofsoulless (anatman) rebirth (bhava) as the rebirthof each person’s impersonal “will to live.” Schopen-hauer was the first to collect and publish referencesto the doctrine of rebirth from early to contempo-rary times. In these he pointed out that the doctrineof metempsychosis was far older and more wide-spread than most of his contemporaries believed.

See also Ex Oriente Lux; Karma with minimalrebirth.

Science and pseudo-science see Logic andpseudo-logic and rebirth.

Science of Mind. A part of the New Thoughtmovement, Science of Mind, also known as Reli-gious Science, was founded by Ernest ShurtleffHolmes (1887– 1960). Although reincarnation isnot an official doctrine of this church, the churchis open to the concept.

Scientology. This New Age Organization wasfounded by Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911– 1986).In his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Men-tal Health (1950) Hubbard claimed to have discov-ered a new and more advanced way to cure emo-tional and psychosomatic illnesses. Moving fromthe simple mental therapy of Dianetics, Scientol-ogy was officially initiated as a religion in 1954,which is a blending of psychoanalysis, WesternGnosticism, and Eastern religion. One reason forthe name Scientology seems to be due to thegroup’s use of the presumed techno-scientific e-meter (electropsychometer), a kind of lie detectordevice that monitors the psychogalvanic reflex orgalvanic skin response, an indicator of stress.

Scientology’s religious dimension was especiallyrepresented in Hubbard’s Have You Lived BeforeThis Life? A Scientific Study: A Study of Death andEvidence of Past Lives (1958); and Mission into Time(1973). The first of these is purported to be a col-lection of forty-one cases of past lives obtainedfrom auditing with the e-meter. Among these pastlives are ones that are said to have occurred as an an-imal and on other planets. In the introduction toHave You Lived Before Hubbard states that Scien-tology and Dianetics techniques differ greatly fromhypnotism. He says that in hypnotism the aim is toput the client to sleep and make him as irrespon-sible as possible for his answers. In contrast, in Sci-entology and Dianetics, the person is made moreand more alert, more and more responsible andtruthful. Hubbard further states that past lives are

not the same as the theory which has been called“reincarnation in Hinduism.” Having made the laststatement the book’s explanation of past lives ismore or less the “same” as in Hinduism. Finally,many of the cases in Have You Lived Before readmore like poorly researched history and/or poorlywritten science fiction. For example, case 8 statesthat the person lived 3,225 years ago as a memberof the Roman army. This date was 700 years beforethe founding of Rome. Case 10 states the personlived 55 quiatillion (18 zeros) years ago as a mantaray. The earth is only four billion (9 zeros) yearsold. Case 13 has a past life as a person living onMars nearly 5 hundred million years ago. Hub-bard’s Mission into Time is even less reliable.

The understanding of reincarnation in Scientol-ogy is based on the concept of the “Theta” and the“Thetan.” These terms comes from the name of theGreek letter theta, which was said to representthought. To this Hubbard added a “-n” suffix tomake it appear more like a proper English noun.The -n is also said to represent the power of thetheta to the “nth” or unlimited degree. Accordingto Scientology the theta is the mathematical sym-bol for static thought or the static thought itself.The term is used to refer to creative energy specificto life, as well as to the thought and spirit embod-ied in the individual. The theta entity is called athetan and this refers to the single unit of being-ness that is each person. The thetan is that which hasawareness of its own awareness. It is the innermost,hence real, personality beneath body and mind.

According to Hubbard thetans are immortal ce-lestial beings, which billions of years ago createdmatter, energy, space and time. In an experimentwith trying to experience life in material bodiesthey inadvertently became trapped. This causedthem to forget most of their celestial origins. Thethetans must now undergo constant reincarnationuntil they can once again be come free of materi-ality. This freedom can only be achieved firstthrough clearing all of the traumatic impressions(engrams) on the subconscious (reactive) mind. Ifthis is not done these engrams will pass on into theperson’s next reincarnation and cause one unneces-sary suffering. Once the engrams have been cleared,a series of carefully guarded consciousness trainingwill be required to produce an operant thetan. Thisis a thetan that is, not only fully conscious both ofits origin and of God; but is a master of matter,energy, space, and time (a MEST). It is just such aclear, operant, and “mest thetan” that Jesus was ac-cording to Hubbard. During the reincarnationprocess the thetan is said to take over a new body afew days or weeks before the birth of that host-to-be’s body.

Between the years 1945 and 1946 Hubbard was,

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to some degree, involved with the Californiabranch of the occult sexual order Ordo Templi Orientis with Jack Parson, a disciple of AleisterCrowley; thus, it is not unexpected that some ofCrowley’s thought has been passed on via Scien-tology.

See also Affect bridge; Blocked regression;Crowley, Aleister; Eckankar; Fall of the Souls;Netherton Method; Planets, other; Psychophore;Zhendao.

Sciomancy. This is the proper term for the com-munication with the souls (shades) of the dead forthe purpose of divination, as can be seen from itsroot scio (from the Greek: skia), meaning a shadowor shade, as in the sense of a soul in Hades. Un-fortunately the term necromancy is more com-monly, but incorrectly, used for such divination.The Greek root “necro” refers to a corpse, not thesoul. Necromancy, therefore, should strictly be usedto refer to any attempt to use a dead body for div-inational purposes. A synonym of sciomancy is psy-chomancy (soul-divination) and a person who in-vokes the spirits of the dead is sometimes called a psychogogues. Perhaps one reason that necro-mancy is substituted for sciomany is that sciomancycan also mean divination by observing shadows.Sciomancy is also at times confused with theurgy,which properly used is the art of persuading orcompelling a god or beneficent supernatural powerto do or not do some activity.

Many modern conservative religious groups re-gard past life inquiry as sciomancy and along withSpiritualism and channeling consider them to bewitchcraft and/or demonomancy. These groupsreadily point towards those verses in the Old Tes-tament that condemn such witchcraft (Hebrew:kishuph) activities. Among these are Exodus 22:18;Leviticus 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deuteronomy 18:12; 2Kings 21:6; 23:24; 2 Chronicles 33:6; Isaiah 8:19–20; 19:3; 47:9– 14; Jeremiah 27:9; and Malachi 3:5.1 Samuel 28:6–20; while 1 Chronicles 10:13 evencondemns the practice of sciomancy as an actionworthy of execution.

In defensive of such condemned activities, anumber of their more sophisticated practitionersargue that most of those passages were really op-posing the worship of the dead or ancestors, notonly by the neighboring tribes around ancient Is-rael, but also among the early Israelites. The spir-itualist, channeler, and past life recallers furtherargue that the biblical condemnations were part of the attempt by Judean authorizes to center allreligious activities on the Temple of Solomon inJerusalem and the Yahwehist tradition, and re-garded spiritualist activities as threatening compe-tition.

See also Astral plane; Old Testament and theafterlife; Possession.

Score, John (1914– 1979). Score was one of thelesser known figures in the modern witchcraft re-vival. As early as 1948 Score’s desire for a more spir-itual dimension to his life caused him to seek topurify his body by turning to vegetarianism. Be-coming aware of the newly arising neo–Pagan andWicca movements in the 1960s, Score was drawn tothem by recognizing that they had great similaritiesto the solar worship that he felt he had practiced inEgypt in a distant past life. In fact, Score believedthat he could remember past lives as far back as oneon the lost continent of Atlantis.

In 1968 Score became the editor of the newslet-ter The Wiccan, published by the Pagan Federa-tion, and through this newsletter he was able to es-tablish the Pagan Front, a British organization forthe support and defense of Neo-Paganism. Thisorganization changed its name to the Pagan Feder-ation in 1981, and its publication became the PaganDawn.

See also Lost continents and reincarnation;Neo-pagan religions; Wicca.

Screen memories. These are false memories pro-duced by the unconscious mind to protect the con-scious mind from remembering some event that isotherwise too traumatic for the person to deal withconsciously. For example, seemingly unaccountedfor phobias (irrational fears) can lead to screenmemories. Under hypnosis many subjects havebeen asked to go back to the time in this life whenthey first experienced the cause of a particular pho-bia. In many of those cases the individuals seemsunable to locate that time. The hypnotist may thenask them to go back to former lives and locate thecause of the phobia. This very often results in apast life scenario that explains the origin of the pho-bia. The same process has often worked in locatingthe origin of psychosomatic illnesses. Skeptics ofsuch past life origins suggest that finding the sourceof a trauma in a past life is simply psychologicallyless threatening than finding it in the present life.

See also Affect bridge; Blocked regression;Memory, suppressed; Past life therapy.

Scrying or Skrying. This is the concentrated gaz-ing at any highly polished monochromatic surface.It is believed by some that concentrated gazing atany such surface may aid the mind in a vision of apast life. There are a great variety of surfaces atwhich to gaze: most commonly a glass or crystalsphere (crystal(l)omancy); but also a bowel of liq-uid (hydromancy) such as water; oil (lecono-mancy), treacle (molasses), black ink, red wine,fresh blood, or narcotic power in magnetized water;

243 Scrying

a small polished pendulum; a mirror (catoptro-mancy or enoptromancy); a lamp or candle flame(lampadomancy) or a fire (pyromancy, fire of Az-rael). Each of these serve as a speculum, a shiny,reflective surface used to focus all of one’s gaze insuch a manner as to enter into some degree of atrance state.

Strictly speaking scrying differs from crystal gaz-ing (crystal(l)omancy) in that the scryer is using acrystal surface in an attempt either to contact spir-its or to have an inner vision of the future. A crys-tal gazer, on the other hand, is looking for a visionor sign of the future within the crystal itself.

One modern replacement for a crystal ball is agalvanic mirror. This is a magnetized disc made byjoining together concave copper and convex zincparts. It differs from a normal scrying mirror, whichis basically a piece of clear glass with its back sidepainted black.

See also Lhamoi Latso; Moody, Raymond A.Jr; Phoenix Cards; Tarot; Sciomancy; Trancestates.

Séance see Astral plane; Blavatsky, HelenaPetrova; Sciomancy

Seasons. In temperate climates the perpetual cycleof spring birth, summer youth, autumn aging, andwinter death were certainly one of the analogies innature that suggests the concept of rebirth.

See also Rebirth, analogies from nature.

Second death. This term has two religious mean-ing. The first is found in various ancient and mod-ern folk religions, while the second is found inmodern Theosophy and related systems.

A number of folk religions, while acknowledg-ing an afterlife, believe that some or all souls onlyexperience a temporary afterlife. This belief in atemporary afterlife can take two general forms. Thefirst involves the memories of the living. For ex-ample, in several ancestral worshipping religionsthe deceased survive only as long as there are livingfamily members who periodically remember thedeceased through some ritual procedure. Since eachgeneration of ancestors will eventually be replacedby newer ancestral generations in the memory oftheir descendents, memory of the older ones willfade into a secondary and permanent death. Manytribal people in Africa hold this view of a seconddeath.

In the second form of folk religion second deathit is believed that an after-life is dependent on thebehavior of the soul. An example of this is the be-lief that every soul is required to undergo judgmentin an afterlife. Those that are judged good con-tinue on indefinitely in some happy state. Thosethat are judged bad are either immediately extin-

guished or first punished in some very unhappystate and then face extinction. The people of ancientEgypt and, in some cases, the ancient Greeks are associated with this view. Even some Christiangroups, over the centuries, have felt that this seconddeath concept is more in keeping with a God ofmercy than is the idea of an eternal hell, although,in the Revelation of John the term second deathis found in the context of the wicked being castinto a lake which burns with fire and brimstone.

The Theosophical view of the second deathrefers to one of two situations. The first is the deathof the astral body upon the soul entering the men-tal plane of existence, a necessary phase before aneventual rebirth. The second is the annihilation ofthe soul in the eighth sphere.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; An-nihilationism, Buddhist view; Astral plane;Buddha’s necklace; Chinese Religion and Rein-carnation; Etheric revenant.

Seelenwanderung. This is the standard dictionaryGerman phrase for transmigration or metempsy-chosis of souls. It literally translates as the wan-dering of many souls. Another word that has beenused is Wiedermenschwerdung, but this appears tobe more of a recently made up word, using variousGerman roots. It literally means “people becom-ing people again.” It does not appear in standarddictionaries.

Self-Realization Fellowship see Yogananda,Paramahansa.

Sensation body. This is an alternative name forthe etheric body. It is called this because it isthought that the physical body only has sensationin union with this sensation body.

Sephiroth (Hebrew: numerations). These are theten emanations of God that form the Kabbalic“Tree of Life.” These ten descend in the order of (1)Kether (Crown); (2) Chokmah (Wisdom), (3) Binah(Understanding); (4) Chesed (Mercy); (5) Geburah(Severity); (6) Tipareth (Beauty); (7) Netzach (Vic-tory) (8) Hod (Glory); (9) Yesod (Foundation); and(10) Malkuth (Kingdom). According to the me-dieval Kabbalic teacher Isaac Luria it was due to afault in the original emanations of the Sephiroththat souls became trapped in matter and thus mustgo through transmigration (gilgul) until they canescape.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Astrologyand rebirth; Blavatsky, Helena; Kabbalah;Milky Way; Moon; Planetary descent and as-cent of the soul; Qlippoth.

Septenary nature of man see Soul and spirit lev-els, Theosophical.

Séance 244

Serial lives. This is term for a set of linear multi-ple lives; in other words, for rebirths, reincarna-tions, transmigrations, etc.

Serpent or snakes. Although modern supportersof rebirth no longer use the serpent analogy, an-cient people certainly did. The habit of serpentssloughing off their skin only to reveal a new onebeneath it was thought suggestive of rebirth.

See also Ouroboros; Rebirth, analogies fromnature.

Seth. In 1963 Jane Roberts (1929– 1984) and herhusband Robert Butts began experimenting with aOuija board which brought through an entity thatat first called itself Frank Withers, but preferred tobe known as Seth. It was not long before the Ouijaboard was replaced with clairaudience and auto-matic writing while Roberts was in a trance. Sethdescribed itself as a bisexual fragment of a largerentity. This description ultimately applied to Robertsand everyone else. According to Seth he had expe-rienced many lives on Earth, including one on thelost continent of Atlantis, but eventually evolvedinto an energy personality essence that is no longerdependent on physical reality. At the same timeSeth suggested a time schema very similar to thatof Joan Marshall Grant where our so-called Past,Present, and Future lives all exist simultaneously.

The 1963 date of Seth’s appearance actually madeRoberts the earliest of the modern channelers;moreover, while Roberts continued to channel Sethuntil her death in 1984, she later also channeledother entities, including a Seth Two, who was partof the same collective entity as Seth One. Amongthe works on reincarnation from Seth, via Robertsis The Seth Material (1970); Seth Speaks: The Eter-nal Validity of the Soul (1972); and Dreams, Evolu-tion, and Value Fulfillment (1986). These and otherextensive recorded writings of Seth encouraged theestablishment of Seth Centers which perform pastlife regressions.

It needs to be noted that Robert’s Seth is quitedistinct from three other occult Seths. The first isthe Egyptian name for the murderous brother ofthe god Osiris; hence the representation of all thatwas thought to be evil. This Seth is sometimesspelled as Set. The second Seth, modeled on theEgyptian Seth, is the deity of The Temple of Seth,which is a modern Satanic group founded in 1975by Michael Aquino. The third Seth is the name ofthe third and youngest son of the biblical Adam.Since according to Genesis, Noah was descendedfrom Seth all post-flood humanity was descendedfrom this Seth. This ancestry encouraged severaltraditions of Gnosticism, called Sethian gnostics,to surround this biblical Seth with an esotericsignificance as a pneumatikoi.

See also Attached entity; Channeling; Egypt;Equinox; Franklin, Benjamin (2); Hilarion;Karma, developmental; Lazaris; Mafu; Parallellives; Plurality of existences; Ramtha; Ryerson,Kevin; Satya; Time and the simultaneous past,present, and future; Torah (2); Trance states;Wilcock, David.

Seven. This number is regarded in both the Westand East as of particular esoteric significance. Thisuniversality is probably due to the original (pre-telescope) seven visibly moving celestial bodies, theseven Pleiades stars, and/or the Big Bear or BigDipper. In the Old Testament, for example, sevenis mentioned seventy-seven times, beginning withthe seven days of creation. It is a number also fre-quent in the New Testament, where in the Reve-lation of John it occurs forty times. With such es-oteric popularity it is no surprise that the numberseven has significance in various reincarnationalsystems.

See also Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ; Archons; Ascended masters; Astrology and re-birth; Blavatsky, Helena Petrova; Buddhiststages of liberation Buddhist stages of libera-tion; Chakras; Colton, Ann Ree; Critical timeperiods; Cult of Angels and reincarnation; Fi-nite or infinite number of rebirths; Genesis;Heaven; Hell, the Chinese; Interim period; Kab-balah; Lords of Karma; Lucifer; Matthew18:21–22; Mental plane; Mithraism; NirvikalpaSamadhi; Planetary descent and ascent of thesoul; Poimandres; Rebirth in Buddhism; Returnand serve argument for reincarnation; Sephi-roth; Seven rungs of the heavenly ladder; SevenVeils, Dance of ; Soul and spirit levels, Theo-sophical; Yarsanism.

Seven rungs of the heavenly ladder. In variousesoteric systems a ladder with seven rungs symbol-izes the seven steps or actions needed to attain lib-eration from birth and death. This symbolism wasespecially important in Mithraism. This was orig-inally based on the seven moving celestial bodies.

See also Genesis; Planetary descent and ascentof the soul; Seven; Seven Veils, Dance of the.

Seven times seven see Bardo; Matthew, Gospelof.

Seven Veils, Dance of the. The famous Dance ofthe Seven Veils by Salome before King Herod isbelieved in some esoteric traditions to actually rep-resent the soul divesting itself of seven layers of ma-teriality in order to ascend to paradise. While thedance is mentioned in Mark 6:22 and Matthew14:6, there is no mention of any removal of cloth-ing. This was the invention of Oscar Wilde in his

245 Seven

play Salome, which was then made into an operaby Richard Strauss.

Wilde’s concept of the removing seven veils mayhave come from the Sumerian myth of Inanna andDumuzi. The goddess of love and fertility, Inanna(later Ishtar), lost her mortal lover Dumuzi (Tam-muz) to death and to retrieve him she has to de-scend into the land of the dead which has sevengates. At each gate she had to remove a piece ofclothing until she is finally naked, as were all the in-habitants of the underworld. This left the worldwithout fertility and that returned only when thegoddess, with her lover, returned to the surface.This descent and ascent was really represented thedying of life in autumn and winter, followed by itsrebirth in the spring and summer, so as a sourcefor a reincarnationist interpretation this myth is weak.A stronger reincarnationist interpretation woulduse the planetary descent and ascent of the soul.

See also Seven rungs of the heavenly ladder

Seventeenth century renewed interest in rebirth.With the rise of the Cambridge Platonists in thesixteenth century there gradually developed an in-terest in the subject of metempsychosis. This in-terest is witnessed by the number of books pub-lished in the late seventeenth century in English onthe subject of metempsychosis, pro and con. This,of course, demonstrates that the suppression of un-orthodox religious ideas found in the 16th and ear-lier centuries had significantly diminished, at leastin Protestant England.

A search for books from the 15th– 17th centurieson the subject of reincarnation in Early EnglishBooks Online (EEBO), an electronic data base, re-sulted in only three finds which interestingly areall inter-related. The first has a not uncommon ex-tended title of that period which is Two hundredqueries moderately propounded concerning the doc-trine of the revolution of humane souls and its con-formity to the truths of Christianity (De RevolutioneAnimarum, for short) by the Kabbalist FranciscusMercurius van Helmont (1614– 1699). This 88-pagebook was printed in London in 1684. (A relatedbook by this author, not in EEBO, was Seder Olam;or the Order, Series or Succession of All the Ages, Pe-riods, and Times of the Whole World is theologically,philosophically and Chronologically Explicated andStated also the Hypothesus of the Pre-existency andRevolution of the Human Souls ... [Holland 1693],which was translated from the Latin and publishedin London in 1694).

The second EEBO listing is Truth and innocencydefended against calumny and defamation in a late re-port spread abroad concerning the revolution of hu-mane souls: with a further clearing of the truth by aplain explication of my sence, &c by George Keith

(1639?– 1716). This 20-page book, printed in Phila-delphia in 1692, was written to counter a chargemade by an unspecified person that George Keithwas in fact the real author of the Helmont book. Inthis book the author not only denies the charge,but reaffirms his orthodox Christian belief againstthe revolution of humane souls (reincarnation) andfor the resurrection.

The third book has the even more elaborate titleof The harmless opinion of the revolution of humanesouls as a probable hypothesis, and very serviceable toclear many doubts, and answer many objections ofatheists against the divine providence, and the HolyScriptures. Modestly defended in a reply to a late trea-tise, signed by J.H. printed at Oxford, and called byhim, An answer to some queries, proposed by W.C. ora refutation of Helmont’s pernicious error, &c by ananonymous author. This 48-page book was printedin 1694 in London and tries to defend the views ofthe Helmont book and challenges the criticism ofKeith.

Other 17th-century publications in Englanddealing with reincarnation included PhilosophicalPoems: A Platonick Song of the Soul, treating of theLife of the Soul, her Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul,the Unitie of the Souls, and Memorie after Death byHenry More (1647); Works by John Goodwin(1652), which defended soul’s existence prior toembodiment; Lux Orientalis: or an Inquiry into theopinions of the Eastern sages concerning the Prae-ex-istence of Souls. Being a key to unlock the Grand Mys-teries of Providence in Relation to man’s sin and mis-ery by Joseph Glanvil (1662), the chaplain to KingCharles II; A Free and Impartial Censure of the Pla-tonic Philosophie, with an account of the OrigenianHypothesis, concerning the Pre-existence of Souls by(Bishop) Samuel Parker (1666); No Pre-existence,or a brief Dissertation against the Hypothesis ofHuman Souls living in a state antecedaneous to thisby Edward Warren (1667); An Essay on Transmi-gration, in Defense of Pythagoras by Whitelock Bul-stode (1692); and The Visions of the Soul before itcomes into the Body by John Dunton (1692). Out-side of England there was at least De metempsycosidissertation by Heinrich Wolfgang Schilling, Lipsiae[Lipzig] (1679); De animarum transmigratione byHeinrich Henrici (1699); and The Book on theRashith ha Gigalim (revolutions of the soul or schemeof reincarnation) by the Christian Kabbalist BaronKnorr von Rosenroth (1636– 1689), place of pub-lication unknown.

See also Internet and reincarnation; Metem-psychosis, or the Transmigration of Souls, Sys-tematically Considered...

Seventh heaven see Heaven; Planetary descentand ascent of the soul.

Seventeenth 246

Sewer lifetime see Solity.

Sexual activity and rebirth see Creationism,soul; Electra/Oedipus Complex and rebirth;Kabbalah; Pratitya-samutpada; Rebirth andartificial insemination; Rebirth in Buddhism.

Shadow or shade. These two terms have been usedto refer to the deceased as continuing to exist notonly in English but in other languages. For exam-ple, the Roman term umbra meant, not only theshadow created by blocking light, but the part of thetripartite soul that remained near the body afterdeath. In ancient Egypt the shadow (khaibi orhaidit) had a more positive connotation. It was be-lieved a person could not exist without this in thislife or the next.

See also Archetypes; Astral plane; Greek af-terlife, the ancient; New Testament and reincar-nation; Old Testament and the afterlife; Scien-tology; Sciomancy; Shinto; Soul; Soul, tripartite.

Shadow body. This term, though widely used inboth esoteric and occult circles, may signify notonly the dark (demonic) side of a person, but alsothe etheric body, the astral body, or the Dwelleron the Threshold. The shadow body may also becalled the double. It is believed by some occultiststhat such a shadow body may linger about the de-ceased physical body due to its attachment to thematerial world.

See also Shadow or shade.

Shakespeare, William (1564– 1616). There is nodoubt that Shakespeare was familiar with the con-cept of transmigration. If nothing else, this isshown by its brief mention in his play, TwelfthNight (1601/02). In this play the dour, puritanicalMalvolio lampoons the Pythagorean idea that a human soul can happily be reborn as a bird.Whether Shakespeare had a more positive and morepersonal belief in transmigration is an arguableissue. A number of readers of the bard’s sonnets be-lieve that they, rather than his plays, at least hint ata favorable view of it. The sonnet most commonlythought of as pro-transmigrational is Sonnet LIX.The first four lines of this fourteen lined poem read,“If there be nothing new, but that which is /Hathbeen before, how are our brains beguiled, /Which,belaboring for invention, bear amiss /The secondburden of a former child.”

Shamanism see Bon-pa [po] religion; Channel-ing; Dalai Lama; Greeks and reincarnation; Ko-ryaks; Kwakiutl; Neo-pagan religions; Posses-sion; Shinto.

Shanti Devi case. This is one of the most widelycited cases for proof of reincarnation. Devi was

born in India in 1926 and her memories of a pastlife were said to begin when she was three years old. She claimed to remember the village she usedto live in, which was about 80 miles away; to re-member her former husband; caste; previous fam-ily; house; and even the fact that she had buriedsome money under her former house. Upon ShantiDevi’s visit to her presumed former village she issaid to have been correct on many of these recol-lections. Unfortunately, no scientifically controlledinvestigation of this case was attempted until afterthe village visit, which for all practical purposesmakes it useless as evidence for reincarnation.

See also Children remembering past lives;Katsugoro case; Possession.

Shared or duplicate recall memories see Soul-fission.

Shasta, Mount see Mount Shasta.

Sheep. In the Welsh tale of Peredur, in the Mabino-gion, there are two flocks of sheep, one white, theother black, which were separated by a river. Everytime a white sheep crossed to the black sheep sideit turned black, while the opposite happened to ablack sheep crossing to the white side. One eso-teric interpretation of this is that the river is saidto represent the boundary between life and death.The white sheep crossing it represents the soul de-scending from heaven (death) to earth to be re-born, while the black sheep crossing it represents thesoul at death ascending to heaven.

See also East-West, Traveling.

Sheol (Hebrew: abyss, cave) see Elijah; Genesis;Hades; Harrowing of Hell; Hell; Numbers; OldTestament and the afterlife; Shinto/Shintoism;Unarius Academy of Science.

Shinto/Shintoism ( Japanese: Way of the spirits orgods). This is the native shamanic religion of Japan.Like many folk religions it did not originally havea very promising attitude towards an afterlife. Infact, the Shinto view was very similar to that of theancient Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheol in thatthe underworld was a place of gloomy shades. Itwas not until Buddhism was introduced into thecountry that a more positive vision of an afterlifewas offered the Japanese. One of the reasons forBuddhism’s great success in Japan was because of itpromise of rebirth into heavens and Pure Lands. Ofcourse, Buddhism also brought to Japan its firsttaste of purgatory ( Japanese: Jigoku). Since the in-troduction of Buddhism most Japanese have tendedto practice both religions side by side. As in manyfolk religions there is no clearly defined doctrinal ordogmatic view about the soul (tama or mitama) inShinto.

247 Shinto

See also Animism; Emma-o; Greek afterlife,the ancient; Hotoke; Old Testament and the af-terlife; Shadow or shade; Tama.

Shiva. In Hinduism this is one of the three personalmanifestations of the universal soul or self (Brah-man). When envisioned as just one of the threehigh gods he is simply called the Destroyer, as op-posed to Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Sus-tainer. But when worshipped as a completely sep-arate entity, particularly in the form of a dancingfigure (Nataraja: Lord of the Dance), Shiva dancesthe universe into being, sustains it by his rhythm,and eventually dances it into annihilation. As thegod of generation his symbol is the lingam. As Shivathe great meditating ascetic he also represents thegreat effort to liberate oneself from the round ofreincarnation.

Shotoku Taishi (574–622). The efforts of this im-perial Japanese prince and de facto ruler of Japanin the spread of Buddhism were great enough forhim to have been thought to be, not only the Bud-dha Shakya-muni (Gautama) reborn, but also tobe the one who will be reborn on earth in the fu-ture as the Buddha to come, Maitreya Buddha.

Sikhism. This is a religious sect founded in thePunjab (northwestern India) by Guru Nanak(1469– 1539) that originally sought to bridge thegap between Muslims and Hindus. Animosity be-tween these two very different religions turned outto be far too deeply seated to be bridged. This re-sulted in Nanak’s followers becoming a separateand autonomous sect from both Islam and Hindu-ism. While the sect adopted an undiluted mono-theism from Islam, it adopted its belief in karmaand reincarnation (awagaun) from Hinduism. TheSikhs, however, added to the Hindu view the Is-lamic idea of a last judgment, only with the Hindu-like belief that all souls, upon ceasing to reincarnate,would be absorbed back into God.

See also Eckankar; Kabirpanthi; Resurrectionor reincarnation.

Silent watchers. In Theosophy these are supremelyenlightened spirits who are more or less omniscientand who have taken upon themselves the role ofassisting mankind in its evolution. As omniscientthey are superior to the ascended masters.

See also Dweller on the Threshold.

Similes and rebirth. A number of similes havebeen employed to argue for rebirth. Among theseare the alternating of wakefulness and sleep, dayand night, summer and winter, and the fact that allthe cells in our body are said to undergo replace-ment at least every seven years. The use of suchsimiles may be very poetic, and on the surface seem

very apt, but a deeper look at them makes for avery weak argument for rebirth. The mental andphysical activity of an individual may be greatlyreduced in sleep compared to wakefulness, but thebody while asleep does not disintegrate as it does atdeath, nor does the planet earth as a whole changeradically (die) during its daily rotation or yearlyrevolution. Also, at no time in the process of cell re-placement does the body as a whole cease to func-tion.

See also Rebirth, analogies from nature.

Simon Magus (Simon the Magician or Sorcerer).This semi-legendary 1st century CE individualseems to have been a Gnostic teacher of some kind.As was not an uncommon among Gnostics, he be-lieved that the female personification of DivineWisdom (Greek: Sophia), the first emanation fromGod had, through some cosmic tragedy fallen fromheaven to earth and been trapped in a series ofearthly female embodiments, among which wasHelen of Troy. The salvation of mankind frommetempsychosis was impossible until she couldbe liberated. Legend has it that Simon foundSophia in her latest embodiment as a prostitute ina brothel in the Phoenician city of Tyre.

See also Fall of Souls; Gnosticism; Valentinus.

Single-direction rebirth see Rebirth, non-back-sliding; Transmigration.

Sinnett, Alfred Percy (1840–1921). Sinnett is theauthor of The Occult World (1881), Esoteric Bud-dhism (1883), Growth of the Soul: A Sequel to Eso-teric Buddhism (1896), and the article “ObscureProblems of Karma and Rebirth” (1902). Each ofthese works was written as a result of Sinnett’smeeting Helena Blavatsky (1879) and being converted to her Theosophy. The material for Es-oteric Buddhism was purportedly given to him bytwo members of the ascended masters (dhyanichohans), Mahatma (El) Morya and, especially,Master Koot Hoomi (Kuthumi). The letters thatformed the bases of Esoteric Buddhism were laterindependently published as The Mahatma Lettersto A.P. Sinnett (1924). Sinnett and his wife were also associated with the Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn, the pioneering ceremonial magicsociety.

See also Esoteric Buddhism; Soul and spiritlevels, Theosophical.

Sirius (dog star). This star in the constellationCanis Major is the brightest (true) star in thenorthern sky. It has been important in a number ofancient and not so ancient religious systems. Itsworship by some pagan Arab tribes is even men-tioned in the Quran (53:49). It has figured in sev-eral more modern occult systems in conjunction

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with the concept of reincarnation. Old Christianlore names it as the home of Lucifer.

See also Crowley, Edward Aleister; Solar Tem-ple, Order of.

Six sentient states of being see Bhavachakra.

Skandha/Khandha (S/P). This term is the collec-tive designation for the five causally conditionedfactors or aggregates of which a living being is com-posed, according to Buddhism. These five are body(rupa), feelings or sensations (vedana), perception(samjna/sanna), vijnana/vinnana (consciousness),and (samskara). The exact meaning of the termsamskara is debatable since it has a variety of defini-tions, one of which is subconscious habit patternsthat result from past experiences or simply karmicformations. A possible modern definition might begenetic dispositions. This five component analyt-ical schema was an attempt to explain the devel-opment and functioning of the body and mindcomplex without having to resort to a belief in apermanent soul that acts as the vitalizing agent ofa mere material body, in other words “a ghost inthe machine.” In other words, it is because no oneof these can be considered to be at the heart of self-hood that Buddhism theoretically teaches that thereis no permanent self (anatman). Various Buddhisttexts, however, have suggested that it is either sam-skara or vijnana that is involved with the rebirthprocess. This has led some critics to accuse Bud-dhism of teaching the existence of at least a tempo-rary self or soul despite Buddhist disclaimers not todo so.

While this Buddhist schema is far more natura-listic than the older soul as animating agent concept,it should not be assumed that it is a more scientificanalysis of the body-mind complex. The skandhaconcept arose to support a particular sectarian view,not to develop a scientific explanation.

See also Anatman; Death; Pratitya-samut-pada; Rebirth; Rebirth in Buddhism; Soul.

Social status in past lives. Critics of reincarnationhave sometimes claimed that most persons whopurport to remember past lives remember lives asupper status individuals despite the fact that mostof humanity has lived as low status individuals.The psychologist Helen Wambach is one of thefew that have tried to address this issue.

See also Cayce, Edgar; Egypt; Important per-son criticism.

Society for Psychical Research. This is the lead-ing organization in Great Britain for the study ofparanormal phenomena, including claims of vari-ous kinds of post-mortem survival. The Societywas established in 1882.

See also American Society for Psychical Re-search; Associations and organizations.

Society for Spiritual Regression. This organiza-tion was founded by Dr. Michael Newton, the au-thor of Journey of Souls (2003) and Destiny of Souls(2003). According to the Society’s website the So-ciety provides information and referral services topeople interested in achieving an experiential un-derstanding of their nature as an eternal spiritualbeing through the process of Life-Between-LivesSpiritual Regression. This method offers individu-als a means to access soul memories through atrance-induced “superconscious” state of aware-ness.

See also Associations and organizations.

Solar Temple, Order of (French: Ordre du Tem-ple Solaire). This order was founded in the 1980’sby Luc Jouret (1947– 1994) and Joseph Di Mambro(1924– 1994). As leaders of the order they taught amixture of AMORC Rosicrucianism, Egyptianmortuary occultism, Pyramidology, Knights Tem-plar mythology, and a belief in ascended mastersof the Great White Brotherhood who were thoughtto dwell in Agartha, a secret subterranean center.Both men believed strongly in reincarnation, infact, Jouret considered himself a reincarnation ofSaint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090– 1153), who wasa major influence in the establishment of the me-dieval military monastic order of the Poor Knightsof Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, in short,the Templars. Di Mambro believed that he was thereincarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh, of one ofthe apostles of Christ, and of an ascended masternamed Manatanus. The members of the SolarTemple order were mainly French speakers fromSwitzerland, France, and Quebec.

The order received world wide attention in Oc-tober of 1994 when authorities discovered that amass murder-suicide of five temple members inQuebec and forty-eight members in Switzerlandhad occurred. This was to be followed the next yearwith sixteen more deaths in France, in which someof the victims and been drugged, shot, and hadtheir bodies burned. Finally, in1997, there were fivemore suicides found, who appear to have burnedthemselves to death. As best as can be determinedthe motivation for these seventy-four deaths wasthe order’s belief that the world was very soon to ex-perience an apocalyptic transition from the Age ofPisces to the Age of Aquarius and that this wouldbe preceded by the earth being engulfed in fire.The only way to escape this catastrophe was to bespecially trained and prepared in some esotericfashion for a de-corporealization by the soul whichwould then be able to transit safely to the star Sir-ius A.

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The reason for the burning of the victim’s bod-ies seems to have been based on the idea that someof the de-corporealized souls might have lost cour-age after beginning their astral journey and triedto re-corporealize in their former bodies. Thiswould not be possible if the souls knew that theirbodies had been destroyed.

See also Agasha Temple of Wisdom; Crowley,Edward Aleister; Egypt; Heaven’s Gate; Koresh,David; Planets, other; Rosicrucians.

Solity. This term is said to refer to an individualsoul that, after several dozen lives, integrates all thepositive aspects of its past personalities into a sin-gle super-personality (solity). This super-personal-ity itself does not as a whole re-embody; instead itregenerates a series of new individual personalitiesthat will, one by one, re-embody. In the process ofwinnowing the positive from the negative aspectsof the past lives, the negative aspects must be prop-erly disposed of. This may be done by voluntarilydraining the negativity into a “sewer lifetime”which is a life characterized by moral, emotional,and/or physical ill health. Since it is an end processin creating the solity, presumably this life, unlikemost other ill characterized lives, would not involvethe acquisition of new negative karma.

Solomon, King see Jesus; Phoenix; PistisSophia; Proverb 8:22–31; Rastafarians; Rosicru-cians; Star of David or Sign of Solomon; Wisdomof Solomon 8:19–20.

Solomon, Temple of see Sciomancy; Solar Tem-ple, Order of; Templars.

Somatic rebirth. This is a supposedly more sci-entific name for reincarnation. Presumably it couldbe turned into the verb re-ensomatization.

See also Existential seriality; Hetero-recogni-tion.

Soteriology. (From the Greek soter: savior). Thisis the study of religious salvation. For example, thevarious methods by which the soul is liberated fromthe round of rebirth and re-death (samsara) wouldbe considered soterial or soteriological in nature.Soteriology is closely related to eschatology.

See also Karmic eschatology; Ontology; Pro-tology; Rebirth eschatology.

Soul. This term is commonly understood as beingone or more metaphysical elements of selfhood thatis/are non-material or non-physical in nature andis able to continue to exist after the death and/or de-struction of the body.

Jerome Elbert, in his Are Souls Real? (2000), sug-gests that we could classify souls into four types—the life soul, the ego soul, the free soul, and the

surviving soul. The first of these has been thoughtto be what all living things (plants to people) haveand which distinguish them from non-living mat-ter. When an organism loses this soul it dies. Thistype of soul could also be called a life-force and hasbeen accepted by much of mankind over the mil-lennia. The second soul type would be what carriesthe mental, emotional, and other aspects of an egoand as such is traditionally associated with humanbeing alone. The third would be the soul or entitythat can freely leave the human body during sleepor unconsciousness and has been traditionally asso-ciated with dreams and out-of-the-body experiences.The fourth type would be that which survives thedeath of the body for a longer or shorter time andoccupies an afterlife world or re-embodies itself.

It is rare to find belief systems that keep thesesoul types clearly delineated and it is far more com-mon to find a belief in souls that are mixed or haveoverlapping aspects of these. In fact, Elbert men-tioned the “comprehensive immortal soul” as onethat would be a unification of all four types.

The very fact that any definition of a soul can haveat least as many aspects as Elbert offers demon-strates the problem of finding a single or universaldefinition of soul. A good example of this problemcan be found with the ancient Egyptian under-standing of soul in that, unlike most modern west-ern definitions of the soul, the Egyptian one didnot exclude the physical body. The whole point tothe great expenditure on mummification of thedead body demonstrates this. The Egyptians be-lieved that if the dead body was not in some man-ner preserved from destruction the various non-material aspects of selfhood, the “ba,” the “ka,” thespiritual aspect of the physical heart, the name(ren), and the shadow would be unable to retainany personal identity; therefore, they would eitheraltogether cease to exist or, at best, would cease tohave any meaningful existence.

When dealing with the modern day issue of thesoul, a very careful distinction must be made be-tween the Western ( Judeo-Christian-Islamic) con-cept of it and the various Indian concepts of it,whether Hindu, Jain, or Buddhist. This is espe-cially so when dealing with the issue of the reten-tion of personal memories and personality traitswhich are of crucial significance to the Westernmind, but not necessarily to the Indian mind.

The Western view of the soul generally envisionsit as a permanent or eternally abiding carrier of anintensely personal identity (memories), which as amoral agent is itself the object of salvation. In theHindu view, the soul is a never changing imper-sonal entity (atman) that is surrounded by a set ofsheaths that contain the various changeable ele-ments of individuality or personality.

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When Buddhism, at least in theory, denies thewhole concept of an eternal soul it is even denyingthe atman as a permanence entity. Buddhism indenying any eternal self factor says that the onlything that one could possibly identify with as a selfis a subtle constantly changing compound. Thisposition is based on the two Buddhist concepts ofimpermanence (S: anitya) of all conditioned thingsand the psychophysical aggregate (Skandha) na-ture of sentient bodies.

In both Western religion and non–Buddhist In-dian religions a major characteristic assigned to thesoul after immortality is that of autonomy. How-ever, the early Buddhist canon points out that oneshould not associate anything called self with realautonomy. A person can not successfully commandhimself not to become sick, not to age, and not todie. In all of these the person is powerless or sub-ject to forces other than a self. To believe other-wise is to be deluded, which leads to a life of painfulfrustration or duhkha. This lack of autonomy ofsoul (self ) should not be confused with any kind offatalistic determinism because Buddhism has al-ways upheld the freedom and ability of each per-son to liberate his or her practical or conventionalself.

From a Buddhist perspective to try to identifywith any other impermanent autonomous-lessworldly phenomenon as a self, or a self with any-thing that seems at least semi-permanent and semi-autonomous, only results in a false sense of securitywhich guarantees the person still further frustra-tion, anxiety and grief. This is the case, whetherthat semi-permanence is some concrete presentlyreality or some imaginary factor associated witheternalism such as God. This is why the Buddhistscriptures (S: sutras; P: suttas) say that any graspingafter a theory of soul (self ), hence egotism, is asdefeating to the realization of nirvana (the realdeathless) as is grasping after sensual pleasure.

While some Western critics have seen the ideaof no-soul/-self (anatman) as a threat to morality,Buddhism has also pointed out that to believe in apermanent self is the basis of our efforts to benefitourselves at the expense of others. To let go of thisbelief can lead to living a selfless and morally up-right life.

Despite all the Buddhist belief in no-soul/-selfit must be understood that Buddhism is not sayingthat there is no practical I or self that functions inthe every day world. This temporary self is easily ac-knowledged by Buddhism, but only as a mortaland world dependent self versus any so-called eter-nal and autonomous self.

Clearly the standard Buddhist teaching of no-soul (self ) seems in diametric opposition to the soul(self ) beliefs of such Indian religions as Hinduism

and Jainism, but this may be more the case on thesurface than below it. The Jains have always held tothe idea of individual souls that, upon final liber-ation from the material body lose all individualpersonality characteristics and ascend into a cos-mic realm where they remain eternally in a state ofextreme blissfulness.

In the Hindu Upanishads there is teaching aboutan eternal soul (self ) or atman that is really a part ofa universal soul (self ) or Brahman or God. The goalin this Hindu view is to realize Brahman as impersonalbeingness, consciousness and bliss. Having achievedsuch realization the soul upon death is liberated bybeing dissolved into the beingness of Brahman.

At a first glance nothing could be more differentfrom one another than the Buddhist no (personal)soul (self ), the Jain’s very real, but absolutely iso-lated soul (self ), and the Upanishadic universal,but impersonal soul (self ). However, from a psy-chological perspective they may amount to moreor less the same thing. All three deny the personaluniqueness and importance of the individual; eachsees the illusion of individuality as the real sourceof suffering; and all three agree that once individ-uality is abolished enlightenment and liberation isguaranteed once and for all. Thus, both the Bud-dhist denial of soul (self ) and the non–Buddhistaffirmation of impersonal soul (self ) might be seenas just two sectarian or dogmatic explanations of asingle pan–Indian attitude.

The most obvious problem with the Buddhistrejection of a soul is that this ought to leave noth-ing that could be reborn into a new body. Yet stan-dard Buddhism insists that such rebirth occurs. Because of this dilemma, as well as the religious re-quirement that East Asian people venerate the soulsof their ancestors, folk Buddhism has more or lessacknowledged the reality of a soul in all but name.

If all of the preceding were not enough to dem-onstrate that the common Western view of the soul,as requiring personal identity, is not merely a cul-turally relative view, then the issue of the multi-plicity versus singularity of the soul should be asufficient demonstration of such relativity. In manycultures the Western idea of a single unified soul isreadily replaced with a dual or even multiple-soul.The Chinese, Eskimos, and most African peoplesenvision a concept of a duality of souls, while theearlier example of the ancient Egyptian “ba andka,” etc. is a multiple soul concept. This would ap-pear to lead back to a minimal definition for thesoul, namely, that it is the element of selfhood thatis not annihilated with the death of the body. This,however, would still be misleading in that the var-ious biblical understandings of the soul conflicteven with such a minimal definition.

The earliest biblical concepts of the soul mention

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it under the Hebrew term nephesh (Arabic: Nafs)which, while the body was alive, was the nepheshhayyim (breath of life) and when the body was deadit was the nephesh met (dead breath). But thenephesh as an animating force could also apply toGod, Himself. However, when confined to man-kind this nephesh was only distinguishable from thebody by the fact that it could have some vagueghostly existence after the death of the body.

What is most important to understand is thatthe nephesh was never thought of as an inner essen-tial self because the early Jews never conceived of areal self as something not in the physical body. Infact, in some cases the soul was regarded as syn-onymous with the person’s blood, as in Deuteron-omy 12:23. This, obviously, has little to do withwhat modern people envision as a soul.

The ancient Jews also referred to somethingcalled the Ruah or Ruach (Arabic: ruh) which isgenerally translated as spirit. Etymologically it im-plies air in motion, hence the wind or the breath.At times the terms nephesh and ruah are used inter-changeably, but more often ruah was more closelyassociated with God than with man. In otherwords, ruah, rather than being the mere animat-ing ability of the nephesh, could be understood asthe creative power of God. Even when applied toa person ruah suggested a greater than normal, di-vinely supplied, energy or strength on the part ofthe person. This is most obvious when in the OldTestament it is written that the Spirit of God (RuahElohim) inspires men with great courage, wisdom,artistic genius, and prophecy.

When the Old Testament was translated intoGreek its translators always equated nephesh with theGreek psyche, but rarely equated ruah with psyche.Most of the time ruah was translated as the Greekpneuma (spirit), which also had a connotation ofwind and breath.

The definition as to what is and what is not thehuman soul, biblically, is further complicated bythe fact that the person in the earliest parts of theOld Testament is dichotomic which is to say thatof a two-fold body and soul. Only in the later partsof the Old Testament does the trichotomy of body,soul, and spirit making a significant appearance.In contrast, through the trichotomic influence ofPaul of Tarsus, Christianity in general adopted atrichotomic view of man.

It is true that in the New Testament the psyche(soul) and pneuma (spirit) of the living person areoften accepted as equivalent to one another, espe-cially in the Gospels. However, in the writings ofPaul, the psyche is never equated with the pneuma.This is because the psyche has had no natural or in-herent capacity to survive death ever since the “Sinof Adam” deprived it of its original inherent right

to immortality. In other words, the psyche is auto-matically bound to the body (soma) or flesh (sarx),but the pneuma is not; therefore, when somethingspecifically concerning the human will or desire isimplied psyche is the term that is exclusively used,as in Jude 19, where the term “psychikos” has beenvariously translated as “natural man” or “unspiri-tual.”

The New Testament further makes it clear thatwhen the spirit (pneuma) is withdrawn, the soulsleeps in a kind of suspended state until the mes-sianic resurrection and final judgment of the dead.Some Christian theologists try to settle the soul tospirit relationship by proposing a distinction be-tween a human spirit (pneuma tou anthropou) andthe Spirit of God or Holy Spirit (Pneuma Hagion).Finally, it should be noted that despite what Chris-tian orthodoxy demands, the “popular” Christianview of the human being is dichotomic, with theterms soul and spirit being synonymous. This isnot due to a preference for an Old Testament viewover a New Testament one, but a long held prefer-ence for the simpler classical Greek view of the per-son as a mortal body and an inherently immortalsoul.

See also Amrita; Arguments pro and con onan afterlife in general; Body-soul dualism; Chi-nese Religion and Reincarnation; Creationism,soul; Gender issue of the soul; Generationismand Traducianism; Greek afterlife, the ancient;Egypt; Individuality and rebirth; Infusionism;Kabbalah; Karma and justice; Linga Sharia;Memories, ancestral or genetic; Memories, rea-sons for loss of past life; Memory, Episodic;Mental plane; Mind; Nafs and Ruh; New Testa-ment and reincarnation; Nusayris (Nursaris);Old Testament and the afterlife; Old Testamentand the soul; Original sin, Christianity, andreincarnation; Pineal and pituitary gland; Pneu-matikoi; Population increase issue; Rebirth fac-tor; Rebirth, qualifications for; Rebirth, simul-taneous; Scientology; Soul, Fixed and Free; Souland spirit levels, Theosophical; Soul, origin ofthe; Soul, tripartite; Soul’s existence prior toembodiment; Trichotomy.

Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical. The Theoso-phical movement as started by Helena P. Blavatskyand others, as well as several of its offshoots, suchas those of Rudolf Steiner and Alice Bailey, envi-sioned a seven level (septenary) esoteric body-soul-spirit system which is more complex than in mostother metaphysical systems. Each of these individ-uals used slightly different terms for the various lev-els, which has lead to a fair amount of confusion be-tween their respective systems.

The earliest of these septenary listings appears

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to come from Fragments of Occult Truth by A. O.Hume in the Theosophist, Oct. 1881. Here they werelisted from the lowest to the highest levels as phys-ical body (rupa); vital principle or jiv-atma; astralbody or linga sharia; astral shape or kama rupa(body of desire); animal, physical intelligence, orconsciousness of ego; higher or spiritual intelli-gence, or spiritual ego; spirit or the absolute. Thislisting was soon modified in the book Esoteric Bud-dhism by A. P. Sinnett, who gave the followingorder: rupa (physical body), prana-jiva (vitality),linga-sharia (astral body), kama-rupa (animalsoul), manas (human soul), buddhi (spiritual soul),and atma (spirit). Various later theosophical list-ings included seven out of the following eightterms. These were the physical (body) sthulasharira; the etheric body or prana; astral body orlinga sharira; mental body (manas); intuitional orbuddhi; spiritual, nirvanic or atmic; monadic oranupadaka; and the divine or adi. Still another,though rarer, septenary version considered thefourth place kama-rupa as will- form, but placedthe animal soul in fifth place with the translationof linga deha (body) . The sixth place had spiritualsoul, which was translated as both atman andmayavi-rupa (illusory body); and in seventh placewas spirit or maha-atma.

Taking into consideration the most common ver-sion, little needs to be said about the physical body(rupa or sthula sharira), but the others do needssome further explanation. The etheric body (pranaor prana-jiva) is considered to be the basic animat-ing factor for the physical body, which would beinanimate matter without it. Death then is the sep-aration of the etheric body from the physical body.The astral body is sometimes called the dream bodysince it is thought to be able to partially divorce it-self from the sleeping physical body and ethericparts and travel during that time, leaving us withour dreams. The astral body is also called the de-sire body, since it the seat of the emotional life.Shortly after physical death the etheric body dis-solves which leaves the astral body free to reflecton the past life of the deceased person.

The manas is said to have a dual nature or alower level and a higher level. It is the lower manas,which, while not directly partaking of embodi-ment, is able to transmit higher truth to the embod-ied levels. The term buddhi is from Sanskrit budhmeaning “enlighten,” as the word implies this islevel of enlightened consciousness. The atmic is de-rived from atma, a shortened form of atman and isthe self as one with the universal divine spirit,hence the deified self. The term anupadaka means“parent-less or self-existing” and adi means “thefirst or primordial.”

In theosophical and related systems there seems

to be agreement mostly on the lower two levelnames, and disagreement on all the names for thepositions above those two. For example, the lingasharira, as noted above, is the equivalent of the as-tral body in some texts, yet other texts equate itwith the much higher causal body. Also, the termkama rupa (desire body) which in some texts is thesame as the astral body, in other texts is given theposition just above the astral body and when thishappens the manas is forced into the position allo-cated to the intuitional body. Likewise, the termbuddhi may be used for the second to the highestrather than the as the fourth level; hence, it wouldbe the equivalent of the spiritual body (spiritualsoul); while the atmic may be used at the highestlevel in the sense of the divine as atma, rather thanas a synonym for the spiritual level. There, at least,seems some agreement among most of these sys-tems that the terms soul and spirit are not synony-mous. The soul refers only to the lower level self,while spirit refers to the higher level self.

The terms etheric, astral, mental, and causal arealso used by other New Age teachers less connectedto Theosophy, such as John-Roger Hinkins, whoin breaking away from the Eckankar movement,established his own Movement of Spiritual InnerAwareness Church.

See also Astral travel; Buddhism, esoteric;Consciousness and Mind; Devachan; Id, ego,and superego; Kabbalah; Monad; Soul.

Soul and rebirth in Ch’an and Zen Buddhismsee Rebirth in Zen.

Soul cohorts. These are two or more souls whohave lived and interacted with one another in onelife and wish to continue that interaction into thenext life by being reborn under circumstances thatwill maximize the chances for that continued inter-action.

See also Soul family.

Soul, collective. It is believed by the most West-ern reincarnationists that only beings that have fullself-awareness have individual souls and that eachanimal species, or maybe each genus of a non-self-aware animal, and possibly even plants, have a sin-gle collective soul. Presumably our pre-hominidancestors also had only a collective soul, but uponour species evolving self-awareness that collectivesoul broke into individual souls. It should be notedthat this would make it impossible for animals tobe reborn as humans or humans as animals. Thiswould also make it impossible to use the animalkingdom to solve the population increase issue.

This evolutionary view would also suggest thatthere was only one point in time that individualself-aware souls evolved out of the collective. This

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being the case, there should be only a very limitednumber of souls available for reincarnation. Itwould seem that the only way then to account foran increased population of souls would be throughsoul-fission or creation of new souls by God.

The term collective soul should not be confusedwith the term group soul, since in the collectivethere have never been any formerly discernable sep-arate entities that make up that soul as is the casewith a group soul.

See also Creationism, soul; Ontological leap orontological discontinuity.

Soul creationism see Creationism, soul.

Soul Darwinism. This is the concept that therehas been a gradual evolution of the human soulthat parallels the evolution of the human body.Soul Darwinism has a distinct problem when itcomes to the theory of reincarnation in that it tiesthe soul so tightly to a limited number of our an-cestral bodies. Because of this tie there is no expla-nation for where the new fully evolved souls of theever increasing human population come from. Inother words, there is no surplus of souls in a spiritworld to reincarnate.

See also Generationism and Traducianism;Ontological leap or ontological discontinuity;Population increase issue; Rebirth and the sci-entific theory of biological evolution; Soul, col-lective; Soul, origin of the.

Soul, external. This is the belief that the soul of aperson, rather than residing within that person’sown physical body, resides in a separate body exter-nal to the person. This external body can be an an-imal, more often than not, a wild one versus a do-mesticated one; a plant, especially a tree; or even aninanimate object, such as a weapon, tool, roof of thehouse, or an amulet. The person who has identifiedthe residing body of his soul tries to be very care-ful about the safety of that body since it is believedthat if it is harmed or destroyed, the same will hap-pen to the person. James Frazer, in his The GoldenBough (1963) has a detailed chapter on this externalsoul concept. There is no information on whetheror not an external soul can be subject to reincarna-tion.

See also Ob Ugrians.

Soul family. This refers to a group of companionswith whom a person has shared past lives and,therefore, among which karmic ties have developed.

See also Karma, family; Rebirth, consan-guineous; Rebirth, group; Soul cohorts; Soul-siblings.

Soul-fission. This is the idea that souls could ac-tually split or duplicate themselves asexually like

an amoeba. It is one of the proposed solutions to thepopulation increase issue.

This solution, however, leads to several ques-tions. (1) Do all souls divide or do only some soulsdivide? (2) Do souls automatically fission or do theydo so only under specific circumstances and whatwould those circumstances be? (3) If only somesouls divide, what determines which souls divideand do not divide? (4) Do souls divide during theinterim period or in the embodied period?

This soul-fission concept could actually justifytwo or more persons claiming to have been thesame person in a past life. In other words, it couldaccount for the number of people claiming to havebeen Cleopatra or Louis XIV. In this regard, soul-fission would be similar to the swarm of bees the-ory. Soul-fission is not to be confused with soulfragmentation.

See also Cleopatra syndrome; Embodiment,moment of; Generationism and Traducianism;Home, Daniel Douglas; Soul, collective; Soul,origin of the; Soul twins.

Soul fragmentation. This is the idea that the soulcan divide into two or more parts when reincar-nating although at some point each of these partswill seek to reunite. In the mean time it is thoughtpossible that one living person may meet anotherperson unaware that they share the fragments ofthe same soul. One aspect of this theory is thatwhen two or more of those formerly separately em-bodied souls reunite the person could have the re-call-memory of two or more individuals that livedat the same time. Soul fragmentation is not to beconfused with soul-fission in that in the latter casethere is no reunification of the divisions.

See also Hypnosis; Rebirth, simultaneous;Soul mates; Swarm of bees theory

Soul, free see American Indians; AustralianAborigines; Soul.

Soul fusion see Embryonic fusion.

Soul groups. This term is not to be confused withthe term group soul. Soul groups are said to befamilies of souls that may have up to thousands ofindividual members which in various manners sup-port each other through the reincarnation process.It is further thought by some that these families aredivided into smaller groups called tribes, whichcontinually reincarnate around the same time andplace. An even smaller and more intimate soulgroup would be smaller families with karmic ties.

See also Celestine Prophecy; Karma, family;Rebirth, group.

Soul imprinting see Passing-Memories Adop-tion.

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Soul injection theory see Ontological leap orontological discontinuity.

Soul intrusion. This is said to be the rather rareprocess whereby part of one person’s soul, inten-tionally or unintentionally, intrudes into anotherperson’s soul. The cause of such an intrusion isthought to be due to some trauma experienced byone or both of the souls. It has been suggested thatsuch an intrusion can last over several lifetimescausing much distress to both souls.

See also Death trauma.

Soul mates. This term has been used in a narrowsense to signify a relationship of only two souls thateither are closely related to one another and/or insome manner interact with one another over manylife times. The term also has a broader meaning ofmore than two souls in a relationship over manylives. The narrower sense of the term can be tracedback at least as far as the romantic Greek mythmentioned in the Symposium of Plato that told thestory of the division of all the primordial souls intopairs, which ever since have sought to find and reunite with one another. One of the lesser argu-ments supportive of rebirth is that the phenom-enon of “love at first sight” is the immediate recog-nition between soul mates on their first meeting innew lives.

It should be emphasized that the romantic, evenoptimistic, nature of the Platonic story is far morea Western creation, than an Eastern one. In Hin-duism, Buddhism, and Jainism rebirth is prima-rily a punitive condition caused by worldly desires,therefore, to wish that you and your mate be re-born to meet again is to wish that you and yourmate suffer again. According to the rules of karmathis well might happen, but not to the joy of ei-ther party. Also, there is nothing to prevent karmafrom bringing one into a “hatred at first sight” re-lationship. In short, karma is not given to roman-ticism.

Since in Christianity the soul’s existence priorto embodiment is denied, there is no orthodoxbasis for a soul mates concept and certainly not insuch a romantic form as the so-called “marriagemade in heaven.” However, the pagan Greek soulmate concept has a loose analogy in the Judeo-Christianity tradition by way of the biblical mythin Genesis 2:23, where God creates Eve out ofAdams flesh (rib) after which Adam says, “Nowthis, at last—/bone from my bones,/flesh from myflesh?—/this shall be called woman [Hebrew:ishshah],/for from man [Hebrew: ish] was thistaken.” This is followed by the narrator’s statement,“That is why a man leaves his father and mother andis united to his wife, and the two become oneflesh.” Using this biblical justification it can be seen

how easy it was for the pagan Greek soul mate at-titude to enter Christianity and even more so inKabbalic Judaism where successful or unsuccessfulmarriages depend on finding one’s soul mate.

According to the Grace-Loehr Life Readingstrue soul mates are, Symposium-like, the two halvesof an originally undivided soul; however, whilemany people look for their soul mates, the twohalves “purposely” do not come together very oftenbecause to do so makes their togetherness so satis-fying that they lose the desire for further growthand development. To prevent this one mate re-mains un-embodied while the other is embodied.

Soul mates, in a broader sense, do not necessar-ily require that there be only two souls, or that thesouls be those of lovers or to even be amicable. Itcan include three or more family members, friends,business partners, teachers and students, even en-emies. It is also thought that such soul mates maynot be present in every rebirth, but only in thosewhere they are able to further fulfill their commondestiny.

A number of past life memories have impliedthat a process of role reversal is often a significantaspect of soul mate relationships. This is where apresent-life husband might have been a past life father, brother, or son. It is also, where the genderroles of husband and wife, mother and son, etc.may have been reversed.

The author Gloria Chadwick, in her Reincarna-tion and Your Past Life Memories (1988), dividessoul mates into three categories—companion soulmates, twin soul mates, and twin flame soul mates.The first refers to persons that one has spent onlya brief time with in a past life and who help one toaccomplish a goal or to fulfill a specific purpose inthis life because the soul mate did the same forthem in a past life. Beyond this the bond betweenone and the other is not very strong. With a twinsoul mate the bond is much stronger. These arepersons with whom one has shared various lives of close friendship or family relationships. Thestrongest bond is between a person and his or hertwin flame soul mate who is a soul mate in thetruest way possible for, according to Chadwick,each person has only one such soul mate. This is theperson who one falls deeply in love with at firstsight and he or she reciprocates; however, a persondoes not meet a flame twin in every life. Eventhough both do not share all lifetimes together, to-gether or separately both mates are working to-wards spiritually evolving in similar ways.

See also Anamnesis; Cycle mates; Gender issueof the soul; Homosexuality and transsexuality;Karmic romances; Plato; Ramtha; Rebirth, Eastand West; Rebirth, group; Soul fragmentation;Soul groups; Soul twins.

255 Soul

Soul-personality. Among some Rosicrucians manis considered to be composed of a mortal body; areincarnating soul-personality; and an immortal,perfect, and non-reincarnating soul. The soul-per-sonality suggests something like the Hindu rein-carnating part of the soul, while the non-reincar-nating part would be the equivalent of the atman.

Soul, psychology of. A psychological investiga-tion of why people believe in a soul, or for thatmatter believe in spirits, gods, or God, goes back toat least to the early 19th century, but that investi-gation depended as much on philosophy as it didon science. This was even true of the early 20thcentury depth psychology of Freud and Jung. Ithas only been from the mid 20th century thatsufficient understanding of the human mind hasbeen achieved that this investigation came to bebased upon more verifiable scientific data.

According to some psychologists one source of asoul belief is the “Agent Detection Factor,” whichis the tendency to assume the presence of an agentbehind otherwise agent-less motions. It wouldseem that this factor was originally one of the sur-vival mechanisms that we inherited from our pre-historic ancestors. If a caveman was out huntingand his peripheral vision detected motion it wasultimately safer to assume that it was related to anagent, such as a predatory animal, than to some-thing as harmless as a bush bending in the breeze.If it was a bush he lost nothing; if it was a preda-tor, he had a chance to defend himself. This agentdetection factor means that the human brain isprimed to presume the working of an agent (spirit,deity, etc) behind any number of events or occur-rences in the world to which logic would not nec-essarily assign agency.

A second source of soul belief is due to our“causal reasoning.” The human brain has the capac-ity and tendency to impose a chronological andcause-effect narrative on even the most obviouslyrandom events. We are very reluctant to accept ap-parently meaningless reasons for things thatstrongly affect our lives. In other words, we auto-matically ask “Why something happened?” and ifwe can not find an easy answer, we may very well,if only semi-consciously, invent a meaningful rea-son, even though it may not be complimentary toour self-image; for example, “It happened becauseof our breaking a taboo.”

A third source of soul belief is a social intuitionconcept called the “Theory of Mind,” also, knownas “Folk-psychology.” This is essentially our abil-ity to assume the existence of minds other than ourown, or more specifically, it is the ability to imag-ine oneself in another person’s head. This may seemsuch a totally inherent ability as not to even need

a specially labeled theory to remind us of it; but itis not as inherent as it at first seems. Severely autis-tic individuals are more or less incapable of imag-ining being in another’s mental world, which is whythey have such difficulties in managing any socialrelationships.

The ability to imagine oneself as if in anotherliving person also allows one to imagine himself asexisting outside of his own body, that is to say as abodiless entity (soul or spirit). An extension of thisfolk-psychology makes it nearly impossible for aperson to think about not being able to think; orin other words, impossible to conceptualize one-self as not existing.

Finally, it would seem that if to the elements ofagent detection factor, causal reasoning, and the-ory of mind, we add the ability to vividly dreamof the deceased, we have more than enough sourcesto not merely allow for, but to encourage, a beliefin the post-mortem existence of the individual insome manner.

See also Dreams; Dreams, lucid.

Soul-siblings. These are two or more souls whichwere biological siblings in their past lives and stillfeel a bond even though they are not biologically re-lated in their present life.

Soul, Stoic. In classical Greek Stoicism the soulwas often regarded as a particle of God (apospasmatou theu). This view was later adopted by severalforms of ancient Gnosticism and modern Theos-ophy.

Soul travel see Astral travel; Essenes; Greek af-terlife, the ancient; Hades; Plato

Soul, tripartite. A number of cultures have viewedthe soul as less of a unity and more of a composite.A belief in a composite soul of three parts was es-pecially common in the Greco-Roman and laterthe Christian world.

Plato, in his Phaedrus, seems to have been oneof the earliest recorded advocates of this tripartiteconcept. According to Plato’s there is the lowestsoul or appetitive soul (epithumia) that resides in thestomach or navel region and/or groin; the interme-diary, passionate, or spirited soul (thumos) that is lo-cated in the heart; and the rational soul (nous or tologistikon) that dwells in the head. This scheme gaverise to the myth that the human body wasspecifically created by the divine with a narrowneck in order to isolate the rational soul from toomuch contamination from the other two souls.Also, it was only the rational soul that would un-dergo metempsychosis.

A somewhat later triad schema suggested byPlato is found in his Republic. In this there is a sin-gle soul that has three elements to it. The first of

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these is the appetitive element and this is respon-sible for the numerous demanding and yet conflict-ing desires of a person. The second is the judgmen-tal element and this is responsible for rationalthought. The third is the spiritual element and it is responsible for control of the appetite elementand the longing for spiritual autonomy. Plato re-garded these three aspects of the soul as beingreflected in society at large. The general populacerepresented the appetite element, the statesmanrepresented the judgmental element, and the army-police (in the ideal state) represented the spiritualelement.

Modern democratic society might look strangelyupon Plato’s equating the higher spiritual aspect ofthe soul with the either military forces or police,but one’s to remember two things about Plato.First, he was no lover of democratic rule, since he related it to the appetitive part of the soul; hispolitical ideal was of an aristocracy (Greek: gov-ernment of the best) of philosophers lead by aphilosopher-king. Second, in Plato’s ideal state thearmy-police would act as a benevolent source fororder. However, Plato was an enemy of any kind oftyranny.

Plato is not the only source for a tripartite vi-sion of the soul. Aristotle, in his De anima, dividesthe soul into the vegetable (anima herba), animal orsensitive (anima bruta), and human or rational lev-els (anima humana). The first is concerned with nu-trition and growth, the second with sense experi-ence and movement, and the third with rationalthought. There seems to be some question as towhether Aristotle believed in the immortality ofthe soul, but if he did it was only of the rationalpart, the nous. This tripartite soul view of Aristo-tle is in keeping with the spirit of Plato’s earliersoul view.

The Romans had an alternative tripartite soul.For them there was the manes that at death wenteither to the Elysium Fields or to Tartarus, theanima (spirit) that returned to the gods, and theumbra (shadow) that stayed near the deceased body.

A much later version of the tripartite soul isfound in the Kabbalah. Here the lowest, vegetative,or life soul is the nephesh; the vital or speaking soulis the ruah (spirit); and the highest part of the soul,the rational soul, is called the neshamah. This thirdand highest soul level is sometimes described as theangelic or even divine aspect of the soul. There isa disagreement among Kabbalist writers as towhether all three parts of the soul undergo gilgul(transmigration) or only the first two levels. LaterKabbalists added two more levels to the soul mak-ing it a pentad. This, however, remained less pop-ular than the three-fold soul.

The tripartite soul is not to be confused with the

trichotomy of later Christianity, which views, notjust the soul, but the whole person as a three-foldof body, soul, and spirit.

See also Aquinas, Thomas; Augustine, SaintAurelius; Old Testament and the afterlife; OldTestament and the soul; Zhen Dao.

Soul twins. This term can refer to three differentphenomena. First, in some metaphysical systemssouls are thought, not only to be bisexual, but tohave the capacity for temporary reincarnation intwo separate bodies, each of a different sex. Sec-ond, this is where two souls are said to come intoindividualized existence, usually by being drawnout from the same part of the universal soul, at thesame time. This creates a very strong bound be-tween the two, although not as strong as soulmates, which are two parts of the same originalsoul-body. Soul twins, more so than soul mates,are thought by some to have no restrictions on theirbeing contemporarily embodied. Third, there isconsiderable debate about the nature of the souls inidentical twins, triplets, etc. as they develop in thewomb. One view is that an embryo acquires a soulat the moment of conception, in which case twoor more fetuses arising from the same embryowould have to either all share a single soul, or theoriginal soul would have to undergo soul-fission,the division of an original single soul into two ormore identical souls, one for each fetus.

In an alternate view, it is assumed that the fetusdoes not acquire its soul until some later intrauter-ine stage when such fission is no longer possibleand the two or more fetuses are clearly individual-ized. A major current view is that such fissionwould cease to be possible somewhere between theend of the second and third week of gestation. Aneven simpler possibility would be that the soul doesnot taken on bodily form until the moment of birthor very shortly afterwards (postpartum). In thesecases there would really be no reason to even speakof twin souls.

According to Edgar Cayce, Adam and Eve, andJesus and Mary his mother were soul twins in theabove first sense.

See also Cycle mates; Embryonic fusion; Gen-der issue of the soul; Twins, identical.

Soul, virgin. This term can imply either a soulnever before embodied and/or a soul that has beenso freed from material impressions as to be as pureas it was before its first embodiment.

Souls, complementary. This refers to souls thatare so similar in temperament and personality asto be near copies of one another. Such souls arethought to travel through lives together, especiallyas twins or triplets.

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Soul’s existence prior to embodiment This is thebelief that souls exists prior to any conception of anembryo; that souls existed prior to the physical evo-lution of mankind; or even that souls existed beforethe start of life on earth. Obviously, all versions ofrebirth imply pre-existence in some manner, butall versions of pre-existence do not automaticallyimply rebirth. For example, the gospel of Johnclearly attributes pre-existence to Jesus (John 1:1–2,8:58, and 17:24), but in none of these passages ismetempsychosis suggested.

See also Aetherius Society; Church Council of553; Creationism, soul; Infusionism; Gender issueof the soul; Generationism and Traducianism;Kabbalah; Mormonism; Nemesius; Origin or Ori-genes Adamanthus; Pre-existiani; Scientology;Soul, origin of the; Unarius Academy of Science.

Souls, fixed and free. The fixed soul is one that isregarded as essential for the maintenance of all nor-mal physical processes of the body in which it dwells.The free soul is one that can leave and return to thebody without a major disruption of the life processes.In many cultures it is believed that everyone hasboth kinds of souls with the free one being able togo and come during sleep or in shamanic trance.

See also American Indians; Australian Aborig-ines; Dreams; Soul.

Souls, multiple. In many cultures the soul is notconsidered to be a simple unified entity. Rather itmay be composed of two or more independent parts.This concept was especially widespread amongNorth American Indians, except in the Southwestarea; and is also found among the Ob Ugarins.

See also Chinese Religion and Reincarnation;Egypt; Nupe; Rebirth, simultaneous; Soul frag-mentation; Souls; Swarm of bees theory; ZhenDao.

Soul, origin of the. Speculation on the origin ofsouls is of far less concern for Eastern religions thanfor Western ones. In Hinduism, Buddhism, andJainism the origin of souls is pushed so far backinto time that their origin is a mute point; more-over, these three traditions accept that animal soulscan transmigrate into human bodies just as humansouls can transmigrate into animal bodies. Thisfurther frees those traditions from speculating onthe origins of souls.

Among many Westerner reincarnationists theissue of origins is not so easily avoided. Most West-ern advocates of reincarnation accept that souls mayhave pre-existed either since the beginning of theuniverse or at least prior to the evolution of thehuman body from that of the ape. This has givenrise to the question, “What bodies, if any, did soulsinhabit before the human bodies came into exis-

tence?” This question is especially problematic forthose Western believers who reject the possibility ofhuman souls ever inhabiting an animal form. Oneof the easier ways to answer this question is to in-ject some form of intelligent design (creator God)into the issue.

See also Animals, domesticated; Animism;Creationism, soul; Fall of Souls; Generationismand Traducianism; Infusionism; Kabbalah;Karma and the moral structure of the universe;Ontological leap or ontological discontinuity;Population increase issue; Rebirth and the sci-entific theory of biological evolution; Soul, col-lective; Soul Darwinism; Soul’s existence priorto embodiment; Soul-fission.

Sowing and reaping see Karma in the Bible?

Spare, Austin Osman (1888– 1956). Spare was atrance artist and occultist who claimed that his for-mer lives as animals and humans, while deeplyimbedded in his unconscious mind, were accessi-ble through the trance state. Through his belief inreincarnation Spare came to the conclusion thathumanity had the mystical purpose of an atavisticresurgence (tracing previous lives to their primalroots). This was to be done through the use of oc-cult symbols (sigils) and a state of trance in whichthe person entered what he called “the Death Pos-ture.” That posture required a person to practicegazing at his or her reflection in a tall mirror untilthe image blurred and the person was unsure of theidentity of the gazer. The eyes were then closed andlight visualized. This, when done daily, could leadto a full and detailed knowledge of one’s past lives.

Spare was influenced by Aleister Crowley andboth the Astrum Argentinum and Ordo TempliOrientis in creating his own set of sigils. Spare alsoclaimed possession by the artist William Blake,whose art he emulated.

See also Trance states.

Specific age spontaneous recall see Spontaneousrecall.

Spirit. There are several possible definitions for thisword. 1) This is a non-physical part of an embod-ied human being that many believe survives phys-ical death, and may or may not be equated withthe term soul. 2) This is a non-physical conscienceentity that has never been embodied in humanform such as in an angel and a demon (daimones).3) In Christianity this is the part or aspect of Godthat connects Him to human beings, as in the HolySpirit (Hagia Pneuma, or Spiritus Sanctus).

See also Soul and spirit levels, Theosophical.

Spiritism. In its broadest sense this term simplymeans a belief in spirits. In a far narrower sense it

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refers to a movement beginning in mid– 19th cen-tury France in which there was the belief that itwas possible for the living to communicate withthe souls (spirits) of the deceased while the latterwere in between embodiments (reincarnations).The ground work for the founding of FrenchSpiritism was in place by the 1830s. By then aninflux of religious ideas from Hinduism and Bud-dhism, a rise in socialism, a matching anti-cleri-calism, and a perception of a growing tension be-tween Christianity and science made a significantportion of the French literati open to the conceptof reincarnation. While there were other influentialpopularizers of this concept at this time it was oneJean Reynaud who cleverly reminded his listenersthat reincarnation was part of the religion of theancient Druids of pre–Romanized Gaul (France)and as such was part of the true spirit of that coun-try. To say the least, Reynaud did everything hecould to down-play some of the more primitive el-ements of ancient Druidism, such as polytheismand human sacrifice, so as to raise the level of cul-tural sophistication of the Druids to that of the an-cient Greeks and to make it the moral equal ofChristianity. For Reynaud one of the most impor-tant aspects of multiple lives was that it gave theindividual the opportunity to progress spiritually ina parallel fashion to what society should be doingto create a socialist system of equality for all.

With the new rage for spirit communications ar-riving from the United States in the 1850s the sec-ond element of Spiritism was present and in thehands of Hippoltyte Leon Denizard Riail (1804–1869), better known by his pseudonym AllanKardec, Spiritism was officially born. Riail took hispseudonym from what he claimed was his name ina previous life as a Druid in ancient Breton.

In developing Reynaud’s views into SpiritismKardec taught that many human psychological ill-nesses were not only the result of conditions in thepresent life, but leftovers from past lives. For thisreason mediumship was useful in diagnosing theseillnesses. In this sense Kardec is one of the fathersof past life therapy. In fact, it was this emphasis onpast lives that more than anything else distin-guished French spiritism from the majority of En-glish and American Spiritualists who tended to re-ject reincarnation. This rejection was strong enoughto encourage the famous Scottish medium DanielDouglas Home (1833– 1886) to claim that thepost-mortem spirit of Kardec eventually denouncedthe belief in reincarnation.

Spiritism went through a rapid rise in popular-ity in France in the 1860s and 1870s, only to expe-rience an equally rapidly loss of popularity in the1880s and 1890s. Spiritism regained some of thatinfluence in the 20th century, but less so in France

than in Brazil, Cuba, and the Philippines underthe name Kardecism.

Kardec’s most famous written work is his LeLivre des Esprits (1856), published in English as theSpirits Book (1875). This was followed by the Bookof Mediums: A Guide for Mediums and Invocators(1864), The Gospel According to Spiritism (1864),Heaven and Hell: the Divine Justice Vindicated inthe Plurality of Existences (1865), Genesis: The Mir-acles and Predictions According to Spiritism (1867),Experimental Spiritism and Spiritist Philosophy(1881), and The Four Gospels (1881).

See also Afro-American Religion; Kardecismo;Possession; Santeria; Scientology; Spiritism andthe Catholic Church; Spiritualism; Umbanda.

Spiritism and the Catholic Church. In responseto increasingly unorthodox Christian practices inthe second half of the 19th century the CatholicChurch, in 1856 under Pius IX, condemned “Mag-netism,” the original term for hypnosis. In 1864Rome condemned all attempts to communicatewith the dead (Spiritism and Spiritualism); and in1898 Leo XIII threatened to excommunicate any-one who acted as a medium or participated in suchcondemned activities. In particular, the church feltespecially threatened by the spiritist view thatthrough reincarnation no souls could ever be con-demned to eternal punishment, since reincarna-tion obviously undermined the Church’s interestin saving people from endless hell. For the mostpart the Church’s attitude was that such spiritistviews were the workings of the devil.

Spiritualism. In its original sense spiritism meantany belief that all reality is in essence spiritual ratherthan material. In this sense such diverse religioussystems as Hindu Vedanta and Christian Scienceare forms of spiritualism. In the more recent sensespiritualism refers to the belief that spirits (souls) ofthe dead can communicate with the living, espe-cially through a medium. In this sense spiritualismis a quasi-religious movement that had part of itsroots in the teachings of Swedenborg, in mes-merism (hypnosis), and in a white American’s ro-manticizing of American Indian religion.

The formal beginning of spiritualism was inRochester, New York, in 1848 when the fifteen-and-nine-year-old Fox sisters first claimed that theywere able to receive messages from the spirits of thedead. This claim started a movement that rapidlyspread all over the United States and Europe. By theturn of the century the movement was in decline,but went through a brief revival after the FirstWorld War.

With such exceptions as the Spiritism of AllanKardec, the spiritualism of the 19th century largelysought to accommodate itself to the standard

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Christian view of a future resurrection rather thanany kind of reincarnation. In fact, the NationalSpiritual Association of Churches (NSAC) in 1930explicitly rejected the concept of reincarnation.Among the most famous of such spiritualists to en-dorse such rejection were Andrew Jackson Davis;J.J. Morse; and Carl A. Wickland. The (NSAC)opposition to the doctrine of reincarnation did notgo completely unchallenged. In fact, it led to thefounding of the reincarnation accepting Indepen-dent Spiritualist Association of the United Statesof America in 1924.

Many of the late 20th century spiritualist teach-ers, however, became more accepting of Eastern re-ligious ideas, including reincarnation and karma.This is particularly true of the much modified formof spiritualism of the very late 20th century betterknow as Channeling.

See also Aquarian Foundation; Blavatsky, He-lena; Oahspe; Sciomancy; Summerland.

Split brain. In some patients when the brain is sur-gically split in order to stop certain kinds of seizuresthe result is two separate mental states. Each half hasindependent memories, perceptions, and desiresco-existing in the same person. This has led to thefollowing question. If there is a soul that holds con-sciousness then why does the person’s conscious-ness not remain unified, since presumably surgerycan not split a soul? It may also be asked, if twoconsciousnesses then exist, which one would rein-carnate as the person?

Spontaneous recall. This is recall of what are be-lieved to be memories of a past life without the aidof hypnosis or other indirect or non-spontaneousmethods. This is said to occur more often in chil-dren than in adults. It is also considered more re-liable in children than adults since there is much lesslikelihood of such recall being contaminated bycryptomnesia, fraud, honest lying, multiple per-sonalities, or screen memories.

On the other hand, there seems to be somethingthat might be called specific age spontaneous re-call. In this, a person suddenly begins to recall apast life only at an age in the present life that cor-responds to the age in a past life at which some-thing that was especially traumatic occurred. Anexample of such “anniversary recall” would be fora person at the age of thirty-five suddenly to recalla former life in which the person in that former lifewas killed at the age of thirty-five. It is believedthat in the case of such anniversary recall the sub-conscious is encouraging us to remember, but onlythose memories which would be helpful to thepresent life.

See also Artificial rebirth; Artificial (past life)recall; Bowman, Carol; Children remembering

past lives; Déjà vu; Hypnotic age regression;Netherton Method; Reverie recall; Stevenson,Ian.

Stags. Among the Druids the autumnal sheddingand spring re-growth of the antlers of stages wasone of the analogies from nature that suggested re-birth of souls.

See also Rebirth, analogies from nature.

Stake a claim. This is the concept that a soul, evenbefore it is ready to become embodied, will chooseits future body and do so in some way will ensurethat another soul does not move in on its claim.

See also Embodiment, moment of.

Star of David or Sign of Solomon. This is the sixpointed star which is composed of two overlappingtriangles. From a reincarnationist point of view thetwo triangles represent the descent (rebirth) andascent (death) of the soul.

Stearn, Jess. A prolific writer on life after deathand reincarnation, Stearn’s writings display a par-ticular interest in the work of Edgar Cayce. Amongthese works are Edgar Cayce: the Sleeping Prophet(1967), A Prophet in His Own Country: The Story ofYoung Edgar Cayce (1974), and Intimates ThroughTime: The Life of Edgar Cayce and His CompanionsThrough the Ages (1989). Among Stearn’s otherworks are The Search for the Girl with the Blue Eyes(1968), The Search for A Soul: Taylor Caldwell’s Psy-chic Lives (1973), A Matter of Immortality: DramaticEvidence of Survival (1976), and Soul Mates (1984).

See also MacIver, Joanne.

Steiger, Brad. This author has written at least eightbooks on reincarnation either alone or with a co-author. These include The Enigma of Reincarna-tion (1967), Other Lives (1969), You will Live Again(1978), and Discover Your Past Lives (1987).

Steiner, Rudolf (1861– 1925). In 1904 Annie Be-sant made the German born Steiner the head of“The Esoteric Society” for Germany and Austria,which was originally created in 1888 by Helena P.Blavatsky, independent of the Theosophical Soci-ety. In that same year Steiner also began to build hisown esoteric society which had a more Egypto-Hermetic-Masonic Rosicrucian flavor than themore theosophically oriented Esoteric Society. Infact, what caused Steiner to break with Theoso-phy in 1907 was the latter’s increasing drift intoEastern mysticism, which finally culminated in theproclaiming of Krishnamurti, as not only the rein-carnation of the Hindu god Krishna and Christ but as the coming world Messiah. For Steiner therewas no need for a new messiah because Jesus ofNazareth was the messiah to end all messiahs. In

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this regard Steiner rejected the Theosophical viewthat Jesus was just one of many great world teach-ers. Steiner believed that the spilled etherized bloodof the Christ essence that took possession of Jesusand the resurrection of the etheric body of ChristJesus had been slowly working to spiritually trans-form this world for the past 2000 years. The sub-ordination of Eastern religions to esoteric Chris-tianity can be seen in Steiner’s belief that in theGospel of Luke the angel that heralded the birth ofChrist to the shepherds was the Buddha.

By 1914 Steiner’s own esoteric society gave wayto his new school which he called Anthroposophy(Wisdom of Man). In the mean time, Steiner wasalso involved with the occult group Mysteria Mys-tica Maeterna, an autonomous national section ofthe Ordo Templi Orientis, founded in 1896, andhe also was involved with the closely related Orderof the Illuminati.

Steiner claimed to be able to access the akashicrecords from which he learned about his own pastlives and the true history of humanity. Accordingto these records, human kind originally lived free ofa material plane of existence, but in time fell intoit and was trapped in what is the round of birthand death and it is freedom from this entrapmentthat the soul now seeks. To accomplish this freedomthe soul must pass and evolve through the variouszodiacal periods or processional years. Every 2,160solar years, the time it takes for the sun to enter anew sign of the zodiac, is one processional year.From one of these years to the next the evolutionof the earth is believed to be radically different. Inthis way each soul is reborn under a different astro-logical sign for at least every twelve lives or 25,920years, after which the zodiacal cycle repeats itself.

It is also part of the human evolutionary processthat a person must be reborn at least once in eachsign, with the standard number being two times,once as a man and once as a woman. In fact, accord-ing to Anthroposophy, with some exceptions, thereis a law of reincarnation that requires each soul toalternate in gender with each new life. Anthropos-ophy also advocates the evolution of latent spiri-tual awareness in order to contact a higher worldcomposed of pure thought. It is through non-back-sliding reincarnation that much of this evolutionis advanced.

Steiner also believed that there were two sets ofsuperior spiritual beings, the first worked to assistmankind in its evolutionary process, while the sec-ond were opposed to such progress. Since Jesus theChrist is considered to be one of these great sup-portive beings, Anthroposophy considers itself anEsoteric Christian Theosophy with a blending ofRosicrucianism, but at the same time a system ofthought that puts man, not God, at the center.

Steiner seems to have further believed that theyear 1899 was the dawn of a new age of light inwhich people would, in the not-too-distant future,begin to remember their past lives. In the mean-while, in a series of lectures given in 1924, but notpublished until 1955– 1966 as Karmic Relationships:Esoteric Studies, Steiner claimed that Charles Dar-win was in a former life the 8th century Arab com-mander and conqueror of Spain, Gebel al Tarik;that the Caliph al Mamun (790–823) was reincar-nated as the astronomer and mathematician Perre-Simon Laplace (1749– 1827); and that the AbbasidCaliph Haroun al Raschid (764–809) reincarnatedas Francis Bacon (1561– 1626). In terms of his ownrebirth Steiner is said to have believed that he wasthe reincarnation of the Medieval Christian the-ologian Thomas Aquinas.

Steiner offered a rather interesting idea about thepurpose for mummification in Egypt. He said thatthe whole purpose of such elaborate preservation ofthe body was to prevent a new descent of the soulinto a material body, which allowed the soul to re-main indefinitely in the spirit world.

Steiner wrote some fifty books on reincarnation,the majority of which have been published by An-throposophic Press. The headquarters of the An-throposophical Society is in Switzerland.

See also Ascended masters; Astrology and re-birth; Besant, Annie; Crowley, Aleister; Elijah;Fall of Souls; Finite or infinite number of re-births; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Lost continentsand reincarnation; Moltke, Helmuth Graf von;Mummy, The; Population increase issue; Re-birth, non-backsliding.

Stelle Group. This Illinois based group was foundedin 1963 by Richard Kieninger (b. 1927), a formermember of the Lemurian Fellowship. The sameyear the group was formed, The Ultimate Frontier(1963), written by Kieninger under a pen-name,Eklal Kueshana, was released. This book is said tobe autobiographical and forms the basics of theStelle teachings. In the book Kieninger claims thaton his 12th birthday he was contacted by a Dr.White, the first of several mysterious persons. Kien-inger was informed about his past lives, includingones as the biblical King David and Pharaoh Akhe-naton, and that his mission was to found a new nation. Later that year Kieninger was given a se-cret name and told about the 12 Brotherhoods (fivegreater and seven lesser). Included in the teachingsKieninger received was knowledge of the angelsand archangels such as Jehovah, Lucifer, and Mel-chizedek-Christ who created and ruled over theearth; the akashic record; the various planes of ex-istence (physical, etheric, astral, mental, angelic,archangelic, and celestial); extraterrestrial beings;

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the lost continents (Atlantis and Mu-Lemuria);pyramidology; the “Young Jesus in India Theory”and that all the traditional churches in the worldwere to be consider at best Grey occultists and atthe worst priestly Black Mentalists, both in theservice of the anti–Christ. In 1945, Dr. White fur-ther informed Kieninger as to the ideal commu-nity site which he and his students should establish.This became Stelle City, Illinois.

In The Ultimate Frontier it is predicted that at theend of the twentieth century a massive natural ca-tastrophe leading to a rearrangement of the landmasses would be triggered by the alignment of theplanets in this solar system (May 5, 2000), but eventhe year before this there would be, in the form ofan atomic war, the Battle of Armageddon as proph-esized in Revelation, and less than a tenth of theworld’s population would survive into 2001.

Despite being the founder of the Stelle GroupKieninger was eventually forced out of its leader-ship due to charges of financial irregularities andsexual misconduct. In response Kieninger formeda new organization called Adelphi which he claimedwas established to carry out “The Great Plan of theBrotherhood.”

Stevenson, Ian (1918–2007). A psychiatrist withthe University of Virginia, Stevenson was the mostwell known modern investigator of rebirth claims.Stevenson’s interest in reincarnation may have ini-tially stemmed from his mother’s interest in Theos-ophy, which has been used to suggest that Steven-son’s investigations were not as objective as theyshould have been. A major critic of Stevenson’s re-search is Champe Ransom, a former assistant ofIan Stevenson. Ransom, as quoted in Reincarna-tion: A Critical Examination (1996) by Paul Ed-wards, faults Stevenson in a number of ways. First,there was Stevenson’s tendency to ask leadingquestions; second, the question periods were tooshort for a thorough investigation; third, there wastoo much time having elapsed between the occur-rences of past life recall and the investigation ofthem; fourth, the imaginative capacities of the chil-dren were not being well explored; fifth, there wasa tendency on Stevenson’s part to unintentionally“fill in” an investigated story to make it more com-plete; sixth, there was too much reliance on poten-tially biased witnesses; and seventh, there was thefact that in 90 percent of the researched cases thefamilies of the recalling children had met with thefamilies of the deceased before Stevenson’s researchbegan.

In actuality, Stevenson tended to avoid any outand out statement that his research proved reincar-nation. Instead, he said that his research was highlysuggestive of reincarnation. Perhaps to lessen any

suggestion that his work had a religious bias Steven-son implied that his cases of likely reincarnationhad shown no relationship to karma.

Stevenson published more than a dozen works onreincarnation. Among his most well know areTwenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966), Un-learned Languages: New Studies in Xenoglossy (1984),Children Who Remember Previous Lives (1987),Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (1997),and European Cases of the Reincarnation Type(2003).

See also Extrasensory perception; Grant, Joan;International cases; Karma; Male births, greaterproportion of; Pasricha, Satwant K.; Possession;Proof of Rebirth, Criteria; Psychophore; Rebirthand cultural conditioning; Rebirth, proximity;Uttar Pradesh.

Stygian sexuality (Sexuality beyond the River Styx[River of Death], the most well known of the fivemythological rivers of the ancient Greek under-world). This is a metaphor for the sexuality that issaid to be evidenced between disembodied souls orspirits. Another term for such post-mortem sexu-ality is second state sexuality, as identified in Jour-neys Out of the Body (1973) by Robert A. Monroe.Stygian sexuality is not to be confused with necro-philia, which is a living person having sex with acorpse, or with spectrophilia, which is a living per-son having sex with the spirit of a deceased personor other spiritual entity. Presumably, stygian sexu-ality means that two entities in the interim periodcould have a sexual relationship which implies thatthe soul possesses gender between death and birth.

See also Boullan, Joseph-Antoine; Genderissue of the soul.

Subconscious, mystifying of. Many proponents ofreincarnation claim that past life memories survivedeath by being stored in the subconscious, whichof course means that the subconscious mind mustsurvive death while the conscious mind does not.There is, however, no scientifically logical reasonfor assuming that the subconscious can in any wayexist independently from the conscious mind,much less independently from the whole body-brain complex. Even if this were possible, reincar-nationists seem to ignore the fact that the term sub-conscious is far more often associated with theprimitive aspects of the brain (i.e. the reptilian andthe mammalian), rather than the higher humanlevels of the conscious mind. For the advocates of asurvival of the subconscious to avoid the body-brain(mind) dependency of the subconscious they haveto mystify that mind level and then metaphysicalizeit into a substitute soul. It would be far less open to criticism to just attribute any survival of memo-ries to a completely metaphysical, hence religious,

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factor such as a soul, than to try to seem more psy-chological, hence scientific, in arguing for such sur-vival.

Subtle body. This is the collective name for all theproposed psychic bodies surrounding the physicalbody.

See also Astral body; Causal body; Ethericbody; Linga Sharia; Soul and spirit levels, Theo-sophical.

Sufism. Although some orthodox Islamic author-ities consider Sufism in general as unorthodox,other Islamic authorities accept the more conserva-tive Sufi Schools as orthodox. One of the maincharacteristic that separate these two versions ofSufism is that the more orthodox reject reincarna-tion (tanasukh) while the less orthodox accept theNeo-Platonist belief in tanasukh.

See also Ahmadiyya; Druzes; Indonesia; Islam;Neo-Platonism; Passing-Memories Adoption.

Suggestion and past life regression see Past liferegression and suggestibility.

Suicide see Rebirth and suicide.

Summerland. Among advocates of spiritualism thisis the name for heaven, which was believed to be ei-ther within the Milky Way or just beyond it. It isbelieved that here all the spirits sooner or later willreside for an indefinite period. Among Neo-PagansSummerland is where souls temporarily dwell inbetween embodiments. In other words, for themit is only an interim period place of rest.

See also Astral plane; Devachan; Diakka.

Supernatural-in-the-gap process. This processoccurs when a non-scientific explanation such asGod, karma, etc. is inserted in a present-day gap inscientific knowledge.

See also Current knowledge discrepancy; Lostcontinents and reincarnation; Planets, other;Rebirth and science.

Suras (Arabic: Writings) see Doceticism; Islam;Islam; Judgment of the Dead.

Surya-marga. In Hinduism this means path of thesun and is the name for the spiritual road taken bythose souls that are liberated forever from rebirth asopposed to the moon path which leads to a rebirth.

See also Pritiloka.

Sutphen, Richard (“Dick,” 1937–). Sutphen is thefounder of the new age organization called the Val-ley of the Sun. He has been a strong opponent offundamentalist Christianity and advocates theunity of all religions as well as belief in reincarna-tion and karma. He supports such practices asmeditation, the use of the pendulum, and auto-

matic writing. Sutphen was the founder of Rein-carnationists, Inc., in 1982, which, until its demisein 1987, published Reincarnation Report. In 1983Sutphen married Tara Sutphen who, through au-tomatic writing, began channeling a spirit namedAbenda.

Sutphen has authored and co-authored a num-ber of books on reincarnation. One of these is PastLife Therapy in Action, co-authored with LawrenceLeigh (1983). Also, Tara Sutphen, with the help ofAbenda, wrote the book Blame It on Your Past Lives:Personal Problems and Supernatural Solutions (1992).

See also Channeling; Walk-ins.

Sutratman (Thread of the atman). In Hinduismthis is the part of the self that goes from one life toanother like beads on a thread.

See also Kosha; Linga Sharia.

Swarga or Svarga. Meaning Good Kingdom, thisis the general name for heaven in Hinduism, andmore specifically the name for the heaven of thestorm and warrior god Indra. Dwelling here are thelesser gods and beatified mortals, but even for thesouls that have earned time in this heaven thosesouls will eventually be drawn back into the rebirthcycle.

See also Vaikuntha.

Swarm of bees theory. This is the theory that thesoul is actually a collective of particles like a swarmof bees. At death the collective (swarm) breaks upand the numerous particles go their separate waysin search of rebirth into a new body with which itwill share other particles that formerly belonged todifferent collectives. It is this changing collectivenature of souls that is said to account for a numberof people remembering the same former life. Inother words, most of the people who claim to havememories of being Marie Antoinettes, Alexanderthe Great, or Napoleon Bonaparte do have suchmemories because the various particles that com-prised such person’s soul reincarnated separately innumerous people. Thomas Edison is credited withsuggesting this theory.

See also Cleopatra Syndrome, Home, DanielDouglas; Population increase issue; Rebirth, si-multaneous; Soul-fission; Soul fragmentation;Souls, multiple.

Swastika or Svastika. Meaning “well-being” or“good fortune,” this image is also called the fylfotcross and is one of the most widely used symbols inthe world. It is found on most continents and its ap-pearance extends back beyond recorded history. Itappears, more than anything else, to be a symbol ofthe movement of the sun, and hence of fire andlight. As a symbol of enlightenment legend has it

263 Swastika

that it was engraved on the souls of the Buddha’sfeet at birth. It is also often found on the exposedchest of images of the Buddha and is used in EastAsia on maps to designate the location of Buddhisttemples.

In Jainism the swastika is a symbol that repre-sents the movement of the soul in the round orcycle of existence. The four arms of this symbolrepresent for the Jains the four possibilities of re-birth: the realms of humanity, animals, hell, andheaven. The Nazi’s corrupt employment of thesymbol ultimately derives from its use in ancientGermanic paganism.

See also Bhavachakra; Christianity, esoteric;Ouroboros; Possession; Spiritualism.

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688– 1772). This famousSwedish mystic in 1743 began to have visions ofheaven, hell, Jesus, Satan and God that differedin major ways from orthodox Christianity. In noneof these, however, was there any place for the be-lief in reincarnation. In fact, Swedenborg was ofthe opinion that what might be thought of as areincarnating entity was actually an attached en-tity. Some reincarnationists in an attempted to dis-credit Swedenborg, have pointed out that in someof his visions he saw and described the inhabitantsof the other planets in our solar system.

Symbola (Greek: passwords). In Orphism thesewere words, phrases, or sentences that were writtenon gold leaves and buried with the dead and whichwere believed to assist the soul to enter paradise,thus escaping rebirth.

Symposium see Gender issue of the soul; Plato;Soul mates.

Synchronicity. This is a more scientific term forparticularly meaningful occurrences without anyapparent cause, or in common English, amazingcoincidences. An example of such synchronicitywould be when two soul mates were not only bornabout the same time, but met each other at whatseems like just the most appropriate time.

See also I, William the Conqueror; Kennedy,John F.

Synesius of Cyrene (370–415?). This Christianbishop of Ptolemais, Libya was also a Neoplatonicphilosopher. Before answering the call to be abishop, Synesius freely published philosophicalviews which were not fully in accord with standardChristian teachings. In particular, he cited differ-ences of opinion regarding the relationship of thesoul to the body and the resurrection. Among hiswritten works was the Aegyptus sive de providential(Egypt or On providence) in which he appears tohave affirmed a belief in metempsychosis.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Neoplatonism.

T’ai-Yueh-Ta-Ti (WG). In the Chinese heaventhings run like a civil service and T’ai-Yueh-Ta-Ti(Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak) is one of itsbureaucrats; in fact, he is the chancellor and second-in-command among the heavenly figures. T’ai-Yueh-Ta-Ti looks after the affairs of both men andanimals, and besides determining births, deaths,marriages, and the number of children to be had,he registers good and evil deeds and their appropri-ate retributions during and after death. In otherwords, he is associated with fate (fortune, destiny),and karma. He is also called Tung-Yueh-Ta-Ti andT’ai-Yo Ta-Ti.

Talbot, Michael. The author of Your Past Lives: AReincarnation Handbook (1987), Talbot describesstep-by-step exercises and techniques to explore aperson’s past lives.

Tanasukh (Arabic: to copy, in the sense of fromlife to life). This term has three different meanings.First it can mean the evolutionary transmigra-tion of souls (mineral to plant to animal to humanto transhuman). Second, it can refer to ordinaryreincarnation from one human life to anotherhuman life. Neither of these is acknowledged inorthodox Islam and the second is even regarded asa clear heresy. Nonetheless, some Shiite sects be-lieve in one or both of these, as do many Muslimsin India and Indonesia. The third meaning oftanasukh is the Shiite belief that the soul of thesupreme religious leader, the Imam, reincarnateseveral times in a kind of tulka fashion. Among theIsma’ilis Shiites it was believed that souls could notbe reborn until released by their Imam (secret orhidden spiritual leader).

Tanasukh is never to be confused with hululwhich means descent or incarnation of the divineinto human form, and is considered the heresy ofheresies in orthodox Islam; and the minority ofShiites who believe in it are considered ghulat (ex-tremists).

See also Dabistan; Druzes; Neoplatonism;Nusayris (Nursaris); Sufism; Yarsanism; Yazidis(Yezidis).

Tantrism. This esoteric teaching is found in botha Hindu and a Buddhist form. The teaching re-gards itself as the quick way to liberation from re-birth through the power of sacred or magical ritu-als. This is in contrast to the non-esoteric Hinduand Buddhist paths which often require a long se-ries of rebirths dedicated to the purifying or extin-guishing of the passions through ascetic practices.

The justification for Buddhist Tantric teachingsis based on the Age of Dharma Decline Theory.

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Early Buddhism had taught that the true Dharmawould eventually fall on hard times and enlighten-ment would become more and more difficult forthe average practitioner, until no one would be ca-pable of realizing release through the original asce-tic path taught by Shakyamuni (the Buddha). Itwas for this reason that the esoteric path was finallyrevealed after having been kept in secret reserve upuntil the time of decline.

Since Tantric Buddhism had several centuries ofdevelopment it naturally went through a number ofphases before its present state. Chinese Tantrism(Chen-yen) and Japanese Tantrism (Shingon) rep-resents mainly the earlier phases of Tantrism, whilethe Central Asian or Tibetan-Mongol, Tantrism(Vajrayana) represents the later phases; nonetheless,all forms teach what they consider an accelerated es-oteric path to liberation from the cycle of rebirthand re-death.

See also Antinomianism; Bardo; Buddhism,esoteric; Vajrayana Buddhism; Vegetarianism;Vijnanavada (Consciousness only) School.

Tanya (Aramaic: It was taught). This is the morecommon name for the Likkutei Amarim (Collectionof Statements) published in 1797. In this work bythe Hasidic master Sh’neur Zalman of Laydi gilgul(reincarnation) is offered as an explanation for con-versions to Judaism. According to the text, thoseconverts are really Jewish souls trapped in non–Jewish bodies who have found their way back toJudaism. According to the Tanya and based on theaccount in Exodus that there were six hundredthousand “souls” present at Mount Sinai that is thenumber of root Jewish souls, which since then havesplit, spread out, and reunited in the millions ofJewish bodies over the generations.

See also Kabbalah.

Taoism see Daoism.

Tarot cards. The Tarot deck is divided into Fifty-six Minor Arcana or suit cards, and twenty-twoMajor Arcana or tarot proper cards. The former isroughly the same as a modern deck of playing cardsexcept for its four extra cards royal cards (Pages). Ithas been suggested that there is a connection be-tween the Tarot and the “Kabbalah”; however, thisis entirely due to the belief that the twenty-two let-ters of the Hebrew alphabet appear to be related tothe highly symbolic twenty-two Major Arcanacards.

Some tarot cartomancers (diviners by cards) aresaid to be able to read a person’s past life or livesthrough the cards. For example, the Major Arcanacard “Justice” is thought to focus on a person’skarma, while the Wheel of Fortune card is recom-mended for Past life recall meditation. On the

other hand, some taroists regard the Temperancecard as dealing with reincarnation, especially in itssymbolism of pouring one liquid (life/soul) fromone vessel (body) into another vessel. Even the col-ors of the vessels, one either red (earth) or silver(moon) and the other purple-violet (heaven) or yel-low (sun) are said to represent this back and forthmovement of the soul. This association of the Tem-perance card with rebirth has also been encouragedby the fact that the classical Greek word for such apouring act is metagiosmos which is then associatedwith metempsychosis.

All the relationships between the tarot and pastlife are, in the sense of the psychology of Carl Jung,said to be due to the images in the Major Arcanarepresenting Archetypes stored in the CollectiveUnconscious.

Among the works on the tarot and reincarna-tion and karma are the Karmic Tarot: A New Systemfor Finding Your Lifetime’s Purpose (1988) by W. C.Lammey; Past Life and Karma Tarot (2004) byEdain McCoy; and the Tarot of Reincarnation(2007) by Massimiliano Filadoro.

See also Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn;Past life readings; Phoenix Cards; Scrying.

Tartarus. For the ancient Greeks this was the deep-est and worst part of hells (the Hades beneathHades) and it was reserved mainly as a place toconfine and punish various Titans, gods, and thosehuman souls which were so evil that instead of re-birth were condemned to endless punishment.

See also Essenes; Greek afterlife, the ancient;Hades; Peter, 1st and 2nd; Plato; Soul, tripartite;Virgil.

TAU. According to Alice Bailey in her A Treatiseof White Magic, TAU is the power sound whichsymbolizes reincarnation.

Taylor, Thomas (1758– 1835). This great EnglishPlatonist openly rejected Christianity as “bas-tardized and barbarous” and publicly admitted toa personal worship of the old classical Greco-Roman deities, as well as to a belief in reincarnation.He is regarded as one of the founders of the non–Druid wing of the Neo-pagan revival.

See also Neo-pagan religions.

Techiyat Hameitim. This is the Hebrew phrase forrevival or resurrection of the dead and not to beconfused with gilgul (reincarnation).

See also Resurrection, bodily.

Teleological presumption. This presumption isthat either nature itself or some intelligence behindnature (e.g. God) has as its ultimate creative goal thecreation of rational beings. Once this presumptionhas been considered valid it is easy to further pre-

265 Teleological

sume that inherent to this rational beingness is acontinuation of that beingness after death.

The first part of this dual presumption is thebasis of intelligent design theory which seeks tochallenge the Darwinian evolutionism or NaturalSelection which denies any teleological aspect tonature and her evolution. The second part of thisteleology presumption can be used to support ei-ther the concept of resurrection or reincarnation.

Telepathy (telegnosis) with the living. This issaid to be the ability of one living person to read thethoughts produced by another living person. It isone of the psychic abilities that are sometimes sug-gested as accounting for what otherwise might bethought of as an indication of past life recall. H.N. Banerjee argues that most subjects who haveexperienced past lives generally demonstrate nomore telepathic abilities than an otherwise ordi-nary person; thus, he believes a telepathic expla-nation for the reincarnation phenomenon is largelyinvalid.

Telepathy is also a problematic explanation inthe case of the children who seem to remember apast life. To create the sometimes elaborate set ofmemories of the past life those children would haveto telepathically “chose” from the memories of aseveral adults, and then do so very selectively so asnot to recall the wrong lives.

See also Déjà Vu; Psychometry; Rebirth, al-ternative explanations to; Telepathy with thedead.

Telepathy with the dead. This has been suggestedas one of the possible sources for so-called past liferecall. One problem with such a telepathic expla-nation, especially with regards to children, is thatthose who are thought to demonstrate mediumshipabilities show those abilities almost in every casewhile in some form of altered state of consciousness(trance); but all the children studied recalled thepast in a normal state of consciousness.

See also Rebirth, alternative explanations to;Telepathy (telegnosis) with the living.

Templars. This is the abbreviated name of a me-dieval Catholic monastic military order whose fullname was the Poor Knights of Christ and of theTemple of Solomon. The order was established bysome French knights around 1119/1120 in Jerusalemafter the city’s conquest during the First Crusade.Thanks to large charitable donations offered to theorder over the years the order became extremelywealthy. The Templar’s wealth and secrecy cameunder criticism and enabled the king of France,who coveted their wealth, to charge the order withheresy, sodomy, and blasphemy and to persuadethe Pope to abolish the order in 1312.

In modern times the various mysteries surround-ing the Templars have given rise to diverse claimsof the order being the ancestor of Free Masonryand the Rosicrucians, and to having a belief inreincarnation. However, during the various trialsfor heresy that the Templars underwent there wasnever any accusation of a belief in metempsy-chosis; so it is highly unlikely that the order heldto such a belief.

See also Ordor Templi Orientis; Solar Tem-ple, Order of.

Ten Dam, Hans. This author’s book, ExploringReincarnation: The Classical Guide to the Evidencefor Past Life Experiences (2003), has a very extensivebibliography on the subject of reincarnation. It cov-ers some Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish,and Portuguese language sources, as well as En-glish.

Termas see Bardo.

Tertullian (155/160–220? CE). This Church Fa-ther’s full Latin name was Quintus Septimius Flo-rens Tertullianus. He is thought to have been thefirst Christian theologian to question the logic ofmetempsychosis. In his De Anima (Treatise on theSoul) he applies both the age factor and rebirthand population problem issue arguments againstmetempsychosis. With regards to the later argu-ment Tertullian was especially critical of transmi-gration of animal souls into human bodies.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Christian fathers critical of reincarnation; Chris-tianity and reincarnation; New Testament andreincarnation; Transmigration, progressive.

Theodicy. This Greek derived term means “divinejustice.” It refers to the attempt to explain whythere is evil in the world if ultimately the world wascreated and is ruled by a loving, or at least just,deity. In the Western religious claim that God isall good the presence of evil has always been a majorproblem. This is especially true when it comes tothe suffering of presumably innocent people whetherat the hands of other people or natural catastro-phes. In the Old Testament this seeming contra-diction is most fully explored, but not resolved, inJob. Christianity makes a questionable attempt atexplaining the problem of evil by placing all theblame on humanity through the doctrine of Orig-inal Sin and countering the problem of the inno-cent suffering by the deferred payment plan (forthe Soul).

In religions that acknowledge rebirth and karmablaming the victim leaves no need to account forinjustice in anyway that includes God. In otherwords, theodicy is not a problem in Buddhism,Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism.

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See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Job1:20–21; Kabbalah; Karma and justice; Weber,Max.

Theophilus (?–412 CE). This Christian patriarchof Alexandria, Egypt was violently intolerant of allnon–Christian beliefs. He is most infamous for twoof his actions. First, it was he, with permission theRoman emperor Theodosius I (379–395), who de-stroyed the pagan temples of the gods Mithra, Dio-nysus, and Sarapis. This included the burning to theground of the Sarapeum library in 391 with its ir-replaceable collection of classical Greco-Roman lit-erature.

Second, Theophilus was one of the earliest Chris-tian theologians to attack the views of Origin, whosupported the Platonic, hence pagan, idea of thesoul’s existence prior to embodiment. These twoactions almost certainly began the as yet unofficialChristian condemnation of metempsychosis.

See also Christian fathers critical of reincarna-tion; Christianity and reincarnation; New Tes-tament and reincarnation; Platonism; Pre-exis-tiani.

Theory of Mind see Mind, Theory of.

Theosis. This is a synonym for deification. It is thecall to man to become God-like. One of the argu-ments for reincarnation is that this is the ultimategoal of humanity and the only way for any individ-ual to achieve this is to have many life-times to per-fect one’s soul to this end.

The most unambiguously supportive statementof theosis in the New Testament, or anywhere elsein the Bible, is 2nd Peter 1:3–4 which reads, “Hisdivine power has bestowed on us everything thatmakes for life and true religion, enabling us toknow the One who called us by his own splendorand might. Through this might and splendor hehas given us his promise, great beyond all price,and through them you may escape the corruptionwith which lust infested the world, and come toshare in the very being of God.” 2nd Peter goes onin verses 5–7 to state the standards for such shar-ing “...in the very being of God” would require.These are to have faith [in the promise], virtue,knowledge [of the divine], temperance, patience,godliness, brotherly love, and divine love. It is ar-gued by some Christian reincarnationists that forthe average believer to meet such heroic standardswould require more than one life and that require-ment “indirectly” proves that 2nd Peter is subtlyacknowledging reincarnation.

See also Rebirth and moral perfection; Resur-rection or reincarnation.

Theosophy. This school of thought derives itsname from the Greek Theo-sophia, meaning Di-

vine-wisdom. In the most general sense of this termTheosophy is the belief that truly authentic knowl-edge of God comes, not through reason or thesenses, but through a direct mystical insight or ex-perience. Along with this mystical aspect, mostforms of Theosophy also favor esotericism, oc-cultism, and pantheism, or some other form ofmonism. In this sense the teachings of Pythago-ras, Plato, various Gnostic and Neoplatoniststeachers, and even a number of Medieval and Re-naissance Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mysticcould be considered Theosophists.

In the narrower sense of the term Theosophy isthe esoteric system of teachings founded by He-lena Blavatsky, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, andWilliam Q. Judge in 1875. This system, as repre-sented by Blavatsky’s book Isis Unveiled (1877), revolved around Egyptian Gnostic and Rosicru-cian works with some influence from Hinduism.Soon, however, a more Hindu-Buddhist influencecame to dominate Theosophy as represented inBlavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine (1888). While it isquestionable whether the first book dealt with rein-carnation and karma, the second one clearly did,and this lead to a major revival of interest in theconcept of reincarnation.

The impact of Theosophy, however, went wellbeyond that of groups that officially identify astheosophical. It led to a resurrection, at least inname, to several Rosicrucian groups, and to the de-velopment of the Anthroposophy of RudolfSteiner; the I Am Movement, and the LiberalCatholic Church, Province of the United States,etc. Each of these accepted the concept of reincar-nation.

See also Akashic Record; Apollonius of Tyana;Aquarian Foundation; Arcane School; Ascendedmasters; Astral plane; Besant, Annie; Chnoumis(Chnouphis); Church Universal and Trium-phant; Devachan; Dhyani Chohans; Ego; Egypt;Eighth sphere; Esotericism versus Occult;Etheric body; Gnosticism; Higgins, Godfrey;Kabbalah; Khepra; Kingsford, Anna Bonus;Limbo; Linga Sharia; Lords of Karma; Lostcontinents and reincarnation; Lost soul; Lucifer;Manas; Mental plane; Moon; New Age; NewTestament and reincarnation; Open Court;Planes of existence, names of; Rebirth and cycli-cal time; Rosicrucians; Saint Germain; SammaSambuddha; Second death; Silent watchers; Sin-nett, Alfred Percy; Steiner, Rudolf; Stevenson;Ian; Yeats, William Butler; Zoroastrianism.

Therapeutic value of past life therapy see Pastlife therapy.

Theravada Buddhism. This is the Buddhism ofthe south Asian countries of Sri Lanka, Myanmar

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(Burma), Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Thisform of Buddhism has retained many more of theearliest Buddhist traits than has the MahayanaBuddhism of East Asia or the Vajrayana Bud-dhism of central Asia. Among these earlier traits isa rejection of an interim period.

See also Buddhism; Merit, transfer of ;Monism.

Theta (1). This is the bulletin published by thePsychical Research Foundation.

See also Associations and organizations; In-ternational Association for Regression Researchand Therapy; Thanatology.

Theta (2). According to the entity Alexander, aschanneled through Ramon Stevens and reported inEarthly Cycles (1994), theta is the third post-mortem level into which the disembodied soulmust pass before attaining bodily rebirth. The otherlevels are Omega and Astral plane.

Theta (3) see Scientology.

Theta waves. These are the brain waves associatedwith the twilight state, Dreams, and creative think-ing. It is claimed that spontaneous psi (psychic phe-nomenon) has been associated with these wavesand that there may be some relationship betweenthem and past life recall.

See also Hypnotic age regression.

Third and fourth generation, punishment to seeExodus.

Third eye. This is believed to be a spot in the mid-dle of the forehead just above the normal eye levelthat is a focal point for psychic powers. In Sanskritit is called the dyoya-drsti and in Indian thought itis sometimes linked with both the sixth chakra,called ajna, and the pineal gland, which is foundjust below the front mid section of the brain. Prac-titioners of Kundalini Yoga claim that if one canraise the kundalini (psychic) energy to this level allpast karma can be destroyed. Also, some advocatesof rebirth believe that if the soul is able to leave thebody upon death through this chakra it need neveragain be reborn.

Since the pineal gland is sometimes associatedwith this occult eye it is sometimes called the pin-eal or parietal eye. Other names for it are the Eyeof Dangma (Purified Soul), the Eye of Shiva, andthe Eye of the Buddha. Buddhists often equate this third eye with the urna, which is a small circleof hair that is said to grow at this chakra spot on all Buddhas. The early western authority on thechakra system, Arthur Avalon (Sir John GeorgeWoodruff ), called this psychic spot the Juana-chakrasha.

See also Nine doors; Rampa, Lobsang Tues-day; Pineal and pituitary gland.

Thirty-three years see Interim period.

Thoth, Book of. This legendary book is namedafter Thoth, the ancient Egyptian ibis-headed godof writing, mathematics, and of knowledge, espe-cially of the esoteric kind. The Book of Thoth actu-ally refers to at least three different works.

The first is a legendary book (scroll) containingpowerful spells and knowledge, said to have beenburied in a princely tomb in the City of the Dead.The reader, even though he was dead and in theworld of ghosts, could come back to the earth in theform he once had. On the other hand, anyoneunauthorized who read the book was punished bythe gods.

The second Book of Thoth is the Eine Einwei-hung im Alten Agypten nach dem Buch Throth (Aninitiation in ancient Egypt according to the ThothBook, 1922) by Woldemar von Uxkull. Among thethemes encountered in Uxkull’s work are the the-ory that Egyptians had their origin in Atlantis, anextensive pyramidology mysticism, and reincar-nation.

Since the late 18th century, beginning with someFrench occultists, the Tarot, especially the majorarcana, has also been called the Book of Thoth. Infact, the tarot deck and the book that goes with itby Aleister Crowley (1944) is specifically called theBook of Thoth, but this work has more to do withthe Kabbalah than with reincarnation.

See also Cayce, Edgar; Egypt; Hermetic phi-losophy; Lost continents and reincarnation.

Three lives only see Kabbalah; Plato.

Three refuges and five Buddhist lay precepts. Itis believed in Buddhism that once a person takes thethree refugees and five precepts that s/he can neveragain fall into a less than human birth. The refugesare in the Buddha (teacher), the Dharma (Buddhistteaching), and the Sangha (Buddhist order ofmonks and nuns as teachers). The minimum pre-cepts that a lay person takes are to avoid harmingother life forms (ahimsa), to avoid harmful speech,to avoid taking what is not rightfully yours to take,to avoid sexual misconduct, and to avoid becom-ing intoxicated.

See also Bhavachakra; Rebirth, Non-back-sliding.

Three roots of Samsara see Mulas.

Threefold (law of ) return. This is a Neo-Pagan orWicca version of karma. According to this law anyevil a practitioner does to another will be returnedto the doer in a triple degree. The first will be for

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intent, the second for execution, and the third foroutcome. Presumably the same applies to good in-tent, execution, and outcome.

See also Neo-pagan religions.

Thumos or thymos see Soul, tripartite.

Tibet see Animals and rebirth, Western view;Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ; Ascended mas-ters; Bardo; Belgi Dorje; Blavatsky, HelenaPetrova; Bon-pa [po] religion; Dalai Lama; De-hiscent or Seed-pod Principle; Lhamoi LatsoOracle; Panchen Lama; Rebirth and maturity;Rebirth, simultaneous; Swastika; Tulku; Va-jrayana Buddhism.

Timaeus (Timaios). This dialog by Plato is spo-ken by Timaeus a Pythagorean philosopher, whogives an exposition on the origin and nature of theuniverse. In the beginning God created the uni-verse from the two substances of ideas and materialelements. From these he formed the heavens, theearth, the world soul, and the lesser gods. It is thelatter that create animal and human bodies in ac-cordance with certain geometric formulae. Thethree kinds of souls that inhabit man and the fateof these souls after death are also described. Thepreliminary myth of Atlantis is also given here, butthis will be continued in a following work, Critias.Timaeus is by far the most cryptic and mystical ofall Plato’s dialogs.

See also Gender issue of the soul; Pythagoras.

Time and consciousness. A consciousness of timeis what may distinguish human beings from otheranimals. In fact, all religions could be thought ofarising from such consciousness. It is our ability tolook back to our youth and compare it to our pres-ent, and to compare these to our imagined futurewhich means consciousness of our death. Somehigher animals seem to have a rudimentary aware-ness of death of another, but not of their own in-evitable death. Human consciousness of time andthe presumed lack of it in animals have been of-fered as one argument for rebirth being exclusivelya human possibility.

See also Animals and rebirth, non–Westernview; Animals and rebirth, Western view; Ani-mals, domesticated; Transmigration.

Time and the simultaneous past, present, andfuture. This is the idea that the past, present, andfuture do not exist in a linear fashion, but exist si-multaneously. This is thought by some to be thereason that the mind can experience lives of peo-ple long dead, or even lives of people normallythought of as not having lived yet. In other wordsit is said to account for Retrocognition and Precog-nition.

See also Future-lives; Grant, Joan Marshall;Lazaris; Parallel lives; Plurality of existences;Rebirth and cyclical time; Seth.

Time, cyclical see Rebirth and cyclical time.

Time-recall challenge. On many occasions dur-ing supposed past life recall the subject, either onhis or her own or in response to the regressor, willgive the year(s) in which the past life occurred. Inthose cases where the modern western calendar wasnot in use at that time in theory the subject soughtnot to be able to report the year in modern terms.For example, if the past life was as an ancientEgyptian, Greek, Chinese, etc. the Christian use ofBC/AD would be meaningless. The fact that thesubject supplies the date in BC/AD terms is usedas proof that the subject’s subconscious is merelycreating a fantasy. The response to this criticismhas been that no matter how much the subject maybe recalling a past life he/she still has an underlin-ing awareness of the present life and in fact is filter-ing the past-life through the current one which al-lows the subject to use present information in therecall of the past life.

Timothy, 1st and 2nd see Annihilationism, Bib-lical view; Apocatastasis; Hell; Karma versusgrace; Predestination; Universalism.

Titiksha. This Sanskrit term means a cheerful andpatient acceptance one’s karma.

Ti-ts’ang (WG). This is the translation of the San-skrit Kshitigarbha see Bodhisattva.

Titus see Elect or chosen of God; Karma versusgrace; Palingenesis; Predestination.

Tomb to womb. This is a metaphor, like coffin tocradle or death to breath.

See also Cave; Crypt.

Torah (1). This is the collective name for the firstfive books of the Old Testament.

See also Kabbalah.

Torah (2). This is a channeled entity described asan inter-dimensional consciousness by the Los An-geles channeler Shawn Randall. According to Ran-dall, Torah has ceased to reincarnate and has notadopted any of the characteristics or personalitytraits of his former lives.

See also Channeling; Equinox; Franklin, Ben-jamin (2); Grace-Loehr life readings; Hilarion;Lazaris; Mafu; Michael (2); Ra (1); Ra (2);Ramtha; Ryerson, Kevin; Satya; Seth.

Trance states. The entering into a trance state is notas rare as many people assume. In fact, most peo-ple probably enter some degree of a trance state on

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a near daily basis. Being totally absorbed in music,watching a movie, or reading a book to the pointwhere you have become unaware of everything elseare forms of a trance state. Driving on the freewayand suddenly realizing that you have been on a kindof auto-pilot is a type of trance state. Also, as manypeople intuitively know, intense prayer and medi-tation are very obvious trance states. One can alsoenter into a trance state that is sometimes called awalking vision. This is when one has a sudden orspontaneous visionary experience of being in a dif-ferent time and/or place which may be interpretedas a past life vision. In a trance state the usual ra-tional and linear consciousness is suspended andreplaced by a non-rational and non-linear con-sciousness. Note that non-rational does not meanirrational.

The ability of ordinary people in ordinary cir-cumstances to enter into some type of trance stateshould make the hypnotic trance state that a pastlife therapist puts one into seem far less mysteri-ous. This should also make it clear why more than90 percent of the population can be hypnotized. Itdoes seem, however, that children and young adultsare better hypnotic subjects than are middle agedand older persons.

See also Automatic writing; Channeling; Fullparticipation; Hypnotism.

Transcorporation. This is a very rarely used syn-onym for reincarnation.

Transmigration. The earliest recorded use of thisterm in English to signify a renewal of an individ-ual life was in 1559. In its broadest sense this termis an alternative name for rebirth or rebecoming,reincarnation, metempsychosis and palingene-sis. In its narrowest sense it is used by those who be-lieve that human souls can be reborn (transmigrate)into animals and vice versa. Reincarnation is gen-erally the term preferred by those who reject suchcross-special movement.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;Animals, Domestic; Aristotle; Rebirth, cross-species; Rebirth, non-backsliding; Ontologicalleap or ontological discontinuity; Origin or Ori-genes Adamanthus; Rebirth in the West.

Transmigration, alternating lives. This is the be-lief that each time a human being dies his or hersoul must automatically be reborn in a non-humanbody such as an animal just prior to being onceagain reborn into a human body.

See also Kwakiutl.

Transmigration, lateral. This term means that ahuman soul can only be reborn into a human body.It is also called circular rebirth because one is recy-cled back into another human body. Lateral or cir-

cular rebirth is in contrast to either regressive orprogressive transmigration.

See also Rebirth, non-backsliding; Transmi-gration, progressive; Transmigration, regressive.

Transmigration of Souls. This is the name of acritically hailed choral and orchestral work by theCalifornia composer John Adams in commemora-tion of those who lost their lives in the terrorist at-tack on New York City on September 11, 2001.

Transmigration, progressive. This term meansthat an animal soul can be reborn into a humanbody.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;More, Henry; Rebirth, non-backsliding; Re-birth in the West; Transmigration, lateral;Transmigration, regressive.

Transmigration, regressive. This term means thata human soul can be reborn into a non-humanbody.

See also Animals and rebirth, Western view;More, Henry; Transmigration, lateral; Transmi-gration, progressive; Rebirth, non-backsliding;Rebirth in the West.

Traveler’s Tale. This is a long narrative poem byClifford Bax and published in 1921. It tells the storyof the soul of an enlightened spiritual teacher whichhad previously reincarnated as a Stone Age person,a Babylonian, a Greek scribe, a Roman soldier, amedieval bishop, and a more recent English vicar.In each of these lives the soul learns some impor-tant lesson on its way to it enlightenment.

Trichotomy. This refers to the biblical view inwhich the human being is thought to be not just adichotomy of the body and the soul, but a three-fold being of body (sarx), soul (psyche), and spirit(pneuma). While a dichotomy seem to be justifiedby some New Testament passages, a trichotomy ismore commonly implied. The trichotomy is not tobe confused with the tripartite soul.

See also Pneumatikoi; Soul, tripartite.

Tri dhatu or tri loka (Three realms). In Buddhistcosmology these are the realms one can be reborninto. They comprise the kama dhatu and twohigher meditative realms of form (rupa dhatu) andformlessness (arupa-dhatu). The latter two are onlyopen to very spiritually advanced individuals.

See also Buddhist stages of liberation

Trinity, soul as see Augustine, Saint Aurelius.

Tripart soul see Soul, tripartite.

Trobriand Islanders. These Melanesian peoplehave the most well documented belief in reincarna-tion in all of Oceania.

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Tulku (Tibetan: sprul-sku). This term, meaning“manifest body,” is used in Tibet, Bhutan andMongolia for high-ranking monks in VajrayanaBuddhism who are considered to be incarnatedbodhisattvas or celestial Buddhas. The term tulkumust be distinguished from the term rebirth. Thelatter refers to the soul, or its equivalence, of an or-dinary human or animal taking on a new body afterthe death of its previous body. The spiritual com-ponent of a tulku has technically never been that ofan ordinary or mundane being. Instead, it is a ce-lestial or divine essence or factor that has taken on successive material forms (a human body) inorder to guide humanity to liberation; in short, anavatar. It is this status as divine that has for thepast seven centuries gives tulkus a supernatural au-thorization to rule Tibet and neighboring areas.The earliest historical designation of a person as atulku appears to have been the second KarmapaLama (Tibetan: bKa’gdams-pa bla-ma) KarmaPakshi (1206– 1283), of the Kagyu-pa (Tibetan:bKa’brgyud-pa) School. It may or may not be acoincidence that this it was at this time that theBuddhist clerical hierarchy was assuming full tem-poral power in Tibet and even today the candidatesfor such tulku-ship are not chosen exclusively byspiritual evidence, but also by the current politicalneeds of the monasteries and of society at large.

The Dalai Lama, who is considered the incar-nation of the transcendental manifestation of com-passion, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, and thePanchen Lama who is considered the incarnationof the transcendental manifestation of the celestialBuddha Amitabha are the most well known exam-ples of tulkus.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Avalokiteshvara; Incarnation versus reincarna-tion; Jesus; Lama; Lhamoi Latso Oracle; Pos-session; Rebirth and maturity.

Twelve. This number is a nearly universal symbolfor time, hence of birth and death as well. This isprobably due to there being just over twelve lunarmonths (12.368) in a solar year. In cultures withmore sophisticated astronomical interests this hasoften been reinforced by the fact that the orbit ofJupiter is nearly twelve years (11.86). It is possiblethat the twelve links (nidanas) of the pratitya-samutpada wheel has its origin in such celestialcycles.

See also Zodiac.

Twin Souls see Soul twins.

Twins, conjoined (Siamese) see Embryonic fu-sion.

Twins, identical. These are twins that have anidentical genetic inheritance since they developed

from the same fertilized egg; hence monzygotic, asopposed to fraternal twins (dizygotic). If thesetwins were raised in the same household it wouldbe assumed that they should have identical person-alities. This is not always the case. Even with con-joined (Siamese) twins there are personality differ-ences. This has led advocates of rebirth to suggestthat a non-biological or independent extra-geneticfactor or factors must be present to account for thedifferences. Theoretically, this factor ought not tobe that of two newly God-created souls becausethose souls would have no prior personality differ-entiations that would explain the differences in thetwins; therefore, reincarnationists argue that thefactor must be two unrelated souls that had priorlives and identities.

One counter argument to this may be found inthe form of L1 retrotransposons which make up 20percent of the human genome. These are pieces ofDNA that have the ability to make copies of them-selves and then to insert these onto new spots inthe genome. It is thought that the activity of someof these virus-like genes jumping from one place toanother in the brain may help explain why thebrains even of identical twins are different.

To complicate the whole twin issue there is thevery rare form of semi-identical twins which iswhere a single egg is fertilized by two differentsperm.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth; Em-bryonic fusion; Soul twins.

Tzror ha-Chayyim (Hebrew: bonds of Life) orOtzar (Treasury [of souls]). In kabbalic literaturethis is the resting place of righteous souls beforethey reincarnate into new bodies. As the treasury ofsouls it is said to be beneath God’s Throne ofGlory.

See also Enoch, Third Book of; Guf ha-Briyot;Kabbalah.

Ubar see Kabbalah.

UFOism or Ufology. Although UFO is theacronym for Unidentified Flying Objects, when ap-plied to any of the New Age religions it can meanany of those that believe that the Earth has beenvisited by or been put into contact with intelligentextra-terrestrials “with or without” an interplane-tary vehicle. UFO groups generally can be dividedinto those that regard the space travelers as hostilealiens, and those that regard them as friendly, evenbenevolent aliens. The first group is often labeledapocalyptic UFOism in that it is often believed thatthe aliens are intent on either destroying or enslav-ing mankind. Among the second group of UFO-ers are those who claim that the space visitors havecome to teach us a higher wisdom. In a number of

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cases this wisdom includes reincarnation and othertheosophical-like teachings. Only rarely is it claimedthat these benevolent interplanetary teachers makecontact in their own bodily form. Instead, they aresaid to usually contact earthlings either throughchanneling or by having purposefully incarnatedinto human form, especially as walk-ins. These in-carnated teachers presumably have retained the fullmemory of their previous lives on their home planet.It might be noted that claims of past lives as aliensis not uncommon among those who claim that theywere temporarily abducted by UFO entities.

The modern UFO movement had it beginningon June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a civilianpilot, reported seeing a chain-like formation ofnine shiny objects flying at some 1600 miles perhour in the sky over the Cascade Mountains inwestern Washington. It was his description of themas “flying erratic, like a saucer if you skip it acrossthe water” that led to the term flying saucer. Whilethe present UFO groups are obviously all post–1947 development, some of their roots are in ear-lier non–UFO groups. Those earlier groups thatembraced communication with angels and thosethat believed in ascended masters were in manyways precursors to the UFOers.

See also Aetherius Society; Aquarian Founda-tion; Fiat Lux; Heaven’s Gate; Rampa, LobsangTuesday; Lost continents and reincarnation;Planets, other; Unarius Academy of Science.

Umbanda. This is a popular Brazilian mediumshipreligion that began around 1900 and is a blendingof native Indian (Tupi), African (Yoruba), Euro-pean (Catholic), and Eastern religious elements. Inparticular this includes belief in both reincarnationand karma, which it adopted from Kardecismo.Umbanda sacred literature includes the Secrete Doc-trine of Umbanda, the Tight Fundamentals of Um-banda, and the Revelation of the Hexagramatic Cross.The last of these contains details on how to receivespiritual protection, how to help others, and howto properly serve the Masters of Karma.

There are 3 branches of Umbanda: the Gege-Nago (the most African), the Angola-Congo (themore mixed), and the Caboclo (the most syncretic).

See also Afro-American religions; Astral plane(2); Kubitschek, Juscelino.

Umbra see Shadow.

Unarius Academy of Science. This is one of theNew Age religions that combine a belief in rein-carnation, karma, lost continents, and non-apoc-alyptic UFOism. Unarius was founded in 1954 byErnest (d. 1971) and Ruth (d.1993) Norman, whenthe first announcement of it appeared in ErnestNorman’s book Voice of Venus (1954).

The Unarius name is an acronym derived fromthe title Universal Articulate Inter-dimensional Un-derstanding of Science. The Academy is said tohave begun from both the ability of the Normansto channel messages from extraterrestrials and toextensively read into their own past lives. Accord-ing to the Unarius Academy, Ernest Norman’shigher self was the archangel Raphael (Hebrew:God heals), while Ruth Norman’s higher self wasthe archangel Uriel (Hebrew: Fire of God). Thislater archangel, at least according to the twentiethchapter of the Christian apocryphal, The Book ofEnoch, is the leader of the heavenly host andguardian of Sheol, the underworld. Ruth Norman,however, also considered the Uriel name to be anacronym for Universal Radiant Infinite EternalLight.

The Normans claimed that they could remem-bered their past lives as far back as those of extra-terrestrials from the 700 light-years distant planetLemuria who, along with other Lemurians, arrivedon the Earth some 156,000 years ago. These inter-planetary beings established the Earth’s first civi-lization on the now lost continent which they ob-viously named after their home planet. TheseLemurian lives of the Normans were said to havebeen followed by lives on the pre-deluge Atlantisand then, some 14,000 years ago, as the Egyptiangod-king Osiris and goddess-queen Isis; these werefollowed by a life as Jesus of Nazareth and Mary ofBethany, who was betrothed to Jesus.

After the death of her husband, Ruth Normanwrote her past life autobiography Visitations: A sagaof Gods and Men (1985). In this she described someof her further past lives as the female Pharaoh Hap-shepsut, Socrates, Charlemagne, the Toltec (Mex-ican) god-king Quetzalcoatl (Kulkulcan), Eliza-beth the I of England, Peter the Great of Russia,the Mogul Indian emperor Akbar, the empressMaria Theresa of Austria, the Inca emperorAtahualpa, etc. Among Ruth Norman’s writingson reincarnation are Principles and Practices of PastLife Therapy (1984); The Proof of the Truth of PastLife Therapy (1988); and The Last Inca, Atahualpa:An Eyewitness Account of The Conquest of Peru in1535 (1993).

See also Aetherius Society; Angels and rein-carnation; Heaven’s Gate; Old Testament andthe afterlife; Planets, other; Ramtha; Silentwatchers; UFOism.

Unconscious, the. This is the region of the mindthat is presumed to produce mental processes thatare neither autonomic nor conscious. In depth psy-chologies such as psychoanalysis it is regarded asthe repository of repressed impulses and memories.The psychotherapeutic approach of such psycholo-

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gies is to bring these repressions to the surface con-scious mind. It is theorized by many believers inreincarnation that the memories of past lives residein this unconscious and that psychotherapy cansometimes lead to past life recall.

See also Id, Ego, Superego.

Underworld see Greek Afterlife, Ancient; Hell;Hell, the Chinese; Old Testament and the after-life; Purgatory; Shinto.

Unity School of Christianity. Unity Christianityis a version of “New Thought.” This is the name ofa loosely structured movement that began in theUnited States in the latter part of the 19th century.It was mainly centered on the belief that a benev-olent God of pure spirit had never meant for hu-manity to suffer illness or disease; therefore, mostforms of illness were due to a false belief in the ma-terial reality of illness and lack of faith in God’sbenevolence. While most New Thought teachersand practitioners considered themselves to be au-thentically Christian, as might be expected, theydid not emphasize sin, eternal damnation, or a fu-ture physical resurrection. In fact, a number of NewThought groups, for example Christian Science,regarded death as being just as illusory as disease.With the exception of Unity Christianity none ofthe other New Thought groups adopt a belief inreincarnation and karma.

Unity Christianity was founded in 1889 byCharles Fillmore (1854– 1948) and his wife MyrtleFillmore (1845– 1931). The Filmores were studentsof Emma Curtis Hopkins, who was an associate ofMary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Sci-ence. Like Eddy’s group, Unity emphasizes spiritualhealing through prayer. However, Unity also ac-cepted lateral reincarnation as a way to perfect one-self in order to eventually leave the physical bodybehind and to assume a purely spiritual one, likethat of the resurrected Christ. While acceptingkarma Unity has never regarded it as an immutablelaw, but considers it to be under the will of God.

See also Christianity, esoteric; Karma versusgrace; Liberal Catholic Church; Reincarnation,Lateral; Science of Mind.

Universal Church of the Master. Established in1908, this is one of the larger Spiritualist religiousgroups. It teachings are primarily based on theAquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ. Besides ac-knowledging the ability to communicate with thedead, it also accepts a belief in reincarnation.

Universalism. This is the doctrine that all soulswill eventually be redeemed (apocatastasis) fromhell or some other less desirable state, such aslimbo. Most believers in rebirth, especially in theWest, subscribe to some form of universalism.

Christian Universalists have often cited Romans11: 25–32; 14: 9– 12 and especially 1st Timothy 2:4in support of their rejection of eternal punishment.Some Christian Universalists believe that such uni-versal salvation is achieved through a pre-messianicseries of reincarnations.

See also Annihilationism, Biblical view; Ori-gin; Predestination.

Upanishads. This is the ancient Hindu sacred lit-erature that conceives of God in a very monistic orpantheistic manner. It is the earliest known Indianliterature to acknowledge the doctrine of rebirth.While certain passages in the pre–Upanishad lit-erature called the Brahmanas may hint at the ideaof rebirth, the earliest text to clearly mention re-birth is probably in the third and fourth chapterof the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, which was prob-ably composed shortly before the 6th century BCE.The only other early Upanishads to mention rebirthare the Chandog ya Upanishad and the KausitakiUpanishad. Even in these the concept of rebirth isregarded as a secret teaching known only to somenon–Brahman (non-priestly) teachers. This sug-gests that the concept of rebirth originated from asource outside of the Vedic Religion, most likelyamong the pre–Aryan (pre–Vedic) population.

See also Bhagavad Gita; Caste system; Hin-duism; Jainism; Karma, origins of; Yeats, Wil-liam Butler.

Urantia Book. The anonymous author of this 1955new age religion book claims that it is a record ofthe teachings of certain high spiritual (angelic) be-ings channeled through the author while asleep,but recorded by a University of Chicago psychia-trist, Dr William Samuel Sadler (1875– 1969). In-cluded in the titles and names of these beings areChief of Archangels, Chief of Seraphim, BrightEvening Star (Lucifer), and Melchizedek. Thebook has a detailed cosmology and an alternativeaccount of the life and teachings of Jesus. Perhapsthe most interesting teaching found in the UrantiaBook is the idea that Urantian believers can invitesome of these high spiritual beings, as “ThoughtAdjusters,” to take possession of the believers. Inthis way the angelic adjusters can communicatewith, and teach, the believer’s higher selves to let goof fear and uncertainty and in their place to expe-rience of the presence of God. The name of thisbook comes from the name these beings use for theplanet Earth. Unlike a number of New Age writ-ings the Urantia Book, (Urantia Foundation,Chicago, 1955), states that the belief in reincarna-tion is an absurd and barbaric left over conceptfrom ancestor worship.

See also Angels and reincarnation; AquarianGospel of Jesus Christ; Ascended masters; Auto-

273 Urantia

matic writing; Channeling; Christianity, eso-teric; Oahspe; Possession.

Uttar Pradesh. It is in this north central India statethat the belief in reincarnation seems to be morestrongly adhered to than in other parts of India.This is also the part of India in which Ian Steven-son has found most of his Indian cases of presumedreincarnation.

Vaikuntha (land of no hindrance).This is the namefor the personal paradise of the Hindu SagunaBrahman god Vishnu and is attained throughbhakti (devotional) yoga. It Vaikuntha is not theultimate spiritual goal in Vaishnavism, but is aplace for the soul of the devotee to rest in betweenlives. After a longer or shorter stay in this blissfulrealm the soul is once again reborn into a worldlybody to continue its ultimate goal of merging backinto an impersonal Brahman, in short moksha.

See also Hinduism; Incarnation versus rein-carnation; Karma versus grace; Swarga orSvarga.

Vajrayana Buddhism. (Sanskrit: Diamond Vehi-cle) This is the Tantric form of Buddhism that isdominant in Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, parts ofRussia, and formerly in Manchuria. It is bestknown through its association with the Bardo,Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, and other Tulkumanifestations.

See also Amitabha Buddha; Avalokiteshvara;Bodhisattva; Buddhism, esoteric; Dehiscent orSeed-pod Principle; Gandharva/Gandhabba;Interim period; Mahayana Buddhism; Merit,transfer of ; Nine doors; Phowa; Rebirth andmaturity; Russia, reincarnation in; Tantrism;Theravada Buddhism.

Valentinus (ca. 136–ca. 165 CE). This Egyptianborn teacher was one of the more important figuresin Christian Gnosticism. His teachings were a fu-sion between the Christianity of Paul of Tarsus andthe Gnosticism of Basilides. Like the latter he be-lieved that the material world had been created by aninferior deity (demiurge) and not the father ofChrist. Christ was seen as the offspring of Sophia(the Divine Wisdom) which was a secondary ema-nation from a primary emanation of the Father (nearunknowable supreme God). It was this Christ whowas sent to help liberate souls trapped by the demi-urge in their reincarnational round. Adversus omnesHaereses (Against the Heresies) by Irenaeus was par-ticularly directed against the teachings of Valentinus.

See also Origin or Origenes Adamanthus;Pneumatikoi; Simon Magus.

Vampires. In several versions of the Dracula storythe beloved wife of the count, thinking he has been

killed in battle, commits suicide. When the countreturns home he finds that his beloved is not onlydead, but as a suicide victim has been refused bur-ial in consecrated ground. It is his cursing of Godfor this injustice that turns him into a member ofthe undead. Centuries pass and the count discov-ers that his wife’s soul has finally reincarnated intothe body of an English woman with whom he be-comes determined to reunite. In another particu-larly imaginative association of reincarnation andvampires, the horror writer J.N. Williamson, in hisbook Death-Coach (1981), managed to bring to-gether Pythagoras, a Greek-American communityin Indiana, and vampires.

See also Astral plane; Attached entity; Bo-gomils; Chinese Religion and Reincarnation;Crowley, Edward Aleister; Diakka; Etheric body;Etheric revenant; Immortality; Saint Germain.

Vasanas. In Buddhism these are the inner tenden-cies or impressions latent in each person that areinherited from a past life and that act as karmicseeds in the present and future lives.

See also Samskara.

Vedanta see Monism; Yogananda, Parama-hansa; Vedanta Society; Vivekananda, Swami.

Vedanta Society. Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the first Hindu teacher to attract an Amer-ican following, arrived in the United States in 1893.He organized the Vedanta Society in 1896. UnderVivekananda’s disciple, Swami Prabhavananda(1893– 1976), the society attracted the support ofsuch men as Aldous Huxley and Christopher Ish-erwood. Both reincarnation and karma are in-cluded in the teachings of the Society.

See also Atman; Yogananda, Paramahansa.

Vedic Religion. This is the name given by schol-ars to the religion of the Aryan people in northernIndia before that religion gradually evolved intoHinduism. The name Vedic comes from the sa-cred texts known as the “Veda,” which is Sanskritfor wisdom. The Vedic religion is the religion thatboth Buddhism and Jainism rose to challenge. Itwas only in the last Vedic phase that the concept ofrebirth and karma were found. This suggests thatthe concepts of reincarnation entered into lateVedic writings from some non–Vedic source.

See also Bhagavad-Gita; Rain; Upanishads.

Vegetarianism. Many believers in transmigrationfeel that since a human soul might reincarnate intoan animal’s body eating meat might be paramountto cannibalism. Also, it is believed by some teach-ers that eating meat, or in some cases any animalproduct, is a major impediment to rememberingone’s past lives. Among the religions that believe in

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rebirth Jainism is the one most thoroughly commit-ted to vegetarianism. Hinduism and Buddhismencourage vegetarianism, but they generally do notrequire it. There are, however, a small number ofMahayana Buddhist texts that have a very negativeview of meat eating. One example of such a text isthe renowned Lankavatara Sutra. This text claimsthat eating meat will result in being reborn as an ill-smelling, contemptuous, and insane member of theuntouchable caste; as if that was not bad enough,from there the person will be reborn as a dakini(ogress) or even as a cat.

In contrast to advocating vegetarianism, Left-handed Tantrism regards meat (S: mamsa) and fish(matsya) eating as part of the esoteric way to spir-itual liberation or freedom from birth and death,specifically because eating meat and fish are two ofthe five forbidden practices (pancamakara) innon–Tantric (exoteric) circles. The other three for-bidden or antinomian practices are the use of intox-icants (mada), aphrodisiacs (mudra), and ritual sex-ual intercourse (maithuna).

On the other hand, the founder of the OshoMovement taught that the inability of most peo-ple to remember their past lives was due to the factthat meat eating blocked the necessary channelthrough which such lives could be remembered.This seems to agree with the view of HelenaBlavatsky that meat possessed a kind of magnet-ism that anesthetized the psychic power in itseaters.

India-originating religions were not the onlyones to associate meat-eating with rebirth. The an-cient Greek Pythagoreans and followers of Or-phism also regarded some degree of vegetarianismas essential for liberation from the wheel of rebirth(kyklos genesion). Also, according to a folk Chinesebelief, being a vegetarian and teaching your childrento be the same will help a person to avoid sufferingin the third Court of Hell.

See also Aetherius Society; Ahimsa; Antino-mianism; Beans; Empedocles; Fiat Lux; Hell,the Chinese; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Porphyry;Pythagoras.

Venus, the planet see Aetherius Society; I AmMovement; Lucifer; Planets, other; Rampa,Tuesday Lobsang; Unarius Academy of Science.

Vijnana (S. Consciousness) see Pratitya-samut-pada; Psychophysical aggregates; Rebirth inBuddhism; Soul.

Vijnanavada (S: Consciousness) School of Bud-dhism. This is one of the two main philosophicalschools of Mahayana Buddhism; the other beingthe Madhyamika School. The name of the schoolcomes from the fact that it teaches that the mind or

consciousness (vijnana) can never be sure how realthe outer world is. The only thing it can be certainof is that there is a consciousness which is called“I.” This is much like the view of the seventeenthcentury French philosopher Descartes, as well asthe Western system called Subjective Idealism.

Vijnanavada divides consciousness into eight lev-els. The first five levels correspond to the five sensesof sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. The sixth(manovijnana) and seventh (manas) levels are re-spectively the lower and higher forms of intellectualconsciousness. The manovijnana is the thinkingconsciousness that coordinates the previous fiveconsciousnesses. The manas in unenlightened per-sons is “defiled” by delusion of self consciousness.The eighth, or alayavijnana, is not consciousnessin any ordinary sense as are the other seven. Ratherit is the non-reflected or non-self-aware conscious-ness that underlines the others. The name alayameans womb or storehouse and refers to where theseeds (bija) of good and bad karma reside or arestored. It is only when consciousness manifests it-self as the manas that the person begins to have thebasis for a sense of self or ego develop. Of course,this happens as a result of the karmic seeds in thealayavijnana. These seeds sprout into all the delu-sions that we call the world and the self.

Other names applied to this philosophical schoolare Chittamatra (Intention-only), Vijnaptimatrata(consciousness-matrix-only), Dharma-Laksana(Dharma-characters), and Yogachara (Yoga way).The last name is given to this school because itteaches that only through the right meditationpractice (yoga) can one realize this “conscious-only”condition and thus gain awakening (Buddhahood)which meant the end of rebirth. One of the mainreasons for the development of this school was totry to answer the Buddhist dilemma of how therecould be rebirth without a soul (anatman).

See also Alayavijnana; Annihilationism, Bud-dhist view; Zen.

Vilna Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon Kramer, 1720–1797). This Lithuanian Kabbalist wrote a commen-tary on the biblical book of Jonah that envisions itas an allegory for reincarnation.

See also Kabbalah.

Vimanavatthu. In the canon of Theravada Bud-dhism this is a minor book which describes the fateof a certain group of the virtuous deceased that in-stead of being immediately reborn into a newhuman body, are born into the blissful state of thegods (devas). The Vimanavatthu tells eighty-threestories detailing with how the wholesome (kusala)karma of those individuals brought them to theircelestial births.

See also Bhavachakra; Petavatthu; Pretas.

275 Vimanavatthu

Vintras, Eugene (1807– 1875). In 1839 Frenchmanclaimed that he had been visited by Saint Josephfor the purpose of announcing the “Reign of Love”in order to prevent the end of the world. This Reignof Love turned out to be more a reign of sexual lib-ertinism than anything else. Despite a five year im-prisonment for collecting money under false pre-tenses, Vintras continued to attract followers upuntil his death, by which time he had become con-vinced that he was the reincarnation of the prophetElijah and of John the Baptist. Vintras was appar-ently sufficiently notorious to merit condemnationby the equally disrespectable occultist Eliphas Levi.

See also New Testament and reincarnation.

Violent and premature deaths see Deaths, vio-lent and premature.

Vipaka (S/P: ripening, maturing). This refers tothe consequence (fruit: phala) of karma. Technicallykarma is only the cause and vipaka is the effect ofan action. In this sense a person sows karma butreaps vipaka.

See also Karma and forgiveness.

Virgil (70– 19 BCE). This ancient Roman writer,whose full name was Publius Vergilius Maro, wasthe author the Aeneid. In book six of this epic poemthe author combines Orphic and Pythagorean ideasin his views of the afterlife. In the Aeneid the Tro-jan hero Aeneas, in visiting the underworld, seeshow the wicked are punished in Tartarus and thegood are rewarded in the Elysium Fields. Aeneasalso sees those souls that, after drinking from theriver Lethe, will eventually be reincarnated as il-lustrious Romans.

See also Greek afterlife, the ancient; Greeks andreincarnation; Orphism; Pythagoras.

Virgin conception. It has been believed in manyfolk societies that the man’s semen is not necessaryfor conception. At most the male is thought to serveonly to open up the womb so that a reincarnatingspirit can enter and produce a fetus.

See also Australian Aborigines.

Virgo (Hebrew: Elul). In the Kabbalic thought ofIsaac Luria this is the astrological period in whichnon-premeditated murder victims reincarnate forthe purpose of continuing to fulfill their cosmicobligations to repair the split between God and thesoul (Hebrew: tikun)

See also Kabbalah.

Vishnu see Avatar; Babbitt, Elwood; Brahman;Incarnation versus reincarnation; Karma versusgrace; Lenz, Frederick; Shiva; Vaikuntha.

Vivekananda, Swami (1863– 1902). This Indianholy man, in visits to Europe and America, sought

to give the West a new image of Hinduism. Ratherthan it being a primitive polytheism he tried toshow that it was the truth behind all religions inthat it taught the unity of humanity through uni-versal human divinity. Vivekananda attended the1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago which leadto his acquiring a group of western disciples. It wasfrom his teachings that the Vedanta Society wasfounded in 1896 in New York City. Vivekananda’svision was carried on in the West by his disciples,in particular by Swami Prabhavananda. While theVedanta Society does not require any belief in rein-carnation, as an offshoot of Hinduism it does notdiscourage the belief.

See also Self-Realization Fellowship; Yo-gananda, Paramahansa.

Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouetde (1694– 1778).This French philosopher was said to have statedthat the doctrine of metempsychosis is neither ab-surd nor useless, and that it is no more surprisingto be born twice than it was to be born once.Whether this statement meant that Voltaire actu-ally believed in reincarnation or was merely point-ing out its logical possibility has long been underdebate.

Wagner, Richard. According to the diaries of Wag-ner’s wife, Cosima Wagner, the musician began towrite a prose sketch for an opera on a Buddhist-reincarnation theme called Die Sieger (The Victor)but never completed it. It must be noted that thisdoes not necessarily mean that Wagner was eithera true believer in reincarnation, much less a Bud-dhist, any more than his Christian or Germanpagan themed operas imply that he was a commit-ted Christian or pagan.

Walk-in. This term refers to an alien soul or beingthat is believed to take over the body of a personwho is about to die. The alien is said to be able torejuvenate the body for its own use. According toRuth Montgomery, in her Strangers Among Us(1979), there are hundred of thousands of suchwalk-ins living on Earth; and while the majorityof these walk-ins are enlightened entities fromEarth, according to her Alien Among Us (1983), afew of them are thought to be extraterrestrials.Montgomery believed that most of these walk-insare benevolent entities trying to teach humanityhigher spiritual truths. Interestingly, Montgomeryconsiders Richard Sutphen as having become awalk-in. Montgomery’s Threshold to Tomorrow(1982) also deals with this subject.

See also Attached entity; Possession; Rebirthor rebecoming; UFOism.

Wallace, Henry A. (1818– 1965). This vice-presi-dent of the United States from 1941–45 was a

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Freemason, Theosophist, and between 1925 and1930 a member of the Liberal Catholic Church.He believed in reincarnation and karma, and thathe had been an Indian brave, possibly Iroquois, ina past life. Wallace was instrumental in having theMasonic mystic eye-pyramid placed on the left sideof the one-dollar bill.

Wambach, Helen (1925– 1986). This Americanpsychologist specialized in group hypnotic regres-sion and claimed that some ninety percent of theparticipants believed that they had some degree ofpast life recall. Wambach stated that the ten percentof her subjects that did not have past life memoriescould be divided into two groups. The first werethose persons who wanted so desperately to havepast life experiences that they could not relaxenough to have those experiences. The second werethose that were very doubtful about reincarnationand would not let themselves relax sufficiently to ex-perience past lives; indeed, they had concluded be-fore-hand that no such experience would occur.

Wambach was of the opinion that among thebest evidence for reincarnation was the fact that inher sample of over a thousand subjects about 50.6percent claimed to have been males and for 49.4percent to have been females in their last past life.Wambach noted that this was just what would beexpected in genuine population statistics. Besidesgender, Wambach analyzed the social status of hersubject’s past lives; and using a sample of 1,100 sub-jects, she said that only 10 percent claimed upperclass status, 60–70 percent acknowledged lowerclass status, and the remaining 20–30 percentwould have been of the middle class. This wouldmore or less match historical reality. Wambach alsoreported that in a study of twenty-five subjectsunder hypnosis who were regressed back to 1400and up to 1945 CE that between those dates the av-erage number of lives for each subject was five.

A major criticism of Wambach’s work has beenthat she began her study with a very favorable viewof reincarnation which automatically prejudicedher result. Wambach’s research is documented inher books Reliving Past Lives: Evidence under Hyp-nosis (1978) and Life before Life (1979).

See also Deaths, violent and premature; Re-birth, group; Researchers; Social Status of PastLives.

Wandering soul. This refers to the soul of a de-ceased person that usually has been so disorientedby the loss of its body at death that it moves fromplace to place until it can somehow orient itself toits disembodied condition.

Watchers see Dweller on the Threshold; Silentwatchers.

Weber, Max (1864– 1920). This German sociolo-gist of religion was probably the first Europeanscholar to examine the doctrine of karma from asocio-economic view point. He wrote that the doc-trine of karma ideologically transformed the In-dian world into a strictly rational, ethically-deter-mined cosmos, the result of which was the mostconsistent theodicy ever produced. However, thekarma doctrine also made revolutionary ideas orprogressivism inconceivable in the Indian world asmanifested in the conservative rigidity of the castesystem.

Welcomers. According to the entity Alexander, aschanneled through Ramon Stevens in Earthly Cy-cles (1994), welcomers are a family of souls that haveevolved beyond the astral plane yet meet recentlydisembodied souls and help them in their post-mortem transition. These welcomers surround eachsoul, even the most monstrous ones, with deepcompassionate wisdom and unconditional love.

See also Embodiment, moment of ; Omega;Theta (2).

Wheatley, Dennis Yates (1897– 1977). This enor-mously popular British novelist of the macabre wasa firm believer in reincarnation. In his later years hewas the editor of the Library of the Occult whichcomprised more than 40 volumes.

Wheel of Life see Bhavachakra; Kyklos Gene-sion.

White Brothers and Blue Sisters see GreatWhite Brotherhood.

White Eagle. This was the name for theAmerindian spirit guide (channeled entry) of GraceCooke. He was said to have guided Cooke in dis-covering several of her past lives. The more recentchanneler, Jill Cook [note similarity of last names],has claimed to be in contact with this same spiritguide.

White Lodge. Founded in 1941 by Lady ElizabethCarey, a representative of the British White EagleLodge, the teachings of the White Lodge were said to come from a member of the Great WhiteBrotherhood named Azrael and channeled throughCarey. Azrael’s messages focused on the approach-ing Age of Aquarius, the healing power of prayerand a belief in reincarnation and karma. The WhiteLodge was eventually absorbed into the ChurchUniversal and Triumphant.

See also Cooke, Grace.

Wicca. This is the modern name for the Neo-Pagan religious movement of benevolent (white)witchcraft. According to its practitioners “Wicca”is said to be derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for

277 Wicca

“wisdom,” although others have traced it back to aGermanic root meaning “to twist” or “to bend.”

Although some Wiccans claim their practice tobe an uninterrupted continuation of pre–Christ-ian European paganism, it really developed as a re-sult of the publication of The Witch Cult in West-ern Europe (1921) and God of the Witches (1931) byMargaret Murray and Witchcraft Today (1954) byGerald Gardner. The view of Wicca as a modern re-vival was vehemently challenged in 1968 by theNew York feminist organization WITCH (Women’sInternational Conspiracy from Hell) which wrotea manifesto declaring that witchcraft was, indeed,the pre–Christian religion of Europe.

Wicca emphasizes worship of the earth as themother goddess and sometimes of a subordinatehorned male deity companion. Many Wicca prac-titioners believe in reincarnation, which is some-times referred to as “psychic recycling.” The Wic-can belief is based on a rejection of the Christiandoctrine of the resurrection of the dead as well asthe tendency to find analogies for rebirth in na-ture.

See also Crowley, Aleister; Druids; Fortune,Dion; Hell; Leland, Charles Godfrey; Neo-pagan religions; New Age religions; Rebirth,analogies from nature; Resurrection, bodily;Roberts, Jane; Sciomancy; Score, John.

Wickland, Carl August (1861– 1945). Wicklandwas the founder of the Psychopathetic Institute ofChicago and the National Psychological Institute(NPI). Through the mediumship of his wife, overa period of thirty years, Wickland was supposedlyable to cure patients of obsessing attached enti-ties. He stated that those who died believing inreincarnation carry that belief into the next worldwhere, imagining that they would be reincarnated,they instead lost opportunities to spiritually pro-gress. In fact, Wickland claimed that the spirit ofHelena Blavatsky recanted her belief in reincar-nation. Wickland was the author of Thirty Yearsamong the Dead (1924).

See also Davis, Andrew Jackson; Home,Daniel Douglas; Morse, J.J.; Spiritualism.

Widespread and multi-cultural belief argument.This argument in favor of rebirth is based on thefact that many totally unrelated cultures aroundthe world, both primitive and advanced, have ac-cepted rebirth as a truism. The same counter ar-gument made about rebirth and famous support-ers can be made here also. While many cultures doaccept rebirth, the majority of known cultures havenot accepted it.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Channeling; Rebirth and cyclical time; Rein-carnation, origins of.

Wieland, Christopher Martin (1733– 1813). ThisGerman writer, beginning with his first importantwork Die Natur der Dinge (The Nature of Things,1751), had a major positive impact on a growinginterest in reincarnation among many of his coun-try’s intellectuals.

Wilcock, David. According to the book The Rein-carnation of Edgar Cayce (2004), Wilcock, who wasborn in 1973, is the reincarnation of Cayce whodied in 1945. Part of the proof for this claim is saidto come from a complex, or group soul, entity bythe name of Ra (1) who is channeled throughWilcock. Ra states that “it” evolved millions ofyears ago on Venus and that presently it is the over-soul for earth. Ra has told Wilcock that Cayce’sprophecy that California, New York, and Tokyowould in inundated and disappear into the oceanin 1998 was false because the entity Halahiah thatrevealed this false information to Cayce was, in re-ality, a negative source and should not have beentrusted.

See also Cayce, Edgar; Channeling; Lazaris;Michael (2); Planets, other; Presley, Elvis;Ramtha; Ryerson, Kevin; Seth.

Willing suspension of disbelief. This phrase wasoffered by the writer Henry James as a the mentalprocess by which people believed in something ofwhich there is no possible concrete or objectiveproof, such as the existence of God, the soul, or anafterlife.

Wilson, Ian. In his book, Mind Out of Time: Rein-carnation, Hypnotic Regression, Stigmata, MultiplePersonality, and Other Little-Understood Powers ofthe Mind (1982), originally published under thename All in the Mind (1981), Wilson offers a majorcritique of reincarnation. Wilson also wrote TheAfter Death Experience 1987.

See also Edwards, Paul.

Winnebago. According to a study by the anthro-pologist Paul Radin (1983) the Winnebago believethat reincarnation is confined only to prominenttribal members and members of the MedicineDance secret society.

Wisdom of Solomon 8:19–20. This is one of thebiblical passages that Christian reincarnationistsuse to claim that this apocrypha supports reincar-nation. The passage reads, “As a child I was born toexcellence, and a noble soul fell to my lot: or rather,I myself was noble, and I entered into an unblem-ished body:..” This passage certainly suggests thesouls existence prior to embodiment; however, apre-existing soul entering a body does not auto-matically imply that this happens more than once.

See also Solomon, King.

Wickland 278

Witchcraft and reincarnation see Wicca.

Witness position. This is said to be a post-mortemstate of consciousness from where the deceased en-tity can review his or her most recent life, but froma safely detached state of mind, almost as if it werethe life of another person.

Women. In a number of societies the concept ofrebirth is used to marginalize women, especially bymaking them believe that their present gender isdue to poor karma, and that if they obey the maleauthorities they will be rewarded by being rebornas men. One version of this marginalization is thedogma that it is only as a male that one could evermanifest as a Buddha. The most extreme case ofmarginalization of women is found in the Nusayrisdoctrine that only men have souls and thus onlythey can reincarnate.

See also Aztecs; Bhaishajyaraja-guru; Castesystem; Gender issue of the soul; Jataka Tales;Kabbalah; Kingsford, Anna Bonus; Nusayris(Nursaris); Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-dhism.

Work of Mercy. This was an occult cult begun inFrance by Eugene Vintras, a factory worker, whoclaimed to be the reincarnation of John the Baptistand to have been visited by both the archangelMichael and the Virgin Mary. Before his death in1875 Vintras passed the leadership on to Joseph-Antoine Boullian, who himself claimed to be thereincarnation of the Baptist, as well as of theprophet Elijah.

See also New Testament and reincarnation;Old Testament and the afterlife.

World Catalyst Church. Founded in 1967 inButte, Montana, the Church teaches that there is aninner internal light that is beyond the self in wis-dom, power and scope, and that it is the church’sresponsibility to lead its members from their pres-ent ignorant state into that eternal light. Each per-son is regarded as bound by natural law and byhis/her oneness with others. No one will enter intoeternal perfection until all are able to do so. Thiswill require each person to be reincarnated in var-ious dimensions to learn the lessons of those di-mensions.

World Wide Web see Internet and reincarna-tion; Seventeenth century renewed interest inrebirth.

Wraith see Astral body.

Xenoglossy. This Greek derived term is from xeno-for foreign and -glossa for tongue; it is sometimesreplaced with xenolalia (foreign-language). Theterm was coined by the French physiologist Dr.

Charles Richet and refers to speaking, reading, orunderstanding of a real language which, presumably,one has never learned. Usually xenoglossy occurswhile in some degree of an altered state of con-sciousness.

There are actually two types of xenoglossy, therecitative and the responsive. In the first, which isthe most common type, the speaker uses words andphrases of which he does not understand the mean-ing. It is thought that this form of xenoglossy is,more likely than not, to be related to cryptomne-sia.

Responsive xenoglossy, which is much rarer, iswhere the speaker does understand the meaning ofwhat he is saying. It is in this form that xenoglossyis thought by some to be related to memories of apast life.

Some of the more conservative Christian churchesviews xenoglossy as related to demonic possession.Xenoglossy is not to be confused with glossolalia.

See also Arguments supportive of rebirth;Language inconsistency; New Testament andreincarnation; Possession; Rosemary case; Xeno-graphy.

Xenography. This ability to writing in a presumedunlearned language is believed by some to suggestrecall from a past life.

See Automatic writing; Xenoglossy.

Xenophanes see Pythagoras.

Xenophrenia. This is an altered state of conscious-ness such as during a past life hypnotic trance.

Y symbol. This symbol was used by the Pythagore-ans to signify the two possible destinations withwhich the soul was eventually faced. The left pathrepresented reincarnation, while the right path rep-resented the Elysium Fields.

See also Greek afterlife, the ancient; Pythago-ras.

Yama. In the Vedas this is the name for the mytho-logical first human being to experience bodilydeath, which gave him the right to become the kingof the after-life world. This world at first wasthought to be located in the heavens, but soon wasbelieved to be in an underworld. Originally a light-hearted ruler of ancestral souls in a morally indif-ferent world, Yama in post–Vedic literature becamea severe judge of the dead ruling over a hellish placeof punishment (naraka). Iconographically Yamais depicted as green in color with red eyes, wearingred garments. He carries a noose, and a mace whichis often decorated with a skull; he rides a blackwater buffalo.

According to Hindu mythology when a personis about to die, Yama sends to that person his Bird

279 Yama

of Doom (crow and/or pigeon). Once the person isdead the messenger of Yama, Yamduta, will guidethe soul of the deceased to the underworld whichinvolves passing by two ferocious four-eyed dogsof Yama, the Sarameyas, which guard Yama’spalace, Kalichi, in the city of the dead, Yamapura.Once in Yamapura, the dead meet Chintra-Gupta,the Registrar of the Dead, who reads out the Agra-sandhani, the register of all the deceased’s deeds.This is followed by the judgment of Yama who willsend some souls to hell, others to heaven (swarga)and still others to immediate earthly rebirth.

The journey to the underworld is said to take 4hours and 40 minutes, so the body of the deceasedmust not be cremated before this time.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead Yama, havingbeen borrowed from Hinduism, carries a mirrorthat reflects all the good and evil actions of a per-son’s most recent embodiment.

See also Emma-o; Hell, the Chinese; Vedic Re-ligion; Yen-Lo.

Yanomamo. Among these Indians of Venezuelathere is a belief that the souls of the deceased, aftera rest and rejuvenation period on the moon, returnto earth as rain that is absorbed by the penises of themen, who, through sexual intercourse, will thentransfer them into the womb of their mates. TheYanomamo also believe one alternates gender eachlife. In fact, these people believe that if a child diesduring or shortly after its birth the death was dueto it having mistakenly entered a body with theidentical gender of its last one.

See also American Indians; Gender issue ofthe soul.

Yarsanism. A religion which is concentrated insouthern Kurdistan (Iran and Iraq), Yarsanism pos-sesses an impressive body of religious cosmogony.It holds that the world was created when the Uni-versal Spirit (Haq), who resided in Pre-Eternity in(or as) a pearl, manifested itself in a primary avataras the Lord God (Khawandagar). This signaled theFirst of the Seven Epochs of universal life. TheLord God then proceeded to create the world. TheSpirit further manifested itself in five secondaryavatars to form the Holy Seven with the Spirit it-self.

Yarsanism teaches that all souls start their evolu-tionary development by entering inanimate objects,eventually advancing into plants, then animals, andfinally human beings. Once transmigrating intohuman form most souls begins a transmigratoryjourney which can last for 1,000 life-times. This isthe equivalent in time to the 50,000 years that it isthought the universe will exist. At the end of thisevolutionary journey a man or woman reaches sal-vation and becomes a holy perfect being which is

then privileged to dwell in the high heavens andexperience total union with the Universal Spirit.

While it is thought very rare, a person of excep-tional quality and effort may in a single life-timereach the highest state. Morally inadequate per-sons, on the other hand, may regress to an animalform; but such a life is not then counted amongthe 1,000 lives. Also, not counted is the life-time ofan infant that dies before reaching a minimum of40 days. If after the 1,000 lives, or at the end of theuniverse’s 50,000 years, whichever comes first, asoul has not yet reach the status of a holy personthen that soul will be judged at the Final Judgmentor Pardivari (the bridge crossing).

See also Cult of Angels; Evolutionary trans-migration of souls; Hashimiyya; Islam; Kan-thaeans; Khurramiyya; Tanasukh.

Yazidis or Yezidis. These are a non–Muslim Kur-dish speaking people of northern Iraq who honoras their founder the 11th century Sufi saint SheikhAdi b. Musafir. The Yazidis believe that Satan (Ara-bic: Shaitan), as a fallen angel, repented of his crimeand was forgiven by God. Since the term Shaitanwas his pre-repentant name it is forbidden for theYazidis to use it. Instead, this figure is veneratedunder the title of the Peacock Angel (Aramaic:Malak Taus). In accordance with their belief intransmigration, if the dying person has led a goodlife he will be reborn as human being; and if he haslived a bad life he will be reborn as an animal. TheYazidis constitute less than 5 percent of the Kurdishpopulation.

See also Assassins; Babism and Bahaism; Cultof Angels; Druzes; Evolutionary transmigrationof souls; Islam; Mesopotamia; Nusayris (Nur-saris); Rebirth, cross-species; Sufism; Tanasukh.

Yeats, William Butler (1865– 1939). This NoblePrize–winning Irish poet had a major interest inPlatonism, Neoplatonism, the prophetic works ofWilliam Blake and Swedenborg and in the eso-teric and the occult in general. He founded theIrish Hermetic Society in 1885 and from 1887 to1890 he was a member of the Irish TheosophicalSociety. This was followed by his joining the BritishIsis-Urania Lodge of Hermetic Order of theGolden Dawn and still later the Order of the StellaMatu-tina (Morning Star). In 1917 Yeats marriedGeorgie Hyde-Lees, who very shortly afterwardsbegan experimenting with automatic writing. Thesuccess of this experiment was manifested by mak-ing contact with entities Yeats referred to only as“the Communicators.” These spirits communicatedan entire esoteric system based on the twenty-eightphases of the moon and other astrological elements.In this lunar system the soul works its way throughthe phases of the moon both during this life and

Yanomamo 280

continuing on in between one life and another. Thenature of this esoteric system was privately pub-lished in 1925 under the title of A Vision, which in1937 was republished in a much revised form,which showed more influence from the Upanishadsthan in the earlier edition. Further esoteric ideas ofboth a mystical and magic nature are found in thevolume of collected essays of Yeasts titled Ideas ofGood and Evil (1903).

See also Astrology and rebirth; Sinnett, AlfredPercy; Theosophy

Yellow Springs (Huang Quan, WG). In Chinesemythology this is the name for the undergroundabyss where the souls of the dead reside whileawaiting rebirth.

Yen-Lo. This is the Chinese pronunciation for theSanskrit Yama, the lord of the underworld. In theBuddhist-influenced Chinese folk religion Yen-lowas the king of the first hell, but the Jade Emperordecided that he was too merciful towards evil soulsand so demoted him to the fifth hell. One of themajor significances to this fifth hell is that it is herethat the Bank of Hell is located. This is where allthe funeral money offered to the deceased by theirsurviving kin is deposited. With this money the de-ceased are able to bribe the corrupt officials of hell tolet the souls pass quickly through hell and on to theirnext rebirth. This is the hell for those who eitherslandered the Buddha or do not believe in karma.

See also Chinese Religion and Reincarnation;Chuan-lun wang; Emma-o; Hell, the Bank of;Hell, the Chinese.

Yin and Yang forces see Acupuncture; ChineseReligion and Reincarnation; Rebirth and cycli-cal time.

Yoga. According to the “Yoga Sutras” (400CE) pastlives can be recalled through yogic meditation.

See also Bhagavad Gita; Bhakti Yoga; Karmayoga; Nirvikalpa Samadhi; Samkhya Yoga.

Yogachara School of Buddhism see Alayavij-nana; Karmic seeds; Manas; Vijnanavada School.

Yogananda, Paramahansa (1893– 1952). Havingarrived in America from India in 1920 to address theInternational Congress of Religious Liberals Yo-gananda remained in the country lecturing on andteaching a Westernized version of Vedantism torecord crowds. In 1935 he and his followers estab-lished the Self-Realization Fellowship. While theFellowship, in an effort to be compatible with lib-eral Christianity does not require any belief in rein-carnation and karma, as an offshoot of Hinduismit does not discourage the belief. In fact, it appearsthat Yogananda even thought that some of the pas-

sages in the Bible implied reincarnation, such asGenesis 9:6.

See also Atman; Old Testament and the after-life; Vedanta Society; Vivekananda, Swami.

Yoruba. This is a tribe of highly urbanized peopleof southwest Nigeria and neighboring areas. Unlikea number of other African people the Yoruba believethat a person’s moral behavior affects his afterlifecondition. In the case of a person who has not livedan upright life the creator god Olorun (Olodu-mare), to whom the dead must confess, can exilehim to a place of punishment. If the person haslived an upright life Olorun can offer some degreeof reincarnation.

See also Africa; Afro-American religions;Akan; Igbo; Nupe; Santeria; Zulu.

Yukaghir. This is one of the Siberian native peo-ple who, according to Waldemar Jochelson (1855–1937) in his The Yukaghir and Yukarghirized Tun-gus (1910), believed in reincarnation.

See also Chukchi; Inuit; Koryaks, Lapps(Saami).

Zen Buddhism, rebirth in. While most peopleknow the school of Buddhism under the Japanesename Zen it is also called Chan (Chinese), Son (Ko-rean), and Thien (Vietnamese). Zen developed inChina under Daoist and Confucianist influences,and eventually spread to Korea, Japan, and Viet-nam. The belief system in Zen ranges from folkZen to philosophical Zen. In the first of these thereis all of the standard Buddhist supernaturalism. Itaccepts the reality of celestial Buddhas and bod-hisattvas, gods, ghosts, witches, animals that trans-formed themselves into human beings, exorcism,protective amulets, prayers for healing, rain, for thedefense of the country, and for a good rebirth. FolkZen has the problem about rebirth that is found inBuddhism in general, namely how can there be re-birth without a soul?

Philosophical Zen places all of its emphasis onliving in the “Here and Now” as a prelude to expe-riencing the “Eternal Now”; therefore, it makes abelief in rebirth and karma entirely optional.

See also Chinese religion and reincarnation;Mahayana Buddhist rebirth texts; Rebirth inBuddhism.

Zenith. This term is sometimes used as a synonymfor escaping the cycle of birth and death. It is saidthat to pass from the vault of heaven (a temporaryor mere interim period place of rest) to the zenithis to pass from life, or the finite, to the eternity orthe infinite.

Zhendao/Chen Tao (Chinese : True-Way). Theorganization by this name has also advertised itself

281 Zhendao

as God’s Salvation Church. Its main teachings havebeen taken from Daoism, Pure Land Buddhism,apocalyptic Christianity, techno-science, and UFO-ism. Zhendao had its beginnings in the 1950s whena woman named Yu-Hsia Chen formed the Asso-ciation for Research on Soul Light in Taiwan. Thepurpose of the Association is to better the health,spiritual powers, and karma of its members. Underthe later leadership of Hon-Ming Chen propheticand millennial elements have been added to thegroup’s teachings.

The group’s headquarters were relocated fromTaiwan to the United States in 1995 due to the be-lief that after the annihilation of much of the Earth’spopulation in 2043, God will relocate the NorthAmerican continent onto Mars and transform itinto the Kingdom of Heaven/the Pure Land. Justbefore the annihilation Jesus will arrive in a space-ship to take the members of Zhendao to a safehaven in the interior of the planet. Perhaps anotherreason for relocating to the United States is the Yu-Hsia Chen’s belief that nine and a half million yearsago Christ and eleven bodhisattvas created human-ity in this country or, more specifically, in Texas.

Zhendao teaches that everyone has a tripartitesoul. These are the main spiritual light, the phys-ical soul, and the conscious soul. The first of theseactually produces the other two upon embodiment.At death each of these souls goes its own way. Themain spiritual light is the only one that, upondeath, is reincarnated, while the other two willthemselves become main spiritual lights if theirkarma is good, or they will become evil spirits (dev-ils) in hell if their karma is bad. Somewhat like Sci-entology, Zhendao uses an electronic meter to testthe worthiness of its members’ souls.

See also Planets, other; Pluto; Soul, tripartite.

Zodiac. Since the stars in the zodiac descend belowthe horizon as the year moves on the zodiac cameto be identified with death and rebirth by ancientpeoples. This was in contrast to the polar star whichremained visible all year round and representednon-rebirth or escape from rebirth. Also, since thepolar star represented the northern direction that di-rection too was associated with such escape, andso the southern direction was given the oppositemeaning of continuing rebirth.

See also Astrology and rebirth; Celestial gates;Moon; Planetary descent and ascent of the soul;Pleiades; Pyramidology; Steiner, Rudolf.

Zohar see Adam; Frank, Jacob; Kabbalah.

Zoroastrianism. This is a dualist Persian (Iranian)religion founded by the prophet Zoroaster some

time between the tenth and sixth century BCE,which has survived as a minority religion in Iranand India. Zoroastrianism proposes the existence oftwo separate cosmic principles, one good calledMazda (God) and one evil called Ahriman. Thesetwo principles or beings are in a cosmic struggle inwhich humanity is also involved. It is the moral re-sponsibility of human beings to ally with God andhelp defeat evil. Along with a belief in an angelicand demonic hierarchy, Zoroastrianism holds to abelief in a future Messiah, the Resurrection of theDead, and a Last Judgment at the end of time.Zoroastrianism has no traditional belief in reincar-nation; however, some modern Indian members ofthe faith, called the Parsees (Persians), have adoptedthe belief in reincarnation under theosophicalinfluence. There is, for example, the esoteric Zoro-astrian movement called Ilm-e-khshnoom (Persian:Knowledge of gratification), founded in 1907 byBehramshah Shroff (1858– 1927) and establishedas the Zoroastrian Radih Society in 1919. Accord-ing to Shroff his teachings are derived from hiscommunication with a secret colony of masters inan Iranian cave who taught, among other teach-ings, the doctrine of reincarnation.

Nasarvanji Bilimoria, in his Zoroastrianism inthe Light of Theosophy (1898), has a chapter titledTransmigration in the Avesta which states that thereis an obscure reference in the Vendidad, the most or-thodox text of the Zoroastrian canon, that the soulsor consciousnesses of dogs, highly regarded animalsin Zoroastrianism, upon death reincarnate intoUdra (water-dogs) which are mythical beasts, pos-sibly modeled on the seal. Beyond this there is nocurrent evidence for any original belief in reincar-nation in Zoroastrianism.

See also Angels and reincarnation; Ascendedmasters; Dualism; Gnosticism; Islam; Manichae-ism; New Testament and reincarnation; Old Tes-tament and the afterlife; Resurrection, bodily.

Zulu. These South African people believe thatupon death the soul (idhozi) remains for a whilenear the corpse, but then leaves and travels to thePlace of Beasts (Esilweni) where it takes on the par-tial form of an animal, due to the soul’s partial an-imal nature. Eventually it drops this partial animalform and proceeds on to a place of rest where, intime, it dreams about a future life state and uponawakening it is reborn into a human body. Thesoul repeats this process until it develops sufficientlyto become one with the Universal Spirit (Itongo).

See also Africa.

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91Americans Who Have Been Reincar-

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38, 46, 48, 51, 106, 119, 150, 151,173, 184, 198, 226, 242, 249, 251,275

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81Andaman Islanders (tribal group) 19Andrade, Hernani Guimarãre 19; A

Case Suggestion of Reincarnation:Jacira and Ronaldo, Morte, Re-nascimento, Evolucão, Reencar-nacão no Brasil 19

angelic planes 201angels and reincarnation 19, 32, 33,

56, 153, 258, 261, 280anima 19, 23, 162, 257anima mundi 31, 48, 49, 204animals and rebirth: non–Western

view 19–20; Western view 20animals, domesticated 20animus 23ankh 20–21Ann Ree Colton Foundation of Ne-

science 66annihilationism: Biblical view 21;

Buddhist view 21, 172anniversary recall phenomenon 21Anselm (Saint) 61antara-bhava 18anthroposophy 206, 239, 261anthropotathism 21–22antimimon pneuma 22antinomianism 22

299

INDEX

References in bold italics indicate main encyclopedic entries.

Apadana 36apocatastasis 22, 189, 273Apocryphon of John 180Apollonius of Tyana 22Applewhite, Marshall Herff 107Aquarian Foundation 22Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ

(Dowling) 13, 22–23, 55, 126,273

Aquarius, Age of 33, 77, 182, 249,277

Aquinas, Thomas 23, 2, 33, 261;De Anima Commentarium 23;Aristotelis Librum 23; ScriptumSuper Sententiis 23; Summa Con-tra Gentiles 23; Super EvangeliumS. Matthaei 23

Aradia, the Gospel of the Witches(Leland) 157

Arcane School 37archetypes 23, 131, 265archons 24, 202Archy and Mehitabel 24Archytas of Tarentum 24Arcturus 24Ardath (Corelli) 68Are Souls Real? (Elbert, Jerome) 250Argenteum Astrum 70arguments: pro and con on an after-

life in general 24, 207; specificallyagainst rebirth 25; supportive ofrebirth 25–28, 114, 180, 255; thatchallenge rebirth on a logical basis28

arhat/arahat 9, 28, 52, 125, 143Aries 33Aristophanes 97Aristotelis Librum (Aquinas) 23Aristotle 28–29, 109, 181, 257; De

Anima 257; Metaphysics 28;Physics 28

Arnobius the Elder 29; Adversusnationes 29

Arnold, Edwin Lester 151Arnold, Kenneth 272artificial rebirth 29Asahara, Shoko 35ascended masters 29–30, 56, 65,

76, 100, 102, 116, 126, 158, 166,213, 216, 240, 248, 249

asceticism 30, 172Ashoka (Indian king) 30Ashtar 22Asia 30asmi-mana 30Assassins 30Association for Past Life Research

and Therapies 31, 197Association for Research and En-

lightenment 93Association for the Alignment of

Past Life Experience 31Association for the Study of Karma

31associations and organizations 31Astara 31Astraea 31astral body 31, 32, 38, 54, 76, 90,

121, 136, 154, 159, 192, 244, 247,253

astral light 31astral plane 13, 31–32, 80, 90, 170,

188, 201, 268, 277astral soul 32Astrological Reincarnation Time

Scale (ARTS) 165astrology and rebirth 32–34, 64Astrolog y and Your Past Lives: Rein-

carnations through Saturn’s Place-ment in Your Chart (Avery) 241

asuras 32, 34, 40, 100, 136, 166,184, 226, 229

Atlantic Guild for Past Life Aware-ness 31, 34

Atlantis 49, 54, 71, 94, 101, 111, 161,200, 217, 243, 245, 262, 268,269

atman 12, 28, 34–35, 50, 51, 96,98, 104, 106, 119, 127, 154, 169,171, 173, 178, 187, 194, 199, 208,226, 250, 251, 253, 256, 263

atonement 61–62atrilism 207attached entity 35, 140, 178, 218,

26, 278Augustine, St. Aurelius Augustinus

15, 35, 61, 64, 219; De CivitateDei 35

Aum Shinrikyo 35Aum Temple of Universal Truth

35–36Aumism of Mandarom 36Aurum Solis 80Australian aborigines 36, 147, 232automatic speech 36automatic writing 22, 36, 68, 175,

186, 200, 245, 263Ava-Ciripa (tribal group) 15Avadana 36Avalokiteshvara 36, 72, 159, 208,

271Avalon, Arthur: Juana-chakrash

268avatar 10, 12, 36–37, 40, 70, 72,

118, 271, 280Avery, Jeanne: Astrolog y and Your

Past Lives: Reincarnations throughSaturn’s Placement in Your Chart241

avichi 37, 194awagaun 37, 248Awareness Research Foundation 31,

37Awareness Technique 37Ayesha, the Return of She (Haggard)

105Aztec Mummy vs. the Robot (movie)

179Aztecs 37, 52, 168

Babb, Lawrence A.: Destiny and Re-sponsibility: Karma in PopularHinduism 111

Babbitt, Elwood 37Babism 37Bach, Richard S. 130; Jonathan Liv-

ingston Seagull 130Bahaism 37Bahaullah 37Bahir 9

Bailey, Alice A. 37–38, 171; A Trea-tise of White Magic 265; Treatiseon the Seven Rays: Esoteric Astrol-og y 161

Baker, Robert 196Ballard, Edna 115Ballard, Guy Warren 115, 116, 240;

The Magic Presence 116; UnveiledMysteries 116, 177

Banerjee, H.N. 38, 91, 123, 207,232, 266; Americans Who HaveBeen Reincarnated 38; Lives Un-limited: Reincarnations East andWest 38; The Once and FutureLife: An Astonishing Twenty-Five-Year Study on Reincarnation 38,123

baptism and reincarnation 38, 199Bardesanes 33bardo 38, 69, 94, 120, 274Bardo Thodol 38Basil (Basilus) of Caesarea 39, 103Basil the Great 39Basilides 39, 274Bax, Clifford: Traveler’s Tale 270beans 39Beaver (tribal group) 15behavioral memory 39Belgi Dorje 39Beng (tribal group) 11Bengston, David 13: Past Lives of

Famous People: Journeys of the Soul13

Benin (tribal group) 11, 39–40Berg, Philip S.: Wheels of a Soul

127, 134Bernard of Clairvaux 249Bernstein, Morey 49; A Scientific

Report on “The Search for BrideyMurphy” 49; The Search for BrideyMurphy (book) 49

Beruchim, Abraham 40Besant, Annie 32, 40, 90, 156, 171,

231, 260Bey, Hamid 67Beyond Forever: Unlocking the Door

to Eternal Life (Pure Mind Foun-dation) 214

Beyond Human Personality (Cum-mins) 71

Beyond the Ashes: Cases of Reincarna-tion from the Holocaust (Gershom)127

Bhagavad-Gita 12, 40, 122, 126,150, 236

Bhaishajyaraja-gurn 40, 50, 161,214

bhakti yoga 40, 149, 274bhava 40, 209, 226, 242bhavachakra 32, 40, 210, 214, 226,

229bhavanga 40Bi-Amir, al Hakim 78Bible and rebirth 41Biblical deluge and reincarnation 41bija 41Bilimoria, Nasarvanji: “Transmi-

gration in the Avesta” in Zoroas-trianism in the Light of Theosophy282

Index 300

Bimstein, Louis 29birds, soul 41–42birth trauma 42birthmarks 27, 42, 143, 167, 196Bjorkhem, John 42Bjorling, Joel: Reincarnation: A

Bibliography 231black hole 42Black Mentalists 103Blake, William 258Blame It on Your Past Lives: Personal

Problems and Supernatural Solu-tions (Sutphen) 263

blaming the victim vs. illusion ofinnocence 19, 42, 53, 63, 67, 74,126,142, 143, 150, 159, 171, 180,184, 266

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 13, 29,31, 32, 37, 40, 43–44, 76, 90, 91,111, 130, 146, 153, 156, 161, 164,171, 183, 186, 239, 248, 260, 267,275, 278; Isis Unveiled 43, 11,186; The Secret Doctrine 43, 161

bleed-over 44bleed-through of lives 44blocked regression 44Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb

(movie) 179Blue Cliff Record 163bodhisattva 36, 37, 39, 43, 44–45,

48, 50, 60, 72, 74, 107, 125, 149,154, 159, 161, 164, 171, 208, 209,215, 236,271, 281, 282

body as a mere garment of the soul23, 45, 68, 212

body-brain (mind) dependency 12,45, 57, 169, 222, 262

body is the hell of the soul 46body-soul dualism 17, 46, 53, 79,

185, 198, 199Bogomils 46–47, 53, 79, 90, 197,

198Bonaparte, Napoleon 165, 180, 198,

263Bon-pa [po] religion 47The Book of Black Magic and of

Packs (Waite) 89Book of Life 47The Book of Mediums: A Guide for

Mediums and Invocators (Kardec)259

Book of Serenity 164Book of the Dead (Egyptian) 47Book of the Dead (Tibetan) 38–39,

69, 280Book of the Law (Crowley) 70Book of the Law (Elkins) 113Book of Thoth 268Book of Thoth (Crowley) 268Book of Thoth (Uxkull) 268The Book on the Rashith ha Gigalim

(Revolution of the Soul or Schemeof Reincarnation (Rosenroth) 246

borderline state 47“born again” 47–48, 128, 199Born Again: Reincarnation Cases In-

volving International Celebrities(Semkiw) 92, 239

Bostwick, Lewis S. 65Boulder Fellowship Foundation 48

Boullan, Joseph-Antoine 48, 279Bourdin, Gilbert 36Bowman, Carol 48, 232Brahma and rebirth in Buddhism

48brahmacarya (celibacy ) 49, 124Brahman 17, 35, 40, 48–49, 51,

118, 119, 126, 127, 139, 154, 165,168, 175, 209, 248, 251, 273, 274

Brahmanas 48, 273Branch Davidians 153Bremmer, Jan N.: The Rise and Fall

of the Afterlife 103, 193Brennan, J.H.: The Reincarnation

Workbook 101Bridey Murphy case 48, 49, 70bridges 49, 108Brighton, Earl W. 112Brotherhood of Light 163Brotherhood of the White Temple

49Bruno, Giordano 49; Spaccio de la

bestia trionfante 49Brunton, Paul 50; Hermit in the

Himalayas 50Buchan, Sir John 50; Pilgrim’s Way

50Buddha 9, 10, 16, 18, 30, 36, 40,

44, 48, 50, 61, 65, 76, 98, 106,107, 113, 124, 126, 140, 143, 149,156, 161, 164, 171, 178, 184, 191,193, 201, 214, 215, 220, 226, 227,229, 240, 248, 261, 264, 265,268, 271, 275, 279, 281, 282

Buddha’s necklace 50Buddhism 9, 12, 13,16–18, 19, 30,

32, 34, 40, 48, 49, 50–51, 75,79,82, 89, 93, 94, 96, 98, 100,106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114,117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 125, 126,136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142,143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156,157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 164, 165,166, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 178,180, 184, 191, 193, 198, 199, 200,201, 203, 208, 209, 210, 214, 215,216, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225,226–228, 229, 236, 237, 239,240, 242, 248, 249, 250, 251,255, 258, 259, 261, 264, 265,266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 274,275, 279, 281, 282; esoteric 51;folk 51, 98, 251; see also Ma-hayana Buddhism, TheravadaBuddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism,Vijnanavada School of Buddhism,Yogachara School of Buddhism

Buddhist stages of liberation51–52, 227, 236

Bulstode, Whitelock: An Essay onTransmigration, in Defense ofPythagoras 246

Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward:Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale 80

Burke, George 100Butler, Hiram 88butterfly 51, 219

cabales or caballi 51Cancer (the Crab) 33, 52, 55

Candia Debate 52Candomble 11, 136cannibalistic reincarnation 52Cannon, Alexander 52, 96, 102;

The Power of Karma in Relation toDestiny 52; The Power Within 52

Cao Dai 52Capricorn (the Goat horn) 33, 53,

55Caracalla 238Cardiac, Jean-Louis 58Carey, Elizabeth 277Caropocrates 22, 53Carus, Paul 188A Case Suggestive of Reincarnation:

Jacira and Ronaldo (Andrade) 19caste system 42, 53, 135, 137, 146,

165, 184, 220, 228, 231, 236, 239,277

casual body 54, 122, 253Cathars and Reincarnation (Guird-

ham) 104Cathars or Cathari 47, 53–54, 64,

79, 90, 94, 104, 111, 120, 132, 197,215, 233

Catholic Church 28, 35, 47, 53,62, 63, 81, 95, 111, 120, 125, 131,132, 152, 159, 173, 185, 197, 213,215, 235, 238, 241, 259, 266, 272

Catimbo 11cats 54cave 54Cayce, Edgar 10, 13, 24, 33, 54–

55, 109, 126, 16, 168, 169, 184,257, 260, 278

celestial gates 33, 55–56celestial planes 29, 201Celestine Prophecy (Redfield) 56celibacy (brahmacharya) 49, 60, 88,

93, 124, 165, 177, 187, 190, 210,227

Celsus 185, 189Celtic Druids (Higgins) 111Cerminara, Gina: Many Mansions

129Cervé, W.S.: Lemuria: The Lost

Continent of the Pacific 177Chadwick, Gloria: Reincarnation

and Your Past Life Memories 255chakras 56, 65, 184, 187, 268Chalice of Oblivion 78The Challenge of Fate (Dethlefsen)

155Chan-ch’a sha-0-yeh-pao ching 56Chaney, Earlyne 31Chaney, Robert 31Channelers: A New Age Directory

(Western) 57channeling 36, 56, 65, 74, 112, 186,

196, 207, 218, 24, 260, 271Chari, Dr. C.T.K. 57, 232;

Paramnesia and Reincarnation 57;Paranormal Cognition, Survivaland Reincarnation 57; RegressionBeyond Birth 57; Signet Handbookof Parapsycholog y 57

Charlemagne 165, 180, 272Charvakas 57child as its own reborn father or

mother 57

301 Index

child prodigies or geniuses 26, 58children remembering past lives 58Children Who Remember Previous

Lives (Stevenson) 262child’s epitaph 59chimera 86Chinese religion and reincarnation

59–61Chintra-gupta 61, 280chirognomy 61chirology 61chiromancy 61chirosophy 61chit 61chitta 61, 165, 226Chizuo, Matsumoto 35chnoumis, chnouphis 61Christ 16, 22, 24, 30, 35, 45, 47,

48, 53, 55, 61, 62, 63, 70, 87, 90,93, 100, 109, 112, 113, 118, 126,130, 149, 153, 156, 157, 158, 168,169, 173, 177, 180, 182, 183, 185,198, 199, 201, 233, 234, 238, 249,260, 261, 266, 273, 274, 282

Christ the Savior Brotherhood 113Christian Scientists 63, 273Christianity: atonement theories

61–62; esoteric 35, 63–64, 168;fathers critical of reincarnation62; lost chord of 64; missionaryinfluence and reincarnation 62;and reincarnation 62–64; viewof the afterlife 62

Christopher, Daniel 112Christos technique 64Christward Ministry 64Chronicles 243chronoportation 64Chuan-lun wang 64Chukchi (tribal group) 65Church Council: of 553 64, 189; of

Laodicea 65, 183; of Lyons 65,213, 215, 233

Church of the Divine Man 65Church of the People 105Church of the White Eagle Lodge

67Church Truth Universal-Aum 35Church Universal and Triumphant

65, 116, 185, 277Cicero, Marcus Tullius 16, 65, 102;

De Republica 202Circle of Necessity 65Citizens of the Cosmos ( Jocelyn) 12,

13, 33, 55, 161, 176clairaudience 65, 218clairvoyance 65, 218Clarion 22Clement of Alexandria 65–66Cleopatra Syndrome 66, 254, 263Closs, Hannah: High Are the

Mountains 104Clothed with the Sun: Being the Illu-

minations of Anna (Bonus) Kings-ford 153

The Cloud on the Sanctuary (VonEckarshausen) 102

coffin to cradle 66, 70, 73, 269collective birth of extraordinary

men and women 66

collective soul 103collective unconscious 23, 66, 131,

265Collin, Robert 66; The Theory of

Celestial Influence 66; The Theoryof Eternal Life 66

Collin, Rodney 165Collins, Mortimer: Transmigration

151Colton, Ann Ree 66; Draughts of

Remembrance: Memories of PastLives, The Seven-Year EthericCycle of the Soul 66

come-as-you-were parties 67Coming Back: A Psychiatrist Explores

Past Life Journeys (Moody) 175,224

Committee for the Scientific Inves-tigation of the Paranormal(CSIOP) 67

Commodus 238Community of the Inner Light

94conditional immortality 67Confucianism 52, 60, 219, 281congenital retardation 67conscious dying 67, 214consciousness continuity, sleep ver-

sus death 67Cook, Emily Williams: “Do Any

Near-Death Experiences ProvideEvidence for the Survival ofHuman Personality After Death”193

Cooke, Grace 67, 277; The Illu-mined Ones 67

Cooke, Maurice B. 111Cooper, Irving: Reincarnation: The

Hope of the World 121Coptic Fellowship of America 67Cordovero, Moses 67Corelli, Marie 67–68, 105, 151; Ar-

dath 68; The Life Everlasting 68;A Romance of Two Worlds 68;Ziska 68

Corinthians, 1st and 2nd 21, 22, 54,68, 100, 145, 148, 183, 198, 233,234, 237

corporeal versus non-corporeal af-terlife 68

Corpus Hermeticum 110cosmic picture gallery 13Cosmoplanetary Messenger 36Cott, Jonathan: The Search for Om

Sety: a Story of Eternal Love 80Council of Florence 65, 213, 215Council of Sirmium, Fourth 105Course in Miracles 68A Course in Miracles (Schuchman)

68creationism 98; soul 68–69, 96Critias (Plato) 269A Critic of Arguments Offered Against

Reincarnation (Almeder) 174A Critical Examination of the Belief

in Life after Death (Ducasse) 49critical time periods 69Cromwell, Oliver 13Crowley, Aleister 29, 57, 69–70,

238, 243, 258, 268; Book of the

Law 70; Book of Thoth 268; Mag-ick in Theory and Practice 70

Crux Ansata 20–21crypt 70cryptesthesia 70cryptomenesia 29, 49, 59, 70, 127,

218, 224, 260, 279Cult of Angels 37, 70–71, 280Cummins, Geraldine Dorothy 71;

Beyond Human Personality 71;Mind in Life and Death 71; Roadto Immortality 71; The Scripts ofCleophas 71; Swan on a Black Sea:A Study of Automatic Writing, theCummins-Willet Transcripts 71;They Survive 71

cumulative argument 71current knowledge discrepancy 71,

202cycle mates 71

Dabistan 71daimones 71, 258Dakelhnes (tribal group) 15Dakini 274Dalai Lama 36, 72, 117, 118, 158,

193, 208, 274Dali, Salvador 72Damanhur 72Dancer to the Gods (Richardson)

237Danelek, Allen J.: Mystery of rein-

carnation 49Daniel, Book of 13, 72, 96, 114,

187, 213Daoism 60, 72, 108, 118, 159, 219Dark Brotherhood 72Darwin, Charles 211, 254, 261, 266David (King) 10, 54, 95, 133, 153,

169, 171, 212, 260, 261Davis, Andrew Jackson 72–73,

260; The Diakka and theirEarthly Victims 76

Dawn, Rose: The Miracle Power168

Dayaks (tribal group) 73De Anima (Tertullian) 266De Anima Commentarium (Aquinas)

23De Animarum Transmigratione

(Henrici) 246De Bello Galico ( Julius Caesar) 78De Civitate Dei (Augustine) 35De Metempsycosi dissertation

(Schilling) 246De Republica (Cicero) 202Dead Sea Scrolls 109, 168death 73Death-Coach (Williamson) 274Death Is of Vital Importance

(Kubler-Ross) 154death panorama 73death to breath 66, 70, 73, 269death, violent and premature 73deciduous trees 74, 219deferred payment plan for the soul

74, 266dehiscent or seed-pod principle 43,

74déjà vu 27, 59, 74, 188, 195, 218

Index 302

demiurge 22, 23, 39, 46, 53, 74,97, 198, 204, 274

demonomancy 74Dene-Tha (tribal group) 15Deo non fortuna 94depth psychology 82De Rochas, Col. Albert 75: La Vies

Successives 75Descartes, René 56, 75, 173, 201,

275Destiny and Responsibility: Karma in

Popular Hinduism (Babb) 111Destiny of Souls (Newton) 249determinism 9, 13, 63, 75, 172, 251Dethlefsen, Thorwald: The Chal-

lenge of Fate 155; Voices fromOther Lives: Reincarnation as aSource of Healing 155

Deuteronomy 75, 132, 145, 188,243, 252, 252

Deutsch, Eliot: Advaita Vedanta: APhilosophical Reconstruction 175

devachan 75–76, 106, 136, 226devaloka 9, 32, 76, 120devas 32, 33, 34, 40, 76, 100, 136,

160, 166, 184, 214, 275dharma 30Dharma Shastras 76dhyani chohans 29, 72, 76, 111, 117,

126, 240, 248diakka 76The Diakka and their Earthly Vic-

tims (Davis) 76“Dialogues on Metempsychosis”

(Herder) 109Diamond Cutter Sutra’s Revilement

163, 164Dianetics: The Modern Science of

Mental Health (Hubbard) 242diathanatic 76dibbuk, dybbuk 76, 135, 136dichotomy 76Diogenes Laertius 76, 216; Lives

and Opinions of Eminent Philoso-phers 76

Dionysus 76–77Diordus Silculus 78Discover Your Lives (Steiger) 260disincarnation 77dissociation 77divided consciousness 77The Divine Plot (Mann) 34, 165Divine Science of the Soul 81doceticism 77, 85A Door to Eternity (Glaskin) 64dor deah 77Doreal, M. 49double torches 77Dowling, Levi H. 22–23; Aquarian

Gospel of Jesus Christ 13, 22–23,55

Draughts of Remembrance: Memoriesof Past Lives, The Seven-YearEtheric Cycle of the Soul (Colton)66

dreams 77–78, 253; announcing78; lucid 78, 218

Dreams, Evolution, and Value Fulfill-ment (Roberts) 245

drink or fruit of forgetfulness 78

drugs 30–31, 45, 103, 170, 176, 192Druids 78, 90, 176, 179, 259, 265Druzes 30, 55, 71, 78–79dual or double souls 36dualism 17, 46, 53, 79, 89, 185,

198, 199, 204Ducasse, Curt John 79; A Critical

Examination of the Belief in Lifeafter Death 49, 79; Is a Life AfterDeath Possible? 79; Nature, Mind,and Death 79

duhkha/dukkha 10, 17, 18, 30, 48,79, 107, 209, 224, 24, 251

Dunton, John: The Visions of theSoul Before It Comes into the Body246

Dweller on the Threshold 80, 247A Dweller on Two Planets (Oliver)

177, 201dying in peace 27, 80Dzogchen 39

Eady, Dorothy 80; Abydos: TheHoly City of Ancient Egypt 80

Earth-bound 80, 124An Earth Dweller’s Return (Oliver)

201Earthly Cycles (Stevens) 86, 191,

268, 277East-West Traveling 80Ecclesiastes 80–81, 82Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of

Jesus son of Sirach 80, 81Eckankar 81, 253Eckart, Dietrich 112Eclesia Catholic Cristiana 81Eddy, Mary Baker 273Edgar Cayce and the Born Again

Christian (Sparrow) 55Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet

(Stearn) 260Edison, Thomas 263Edwards, Paul 31, 174, 262; Rein-

carnation: A Critical Examination31, 262

eggs 81ego 12, 32, 54, 68, 75, 80–81, 117,

165, 170, 173, 251, 253, 275Egypt 13, 23, 30, 69, 71, 82–84,

89, 91, 94, 101, 102, 110, 151, 152,179, 180, 200, 201, 202, 212, 244,247, 249, 250, 251, 261, 264,267, 268, 269

Eighth sphere 84, 205, 244Eike, Erika Bertschinger 93Elbert, Jerome: Are Souls Real?

250Elder Brothers of Mankind 29Elder Brothers of the Rosicrucian

Order 239Elect or Chosen of God 84Electra/Oedipus Complex and re-

birth 84, 96, 173Elements of Reincarnation (Mann)

34, 165Elijah 53, 129, 189, 193, 276, 279Elisha 97Elkins, Don: Book of the Law 113,

216Elysium Fields 102, 237, 257, 276

El Zeini, Hanny: Abydos: the HolyCity of Ancient Egypt 80

emanationism 68embodiment, moment of 86embryonic fusion 86Emerson, Charles 15Emerson, Ralph Waldo 15, 91Emma-o 87, 107Empedocles or Acragas 87, 163,

190, 216Empire of Jade 87engrams 87The Enigma of Reincarnation

(Steiger) 260Ennius, Quintus 87Enoch, Books of 87, 168, 272ensomatosis 87Ephesians 87, 91, 148, 183, 209Equinox 57The Equinox (periodical) 70Erziechung des Menschengeschlechts

(Lessing) 157Esoteric Buddhism (Sinnett) 51, 136,

248Esoteric Christianity 88Esoteric Fraternity 88An Essay on Transmigration, in De-

fense of Pythagoras (Bulstode) 246Essene Center 88Essenes 88–89, 239Essenes of Arkashea 89The Eternal (movie) 179The Eternal Return (Mann) 34, 165eternalism 89, 172Etherian Religious Society of Uni-

versal Brotherhood 89–90etheric body 32, 54, 80, 90, 121,

136, 159, 244, 253etheric plane 90, 201etheric revenant 90Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular

Tradition (Leland) 157Eucharist 62Europe and reincarnation 90European Case of the Reincarnation

Type (Stevenson) 115, 262“every knee should bend ... every

tongue confess” 63, 90evolution 27evolutionary transmigration of souls

91, 264ex oriente lux 91existential seriality 91Exodus 91, 99, 129, 133, 212, 243,

265Experiencing Reincarnation (Perkins)

76Experimental Spiritism and Spiritist

Philosophy (Kardec) 259Exploring Reincarnation: The Classi-

cal Guide to the Evidence for PastLife Experiences (Tan Dam) 266

extinctivist 91extrasensory perceptions 57, 91–92Ezekiel 145, 187

Fab, Peter: Man’s Rise to Civiliza-tion 232

facial architectural consistency 92facial blank 92

303 Index

faculty X 92fall of the souls 92, 176, 201false claims of support for reincar-

nation 92false-memory syndrome 92–93false messiahs 95, 131Falun Gong 93fantasy prone personality 93, 115, 218fantasy versus past life regression

93, 218far memory 93Far Memory (Grant) 101Fellowship of the Inner Life 93Filadoro, Massimiliano: Tarot of

Reincarnation 265Fillmore, Charles 273Fillmore, Myrtle 273The Finest Story in the World

(Kipling) 153finite or infinite number of rebirths

93Finland 94fixed number or variable number of

souls 94Flavius Claudius Julian 117Flournoy, Theodore 178; From

India to the Planet Mars: A Studyof a Case of Somnabulism withGlossolalia 178

fluorite 94A Foot in Both Worlds (Guirdham)

104The Forces of Destiny (Thornton) 34Fortune, Dion 94, 237; Psychic

Self-Defense 94forty 91, 94, 102, 206, 219, 245forty-nine 38, 69, 96, 109, 120Foundation for Reincarnation and

Spiritual Research 31, 94Foundation for the Realization of

Inner Divinity 163The Four Gospels (Kardec) 259Fox Koan 164Frank, Jacob 95Frankel, Fred H. 179; Hypnosis at

Its Bicentennial: Selected Papers179

Franklin, Benjamin 57Fraternity of Light 95Fraternity of the Inner Light 237fraud 95, 218, 224, 260Frazer, James George 155; Golden

Bough 155A Free and Impartial Censure of the

Platonic Philosophie ... (Parker)246

free association 95, 114free soul 15, 36Freud, Sigmund 37, 78, 82, 117,

173, 256From India to the Planet Mars: A

Study of a Case of Somnabulismwith Glossolalia (Flournoy) 178

full participation 95–96future lives 74, 94

Ga (tribal group) 11Gabriel 96, 176Galatians 21, 22, 48, 96, 145, 183,

237

Galya Raza 96gandharva/gandhabba 96–97, 226,

228Ganges river 97, 201Garbhavakranti-nirdesha-sutra 164garden of waiting 96, 102Gardner, Gerald: Book of Shadows

70; Witchcraft Today 278Garvey, Marcus 217Gatti, Hilary: Giordano Bruno 50Gehazi 97gehenna 97, 134, 187, 187Gemini 33gender issue of the soul 97generationism and traducianism

68, 98, 120Genesis 9, 19, 91, 98–99, 127, 135,

168, 187, 237, 245, 255, 281Genesis: The Miracles and Predictions

According to Spiritism (Kardec)259

Genii of Nations, Knowledge andReligion 88

Gershom, Yonassan 127, 188, 215;Beyond the Ashes: Cases of Reincar-nation from the Holocaust 127, 215

ghost 90gilgul or gilgulim 99, 110, 130, 132,

133, 134, 135, 216, 244, 25, 265gilgul neshamot 99Gilgulim, Sefer ha- (Vital) 99Giordano Bruno (Gatti) 50Glanvil, Joseph: Lux Orientalis: or

an Inquiry into the Opinions of theEastern Sages Concern the Pre-ex-istence of Souls.... 246

Glaskin, G.M. 64; A Door to Eter-nity 64; Windows of the Mind 64;Worlds Within 64

Gleanings in Buddha Fields (Hearn)152

glossolalia 99–100, 178, 279glottologues 100Gnostic Order of Christ 100, 113Gnostic Orthodox Church of Christ

in America 100Gnosticism 22, 33–34, 46, 71, 74,

79, 100, 110, 122, 165, 180, 202,205, 23, 242, 245, 256, 274

Gnostics 23, 24, 33, 39, 46, 49,53, 54, 63, 65, 77, 83, 85, 90, 91,92, 96, 97, 106, 124, 126, 128,136, 152, 166, 180, 181, 182, 185,189, 190, 198, 201, 210, 230, 245,248, 267, 274

God and rebirth in the West 100God of the Witches (Murray) 278Gods, cyclically dying and rising 101Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 101Golden Bough (Frazer ) 155Goodwin, John: Works 246The Gospel According to Spiritism

(Kardec) 259Goudey, R.F.: Reincarnation: A

Universal Truth 41, 93, 121, 205Grace-Loerh Life Readings 13, 71,

93, 98, 101, 159, 255Grant, Joan Marshall 101–102, 152,

245: Far Memory 101; Many Life-times 152; Now and Then: Rein-

carnation, Psychiatry, and DailyLife 152

Great Pyramid 109Great White Brotherhood 10, 30,

35, 65, 70, 72, 76, 102, 113, 116,216, 239, 249, 277

Great White Lodge 102Greek afterlife, the ancient 102Greeks and reincarnation 102–103Green, Jeff : Pluto: The Evolutionary

Journey of the Soul 205Greene, Liz: Saturn: A New Look at

an Old Devil 80Gregory of Nazianus 103Gregory of Nyssa 39, 64, 103grey occultists 103, 262Greyson, Bruce: “Do Any Near-

Death Experiences Provide Evi-dence for the Survival of HumanPersonality After Death” 193

Griffin, David Ray 103Grof, Stanislav 103group soul 103–104, 114, 172, 216,

218, 254Growth of a Soul (Oliver) 201Growth of the Soul: A Sequel to Eso-

teric Buddhism (Sinnett) 248Guardian of the Threshold 80Guayaki (tribal group) 15Guernon, Rene: Introduction to the

Study of the Hindu Doctrines 104Guf ha-Briyot 104guided imagery 104Guild of the Master Jesus 94Guirdham, Arthur 104: Cathars

and Reincarnation 104; A Foot inBoth Worlds 104; The Lake and theCastle 104; We Are One Another104

Gurdjieff, Georgi Ivanovitch 31, 66,104–105, 191

Gwenved 105

Hades 44, 101, 102, 105, 117, 158,175, 187, 190, 198, 203, 226, 240,24, 265

Haggard, H. Rider 67, 105, 151Hall, Manley Palmer 105, 172; The

Secret Teachings of All Ages: AnEncyclopedic Outline of Masonic,Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosi-crucian Symbolical Philosophy 105,172

Hapshepsut 83The Harmless Opinion of the Revolu-

tion of Humane Souls as a Proba-ble Hamsa 105

harrowing of hell 105, 158Hartley, Christine 237Hashimiyya 106Hasidism 99, 106, 110, 122, 127,

130, 147, 216, 265Hauntings 104, 106Have You Lived Before This Life? A

Scientific Study: A Study of Deathand Evidence of Past Lives (Hub-bard) 242

Hawkman 106Hearn, Lafcadio: Gleanings in the

Buddha Fields 152

Index 304

heaven 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 35, 37,38, 47, 52, 54, 59, 62–63, 65, 71,76, 79, 80, 82, 84–85, 87, 88,90, 99, 103, 106, 107, 158, 159,162, 167, 173, 175, 178, 193, 206,241, 263, 264, 280

Heaven and Hell: The Divine JusticeVindicated in the Plurality of Exis-tences (Kardec) 259

heaven, hell, and Buddhist no-soul(Self ) 106

heavens, Buddhist 106Heaven’s Gate 107Hebrews, Book of 62, 109, 168, 183hedonism 107, 172Heimarmene 107Heindel, Max 239hell 24, 34, 37, 38, 60, 62, 106,

107–108, 114, 120, 125, 130, 139,144, 158, 159, 162, 166, 171, 178,180, 184, 197, 206, 228, 229,234, 264, 273, 280; Chinese 108,275; realm 32

Helmont, Franciscus Mercurius van109; Seder Olam; or the Order,Series or Succession of All theAges, Periods, and Times of theWhole World.... 246; Two Hun-dred Queries.... 109, 246

Henrici, Heinrich: De AnimarumTransmigratione 246

Heracleides of Ponticus 109Herder, Johann Gottfried von 109;

“Dialogues on Metempsychosis”109

Hermes 109, 216Hermes-Thoth 31Hermes Trismegistus 31, 110, 239Hermetic Astrolog y: Towards a New

Wisdom of the Stars (Powell) 241Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor

29, 44Hermetic Order of the Golden

Dawn 29, 69, 94, 110, 135, 153,248, 280

hermetic philosophy 31, 49, 54Hermetic Society for World Service

110Hermit in the Himalayas (Brunton)

50Herod (King) 85, 245Herodotus 110, 203; The Histories

110heroic “I” 110Heschel of Opatov, Abraham Joshua

110Hesiod 105hetero-retrocognition 110Hezyonat, Sefer ha- (Vital) 111hidden observer 111Higgins, Godfrey 111; Anacalypsis:

An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veilof the Saitic Isis: or, an InquiryInto the Origins of Languages, Na-tions, and Religions 111; CelticDruids 111

High Are the Mountains (Closs) 104Hilarion 57, 72, 76, 111, 117Himmler, Heinrich 111Hinduism 12, 19, 32, 34, 40, 48,

49, 61, 75, 76, 79, 93, 94, 98,105, 106, 108, 111, 118, 119, 120,124, 127, 135, 137, 138, 143, 149,157, 160, 168, 171, 175, 177, 180,191, 194, 195, 201, 208, 210, 219,220, 222, 224, 228, 248, 250,251, 255, 258, 259, 263, 264,266, 267, 274, 275, 276, 280, 281

Hinkins, John-Roger 177, 253Hirvenoja, Reijo 179Historical Fiction: A Guide to the

Genre 151The Histories (Herodotus) 110Hitler, Adolf 112Hodgson, Joan: Reincarnation

through the Zodiac 33Hollywood and reincarnation 112Holmes, Ernest Shurtleff 242holy lying 95Holy Order of Ezekiel 112Holy Order of Mans 100, 112Holy Spirit (Pneuma Hagion or

Spiritus Sanctus) 100, 117, 193,207, 252, 258

Home, Daniel Douglas 113, 259Homer 55, 87, 181homosexuality and transsexuality

27, 84, 113honest lying 95, 113, 163, 218, 224,

260Honoratus, Servius Marius 202Hopkins, Emma Curtis 273Hosea 145, 187Hoskins, Cyril Henry 217Hotel Transylvania (Yarbro) 240Hotoke 113hovering of the soul 113Hubbard, Lafayette Ronald 70,

242; Dianetics: The Modern Sci-ence of Mental Health 242; HaveYou Lived Before This Life? A Sci-entific Study: A Study of Death andEvidence of Past Lives 242; Mis-sion into Time 242

Huffman, Robert W. 48: ManyWonderful Things 48

Hulme, A.J.H.: Ancient EgyptSpeaks: A Miracle of Tongues 238

human embryo stem cell uses andrebirth 113–114

Human Immortality and Pre-exis-tence (MacTaggart) 163

human personality complexity 114hungry ghosts 32, 40, 60, 114, 120,

136, 171, 184, 199, 210, 226, 229Hunter, Neva Dell 216hunting cultures and reincarnation

114Hussein, Saddam 114Hutin, Serge 114Huxley, Aldous 274Huxley, Thomas Henry 114Hyde-Lees, Georgie 280hypermnesia 114hypnosis 29, 47, 49, 75, 77, 113,

114, 162, 179, 197, 242, 259, 277hypnotic age regression 12, 49, 122,

237hypoamnesia 114, 115Hypothesis....(W.C.) 246

I Am Movement 65, 115, 177, 240,267

I, William the Conqueror: a medi-tation on an improbable past life116–117

Iamblichus of Chalcis 117, 207,240; Peri Psyches 117

ibbur 99, 117, 135Ichantika 9, 117id, ego and superego 117, 173Ideas of Good and Evil (Yeats) 281idolatry of the brain 117Igbo of Nigeria 11, 33, 212Illiad and Odyssey (Homer) 117Illuminati 102The Illumined Ones (Cooke) 67illusion of innocence 42immortality 67, 117–118, 136Immortality and Human Destiny: A

Variety of Views (MacGregor) 162important person criticism 118Inca Indians 118incarnation versus reincarnation 118incest and reincarnation 118inconsistent views and reincarnation

118–119, 222incremental change of identify 119Independent Spiritualist Association

of the United States of America31, 260

India 119Indian Institute of Parapsychology

38individuality and rebirth 119–120Indonesia 120, 264infusionism 68, 97, 120, 188The Inner I 31Inquisition, Catholic 53, 120Inter-human reincarnation 120Interim period 11, 12, 43, 57, 65, 68,

69, 73, 75, 79, 94, 96, 109, 118,129, 144, 160, 161, 163, 164, 174,176, 198, 203, 211, 212, 213, 229,238, 254, 262, 263, 268, 281

Interlife 121Internal-external rule 121International Association for Re-

gression Research and Therapy31, 121

International Board for RegressionTherapy 31, 121

International cases 122International Society for Krishna

Consciousness 122Internet and reincarnation 121Interplanetary Parliament 10Intimates Through Time: The Life of

Edgar Cayce and His Companionsthrough the Ages (Stearn) 260

Introduction to the Study of theHindu Doctrines (Guernon) 104

Inuit (tribal group) 15, 73Inupiaq (tribal group) 114Irenaeus 64, 122, 274; Adversus

omnes Haereses 122, 274irrational fears 27, 121Is a Life After Death Possible?

(Ducasse) 79Isaac, Jacob, the Seer of Lublin 122Isaac the Blind 9

305 Index

Isaac the Pious 9Isaiah, Book of 13, 116, 129, 166,

187, 243Isherwood, Christopher 208, 272,

274Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky) 43, 111,

185, 267Islam 30, 47, 71, 79, 106, 120, 122,

124, 131, 153, 164, 165, 177, 179,181, 194, 195, 220, 232, 236, 248,250, 264, 267

Isma‘ilis 44, 124, 264Israel, Manasseh ben 124; The Soul

of Life 124Ivanova, Barbara 124, 232; The

Golden Chalice 124

Jacira and Ronaldo (Andrade) 19Jacob (Biblical) 10Jainism 12, 13, 17, 19, 34, 46, 49,

75, 79, 93, 94, 98, 100, 105, 106,108, 120, 124, 127, 136, 138, 139,141, 171, 184, 195, 203, 219, 220,222, 224, 228, 250, 251, 255,258, 264, 266, 274, 275

James, Henry 278James, Letter of 21, 125, 183Janua Coeli, Janua Inferni 125Jataka Tales 36, 60, 125Jehovah’s Witnesses 63Jeremiah, Book of 9, 145, 243Jerome, Eusebius Hieronymus 125Jesus 10, 12, 14, 22, 23, 39, 54, 62,

65, 68, 76, 77, 88, 94, 96, 98,100, 105, 107, 220, 126, 128, 129,130, 131, 145, 153, 156, 158, 161,165, 166, 167, 169, 182, 183, 185,186, 193, 198, 199, 201, 205, 212,217, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239,241, 242, 257, 258, 260, 261,262, 264, 272, 273

Jewish Holocaust 126Jews, Ashkenazi and Sephardic 127jigoku 87, 154, 247Jiva 13, 16, 124, 127, 240, 253Jivakosha 127Jivamukta 127–128Jivaro (tribal group) 15Jnana chakrasha 268Job, Book of 81, 128, 132, 145, 266Jocelyn, Beredene: Citizens of the

Cosmos 12, 13, 33, 55, 161, 176Jochelson, Waldemar: The Yukaghir

and Yukarghirized Tungus 281John Chrysostom 128John, Gospel of 21, 47, 66, 85, 122,

128–130, 156, 183, 189, 199, 209,213, 215, 258

John the Baptist 48, 53, 129, 189,276, 279

Johnson, Sarah: Historical Fiction:A Guide to the Genre 151

Jonah, Book of 275Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Bach)

130Josephus, Flavius 88Jouret, Luc 249Journal of Regression Therapy 121Journal of the American Society for

Psychical Research 15

Journey into the Bright World(Moore) 176

Journey of Souls (Newton) 249Journeys Out of the Body (Monroe)

262Judaism 9, 79, 89, 95, 97, 100, 122,

131, 132, 147, 158, 190, 194, 201,215, 231, 233 250, 255, 267

Judaism and the afterlife 130, 131,252

Judas Syndrome 130Jude 148Judge, William Q. 64, 130, 267;

Ocean of Theosophy 29Judgment of the Dead 131, 153, 177,

248, 282Julian, Flavius Claudius or Julian,

the Apostate 131, 238, 240Julius Caesar 78; De Bello Galico 78Jung, Carl 23, 78, 82, 131, 157, 174,

265Jupiter 10, 33, 202Justin Martyr 64, 131–132

Kabbalah 44, 76, 97, 100, 127, 130,132–135, 158, 162, 168, 190, 230,238, 257, 265, 268, 271, 275,276

Kabirpanthi 135kaivalya 136Kalama Sutta 227kamadhatu 32, 106, 136, 270kamaloka 32, 106, 136, 176, 107, 176kama-manas 165kamarupa 31, 32, 76, 136, 253, 270Kampman, Reima 59, 179Kant, Immanuel 136Kanthaeans 136Kardec, Allan 52, 81, 113,136, 241,

259: The Book of Mediums: AGuide for Mediums and Invocators259; Experimental Spiritism andSpiritist Philosophy 259; The FourGospels 259; Genesis: The Miraclesand Predictions According toSpiritism 259; The Gospel Accord-ing to Spiritism 259; Heaven andHell: The Divine Justice Vindi-cated in the Plurality of Existences259; Le Livre des Esprits 259

Kardecismo 11, 136, 272Karet 136Karma/kamma 136, 190; as absolute

or relative 141; in the ancient andmodern west 144; attitudinal 143;in the Bible 96, 145–146; bodily143; classification 143; delayed144; developmental 144; family144; and free will 75; geographic144; global 114; and God 138;group 144; and justice 138; jus-tice, and infancy 146; and logic140; marital 146; and the moralstructure of the universe 140; na-tional or state 146; as natural law142, 149; organic or organismic146; origins of 146; parental 147;place or site 147; Prarabdha 147;racial 147–148; and rebirth 84,140; redemptive 148; relationship

148; retributive 148; symbolic148; as unfinished business 142–143, 194; versus grace 148–149;vocational 150; with and withoutrebirth 150; with minimal rebirth150; yoga 40, 150

Karma and Rebirth in Classical In-dian Traditions (O’Flaherty) 231

Karma and Reincarnation League231

Karma in Motion (Layton) 161karma-nemesis 146karma-vipaka as a long term moral

tendency 149karmic: astrology 33, 150; bank-

book 150; boomerang effect 145,150; carrier 98, 159, 226; carry-over 151; disease 151; eschatology106, 108, 144, 151, 224; romances74, 151; script 151; seeds 41; ties152

Karmic Astrolog y: Retrogrades andReincarnation (Schulman) 33

Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies(Steiner) 261

Karmic Tarot: A New System forFinding Your Lifetime’s Purpose(Lammay) 265

Katsugoro case 152Kear, Lynn: Reincarnation: A Se-

lected Annotated Bibliography 231Keith, George: Truth and Innocency

Defended Against Calumny andDefamation.... 246

Kelsey, Denys 152: Many Lifetimes152; Now and Then: Reincarna-tion, Psychiatry and Daily Life 152

Kennedy, John F. 152Kenny, Saint 188Kerr, Katherine 151Kevala 124Khepra 83, 152Khnum 83Khul, Djwal 213Khurramiyya 71, 152Kieninger, Richard 261; The Ulti-

mate Frontier 261King, Elizabeth Delvine 35King, George 10Kings, Book of 243Kingsford, Anna Bonus 152–153;

Clothed with the Sun: Being the Il-luminations of Anna (Bonus)Kingsford 153; The Perfect Way, orthe Finding of Christ 153

Kipling, Rudyard 153; The FinestStory in the World 153

Kiramu-l-katibin 153Kirkisani 130; Sefer ha-Orot 130Klemp, Harold 81Kline, Milton V. 179Koot Hoomi 31Koresh, David 153Koryaks (tribal group) 65Kosha 34, 154, 159, 199Krishna 10, 12, 37, 40, 48, 122, 126,

150, 156, 160Krishnamurti, Jiddu 40, 156, 260Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva 154, 159,

161, 269

Index 306

Kubitschek, Juscelino 154Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth 154, 220,

232; Death Is of Vital Importance154; On Death and Dying 154; OnLife After Death 154; On Life,Death and Life After Death 154

Kueshana, Eklal: The UltimateFrontier 103

Kulkulcan 154, 272kundalini yoga 56, 268Kwakiutl (tribal group) 15, 154kyklos genesion 107, 154, 190, 205,

275

Lactantius, Lucius Caelius Firmi-anus 155

Ladder 155The Lake and the Castle (Guirdham)

104lama 155, 217Lama Yoga 31Lammay, W.C: Karmic Tarot: A

New System for Finding Your Life-time’s Purpose 265

Language inconsistency 155Lankavatara Sutra 275Lao Tzu 10Lapps (Saami) 155Larkin, E.L. 177The Last Inca, Atahualpa: An Eye-

witness Account of the Conquest ofPeru in 1535 272

The Last Incarnation (Lenz) 157Last thought 155Last Word: Therapies, Inc. 31, 156Laszlo, Ervin 11; Science and the

Akashic Field 11Lateran Council 233Lauritsen, Poul 34; Reincarnation

and Freedom 34law of parsimony 13, 218Laws (Plato) 204Layela 78, 156Layton, Felix: Karma in Motion 161Lazaris 57, 156Leadbeater, C.W. 32, 40, 90, 156,

158, 171; A Textbook of Theosophy32, 90, 156, 171

Leading questions 156, 211, 262Leek, Sybil 156; Reincarnation: the

Second Chance 156Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von

156; Philosophische Schriften 156Leigh, Lawrence: Past Life Therapy

in Action 263Leland, Charles Godfrey 157; Ara-

dia, the Gospel of the Witches 157;Etruscan Roman Remains in Popu-lar Tradition 157

Lemuria (Mu) 10, 49, 157, 161, 217,261

Lemuria Fellowship 157, 261Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the

Pacific (Cervé and Ward) 177Lenape (tribal group) 15Lenz, Frederick 157; The Last In-

carnation 157; Lifetimes: True Ac-counts of Reincarnation 157

Leo 33Leo, Alan 157

Leo XIII, Pope 259Lerner, Alan J.: On a Clear Day You

Can See Forever 188Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 157;

Erziechung des Menschengeschlechts157

Lethe 158, 175, 18, 190, 203Levi, Eliphas Zahed 29, 80, 153Levirate marriage 158Leviticus 91, 188, 243Lewis, H. Spencer 238; The Mysti-

cal Life of Jesus 55Lhamoi Latso Oracle 72, 158Liberal Catholic Church Interna-

tional 158Liberal Catholic, Province of the

U.S.A. 100, 156, 158, 267, 276liberation 51–52Libra 33Library of the Occult (Wheatley)

277Life After Life (Moody) 175Life Before Life (Wambach) 277The Life Everlasting (Corelli) 68Life of Apollonius of Tyana 22Life of Pythagoras (Porphyry) 207Life script problem 158Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincar-

nation (Lenz) 157limbo 25, 62, 90, 105, 158, 273Limited life or soul substance 159linga sharia 31, 54, 119, 154, 159,

253lingam 248Lingbao Scripture of the Most High

Concerning Karmic Retribution 159Lipika 12, 140, 160, 161Lives and Opinions of Eminent

Philosophers (Diogenes) 76Lives Unlimited: Reincarnations East

and West (Banerjee) 38Living Your Past Lives: The Psychol-

og y of Past Life Regression (Schlot-terbeck) 34, 197

Le Livre des Esprits (Kardec) 259Loehr, Franklin 101Loehr, Grace Wittenberger 101Logan, Michael 210; Spirit Guide

209Logic and pseudo-logic and rebirth

159–160Logic of physical cause and effect

160Lords of Karma 10, 140, 160–161lost continents 10, 49, 54, 71, 94,

101, 111, 151, 157, 161, 175, 186,200, 217, 222, 245, 262, 272

lost soul 160Lotus Ashram 160Lotus Sutra 151, 223Louis XIV 113, 254Lucian 160Lucifer 160, 249, 261, 273Lucifer (publication) 44Lucretius, Carus Titus 162Luke, Gospel of 21, 53, 62, 77, 84,

85, 96, 122, 145, 162, 166, 167,198, 202, 207, 233, 261

Luria, Isaac 67, 96, 99, 106, 127, 133,136, 147, 162, 177, 216, 244, 276

Lux Orientalis: or an Inquiry into theOpinions of the Eastern Sages Con-cern the Pre-existence of Souls....(Glanvil) 246

Maccabees, Book of 187MacGregor, Geddes 162, 215; Im-

mortality and Human Destiny: AVariety of Views 162; Reincarna-tion and Christianity 215

MacIver, Joanne 162–163MacIver, Ken 162Maclaine, Shirley 112, 163, 220Macrobius, Theodosius 202MacTaggart, John Ellis 163: Human

Immortality and Pre-existence 163;The Nature of Existence 163

Macumba 11, 136Madhi 12, 131Mafu 57, 84; 163Magdalene, Mary 201The Magic Presence (Ballard) 116Magick in Theory and Practice

(Crowley) 70Magna Graecia 103, 163, 216Magnetic attraction metaphor 163The Maha Bodhi 163Maha-brahma 48The Mahatma Letters (Sinnett) 248Mahatmas 29, 44Mahayana Buddhism 16, 36, 45,

50, 79, 118, 120, 149, 154, 161,163, 171, 203, 209, 240, 268, 275

Mahayana Buddhist rebirth texts163–164

Maher Baba 164maiden embodiment or incarnation

164mala 50Malachi, Book of 13, 85, 187, 243Malaysia 164Male births, greater proportion of

164Malkula (tribal group) 164, 187Mambro, Joseph di 249manas 32, 54, 61, 82, 165, 173, 175,

253, 275mandalas 80Mandara 165Mani 165Manichaeism 15, 35, 71, 79, 100,

122, 144, 165, 171, 198Mann, A. Tad. 34, 165, 180; The

Divine Plot 34, 165; Elements ofReincarnation 34, 165; The Eter-nal Return 34, 165

Man’s Rise to Civilization (Fab) 232Manson, Charles Willie 165Manu-Sanhita 165Many Lifetimes (Kelsey and Grant)

152Many Mansions (Cerminara) 129Many Wonderful Things (Huffman

& Specht) 48, 49Mara 76, 107, 165–166Marciniak, Barbara 241Mark, Gospel of 21, 53, 62, 68, 77,

84, 85, 99, 100, 122, 166, 167,183, 245

Mark-Age, Inc. 166

307 Index

Marlowe, Christopher 167; TheTragedy of Doctor Faustus 167

Mars 10, 33, 109, 178, 202Martin, Eva: Reincarnation: The

Ring of Return 205Masefield, John 167Masonry 105, 110, 177, 239, 260,

266, 277Masters of the Great White Broth-

erhood of Cosmic Light 22maternal impressions or maternal

psychokinesis 42, 167Mathesis 167Matlock, James G. 195, 196A Matter of Immortality: Dramatic

Evidence of Survival (Stearn) 260Matthew, Gospel of 21, 53, 62, 77,

84, 85, 90, 99, 122, 145, 158, 162,166, 167–168, 183, 193, 207, 209,213, 215, 245

Maya 168, 208Mayan Indians 83, 154, 168Mayan Order 168Mayan Temple 168Mazda 12McClelland, Bruce 47; Slayers and

Their Vampires 47McCoy, Edain: Past Life and Karma

Tarot 265meditation 18, 36, 48, 50, 60, 64,

76, 94, 107, 112, 168, 174, 182,185, 187, 195, 196, 197, 263, 265,270, 275, 281

medium 168Melanesia 187, 190Melchizedek 10, 54, 89, 100, 157,

168–169, 261, 273Melville, Herman 169; Moby Dick

169Memo (Plato) 16, 204Memoires (Talleyrand-Périgord) 180memory: ancestral or genetic 169;

contamination 170; problem 13;reasons for loss of past life169–170; summation 170; sup-pressed 170

memory alone critique 170mental body 54mental plane 32, 170–171, 201, 244mental retardation 171Mercury 33, 109, 202Merit, transfer of 171Mesopotamia 94, 99, 101, 136, 171Messiah 12, 36, 40, 62, 84, 85, 88,

89, 95, 101, 104, 105, 126, 131,133, 153, 156, 166, 171, 182, 198,219, 260, 282

metagenetics 171Metamorphoses (Ovid) 193Metaphysics (Aristotle) 28metempsychosis 10, 16, 18, 20, 24,

29, 34, 35, 39, 46, 50, 52, 53,62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 102, 109, 110,111, 117, 126, 129, 136, 114, 153,155, 161, 162, 167, 171, 172, 175,177, 181, 182, 189, 190, 193, 195,197, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205,207, 209, 210, 215, 218, 237, 238,242, 244, 248, 256, 257, 264,265, 266, 276

Metempsychosis, or the Transmigra-tion of Souls.... 172

metensomatosis 66, 171, 172Michael (1) 37; 172, 279Michael (2) 57, 172, 240Michael’s Teachings (Yarbro) 172Micronesia 187Middle Way or Middle Path 9, 21,

50, 75, 89, 172, 201midnight 172Milinda Panha 172Milky Way 84, 109, 173, 187, 205,

206, 263Millennialism 173Mills, Antonia: Amerindian Rebirth:

Reincarnation Belief Among NorthAmerican Indians and Inuit 232

mind 14, 23, 34, 36, 45, 56, 57,64, 70, 74, 75, 78, 109, 111, 114,117, 130, 136, 140, 151, 154, 155,165, 168, 172, 173–174, 175, 182,191, 192, 193, 194, 199, 205, 209,211, 214, 215, 237, 242, 243, 249,256, 258, 262, 269, 272–273,275, 278

Mind in Life and Death (Cummins)71

Mind Out of Time: Reincarnation,Hypnotic Regression, Stigmata,Multiple Personality, and OtherLittle-Understood Powers of theMind (Wilson) 278

mind, theory of 174, 256minimal reincarnation hypothesis

174The Miracle Power (Dawn) 168Mirza, Nadarbeg K.: Reincarnation

in Islam 123Mission into Time (Hubbard) 242Mithraism 55, 71, 174–175, 245,

267Mnemosyne 175, 190Moby Dick (Melville) 169Mohan, Rajneesh Chandra 191moksha 9, 127, 144, 175, 274Moltke, Helmuth Graf von 175monad 175monism 81, 175, 204Monroe, Robert A: Journeys out of

the Body 262Montgomery, Ruth Shick 175, 276;

Aliens Among Us 176; StrangersAmong Us 276; Threshold to To-morrow 276

Moody, Raymond A., Jr. 175; Com-ing Back: A Psychiatrist ExploresPast Life Journeys 175, 224; LifeAfter Life 175

moon 33, 55, 84, 90, 96, 102, 121,175–176, 202, 219, 232, 263,280

Moore, Marcia 176; Journey into theBright World 176; Reincarnation:Key to Immortality 176

More, Henry 176; The Immortalityof the Soul 176; PhilosophicalPoems: A Platonick Song of theSoul, ... 246

Morganwg, Iolo (Edward Williams)176

Mormonism 22, 63, 177Moroni 22Morse, J.J. 177, 260Morte, Renascimento, Evolucão,

Reencarnacão no Brasil (Andrade)19

Moses, the Old Testament prophet22, 75, 85, 91, 133, 177, 185, 200,212

Mother, mule, and son 177Mount Shasta 115, 176, 200Movement of Spiritual Inner Aware-

ness Church 177, 253Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 58Mu 10, 49Muhammad Ahmad 177Muhammad, Mirza Ali 37mula 177–178Muller, Catherine Elise (Smith,

Helen) 178multiple personalities 57, 59, 92,

110, 178–179, 218, 260The Mummy 179The Mummy Lives (movie) 179The Mummy Returns (movie) 179mumukshatwa 179Murphy, Bridey 49Murray, Margaret 278; God of the

Witches 278; The Witch Cult inWestern Europe 278

Murro, Jonathan 66Myers, F.W.H. 104, 179Mysteria Mystica Maeterna 261Mysteria Mystica Maxima 70Mystery of Reincarnation (Danelek)

49The Mystical Life of Jesus (Lewis) 55mystical states 14

Nada-Yolanda 166nafs and ruh 179Nag Hammadi Texts 100, 126,

180Nahmanides 132Nanak, Guru 248Nandi (tribal group) 11naraka 108, 136, 180, 279natal defects 143, 180Nataraja (Lord of the Dance) 248national character reappearances

27, 180, 232National Psychopathetic Institute

278National Spiritual Association of

Churches 260nations, their rise and decline argu-

ment 180Die Natur der Dinge (Wieland) 278Nature, Mind, and Death (Ducasse)

79The Nature of Existence (MacTag-

gart) 163Naylor, James 180Nazi 111, 126, 188, 264Ndembu (tribal group) 11necromancy 180–181, 243, 262Nemesius of Emesa 181; Peri Phy-

seos Anthropou 181Neo-pagan religions 171, 181, 182,

219, 243, 263, 265

Index 308

Neoplatonism 16, 30, 74, 79, 100,110, 122, 132, 144, 165, 175, 181,190, 263, 264, 267, 280

Nepenthean veil 181nephesh 134, 252, 257Neptune 33Nero, Claudius Drusus Germanicus

181, 205Nero, Tiberius Claudius 112, 181neshamah 134, 257Netherton, Morris: Past Lives Ther-

apy 182Netherton Method 182Nettles, Bonnie Lu 107Neverdies 181–182New Age Community Church 182New Age religions 35, 45, 65, 81,

169, 181, 182, 215, 217, 271, 272,273, 182, 215, 217, 271, 272, 273

New Testament 9, 16, 21, 22–23, 41,47, 53–54, 62, 64, 68, 76, 84, 96,100, 105, 108, 125, 129, 138, 145,161, 168, 182, 18, 19, 198, 209, 213,233, 234, 235, 245, 252, 266,270; and reincarnation 182–183;sacrificial concept 61, 62, 183–184

New Thought 88, 273New York Institute for Psychic Re-

search 238Newbrough, John Ballou 186Newhouse, Flower A. 64Newton, Michael: Destiny of Souls

249; Journey of Souls 249nidhi 39Nightmare of eastern philosophy

184nine doors 56, 184Nirjara 184nirman-rati 107nirvana 16, 18, 44, 52, 76, 144, 159,

175, 184, 210, 221, 227, 236, 240,251

nirvikalpa samadhi 184No Pre-existence, or a Brief Disserta-

tion Against the Hypothesis ofHuman Souls Living in a StateAntecedaneous to This (Warren)246

no-rebirth wish 184–185noble lie 43, 139, 175, 184, 228Norman, Ernest 272; Voices of

Venus 272Norman, Ruth 272: The Last Inca,

Atahualpa: An Eyewitness Accountof the Conquest of Peru in 1535272; Principles and Practices ofPast Life Therapy 272; The Proofof the Truth of Past Life Therapy272

Norton, Rosaleen 185Notovitch, Nicholas 65, 185; The

Unknown Life of Jesus Christ 185nous 85, 256, 257Now and Then: Reincarnation, Psy-

chiatry, and Daily Life (Grant andKelsey) 152

Numbers 185Numenius of Apamea 185, 202;

Peri Aphtharsias Psyches 185Numerology and rebirth 185

Nupe (tribal group) 11, 185–186Nusayr, Abu Shu’ayb Muhammad

ibn 186Nusayris 98, 186, 279

Oahspe: A Kosmon Bible in the Wordsof Jehovih [sic] and His Angel Am-bassadors 186

Oasis Fellowship 186Ob Ugarins 186, 258Obadiah 145Obeah 11Objective immortality 186Obscure Problems of Karma and Re-

birth (Sinnett) 248obsession 35, 42, 186Occult Hierarchy 102The Occult World (Sinnett) 248Ocean of Theosophy ( Judge) 29Oceania 186–187, 190, 270Octavian (Roman Emperor) 13O’Donnell, Margaret O. 101O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger:

Karma and Rebirth in ClassicalIndian Traditions 231

Ogdoad 187, 201ojas 187Olcott, Henry Steel 130, 267old Brahmin moonshine 187Old Norse 187old souls 135, 161Old Testament 21, 22, 39, 41 53–

55, 62, 71, 72, 75, 80, 81, 83, 96,98, 105, 127, 130, 132, 145, 158,185, 189, 199, 201, 209, 211, 212,213, 220, 23, 237, 243, 245, 252,266, 269; and the afterlife 187;and the soul 188, 252

Olfactory psychic experience 188Oliver, Frederick 177, 200; A

Dweller on Two Planets 177, 201;An Earth Dweller’s Return 201;Growth of a Soul 201

Oliver, Frederick Spencer 200Omega 188, 268On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

(Lerner) 188On Abstinence from Animal Food

(Porphyry) 207On Death and Dying (Kubler-Ross)

154On Life After Death (Kubler-Ross)

154On Life, Death and Life After Death

(Kubler-Ross) 154On the Delays of the Divine

Vengeance (Plutarch) 205The Once and Future Life: An Aston-

ishing Twenty-five-year Study onReincarnation (Banerjee) 38

oneriomancy 78Only Fair Religion 188ontological leap or ontological dis-

continuity 20, 188, 223Open Court 188Order of Melchizedek of the Order

of the Holy Cross 100Order of the Illuminati 261Order of the Temple of the Orient

238

Ordo Templi Orientis 70, 189,238, 243, 258, 261

Origin 16, 64, 125, 185, 189, 267original or ancestral sin and reincar-

nation 189original sin, Christianity, and rein-

carnation 38, 43, 62, 69, 87, 98,103, 148, 158, 189–190, 266

original sin versus karma 190Orokaiva (tribal group) 187Orpheus 190Orphism 39, 46, 77, 83, 89, 100,

101, 103, 117, 129, 165, 190–191,198, 202, 203, 264, 275, 276

Osho Movement 191, 275Osiris 83, 84, 152Other Lives (Steiger) 260Other Lives, Other Selves (Woolger)

211Ouija board 36, 172, 191, 245Ouroboros 191Ouspensky, P.D. 66, 191–192; A

New Model of the Universe 191out-of-the-body and near-death ex-

periences 14, 27, 45, 154, 192Over-soul, personal 193Ovid or Publius Ovidius Naso 193;

Metamorphoses 193Ovimbundu (tribal group) 11

Padmasambhava 39Pagan Dawn 243Pagan Federation 243Pagan Front 243Pali canon 143, 227Palingenesis 171, 193, 218Panchem Lama 16, 193, 274pantheism and panentheism 194pantomnesia 74, 194papa-purusha 194parallel lives 194, 204Paramacca Maroon (tribal group)

15, 194Paramahansa Yogananda 99Paramananda Saraswatti 163paramnesia 74Paramnesia and Reincarnation (Chari)

57para-nirmita-vashavartin 107Paranormal Cognition, Survival and

Reincarnation (Chari) 57parapsychology 194parents in the next life 194parinirvana 44, 175, 184, 240Parker, Samuel: A Free and Impar-

tial Censure of the PlatonicPhilosophie.... 246

Parmenides 195parousia 90, 173, 182, 195, 199partial reincarnation 11, 15Pascal, Blaise 195Pascal’s wager 25, 27Pasricha, Satwant K. 195, 220passing-memories adoption 195,

196, 218past life : fakery 195; journal 195;

life therapy 55, 124, 152, 182, 196,197, 201, 224, 259; memory cate-gories 195; psychic reader 196,197; reading 196; recall 65, 79,

309 Index

114, 196; recall meditation 94, 196,265; regression and suggestibility77, 93, 196; therapist 197, 218

Past Life and Karma Tarot (McCoy)265

Past Life Therapy in Action (Sutphenand Leigh) 263

past lives 197Past Lives of Famous People: Journeys

of the Soul (Bengston) 13Past Lives Therapy (Netherton and

Schiffrin) 182Patala 197Patanjali 197Patarines 79, 90, 197Path of the Western Tradition of the

Priesthood 100pathological retrocognition 197Patton, George S. 197–198Paul of Tarsus 16, 22, 35, 46, 54,

62, 68, 96, 138, 148, 182, 198,233, 237, 252, 274

Paulicians 47, 79, 90, 165, 198Pelagian heresy 148perception and reality 198The Perfect Way, or the Finding of

Christ (Kingsford) 153Peri Aphtharsias Psyches (Numenius

of Apamea) 185Peri Physeos Anthropou (Nemesius of

Emesa) 181Peri Psyches (Iamblichus of Chalcis)

117Perkins, James S.: Experiencing

Reincarnation 76, 112, 147Persephone 198persona 23personalists 18, 198personality after Death (Cook,

Greyson and Stevenson) 193personality versus individuality 198Petavatthu 199Peter, 1st and 2nd 21, 47, 105, 129,

145, 158, 161, 183, 199, 215, 267Phaedo (Plato) 16, 199, 203Phaedrus (Plato) 203phala 276phantasmata 199Pherecydes of Syros 200philias and phobias 39, 195, 200Philippians 13, 63, 90Philo Judaeus or Philo of Alexandria

200; De Gigantes 200; De Somniis200

Philosophical Poems: A PlatonickSong of the Soul, .... (More) 246

Philosophical Research Society 105Phoenix 200Phoenix card set 200Phoenix Cards: Reading and Inter-

preting Past Life Influences withthe Phoenix Deck (Sheppard) 200

Phoenix Rising 31, 200phowa or phoba 200phroura 46Phylos the Tibetan 57, 200physical handicaps 143physical plane 31, 172, 201Physics (Aristotle) 28pilgrimages 201

Pilgrim’s Way (Buchan) 50Pindar 201pineal and pituitary gland 201, 205Pisces 3Pistis Sophia 126, 201Pius IX, Pope 259Pius XII, Pope 23placebo effect 201planes of existence 201, 261planetary ascent and descent of the

soul 13, 34, 175, 201–202planets, other 202–203, 278plants 203Plato 16, 23, 74, 97, 102, 109, 120,

129, 181, 185, 199, 201, 202,203–204, 256, 257, 267, 269;Critias 269; Laws 204; Memo 16,204; Phaedo 16, 199, 203; Phae-drus 203, 256; Republic 190, 203,256; Symposium 203, 220, 239,255; Timaeus 269

Platonism 35, 88, 144, 190, 265,280

Pleiades 91, 94, 204, 241, 245Plotinus 16, 144, 181, 204, 207, 239pluralism 46, 175, 204plurality of existence 204Plutarch or Ploutarchos 205; On

the Delays of the Divine Vengeance205

Pluto 33, 105, 198, 205Pluto: The Evolutionary Journey of

the Soul (Green) 205Pneuma 252, 258, 270Pneumatikoi 205, 245poetry on reincarnation 205Poimandres or Pymander 205–206polarities 206Polynesia 187population increase issue 13, 20,

63, 75, 94, 127, 188, 206, 210,222, 253, 254, 266; and the the-istic solution 206–207

Porphyry Malchus 55, 202, 207;Against the Christians 207; Life ofPythagoras 207; On Abstinencefrom Animal Food 207

Posidonius 78, 202possession 15, 25, 35, 56, 57, 58,

76, 85, 90, 99, 100, 104, 135, 174,186, 196, 200, 207–208, 211, 218,279

Powell, Robert : Hermetic Astrolog y:Towards a New Wisdom of theStars 241

The Power of Karma in Relation toDestiny (Cannon) 52

The Power Within (Cannon) 52Prabhavananda, Swami 208, 274,

276prakriti 208, 240Pramanavarttika 164Prarthana 209pratitya-samutpada 139, 209, 271prayers for the dead 209Precious Records 109Precognition 194, 269predestination 22, 75, 87, 209, 237pre-existiani 66, 209Premananda, Swami 81

Presley, Elvis 209–210preta 114, 214pretaloka 210priesthood, lack of an organized 210Principles and Practices of Past Life

Therapy 272Priscillian 33, 210priti 114pritiloka 210privilege of a human birth 210Proclus 210procrastination, charge of 210–211progression therapy 211The Proof of the Truth of Past Life

Therapy (Norman) 272proof text 126, 183, 211, 212Prophet, Elizabeth Clare 65Prophet, Mark 65A Prophet in His Own Country: The

Story of Young Edgar Cayce(Stearn) 260

protology 211, 226Proverbs 145, 211proximity burial 212Psalms 13, 105, 145, 168, 199, 201,

212Psalmtic (Pharaoh) 13pseudepigrapha 212psyche 52, 173, 252psychic archaeology 212psychic powers 212–213psychic psychodrama 213, 218psychic recycling 213, 278Psychic Self-Defense (Fortune) 94Psychical Research Foundation 31,

213psychology, abnormal 213psychomanteum 175psychomatic illness 27psychometry 29, 65, 213, 218psychopannychism 46, 65, 131, 213,

233Psychopathetic Institute of Chicago

278psychophore 213psycho-physical aggregates 79, 226psychoplasm 214psychopomp 172, 214psychosomatic illnesses 214psychostasis 108, 213Ptolemaeus, Claudius 202Puranas 214Pure-Land 61, 76, 98, 107, 113, 149,

200, 214, 247, 282Pure-Land or Blissful Land Bud-

dhism 63, 214Pure Mind Foundation 214: Beyond

Forever: Unlocking the Door toEternal Life 214

purgatory 32, 40, 62, 87, 108, 13,136, 166, 176, 180, 214, 247

purusha 215, 240purvanivasanusmrti/pubbenivasanus-

sati 9, 170, 215, 240pyramidology 11, 49, 215, 217, 249,

261, 268Pythagoras 76, 87, 102, 103, 110,

117, 161, 162, 163, 167, 185, 193,195, 200, 204, 215–216, 220,239, 247, 267, 274, 276

Index 310

Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symboli-cal Philosophy (Hall) 105, 172

Qadiyani, Mirza Ghulam Ahmed12

Qlippoth/kelipoth 216Quimby, Phineas P. 216Quimby Center 216Quinn, Noreen 93Quran 47, 77, 122–123, 153, 248

Ra 57, 84Ra (1) 216, 278Ra (2) 113, 216racism 43, 102Radin, Paul 278Raghunath Remembered: A Case Sug-

gestive of Reincarnation (Rawat)218

Raikov, Vladimir 29rain 217Rajneesh, Bhagwan Shree 191Ram Dass, Baba 217; Remember, Be

Here Now 217Ramadam 79Rampa, Tuesday Lobsang 217; The

Third Eye: Autobiography of a Ti-betan Lama 217

Ramses I 83Ramtha, the Enlightened One 57,

84, 217Randall, Shawn 269Randolph, Paschal Beverly 207Ransom, Champe 262ransom theory 61Raphael 29, 85Rastafarians 11, 148, 171, 217Ravenscroft, Trevor: The Spear of

Destiny: The Occult Power Behindthe Spear Which Pierced the Side ofChrist 112

Rawandiyah 218Rawat, Kirti S. 218; Raghunath Re-

membered: A Case Suggestive ofReincarnation 218

rebirth 48, 113–114, 163–164, 184–185; and abortion 219; alternativeexplanations to 218–219; analo-gies from nature 74, 219; andartificial insemination 219; com-pensation and life fulfillment223; consanguineous 224; con-trol of 224; criteria for proof of224; cross species 19, 20, 39, 40,206, 225; cultural conditioning219; and cyclical time 219; Eastand West 225; and famous sup-porters 220, 278; and generalmorality 220–221; and logicalsymmetry 221; and maturity 221;as the natural order of all livingthings 223; and the preponder-ance of evidence 223; rebirth andmoral perfection 221–222, 241–242; rebirth and science 222; andreligious tolerance 222; and thescientific theory of biological evo-lution 223; and suicide 222–223; and unilinear descent 223

rebirth eschatology 144, 151,225–226; or becoming 218; in

Buddhism 226–228; ethnic 226;expectational 226; general 226;group 226; instantaneous 228; inthe modern West 228; naturalconcept of 229; non-backsliding229; obligatory 229; partial 229;proof of (Western Buddhist) 229;proximity 229; restricted 230;selective 230; two logical views of230

rebirth factor 38, 69, 76, 98, 120,149, 220, 226

Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief amongNorth American Indians and Inuit(Mills and Slobodin) 232

recurring patterns of behavior 27Redfield, James: The Celestine

Prophecy 56Redivivus 231Regla de Ocha 241Regression Beyond Birth (Chari) 57reincarnation 11, 15, 52, 62–64, 114,

1818–119, 120, 121, 174, 182–183,189, 205, 231, 234, 236, 239;bibliographies 231; origins of231; the term 231

Reincarnation (periodical) 231Reincarnation: A Bibliography (Bjor-

ling) 231Reincarnation: A Critical Examina-

tion (Edwards) 262Reincarnation: A Selected Annotated

Bibliography (Kear) 231Reincarnation: A Study of Forgotten

Truth (Walker) 205Reincarnation: A Universal Truth

(Goudey) 41, 93, 121, 205Reincarnation and Freedom (Laurit-

sen) 34Reincarnation and Your Past Life

Memories (Chadwick) 255Reincarnation: Claiming Your Past,

Creating Your Future (Sparrow)149, 184, 196

Reincarnation in Christianity: A NewVision of the Role of Rebirth inChristian Thought 162

Reincarnation in Islam (Mirza) 123Reincarnation International Maga-

zine 231–232Reincarnation: Key to Immortality

(Moore) 176Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce

(Wilcock) 278Reincarnation Report 232, 263Reincarnation: The Hope of the

World (Cooper) 121Reincarnation: The Second Chance

(Leek) 156Reincarnation through the Zodiac

(Hodgson) 33Reincarnation Unnecessary (Shelley)

24, 34The Reincarnation Workbook (Bren-

nan) 101The Religion of Light and Sound 81Religious Research Foundation of

America 101Reliving Past Lives: Evidence Under

Hypnosis (Wambach) 277

Remember, Be Here Now (RamDass) 217

Renaissance 49, 66, 171, 172, 204,232

re-occurring patterns of behavior232

repeater children (Obanje) 232repetition compulsion 13, 151, 197,

232reptilian and mammalian brain 262Republic (Plato) 190, 203rescue circles 232–233researchers of rebirth 232restitution negates retribution 233restricted rebirth 15, 37, 42, 230resurrection: and the aborted fetus

233; bodily 233, 282; culturaland technological age discrepancyissue 26; individual age discrep-ancy issue 234; of Jesus 62, 68,126; of Jesus as circular thinking234; or reincarnation 234

retardation 67retroactive inhibition 58retrocognition 13, 29, 58, 86, 110,

196, 197, 211, 218, 235, 269, 269Retrocognitions (Alegretti) 86, 112retrofitting 236return and serve argument for rein-

carnation 236Return of the Revolutionaries

(Semkiw) 92, 239Revelation of John 13, 70, 90, 99,

107, 145, 153, 161, 173, 209, 244,245, 262

Revelation of the Hexagramatic Cross272

reverie recall 237Reynaud, Jean 259Rhine, Joseph Banks 232Rhinehart, the Rev. Keith Milton

22Riail, Hippoltyte Leon Denizard

259Richardson, Alan 237; Dancer to

the Gods 237Richter, Charles 70, 279Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich 237right-hand path and left-hand path

237Rig-pa ngo-sprod gcermthong rang-

grol 39ring pass not 237ringu jukai or ringu shukke 237The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

(Bremmer) 103, 193Road to Immortality (Cummins) 71Roberts, Jane: Dreams, Evolution,

and Value Fulfillment 245; TheSeth Material 245; Seth Speaks:The Eternal Validity of the Soul245

role-playing fantasy 224A Romance of Two Worlds (Corelli)

68Romans (Ancient) 77, 83, 87, 90,

166, 174, 210, 236, 256, 257, 276.Romans, Letter to the 21, 22, 47,

62, 84, 88, 145, 148, 183, 189, 20,273

311 Index

Rosemary case 238Rosenkreuz, Christian 239Rosenroth, Baron Knorr von: The

Book on the Rashith ha Gigalim(Revolution of the Soul or Schemeof Reincarnation 246

Rosicrucian Fellowship 239Rosicrucian Research Society 238Rosicrucians 20–21, 29, 121, 238,

249, 256, 260, 261, 266, 267Roy, Raja Ram Mohan 239ruah or ruach 134, 252, 257Rubin, Penny Torres 163Ruecket, Carla 216rupa-dhatu and arupa-dhatu 52,

270Russia, reincarnation in 239Ryerson, Kevin 239

Sadat, Mohammed Anwar 13Saddharmas-metyupasthana-sutra

164Sadler, William Samuel 273Sagittarius 33Saint Germain, Comte de 65, 76,

115saintly versus diabolical persons ar-

gument 240sallekhana (suicide) 17, 124, 222Sallustius the Neoplatonist 117,

240; On the Gods and the World(Universe) 240

Salome (Wilde) 245–246samkhya or sankhya yoga 46, 79,

208, 21, 240Samma Sambuddha 240samsara 34, 37, 44, 48, 51, 76, 86,

107, 136, 166, 172, 178, 191, 203,210, 236, 240, 250

samskara 209, 240, 249samvara 240Sananda 166Sanema-Yanoama (tribal group) 15Sanskrit language 13, 28, 34, 39,

40, 48, 50, 51, 54, 76, 87, 118,124, 146, 240, 241

Santeria (Santerismo) 11, 241Satan 53, 54, 70, 102, 161, 173,

245, 264, 280Sathy Sai Baba 241Saturn (planet) 10, 13, 33, 55, 80,

161, 202, 205, 241Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil

(Greene) 80satya 57Schiffrin, Nancy: Past Lives Therapy

182Schiller, Friedrich von 241Schilling, Heinrich Wolfgang: De

Metempsycosi Dissertation 246Schlotterbeck, Karl 34; Living your

Past Lives: the Psycholog y of PastLife Regression 34, 197

School of Life 241–242Schopenhauer, Arthur 242Schuchman, Helen 68; A Course in

Miracles 68Schulman, Martin 33: Karmic As-

trolog y: Retrogrades and Reincar-nation 33

Science and the Akashic Field (Las-zlo) 11

Science of Man 113Science of Mind 242Scientific Report on “The Search for

Bridey Murphy” (Bernstein) 49scientific theory of biological evolu-

tion 27Scientology 65, 70, 81sciomancy 57, 74, 180, 243Score, John 243Scorpio 33screen memories 11, 29, 127, 170,

179, 19, 218, 243, 260The Scripts of Cleophas (Cummins)

71Scriptum Super Sententiis (Aquinas)

23scrying or skrying 175, 196, 243The Search for a Soul: Taylor Cald-

well’s Psychic Lives (Stearn) 260The Search for Bridey Murphy (Bern-

stein) 49The search for Bridey Murphy

(movie) 49The Search for Om Sety: A Story of

Eternal Love (Cott) 80The Search for the Girl with the Blue

Eyes (Stearn) 163, 260seasons 244second death 32, 90, 206, 244Secret Book of John 180The Secret Doctrine (Blavatsky) 43,

161, 267Secret or Inner Chiefs 29Secret Doctrine of Umbanda 272The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An

Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic,Hermetic Seder Olam; or theOrder, Series or Succession of Allthe Ages, Periods, and Times of theWhole World.... (Helmont) 246

seelenwanderung 244Sefer ha-Gilgulim (Vital) 99Sefer ha-Hezyonat (Vital) 111Sefer ha-Orot 130Sefer-ha-Temunah 133Self Revelation Church of Absolute

Monism 81Self-Realization Fellowship 281sema 46Semkiw, Walter: Born Again: Rein-

carnations Cases Involving Inter-national Celebrities 92, 239; Re-turn of the Revolutionaries 92, 123,239

sensation body 244sephiroth 216, 244serial lives 245serpents or snake 73, 191, 218, 245Seth 57, 84, 245The Seth Material (Roberts) 245Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of

the Soul (Roberts) 245Seti I 83seven 245, 248seven deadly sins 202seven rungs of the heavenly ladder

245seven veils (dance) 245

seventeenth century renewed inter-est in rebirth 246

Seymour, Charles R.F. 237shadow body 247shadow or shade 23, 32, 243, 247,

257Shakespeare, William 247; Sonnet

LIX 247; Twelfth Night 247shamanism 15, 39, 47, 56, 72, 103,

153, 155, 181, 186, 207, 247, 258Shango 11Shanti Devi case 247Sharpe, Pauline 166She (Haggard) 105She and Allen (Haggard) 105sheep 247Shelley, Violet M. 24: Reincarna-

tion Unnecessary 24, 34Sheol 84, 99, 101, 102, 105, 128,

185, 187, 212, 247, 272Sheppard, Susan: Phoenix Cards:

Reading and Interpreting Past LifeInfluences with the Phoenix Deck200

Sherman, Harold Marrow: You LiveAfter Death 186

Shinto/Shintoism 113, 247Shiva 35, 48, 159, 246, 268Sh’ neur Zalman of Laydi 265;

Tanya (Likkutei Amarim) 265Shotoku Taishi 248Shuddemagen, C. 231sidereal periods 33Signet Handbook of Parapsycholog y

57Sikhism 37, 81, 135, 138, 177, 195,

248, 266Silent watchers 248silver chord 31, 192Similes 248Simmons, Ruth 49Simon Magus 248Singh, Kirpal 81Sinnett, Alfred Percy: Esoteric Bud-

dhism 51, 136Sirius (dog star) 248, 249skandha/khandha 249Skeptical Inquirer 67Slayers and Their Vampires (McClel-

land) 47Slobodin, Richard: Amerindian Re-

birth: Reincarnation Belief AmongNorth American Indians and Inuit232

Smith, Helen (Muller, CatherineElise) 178

Smith, Joseph 22, 177Social status in past lives 249Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia 80Society for Psychical Research 179,

249Society for Spiritual Regression 31,

249Society of Inner Light 94Solar Temple, Order of 249solity 250Solomon (King) 54, 201, 212, 239,

243soma 46somatic rebirth 250

Index 312

Sonnet LIX (Shakespeare) 247soteriology 226, 250soul 201–202, 250; cohorts 253;

collective 253; Darwinism 254;external 254; family 254; fission86, 254, 257; fragmentation 254;groups 103, 254; intrusion 255;mates 9, 97, 203, 217, 255, 257,264; psychology of 256; stoic256; tripartite 256, 270; twins257; virgin 257

The Soul Genome (Ward) 214Soul Mates (Stearn) 260The Soul of Life (Israel) 124soul-personality 256soul-siblings 256souls: complementary 257; exis-

tence prior to embodiment 10,68, 87, 96, 103, 125–126, 176,177, 183, 189, 201, 205, 209, 212,237, 255, 258, 267, 278; fixedand free 258; multiple 258; ori-gin of 258

Spaccio de la bestia trionfante(Bruno) 49

Spare, Austin Osman 258Sparrow, Ellen: Edgar Cayce and the

Born Again Christian 55; Reincar-nation: Claiming Your Past, Creat-ing Your Future 149, 184, 196

The Spear of Destiny: The OccultPower Behind the Spear WhichPierced the Side of Christ (Raven-scroft) 112

spectrophilia 262spirit 33, 76, 173, 252, 258Spiritism 113, 136, 241, 258–259;

and Catholic Church 259Spiritualism 22, 31, 44, 74, 76, 152,

168, 173, 175, 182, 186, 243, 259Spiritualist Cristiana Church 81split brain 260spontaneous recall 29, 58, 196, 260Sri Chinmoy 157stags 219, 260stake a claim 260Stanford, John A. 131; Soul Journey:

A Jungian Analyst Looks at Rein-carnation 131

Star of David or Sign of Solomon260

Stearn, Jess 162–163, 260; TheSearch for the Girl with the BlueEyes 163; Edgar Cayce: The SleepingProphet 260i Intimates ThroughTime: The Life of Edgar Cayce andHis Companions through the Ages260; A Matter of Immortality:Dramatic Evidence of Survival 260

Steiger, Brad 260; Discover YourLives 260; The Enigma of Reincar-nation 260; Other Lives 260; YouWill Live Again 260

Steiner, Rudolf 85, 93, 120, 136,161, 175, 206, 239, 260–261, 267

Stella Matutina 94, 280Stelle, Robert D. 157Stelle Group 261–262Stevens, Ramon: Earthly Cycles 86,

188, 191, 268, 277

Stevenson, Ian 58, 73, 92, 94, 115,121, 144, 155, 164, 174, 193, 195,208, 213, 220, 224, 232, 262,274: Children Who Remember Pre-vious Lives 262; “Do Any Near-Death Experiences Provide Evi-dence for the Survival of HumanPersonality After Death” 193; Eu-ropean Cases of the ReincarnationType 262; Twenty Cases Suggestiveof Reincarnation 92, 262, 208;Unlearned Languages: New Studiesin Xenoglossy 155, 262; WhereReincarnation and Biology Intersect262

Strangers Among Us (Montgomery)276

Street, Coleen 161Street, Noel 161stygian sexuality 262subconscious, mystifying of 262–

263subtle body 263Sufiism 12, 71, 104, 263suicide 17, 97, 124, 222Sumerian civilization 83Summa Contra Gentiles (Aquinas)

23Summerland 32, 76, 263Summit Lighthouse 65Super Evangelium S. Matthaei

(Aquinas) 23supernatural-in-the-gap process 58,

222, 263Surya-marga 263Sutphen, Richard 263; Past Life

Therapy in Action 263; Reincarna-tion Report 263

Sutphen, Tara 263: Blame It onYour Past Lives: Personal Problemsand Supernatural Solutions 263

Sutra of Entering the Womb 164Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment 164Sutra on Stability in Mindfulness of

the True Dharma 164Sutratman 263Swan on a Black Sea: A Study of Au-

tomatic Writing, the Cummins-Willet Transcripts (Cummins) 71

Swanson, Guy E.: Birth of the Gods:The Origins of Primitive Beliefs231

Swarga or Svarga 263, 180swarm of bees theory 254, 263swastika or svastika 263Swedenborg, Emanuel 72, 259,

264, 280Swygard, William 37; Awareness

Technique 37symbola 264Symposium (Plato) 203, 255synchronicity 117, 152, 264Synesius of Cyrene 264; Aegypyus

sive de providential 264

Ta’amei ha-Mizat 133T’ai-Yueh-Ta-Ti 264Talbot, Michael 131, 264; Your Past

Lives: A Reincarnation Handbook131, 264

Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Mau-rice de: Memoires 180

Tammuz 101tanasukh 71, 79, 106, 122, 124, 136,

152, 185, 263, 264tankas 38Tantrism 39, 47, 51, 56, 157, 187,

191, 200, 208, 264–265, 274, 275Tanya (Likkutei Amarim) 265Taoism 72Tarkajvala 164tarot 29, 110, 116, 196, 265, 268Tarot of Reincarnation (Massimil-

iano) 265Tartarus 102, 105, 203, 257, 265,

276tau 265Taurus 33Taylor, Thomas 265Techiyat Hameitim 265Techniques of Past Lives Recall 37teleological presumption 265teleology 223telepathy 29telepathy (telegnosis) with the living

218, 266telepathy with the dead 218, 266Templars 249, 266, 249Ten Dam, Hans 266: Exploring

Reincarnation: The ClassicalGuide to the Evidence for Past LifeExperiences 266

terma 38tertons 39Tertullian 12, 20, 53, 64, 266: De

Anima 266A Textbook of Theosophy (Lead-

beater) 32, 90, 171thanatology 225Thelema 69theodicy 43, 132, 266, 277Theon, Max 29Theophilus 64, 189, 267The Theory of Celestial Influence

(Collin) 61The Theory of Eternal Life (Collin)

61theory of mind 174, 256theosis 221, 266Theosophical Society 40, 110, 156,

157, 231, 260, 280theosophy 13, 22, 31, 32, 51, 54, 61,

65, 75, 76, 80, 82, 84, 90, 11, 115,136, 152, 159, 161, 165, 170, 174,175, 176, 182, 183, 194, 216, 220,239, 240, 244, 248, 253, 256,260, 261, 262, 267

Theravada Buddhism 46, 50, 117,118, 120, 149, 163, 171, 173, 175,199, 203, 209, 229, 267, 275

Thessalonians 213Theta (1) 213, 268theta (2) 188, 268theta (3) 242theta waves 115, 268thetan 242They Survive (Cummins) 71third eye 56, 64, 205, 217, 268The Third Eye: Autobiography of a

Tibetan Lama (Rampa) 217

313 Index

Thirty Years Among the Dead (Wick-land) 278

Thoreau, Henry David 15Thornton, Penny: The Forces of

Destiny 34Thoth, Book of 268The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus 167Three refuges and five Buddhist lay

precepts 268Threefold (law of ) return 268Threshold to Tomorrow (Mont-

gomery) 276Tibet 23, 30, 31, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43,

47, 50, 65, 67, 72, 74, 76, 111, 118,126, 146, 158, 185, 193, 208, 217,218, 228, 230, 265, 271, 274, 279

Tibetan Book of the Dead 38, 280Tierney, John: “Are Scientists Play-

ing God? It Depends on Your Reli-gion” 113–114

Tighe, Virginia 49Tight Fundamentals of Umbanda

272Timaeus 78, 269Time and consciousness 269Time and the simultaneous past,

present, and future 269Time-recall challenge 269Timothy, 1st and 2nd 21, 22, 88,

148, 209, 273Tipitaka 52Titus 84, 148, 193, 209Tlingit (tribal group) 15Toltec 83, 154, 168, 272tomb to womb 54, 66, 70, 73, 269Torah (1) 22, 57, 96, 98, 132, 216,

237, 269Torah (2) 269traducianism 68, 96, 223trance states 14, 269–270trance therapy 54transcorporation 270transmigration 11, 18, 20, 29, 37,

39, 52, 57, 78, 101, 102, 130, 133,144, 171, 181, 185, 191, 204, 206,218, 240, 244, 245, 247, 257,266, 270, 274, 280, 282; alter-nating lives 270; lateral 270; pro-gressive 270; regressive 270

Transmigration (Collins) 151“Transmigration in the Avesta “ in

Zoroastrianism in the Light ofTheosophy (Bilimoria) 282

Transmigration of Souls (Adams)270

Traveler’s Tale (Bax) 270A Treatise of White Magic (Bailey)

265Treatise on the Seven Rays: Esoteric

Astrolog y (Bailey) 161trees 74trichotomy 257, 270tri-dhatu or tri-loka 270Trimurti 48Trobriand Islanders (tribal group)

187trzor ha-chayyim or Otzar 104Tukano (tribal group) 15tulkus 16, 72, 118, 126, 193, 264,

271, 274

Tushita Heaven 107Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) 247twelve 271Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincar-

nation (Stevenson) 92, 208, 262twins, identical 271Twitchell, Paul 81Two Hundred Queries (Helmont)

109Tzevi, Shabbettai 95Tzror ha-Chayyim 271

UFOism or ufology 10, 30, 93, 107,202, 271–272

The Ultimate Frontier (Kieninger)103, 261–262

Umbanda 11, 32, 136, 272Unarius Academy of Science 272the unconscious 66, 272–273Unity School of Christianity 273Universal Church of the Master

273universalism 22, 273The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ

(Notovitch) 185Unlearned Languages: New Studies in

Xenoglossy (Stevenson) 155, 262Unveiled Mysteries (Ballard) 116Upanishads 15, 17, 48, 98, 154, 251,

273, 281Urantia Book 273Uranus 33Urhobo (tribal group) 11Uttar Pradesh 274Uxkull, Woldemar von: Eine Ein-

weihung im Alten Agypten nachdem Buch Throth 268

Vaikuntha 274Vajrayana Buddhism 16, 36, 38–

39, 45, 50, 51, 56, 72, 74, 76,96, 120, 171, 184, 239, 265, 268,271, 274

Valentinus 122, 189, 274vampire 32, 47, 60, 70, 90, 118,

240, 274van Hook, Weller 231Vasanas 274Vedanta Society 208, 273, 276Vedic religion 51, 111, 124, 146, 147,

176, 273, 274, 180vegetarianism 93, 153, 165, 190,

207, 243, 274Vendidad 282Venn, Jonathan 224Venus 10, 30, 33, 109, 154, 16, 202,

217, 278La Vies Successives (De Rochas) 75vijnana 14, 61, 154, 165, 209, 226,

227, 249, 275Vijnanavada School of Buddhism

14, 18, 41, 151, 165Vilenkin, Alex 194Vintras, Eugene 276, 279vipaka 36, 136, 140, 141, 142, 143,

146, 150, 151, 161, 164, 190, 227,276

Virgil 276: Aeneid 202, 276virgin conception 276Virgo 33, 276

Vishnu 37, 48, 157, 118, 149, 157,248, 274

A Vision (Yeats) 281The Visions of the Soul before It

Comes into the Body (Dunton)246

Visitations: A Saga of Gods and Men(Norman) 272

Vital, Hayim: Sefer ha–Gilgulim99, 133; Sefer ha–Hezyonat 111

Vivekananda, Swami 208, 274,276

Voices from Other Lives: Reincarna-tion as a Source of Healing (Deth-lefsen) 155

Voices of Venus (Norman) 272Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de

220, 276Von Eckarshausen, Karl: The Cloud

on the Sanctuary 102Voodoo 11

Wagner, Richard 276Waite, Arthur Edward: The Book of

Black Magic and of Packs 89Walker, E.D.: Reincarnation: A

Study of Forgotten Truth 205walk-in 175, 218, 272, 276Wallace, Alan B. 117Wallace, Alfred Russell 220Wallace, Henry A. 276–277Wambach, Helen 73, 121, 220, 226,

232, 24, 277; Life Before Life277; Reliving Past Lives: EvidenceUnder Hypnosis 277

wandering soul 277Wapnick, Kenneth: Absence from

Felicity 68Ward, James D.: Lemuria: The Lost

Continent of the Pacific 177Ward, Paul von: The Soul Genome

214Warren, Edward: No Pre-existence,

or a Brief Dissertation Against theHypothesis of Human Souls Livingin a State Antecedaneous to This246

Watcher on the Threshold 80W.C.: The Harmless Opinion of the

Revolution of Humane Souls as aProbable Hypothesis.... 246

We Are One Another (Guirdham)104

Weber, Max 277Welcomers 277Western, Robin: Channelers: A New

Age Directory 57Western Waripiri (tribal group) 36Wheatley, Dennis Yates 277; Li-

brary of the Occult 277Wheel of Fate 34Wheels of a Soul (Berg) 127, 134Where Reincarnation and Biolog y In-

tersect (Stevenson) 262White, Alice 186White, George 186White Brothers and Blue Sisters

102White Eagle 67, 277White Lodge 277

Index 314

White Temple Church 49Whitehead, Alfred North 103, 186Whitman, Walt 16Wicca 94, 219, 268, 277The Wiccan 243Wickland, Carl August 44, 260,

278; Thirty Years Among the Dead278

widespread and multi-cultural beliefargument 278

wiedermenschwerdung 244Wieland, Christopher Martin 278;

Die Natur der Dinge 278Wilcock, David 55, 278; Reincar-

nation of Edgar Cayce 278Wilde, Oscar: Salome 245–246Williams, Edward 176Williamson, J.N.: Death-Coach 274willing suspension of disbelief 278Wilson, Ian 278; The After Death

Experience 278; Mind Out ofTime: Reincarnation, Hypnotic Re-gression, Stigmata, Multiple Per-sonality, and Other Little-Under-stood Powers of the Mind 278

Windows of the Mind (Glaskin) 64Winnebago 278Wisdom of Solomon 19–20 278The Witch Cult in Western Europe

(Murray) 278Witchcraft Today (Gardner) 278

Witness position 279women 279Wood, F.H.: Ancient Egypt Speaks:

A Miracle of Tongues 238Woolger, Roger J.: Other Lives,

Other Selves 211Work of Mercy 279Works (Goodwin) 246World Catalyst Church 279Worlds Within (Glaskin) 64

xenoglossy 100, 279xenography 279xenophrenia 279

Y symbol 279Yama 61, 87, 107, 279–280, 281Yanomamo (tribal group) 15, 280Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn: Hotel Tran-

sylvania 240; Michael’s Teachings172, 240

Yarsanism 280Yazdanism 70Yazidis (Yezidism) 70, 91, 280Yeats, William Butler 89, 220,

280–281; Ideas of Good and Evil(Yeats) 281; A Vision 281

Yellow Spring 60, 281Yen-lo 108, 281Yin-Yang 59Yoga 281

Yoga Sutra 281Yogachara School of Buddhism 75Yogananda, Paramahansa 99, 281Yoruba (tribal group) 11, 241, 281You Live After Death (Sherman) 186You Will Live Again (Steiger) 260Your Past Lives: A Reincarnation

Handbook (Talbot) 131, 264Yukaghir (tribal group) 281The Yukaghir and Yukarghirized

Tungus ( Jochelson) 281

Zabchos zhikhro dgongs-pa rang-grol39

Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale (Buler-Lytton) 80

Zen Buddhism, rebirth in 281Zenith 281Zeus 105, 175, 190, 198, 202Zhendao/Chen Tao 205, 281–282Ziska (Corelli) 68zodiac 24, 33, 34, 52, 53, 84, 215,

241, 261, 282Zohar 10, 132, 133, 135, 156, 177Zolar’s Book of Reincarnation 34Zoroastrianism 12, 54, 79, 122, 164,

165, 168, 185, 282Zoroastrianism in the Light of Theos-

ophy (Bilimoria) 282Zulu (tribal group) 11, 282

315 Index

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