Reincarnation

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Reincarnation - (Excerpt Chapter 4, 'The Gnostics')

 

(P.127) In the Pagan Mysteries it was believed that a soul progresses towards

the realization of the Gnosis over many lifetimes. [111] The Pagan initiate

Plutarch explains that the unenlightened soul is attracted back into physical

incarnation over and over again by force of habit:

 

'We know that the soul is indestructible and should think of its experience as

like that of a bird in a cage. If it has been kept in the body for a long time

and become tamed to this life as a result of all sorts of involvements and long

habituation, it will alight again back to a body again birth after birth and

will never stop or give up becoming entangled in the passions and chances of

this world.' [112]

 

(P.128) Although it was eventually exorcised from mainstream Christianity, this

Pagan idea was embraced by the early Gnostic Christians. The Gnostic sage

Basilides taught that Gnosis was the consummation of many lives of effort.[113]

'The Secret Book of John' teaches that a soul will continue to reincarnate until

it is eventually 'saved from its lack of perception, attains Gnosis, and so is

perfected', after which 'it no longer goes into another flesh'.[114] The 'Pistis

Sophia' teaches that a soul cannot be brought into the Light until, through many

lifetimes of experience, it has understood all of the Mysteries. Having

progressed on the spiritual journey during this life, however, its next

incarnation will be into a 'righteous body which shall find the God of Truth and

the Higher Mysteries'.[115]

 

Plato tells us that the dead have the choice of drinking from the 'Spring of

Memory' and walking the right-hand path towards heaven or drinking from the 'Cup

of Forgetting' and walking the left-hand path towards reincarnation.[116] The

Gnostic 'Book of the Saviour' teaches the same doctrine, explaining that a

righteous man will be born into his next life without forgetting the wisdom he

has learned in this life because he will not be given the 'Draught of Oblivion'

before his next birth. Rather he will receive 'a cup full of intuition and

wisdom' which will cause the soul not to fall asleep and forget, but to 'seek

after the Mysteries of Light, until it hath found them'.[117]

 

Plato saw being incarnated in a human body as comparable to being incarcerated

in a sort of prison.[118] The Gnostic 'Secret Book of John' likewise describes

incarnation as being 'cast into fetters'.[119] Plato explains, 'The soul is

suffering the punishment of sin until the penalty is paid.'[120] Origin

similarly teaches that incarnation is a sort of punishment for having sinned and

that in proportion to the sin, souls are put into particular types of bodies. He

tells us that souls are 'enveloped in different bodies for punishment' many

times over, until they are purified, when they will 'rise again to the state in

which they formerly were, completely putting away their evil and their

bodies'.[121] (P.129) Like the Pagan sages, Origen could not believe that a just

and compassionate God would condemn any soul to eternity in hell, but thought

that all souls would be saved through experiencing repeated human

incarnations.[122] He writes:

 

'Every soul has existed from the beginning; it has therefore passed through some

worlds already, and will pass through others before it reaches the final

consummation. It comes into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened

by the defeats of its previous life.'[123]

 

Despite his great prestige amongst early Christians, this brilliant Christian

philosopher was posthumously condemned by the Catholic Church as a heretic for

teaching this ancient doctrine.[124] Yet the teachings of reincarnation are

alluded to in the New Testament.[125] In the Gospel of John the high priests of

Jerusalem ask John the Baptist if he is a reincarnation of Elijah,[126] while in

the Gospel of Mark the disciples discuss the possibility of Jesus being the

reincarnation of John the Baptist, the prophet Elijah or one of the other

prophets![127]

 

The Jesus Mysteries

Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God?

Chapter 5, 'The Gnostics'

Page 127-129

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

Element (imprint of HarperCollins'Publishers')

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

ISBN-13 978-0-7225-3677-3

ISBN-10 0-7225-3677-1

 

Notes (Chapter 5: The Gnostics)

 

[111] Herodotus, in 'The Histories', Book 2, 122, tells us that the doctrine of

reincarnation originated with the Egyptians but had been 'adopted by certain

Greek writers'. Although he 'refrains from mentioning them', there is no doubt

that he is referring to the Orphics and Pythagoreans. Kingsley, P. (1995), 368,

states that this was well known even in Classical times: 'The Pythagoreans

maintained a secrecy which was quite exceptional, but that the teachings of

theirs which were " best known by everybody " were the immortality of the soul and

reincarnation.' According to Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras taught that: 'The

soul, revolving around the circle of necessity, is transformed and confined at

different times in different bodies,' quoted in Guthrie, K.S. (1987), 145. In

'The Laws', 870e, Plato attributes this doctrine to the priests of the

Mysteries, by whom it was taught with the associated doctrine of 'karma': 'They

will also state a truth firmly believed by many who have learned it from the

lips of those who occupy themselves with these matters at the Mysteries, that

vengeance is taken on such crimes beyond the grave, and when the sinner has

returned to our own world once more, he must infallibly pay nature's penalty -

must be done by as he did.' In 'Meno', 81b-c, Socrates tells us: 'The soul,

having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, has

knowledge of them all.'

 

[112] Plutarch, 'The Moral Essays', 184, 'A Letter of Consolation', 10

 

[113] Mead, G.R.S. (1906), 282

 

[114] Quoted in Barnstone, W. (1984), 60

 

[115] Quoted in Mead, op.cit., 485

 

[116] Plato, 'The Republic', Book 10, 614ff

 

[117] Quoted in Mead, op.cit., 516

 

[118] Plato, 'Cratylus', 400c: 'The body is an enclosure or prison in which the

soul is incarcerated.' The Gnostic Carpocrates taught the same doctrine and also

called the body a prison. He claimed that souls are reincarnated until they have

completed all sins and that this was the true meaning behind Jesus' teaching in

Luke 12:58: 'You will not be let out till you have paid the last penny.' See

Barnstone, W. (1984), 649

 

[119] Quoted in Barnstone, op.cit., 61

 

[120] Plato, 'Cratylus', 400c: 'For some say that the body is the grave of the

soul which may be thought to be buried in our present life. The Orphic poets ...

were under the impression that the soul is suffering the punishment of sin until

the penalty is paid.'

 

[121] Origin, 'De Pricipiis', 2.8.3, quoted in Stevenson, J. (1957), 203

 

[122] Bernstein, A.E. (1993), 307. Origin's view was that of the Pagans - all

would eventually be restored to God in a total 'apokatastasis' or restoration.

He used the axiom of Neoplatonic philosophy that the end must be as the

beginning. All who are punished will be cured and on this basis he denied

eternal punishment.

 

[123] Origin, 'De Pricipiis', 3.1.20-1. See also Kingsland, W. (1937), 138.

Origen asks how could someone be born blind unless they are being punished for a

previous sin. Reincarnation he says, allows souls sufficient time to purge their

sins and complete their cycle of lives, see Bernstein, op.cit., 311.

 

[124] Bernstein, op.cit., 307. Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, was the

first to condemn Origen. (Jerome denied the pre-existence of souls but taught

that God was 'daily creating new ones'. This doctrine of 'creationism' is still

accepted today, see Brandon, S.G.F. (1969), 84. That a good God could continue

to daily make millions of souls, many of whom he knows will ultimately be

condemned to eternal torture, is just one of the many cruelties and absurdities

of this theology.) Under Justinian in 543 CE the Greek text of Origin was burnt

as heretical. As Stevenson, J. (1957), 203, notes, no other opinion of Origen's

was more vehemently opposed than his doctrine of 'Ultimate salvation for all'.

 

[125] See Josephus, 'The Jewish War', 2.14.165. In Josephus' opinion the

Pharisees gained the support of the majority of the people because they taught

that the soul survives death and receives either the reward of a new life in

another body or eternal punishment in the Underworld. The Pharisees, of whom

Paul was one, were modernizers and Hellenizers who were violently opposed by the

traditionalist Sadducees. Mark 12:18 states that: 'The Sadducees teach that

there is no resurrection,' but unlike Josephus, who was writing at the same

time, it does not go on to state that the Pharisees were teaching the Orphic

doctrine of reincarnation.

 

[126] John 1:19

 

[127] Mark 8:27. How Jesus could be a reincarnation of his contemporary John the

Baptist is not explained.