January 11, 2013
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Reincarnation
Reincarnation
Philosophical comparative musings
If you believe in reincarnation, you believe that after death a person’s soul is reborn in another body. Certain religions hold this belief as a central tenet, including Hinduism and Buddhism. Different religions however has different views on how the soul return.
The theory of reincarnation basically states that that life (eternal and spiritual) and transcends the body (finite and material). The theory includes the concept of karma which implies that the actions of one’s life will continue to have an impact on future life. A person is building up in the present a debt or inventory of future experiences. Some religions maintain that the soul can regress by coming back in a lower conscious form while others maintain that life is evolving and therefore can only maintain a state of development or improve on that state of development. It is like the assumption we have that once you grew past an age in life you can not return to that age…e.g. a mature man can not in flesh return to be a baby. The evolutionist perspective on reincarnation therefor maintains that life continues to evolve. Consequently they differ from other schools that maintain that reincarnation is some sort of returning cycle in which man is stuck and mus strive to escape at all cost. This line of though maintains that ultimately the soul will fully reunite with the divine and ultimately become part of the divine, aware of the divine as if it has become the divine itself but lost all awareness of an identity. Meditation practices of clearing the mind and experiencing the stillness is often means of experience this feeling of merging with the divine through the loss of identity.
The evolutionist approach is a bit different for it maintains the purpose of evolution is not to merge back into the divine but rather an evolution in being. Being is defined as a measure of togetherness. The implication is an evolution of the spirit to more wholeness. In this view reincarnation is a necessity of life…like a seed must return to the ground to grow so the spirit must infuse with the material world to grow. The material world slows down the spirit so that it can experience within the awareness of a time continuum. Entering into the density of the material world provides for the opportunity for the spirit to grow. In both schools the underlying assumption is that life is from the divine of from God. Where one sees reincarnation as a return to God the other sees it as a development to reflect more the image of God and recently some would say it is not either or but the paradoxity of both. The schools of reincarnation almost all say the spirit comes into the material world to learn lessons. A less answered question is why learn lessons? The evolusionists response is that it is through living life that the spirit evolves and add to its progress towards greater wholeness or being. Another question often asked by sceptics is why don’t we remember previous lives if we lived them. A person who believes in reincarnation would be quick to point out that we remember very little consciously even of this life. Most people can not easily give a full description of what they have done a week ago…never mind a life time ago. The evolutionist reincarnation supporter have an additional answer…is it due to the lack of being that the spirit forgets and remembers only through what is subconsciously been integrated during the previous reincarnation that is maintained. They reach the conclusion that memory is not lost but in the contrary maintained and visible through behaviour of the person in a present life. They further maintains the more an individual works at growth in being the more the person will be able to remember past lives.
Reincarnation is an interesting way of viewing life and give its own perspective. Whether one beliefs in reincarnation or not will not change what is true. Since this perspective is today as much prevalent as in the past it is not something to be ignored because it tells something of the spiritual process of awakening.
