DEAD AGAIN (and again and again)

September 3, 1991

Saturday afternoon, Sara, Kirk and I saw the movie “Dead Again.” The film was violent, gripping, and intense, with reincarnation the crux of the plot. Two star-crossed lovers experience agony and death in one life; then are reincarnated to endure mystery, dangers, and confusion, but with a happy ending. (Until the next time? On a Clear Day you can see sequels forever?)

Aware that I know of several persons close to me who believe in reincarnation (while I am yet unconvinced), I recalled a Sunday presentation in Lakeland some years ago. My talk followed one by Harold Cole, a well-informed member who believed in reincarnation. The film “Dead Again” led me to dig out my notes on that talk. The following is a rewrite but I did not seem to be able to shorten the text. So what follows is lengthy. So if you think the question trivial, skip it. But if, for you, it is “deja vu all over again” (Yogi Berra), then you might read on.

Have we lived before? Will we live again? In attempting this second part of a discussion on reincarnation, I was reminded of what Jacob Bronowski wrote in the ASCENT OF MAN: “There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility.” In that vein, I hope my observations will be properly modest.

With such an attitude, I comment on:

1) The surprising extent of the belief in reincarnation in all parts of the ancient world.
2) The suppression of the belief in reincarnation in the early Christian centuries.
3) The appeal of the idea of reincarnation to many well-known 19th century Unitarians and Universalists.
4) The powerful sense of justice that is inescapable when reincarnation is posited as an inexorable consequence.
5) But also I will point out some difficulties to be confronted in accepting reincarnation.

1) As Harold Cole pointed out, reincarnation is not just an Hindu and Buddhist idea, but also has roots in ancient Egypt and Greece, not to speak of the pre-historic nature religions of the Druids, Celts, and Teutonic tribes. One scholar (Cranston, p. 203) writes that reincarnation seems to have been a part of the Orphic mysteries before the time of Pythagoras, although that famous philosopher/mathematician advocated reincarnation as one of his teachings. Many famous names in the seminal tradition of Greek philosophy also held the belief – Heraclitus, Herodotus, Socrates, Plato. Many Roman classical scholars also held this belief. (Seneca, e.g.)

2) When Christianity became the religious power in the Roman Empire, the idea of reincarnation was suppressed – became a heresy. Doctrinally, one could expect this, for the idea of reincarnation is a contradiction of Christian dogma. The Christian scheme of salvation taught that all persons inherited Adam’s sin and consequently were condemned to death. Jesus, who was God, made the singular atoning sacrifice, thus enabling some, at least, to be saved. That atonement was the only way, nothing else made any difference.

Reincarnation asserts that through the law of Karma, one must make restitution, be punished in future lives for one’s misdeeds. In that sense, everyone dies an atoning death (not just Jesus). Also, one is rewarded for good works by achieving a higher state in a future reincarnation.

But although Christian zealots managed to suppress reincarnation ideas – destroying documents for example, the idea persisted. There were sporadic groups holding the idea. The Albigensians, who held the idea, were slaughtered in the 13th century.

The idea of reincarnation can be seen in the Christian legends of the Holy Grail. A persisting King Arthur legend carries the prophecy, “He shall come again full twice as fair to rule over his people.” Or as it has been poetically condensed, “The once and
future King.”

There are examples in more modern times. Some of the famous German philosophers and composers knew of such ancient ideas. Beethoven – so many of us are awed and mystified by his genius – was fond of copying mystical sentences from Eastern religious literature. Framed on his desk was this quotation, “I am that which is. I am all that was, that is and that shall be.”

3) Harold Cole, in his statement, referred to “slow but inevitable progress – the Creator an evolving Deity” and then said, “sounds Unitarian, doesn’t it?” Well, it was. In my opinion, one of the neglected areas in our Unitarian Universalist history is the strain of reincarnation thought, particularly om the 19th century.

The Transcendentalists – Unitarian ministers, literary figures, teachers – were an important element in our tradition. Emerson, through his study of the Hindu scriptures, was a leader, but there were many others. In the Universalist tradition, as a young man, I heard it argued that the then Universalist principle, “The Final Harmony of all souls with God” specifically referred to reincarnation, although at that time few agreed.

On October 1, 1840 (quoted, Head and Cranston, p. 309), the Rev. George Ripley, a Unitarian minister who founded Brook Farm, wrote, “There is a class of persons who desire a reform in the prevailing philosophy of the day. They are called Transcendentalists because they believe in an order of truth which transcends the sphere of the external senses. Their leading idea is the supremacy of mind over matter. Hence they maintain that the truth of religion does not depend on tradition, nor historical facts, but has an unerring witness in the soul.”

There are references to reincarnation in Emerson’s writings, but in his last published essay, “Nominist and Realist,” he affirmed it clearly: “It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again .... Nothing is dead; men (sic) feign themselves dead and endure funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out the window sound and well in some strange new disguise. Jesus is not dead; he is very well alive; nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all and could easily tell the names under which they go.”

James Freeman Clarke, author of the Unitarian “5 Points”, stated belief in the “progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.” Some of us in the 20th century have been skeptical – world wars, genocides, starvation, mass cruelties – is that progress? But Clarke was referring to the reincarnation process, writing at one point, “Evolution has a satisfactory meaning only when we admit the soul is developed and educated by passing through many bodies.” It is probable that “salvation by character” and “progress onward and upward forever” referred in some degree at least to reincarnation..

4) When one believes the implications of Karma and reincarnation, one can feel assurance that there is justice in the Cosmos or the “universal soul.” To the reincarnationist, we carry the misdeeds from previous existences; we improve our next life by the character and kindness we exhibit in a current existence. We learn by living and doing. There is no escaping the report card and its consequences.

5) However, I said at the beginning that there are difficulties. I must confront before embracing the idea of reincarnation. I have been, and am, a skeptical inquirer (long before there was a journal of that name.)

I have not dealt with the many cases where persons have discussed their previous incarnations. Yet there are critical inquiries that need answering. Therefore I do not use these anecdotes (many of them suspect) as evidence for reincarnation.

I feel the same as Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian poet and essayist, “Even though (reincarnation) is the religion of six hundred million people, the nearest to mysterious origins, the only one that is not odious, and the least absurd of all, it will have to do what the others have not done, to bring unimpeachable testimony and what it has given us hitherto is but the first shadow of a proof begun.”

Isaac Asimov, the scientist and prolific science-fiction writer, wrote, “human beings have the habit (a bad one perhaps, but an unavoidable one) of being human; which is to say that they believe in that which comforts them.” Then he goes on, and I quote him at length because he summarizes better than I can what represents my present attitude. If you think Asimov too blunt or even cruel, well, sorry about that:

“To take the greatest, most universal and most unavoidable, inconvenience, consider death. Tell people that death does not exist and they will believe you and sob with gratitude at the good news. Take a census and find out how many human beings believe in life after death, in heaven, in the doctrine of spiritualism, in the transmigration of souls. I am quite confident you will find a healthy majority, even an overwhelming one, in favor of side-stepping death by believing in its non-existence through one strategy or another.

“Yet as far as I know, there is not one piece of evidence ever advanced that would offer any hope that death is anything other than the permanent dissolution of the personality and that beyond it, as far as individual consciousness is concerned, there is nothing.

“If you want to argue the point, present the evidence. I must warn you that there are some arguments I won’t accept:

“I won’t accept any argument from authority (The Bible says so)

“I won’t accept any argument from internal conviction (I have faith it’s so)

“I won’t accept any argument from personal abuse (What are you, an atheist?)

“I won’t accept any argument from irrelevance (Do you think you have been put on this Earth to exist just for a moment of time?)

“Then why do people believe? Because they want to....”

So, that’s where I am. I am a feeling creature who attempts to think on these things. I feel a strong sense of the procession of injustices and cruelties in the human pageant. Should that not be righted? Should there not be a “certainty of the just retribution for sin” as the old Universalist principle had it? If so, what other answer than reincarnation where old debts must be paid; old credits reimbursed in the form of a better, more loving character, more in tune with a “Universal One” which could be at the heart of things?

But I am also a skeptical inquirer – Where’s the evidence?

John Wheeler is a world-renowned physicist whom I met some years back when he was a member of our Princeton, N.J. church. When discussing the phenomenon of the “Black Hole” which implies that the whole universe will collapse in on itself, he observed, “I am thinking of the oriental concepts of reincarnation and of cycle after cycle not only of man (sic), but of the universe itself. I would be the last person to know how to analyze this kind of idea in a sensible way.”

Then he went on, “No theory of physics that deals only with physics will ever explain physics. I believe that as we go on trying to understand the universe, we are at the same time trying to understand man (sic). Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that really doesn't make much difference to the running of the huge machine but rather that there is a much more intimate tie between man and the universe than we have heretofore suspected.”

Could be! Maybe his “suspicion” is a reality, BUT. That’s where I must leave it. In any case, the predictable odds are that I will discover for myself before any of you do, what the truth is. But in the absence of any supernatural “fax” process, I wont be able to pass on the news.