"Reincarnation" requires that a person now living again in the present has lived before at another time, and perhaps in a different place.
The present person came into the world as a newborn baby and the belief does not require any physical remnants of the former incarnation, [that same person in another lifetime] be present.
Indeed, it is most unlikely this would be so, because that previous incarnation was most likely hundreds or thousands of years in the past, of a different race, and often the opposite sex.
Memories of a different lifetime, although incomplete, are thought to be accessible, using the proper techniques, such as past-life regressions... Certain people using hypnosis, and other suggestion techniques, such as dream interpretation, are supposed to have talents and special powers along these lines.
The ability to recognize and associate with his or her former family and friends, due to facial and bodily appearance similar to that they had before is rare, but sometimes happens. In Eastern countries such as India and Tibet, such recognition more often involves places and objects, which the reincarnated person recognizes as being familiar.
There is no problem with the same major physical defects, since the reincarnated person was born as a new baby with different parents and different genes.
But it is thought that certain mental defects, personality traits, and character defects may carry over in a system known as Karma. The theory is that Karmic problems not solved in one lifetime must still be worked on by the reborn person in his next lifetime.
There is no guarantee in reincarnation that a white European may not come back as an Asian, or in Africa with a black skin.
Some believers in reincarnation believe that especially bad people, or those who are gluttonous or lazy, may be reborn as animals, or even insects..... This causes cartain sects in India and Africa to be careful how they treat insects, lizards, snakes, and animals of all types lest they are being hurtful to their own relatives or friends who were unlucky when they were reborn.
A belief in reincarnation requires a belief that someone or some process holds a memory of all persons who have ever lived, and either randomly or selectivly places some or many elements of these former persons into newborn babies before they are born or soon afterwards.
Reincarnated persons here on earth will have a totally human body, but some believe that in another lifetime they may have lived on a different planet. The belief in reincarnation generally excludes a belief in heaven or hell, at least of such a nature as is generally depicted in Orthodox Christianity.
Some people, however, seem to have no major difficulty believing in both reincarnation and Christian Theology, with heaven being a pleasant place the disincarnate soul or spirit waits until he or she desires to be born again.
|In Christianity, there was a belief in Rein- carnation as well as "Resurrection" up until the 6th century AD. In new materials now available from Kashmir Jesus supports reincarnation.||Until 1923, Edgar Cayce had totally Orthodox beliefs regarding the Resurrection. But after several readings in that year switched over to promoting Reincarnation.||The present Dalai Lama of Tibet owes his present position to the belief of his subjects in the Tibetan form of reincarnation. As a small child, he recognized certain objects of his former life.|
Buddhist children, such as these smiling boys in Tibet, are not devoid of a belief in right and wrong, even though they have not been exposed to a belief in a monotheistic "God" such as children in the Western World, Judaism, and Islamic Countries are taught to believe in.
They believe instead in Karma. ......That certain natural and irrevocable laws govern nature and even extend into the lives of human beings....... If these laws are broken, even laws regarding social interactions and personal preferences, then a price must be paid, either in this life or some other lifetime......... By the same person reborn, perhaps specifically to repay some Kharmic Debt.
The life-time goal of a person who believes in Reincarnation is to live the best possible way. ...To make the best possible choice in any given situation........ In classical Reincarnation Theology there is no theory of forgiveness of sins, the massive loophole in the Christian Religion that allows those who hurt others, hate, steal, and even murder, and still reach heaven at death.
This search for the ideal life, the most ethical life, is called Dharma.
Edgar Cayce, called by some the "Sleeping Prophet", first gained fame by healing people who came to him for help in physical problems that doctors could not diagnose or heal. ........He early on learned he could do this because he himself suffered a convulsion, or catatonic state that he was shown how to treat. ..When other people asked for help, he would put himself into a hypnotic trance, then dictate whatever came into his mind to say to an assistant. ....More often than not, if the person followed these instructions his or her disease would be cured or their problems disappear.
After a while, his fame spread far and wide, and people would call him on the telephone or write him a letter describing their symptoms. Again he could go into a self-induced trance, and give a "reading" describing what must be done by this person to get better. ...Nowadays we would call what Edgar Cayce was doing "channelling".
There was, of course much skepicism and no little hostility from not only the medical community of the early 20th century, but also from the Orthodox Christian Churches, although by this time there were no longer witch trials, and few people were excommunicated for ignoring prevalent beliefs. .......Cayce continued to hold a position as a lay official in the Presbyterian Church and taught a regular Sunday School class.
After 1923, Edgar Cayce's readings were more and more about Reincarnation, and he often gave readings to people, often rich or important people, who came to him not for physical problems, but to find out who they had been in a previous lifetime, and how present difficulties in their life may have been caused by what had happened to them in a previous incarnation.
I became much more interested in Cayce's Readings recently when I went to his organization's New Years' Day 2004 conference at Virginia Beach, and learned that Edgar Cayce gave readings saying that Jesus' parents, Joseph and Mary were Essenes, and that Jesus had gone as a child or young man to India and Tibet to study the Eastern Religions.
He gave this reading before the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries..... Indeed, Edgar Cayce died in 1944, just before the time these discoveries were being made.
At the time I visited ARE, the Association for Religious Enlightenment, Cayce's organization, I had already become familiar with Jesus' life as an Essene. .....And I had already received pictures, many E-mails, and the book Kings of Kashmira from Sue Olsson, to which I had applied Pesher techniques and discovered what was to me certain proof that Jesus lived in Kashmir, and reigned there from 25 AD to 89 AD as King Meghaváhana and King Pravarasena I.
Dorothy, one of the lecturers at a Friday Meditation Group I sometimes attend, said she had lived in Virginia Beach and attended Edgar Cayce Study Group meetings for a long time... She said that Edgar Cayce loved the taste of pork chops, but discovered that if he ate even one pork chop, he could no longer do readings for people until a whole week without pork. ...And so Edgar Cayce learned to live without pork, although he was permitted to eat the so- called "clean meats" allowed by the Laws of Moses in the Bible.
From this infornation I deduced that whatever angel or entity was helping Edgar Cayce do his readings, was either a Jewish or Muslim angel or entity.
I went on after January 2004, to give several lectures about Edgar Cayce and Reincarnation, so did some research to find out why it was that Reincarnation was declared a heretical doctrine in the Catholic Churches.
It happened because of the personal preferences of the beautiful but vain and power-hungry wife of the Emporer Justinian, whose name was Theodora.
Both Justinian and Theodora had climbed the difficult and sometimes treacherous ladder of success to become the Emperor and Empress of the Roman Empire. ...Theodora was a Greek actress and courtesan who bestowed sexual favors on a succession of higher ranking individuals until she reached the Emperor's bed. ...He married her, and she had so much power over him that no politician could bypass her without risking loss of fortune or even his life.
Theodora was able to decide even who ruled the Catholic Church as pope, and some have had the audacity to suggest she was the "real pope" of her age, the legendary "Pope Joan". .....In any event, she had a pope who opposed her killed.
Theodora and Justinian had discussions about how unfitting it would be if the claims of the Reincarnationists were indeed true, and that perhaps after their death as emperor and empress they must at some later time be reborn as ordinary citizens, or even, perish the thought, slaves. .......And Theodora, no doubt, remembered her early life as a common prostitute..... Perhaps, using the most extreme form of Reincarnation Theory she would be reborn as a pig!
Some of the ANATHAMAS [CURSES] of the
If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows it, ---
LET HIM BE ANATHEMA [cursed]
CLAUSE 2: If anyone shall say that the creation of all reasonable
things includes only intelligences without bodies
and that there
is unity between them all by identity of substance, force, and energy, and
by their union with and knowledge of God the Word, but that no longer desiring
the sight of God, they gave themselves over to worse things, each one following
his own inclination; and that they have taken bodies more or less subtile,
and have received names ---
CLAUSE 7: If anyone shall say that Christ ---had pity upon the divers falls that had appeared in the spirits --- and that to restore them He passed through divers classes, had different bodies and different names, became all to all, an Angel among Angels, a Power among Powers ---and finally has taken flesh and blood like ours and has become man for man --- if anyone says all this and does not profess that God the Word humbled himself and became man:
LET HIM BE ANATHEMA!
|Indeed, the disincarnate spirit or entity speaking through Edgar Cayce in 1923 and later, ignored clause 2 of the 5th Council, that denied that such spirits do exist, and also instructed Edgar Cayce to present Jesus with multiple human reincarnations - as Adam, and Joseph the dreamer, and Asaph the musician and Psalm-writer, among others!|
There are certain sayings of Jesus as reported by the Gospel writers that could be used to support a belief in reincarnation, and that may be why this belief was still thriving until the 5th Council in 553 AD made it anathema.
Speaking of John the Baptist, Jesus said in Matthew 11:13, 14 "For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you will receive it, this is Elias [Elijah], which was for to come."
Since the circumstances and even the dating relative to Christ's birth are given in Luke concerning John the Baptist's birth and childhood, this could only mean a reincarnation of Elijah. ....Not a resurrection or apparition of Elijah as John the Baptist!
Matthew 16:13, 14 "When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Phillipi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist [previously killed, therefore a resurrected or reincarnated John]; some, Elias [the birth and childhood of Jesus is also recorded, so if Jesus was Elijah, he would have to be a reincarnation of Elijah]; and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets [same argument as before].
Although Simon Peter finally gave in Matthew 16:15, 16 the answer Christ was looking for, the others support the idea that those surrounding Jesus believed in reincarnation, and Jesus supported this belief in regards to John the Baptist being a reincarnation of Elijah.
The most obvious of all the Gospel statements supporting reincarnation escapes our notice, since we are used to giving it a completely symbolic meaning, and ignore its literal meaning.
John 3:3 [speaking to Nicodemus] "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." .....If we use reincarnation as the real meaning, this means that at whatever time in the future that the real kingdom of God is possible, and is really set up and operational, there will be babies and children entering it. ....And since these children are reincarnations of previous human beings of other ages, the saying is then fulfilled.....More about this later.
If we accept that Jesus lived in India [Kashmir] and was a king there twice, as I am now promoting, then we can expect the clearest references to reincarnation in this setting...........In a country in which virtually everyone, Brahmans, other Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists were believers in reincarnation. [There were no Muslims in Kashmir until about 1000 years later.]
Kings of Kashmiri Appendix E, page ix "The visit of Shiva to the king [Jesus Christ as Pravarasena I] is thus narrated: At Shri hill the prince and a follower of Shiva named Ashvapada, who gave him some roots, etc, to eat and said that in a former birth he (Ashvapada) had attained perfection [Good Dharma] and had asked the prince [obviously living that same former lifetime with him] what he wanted, and the prince had asked to have a hingdom." [That's enough of the story to illustrate a belief in reincarnation.]
Indeed, reincarnation is the best way to explain how it was that Jesus could reign in Kashmir under two different names consecutively, with his second incarnation as Pravarasena I immediately following his first incarnation as Meghavahana..... Of course he is said to have died as Meghaváhana before he commenced reigning as Pravarasena. .....But isn't that what reincarnation is all about?.... I suspect some trickery was involved, but then I'm from the skeptical Western world, and a medical doctor. .....Dr. Bob Holt, md ...11-22-2004