Saturday, October 21, 2017

Reincarnation or the Truth

What do you want more, to reincarnate because you enjoy this life, or the truth? If you want reincarnation, then don't be coming to satsang pretending you are seeking truth. Even Jesus said "The truth will set you free." And if you are free, you won't be reincarnating. Why? Because once you know your are the Self, you know you were never born and will never die. 

2 comments:

Randall said...

Maury,

According to Gennes MacGregor's book 'Reincarnation in Christianity' (p. 16),

"The Bible does not explicitly teach reincarnation. That is to say, there is no pronouncement on the subject , either in the Old Testament or the New Testament, to which one could point and compel the acceptance of a person who felt bound to receive as Divine revelation everything that is clearly and unequivocally affirmed in Holy Scripture. No such biblical warrant for reincarnation exists.

That, however, does not take us very far. since much the same can be said for the doctrine of the Trinity, which is surely held to be a classic orthodox expression of Christian belief about God. "

If we must reason about something as fundamental as the Trinity, we can also reason about Reincarnation. Let us start by observing that we must discard 'reincarnation' as defined by the Hindus. A Christian version of Reincarnation would be much stripped down, and be quite literal: Reincarnation is 'incarnating again'. Or, 'a soul going into a body', again. So, does anything in the Scriptures support this literal definition? Of course. After physical death, resurrection (of the body), involves 'reincarnation', i.e. 'a soul going into a body'.

Thus it is not difficult to see that reincarnation - this literal version, anyway - is integral to Christianity, because without it, Death would be Final, etc., etc.

And a reasonable person can of course ask, "If God is prepared for us to be placed in bodies initially (incarnated) and placed in a new body (this time a heavenly body - reincarnated), what is to stop God from doing this any number of times, for example to fulfill the many promises Christ makes such as 'every lost sheep is found', and 'the Prodigal Son returns home'?

My own scholarship suggests that not only is reincarnation possible in Christianity, if one excludes it (as early editors of the Gospels apparently tried to do to make it compatible with Old Testament - Jewish - teaching), then one ends up with many puzzles in the words of Christ. If you start to conceptualize reincarnation as integral to Christ's Christianity, then all these mysteries fall away.

And of course reincarnation is subject to modern study, as in case studies. If you look into this, you can become more comfortable that Death, as Christ taught us, is an illusion, and that we are indeed in a long process of returning home to our Heavenly Father.

Peace.

Maury Lee said...

Nice commentary. Thanks!