Reincarnation — Fact or Fancy?

by Ralph M. Lewis, F. R. C.

MILLIONS throughout the world cherish a belief in rebirth. This conception in its variations is perhaps one of the most universally held religious doctrines. It is undoubtedly as ancient as the belief in immortality. Certain religious sects demean reincarnation because it is not compatible with their own exegetical interpretation, or because it is condemned by their theologians.

Yet the doctrine of reincarnation contains postulations equally as plausible as other beliefs in the afterlife. Most religious doctrines are founded upon faith and personal experience. They are not in the same category as the empirical laws of science, which are demonstrable. Consequently, two doctrines may have equal claim upon the beliefs of man if each is to be accepted on faith and not upon objective evidence.

The idea of the continuation of life after death has intrigued the imagination since the earliest known records. It has been the dominant mystery of life which has challenged the human mind. The instinctive impulse to survive has caused both a fear of death and a hope of im mortality.

The early conception of the duality of man—the association of air and breath with an intangible spirit—suggested that an element of man survives the apparent destruction of his body. But where and how would this incorporeal, invisible entity of the duality of man survive, for the animating force related to breath departed with death.

Rosicrucian However, there was no evidence that

for the primitive mind to believe that,

realm high above the clouds. Or perhaps it entered a nether world beneath Earth as the Sun seemed to do each day in the west. In fact, early forms of the soul, such as the Egyptian Ba, were depicted as a bird.

Paradise

What constituted this other life after death? What these afterlife experiences were assumed to be like varied with the cultures of different civilizations. Some adherents presumed the next life to be a virtual paradise as do some religious devotees today. Man’s entrance into this paradise, of course, was to be determined by whether he had observed a certain moral code on earth, and such beliefs usually required that the soul first be judged for its conduct.

Paradise was usually a place of ecstatic pleasures, similar to those on Earth but more intense and within the moral restrictions of the particular religious sect. The tedious and mean labor and suffering of Earth were excluded from this other- world paradise. Conversely, the sinner was condemned to a region where all the tortures imagined by the human mind would be imposed upon him.

In the Koran, the devout Moslem was promised an afterlife in a world where he might recline on a silken couch and be surrounded by surpassingly beautiful maidens whose eyes were like “hidden pearls.” Though the Moslem was forbidden stimulating drinks in this mortal life, in this afterlife. he was to have wines that would neither cause his head to ache nor confuse his mind.

Along with the conception of the continuation of life after death was the belief in rebirth in some form on Earth. How

The

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