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 con-

tains 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 de-

parted with death.

Rosicrucian However, there was no evidence that

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this entity was destroyed. It was simple

for the primitive mind to believe that,

January

perhaps, this immanent entity soared on

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invisible wings like a bird to another

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 re-

strictions 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 for-

bidden 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 con-

tinuation of life after death was the belief

in rebirth in some form on Earth. How

The

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