One Life or Reincarnation?

The purpose of considering the possibility, indeed, probability of reincarnation is that it offers hope and promise that our souls will achieve freedom from the wheel of birth, life, and death.

However, there’s no objective proof for reincarnation that can’t at least be viewed with skepticism. I found an example just the other day. A book that I appreciated called “The Soul Survivor” (It was made into a movie) will never receive any artistic awards, but the story is a fascinating account of reincarnation and is especially notable because it isn’t from India or anywhere else in the East. It’s from America and is about a young boy whose parents are normal Christians with no clue about or openness to reincarnation. Their son began having nightmares of being a fighter pilot who crashed and died off the coast of Japan near the end of World War II.

I went to refresh my memory about the story recently and sure enough up came a website called Joe skeptic or something like that where some guy trashed the story totally. Because I have read the book and watched the movie, I could tell that his objections to the authenticity of boy’s story were not very intelligently researched but the point is you can’t really prove such stories because you have to rely on the testimony of the one who claims to be the reincarnated soul.

Even the great scriptures of India admit that God can’t be proved — not to a skeptic or to the rational mind.

The concept of reincarnation comes from the East and the Middle East is the dividing line between East and West. For as far back as anyone can remember it’s as if two tectonic plates converge here and produce unending conflict.

On the subject then of reincarnation there isn’t even a Hebrew word (that I know of) for reincarnation. In the Old Testament there are some stories and references that imply the concept was known but because Jewish tradition isn’t so much dogma oriented, but more behavior oriented it doesn’t seem to have been a point of discussion. Even in Jesus’s time there was one sect of Jews who didn’t believe in an afterlife and another sect — the Pharisees — who did believe in an afterlife. There were intimations of reincarnation in Greek philosophy in the last millennium of the BCE. Greece, for example, had had substantial contact with Persia and India in the centuries before Christ because of the conquests of Alexander (the so-called “Great”).

There’s a recording of Paramhansa Yogananda giving a talk that is entitled “One Life vs Reincarnation” where he asks the question “Which is true: do we have only one life, or, do we have many lives?” He playfully approaches the whole subject through logic alone and points out that there’s something to be said for one life because no one really remembers their past lives. I’ve had a few intimations here and there but, like astrology, it’s harmless and fun if you don’t take it too seriously. So why should we worry about what we can’t remember?

We don’t know why we were born; we don’t know where we came from; and we don’t know where we go when we die. We have opinions and beliefs but there’s a lot to be said for one life because that’s all you really know.

It’s like the path of “chop wood and carry water” (or is it the other way around?). It’s sometimes called the path of stoicism: be here now; this is all you’ve got. There’s a lot to be said for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really satisfy the heart. Like that Frank Sinatra song “Is that all there is, then let’s go dancing!” This attitude is dry and somewhat dull. Nonetheless, in terms of raw honesty, there’s much to be said for living here in the present moment and not getting all excited about going into past life regressions and wondering if I really was Cleopatra!

On the other hand, Christians get a lot of criticism for the fact that they believe in heaven and hell but my answer to that is you don’t have to go far to see heaven or hell and you don’t even need to die; it’s all around us.

If “one life” is your starting point — and it’s a valid starting point — and if you also happen to believe there is an afterlife with no more lives or possibility of further evolution in consciousness, then you’re stuck with heaven or hell being forever. Heaven or hell must exist because we see it here on earth and our life experience teaches us the importance and reality that actions have consequences. If you didn’t believe there were consequences, then you wouldn’t even brush your teeth. A young person — a teenager a young adult — has to come to grips with the reality that our actions have consequences, sometimes quite tragic consequences. We couldn’t live with ourselves nor would we have an incentive to live if we didn’t know or at least believe that there were consequences for our actions. You wouldn’t even be in this room (or reading this) if you didn’t that.

So, you see, that’s how they got there to everlasting reward or punishment. It’s perfectly logical however it’s very intense. That’s why they came up with purgatory. It’s a good solution. Then somebody said well what about those poor little babies who didn’t get baptized but who died? Hmmmm, let’s invent Limbo! I don’t really criticize it because it just makes sense and accordingly there’s probably some truth to it.

How, then, can we know what is true? In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali says there’s three basic ways by which we acquire knowledge. First, there’s direct perception. I can see that it’s not raining here today. Direct perception also includes intuition though its objective proof comes in the consequences.

Secondly, there’s inference. Reading countless stories of reincarnation, we might conclude by inference that reincarnation is probably true.

Thirdly, there’s “Valid Authority” which traditionally is a reference to scripture or the testimony of the saints but also includes the legitimate testimony of experts in any field.

Returning now to the recorded talk by Yogananda on this subject, he moves on to the case FOR reincarnation. Look, he says, at the incredible diversity of circumstances into which people are born or live: great injustices, birth defects, disabilities, and abuse. In our world today with our education and awareness via communication and travel we can see that a disadvantaged birth may lead to an unhappy life, even a life of crime. We can track that an abusive upbringing might increase the chances of perpetuating that abuse. We can see all the different countries and the different cultures, and we know so much more about the patterns of life. As a result, we rebel against Injustice; we want to have freedom of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This idea of reincarnation begins to make a lot of sense and indeed some of the great thinkers of the West in recent centuries speak of reincarnation as the obvious reality even if we can’t prove it in the material or scientific sense of evidence. But neither can we prove that God exists. For those of us who look to the wisdom teachings of east and west, we can see that we are offered reincarnation as a fact and a teaching.

In the book, “The New Path” (Swami Kriyananda’s autobiography) there’s a chapter called Reincarnation in which he traces the history of the teaching of reincarnation in the Jewish tradition to modern times.

When you think of the culture at the time of Christ, it was a barbaric age. Imagine enjoying seeing people e covered in oil in the Roman Colosseum and being burned to death. I mean, gee, what fun. The closest thing we have to that is football. (Cruelty always exists but here I speak of mass consciousness not individual acts or those of specific groups.)

It was a barbaric age and people’s awareness of the world around them and their own bodies was limited to the five senses and their one life. If Jesus had come and spoke to his listeners of reincarnation his ministry would have dead in the water, a complete nonstarter. People wouldn’t have been able to relate to it and it would have simply invited an excuse to “eat, drink and be merry.”

And yet reincarnation was alluded to in plain hearing. When Jesus asked, “Who do men say I am?” his disciples fumbled about with odd responses which, in fact, showed very specifically their casual acceptance of reincarnation: “Some say (you are) Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Meaning, in case it isn’t obvious to you, too, that Jesus might be a reincarnation of one of the Old Testament prophets!

Another instance of casual sidestepping of the issue takes place when Jesus and three disciples came down from the mountain after the experience of the transfiguration of Jesus in the presence of Elijah and Moses. As they were walking, the disciples didn’t exclaim the obvious which is the revelation that Jesus was the Messiah. (That they had probably already inferred.) Instead, they asked a question that every good Jewish boy or girl simply had to ask: “Where then is Elias?” Elias (or Elijah) was foretold to come ahead of, or before, the Messiah. Jesus’ reply was straight up saying Elias DID come but that he wasn’t recognized AS Elias (and was executed by Herod). In parentheses, the transcript says simply that then the disciples understood that Jesus was referring to John the Baptist! Note that John’s name was not used as if to keep it somewhat a secret but what clearer example of the acceptance of reincarnation can there be short of proclaiming it?

I refer you here to Chapter 35 of the “Autobiography of a Yogi” where Yogananda takes passages from the Bible and shows that reincarnation is hiding in plain sight.

Scholars have shown that in 553 A.D. at the Council of Constantinople reincarnation was in fact removed from the teachings. An early church “father,” Origen, taught that reincarnation had been accepted since apostolic times. At this point then, Origen who up until then was an accepted source of wisdom, was declared anathema. Thus, it simply cannot be said that Jesus didn’t know of or accept the teaching of reincarnation.

While I can’t prove or know from my own memory my past lives, reincarnation offers to us the hope of fulfillment of the promise of the scriptures and the saints that God loves us, forgives us, and offers us endless opportunities to seek Self-realization and union with God. And, the alternative? Everlasting hellfire or a somewhat boring eternity in Heaven?

Reincarnation passes the test of the valid authority of the Saints and masters of east and west. Those mystics who speak of having seen heaven and hell see only the temporary, astral reality of reward and punishment in the after-death period before reincarnation. But we on earth can see heaven and hell every day. It exists throughout the cosmos!

How else can we fulfill Jesus’ command to “Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” if not over time and space? As science gives us the vast vista of 100 billion galaxies and a microcosm of quantum physics beyond our imagination, so the saviors of humanity offer to our souls a similar vast vista of our own reality. We are as old as God for we are made from the Infinite Spirit and “our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

God is as close to us now as can ever be; we need only to, as Yogananda put it, “improve our knowing.” Jesus, Krishna, Buddha and others incarnate not to show who THEY are but who we can become should we, like the Prodigal Son, make the same choice and similar effort to retrace our steps home.

Yogananda once said he remembered a lifetime as a diamond! Now some people say diamonds are forever but apparently not. Besides, we know that nothing in creation is forever. The concept of time and space is so incredible that if untethered from the deeper truth of our soul’s infinite, unchanging reality we might be left feeling hopelessly irrelevant.

Paramhansa Yogananda said that every atom is dowered with individuality as every snowflake is unique. After an experience of cosmic consciousness, he wrote that “I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my own heart.” “God is,” he later wrote, “center everywhere, circumference, nowhere.” As we live more from our center we touch the center of all creation, all hearts, and ultimately transcend the vibratory spheres into Cosmic Consciousness, into unalloyed Bliss.

In the Eternal present we discover eternity. We transcend reincarnation and karma at the center, still point of Being within us. “The kingdom of God is within you” Jesus the great Yogi pronounced.