RATHER THAN HELL: REINCARNATION part I
There was a saying in the Middle Ages: "Truth is one, falsity is manifold." Modern man might prefer saying: "Truth is clear, falsity is fuzzy." This paper discusses a very fuzzy notion which has come increasingly into vogue in the West: the doctrine variously called "transmigration of souls," "metempsychosis," "palingenesis," "rebirth," and "reincarnation." These various terms correspond to the manifold ideas about reincarnation, which constitute a very vague idea.
Although most of these terms imply belief in an immortal soul that transmigrates or reincarnates, Buddhism, while teaching rebirth, denies the immortality of the soul, so it is not clear at all what it is that reincarnates according to that religion (we shall only discuss versions that assume an immortal soul). A brief summary of the belief in reincarnation is as follows: when a human being is born, it is assumed that the soul has already lived previous lives in other bodies, not necessarily in human bodies, but also possibly in those of animals or plants. Modern spiritists, theosophists and New Agers prefer the term "reincarnation" restricted to human bodies only. In this paper, for the sake of simplicity, we shall also assume only human bodies. And when a human being dies, it is usually assumed that it has to look forward to another life in another body. The time interval between reincarnations may be seconds, days, or thousands of years.
There is no single set of explanations of how all this might take place. For example, matching up bodies with souls appears as a giant "traffic jam." What if several souls want the same body? What if no soul wants the body committed to come into existence? What if there is no soul available for the body committed to come into existence? And while the soul is discarnate, does it act autonomously (find an available body, etc.) or are things done for it, and if so, by whom?
One of the most awkward problems for reincarnation is the so-called population problem.1 In the imaginary world of reincarnationists, all human souls are eternal, they always existed, so there is a fixed number of them. By contrast, the number of human beings (the number of bodies that need animation by souls) has been greatly increasing. It is estimated that 2000 years ago there were about 200 million human beings, whereas today there are more than six billion of them. If there are 200 million souls, just right for the time of Our Lord, how can they animate six billion bodies today? (No matter what this fixed number is, the problem has to be faced somewhere.) Reincarnationists glibly offer some incredible "solutions": a) one soul animates many bodies; b) souls are "split up" into several copies; c) new souls are brought in from "other world systems" that surely must exist "somewhere out there."
It is clear that this doctrine raises a lot more questions than it answers. Since the interest of human beings is usually focused on the (immediately) previous incarnations, and on the (immediately) subsequent incarnations, the ultimate questions– 1) where does the soul ultimately come from, and 2) where does the soul ultimately go–recede from the focus of attention, and no answer is sought or offered to them. In other words, all interest in eschatology vanishes. G.K. Chesterton observed that
Reincarnation is not really a mystical idea. It is not really a transcendental idea, or in that sense a religious idea. Mysticism conceives something transcending experience; religion seeks glimpses of a better good or a worse evil than experience can give. Reincarnation need only extend experiences in the sense of repeating them. It is no more transcendental for a man to remember what he did in Babylon before he was born than to remember what he did in Brixton before he had a knock on the head. His successive lives need not be any more than human lives, under whatever limitations burden human life. It has nothing to do with seeing God or even conjuring up the devil. In other words, reincarnation as such does not necessarily escape from the wheel of destiny; in some sense it is the wheel of destiny.2
Recent developments are proving Chesterton correct. Indeed, reincarnation today is treated primarily as a therapeutic idea, its main (pretended) use being what is called a "past-life therapy." It is also used for explaining such non-issues as déjà-vu experiences, child prodigies, and phobias. None of them have anything to do with the great issues of religion such as afterlife or the meaning of life.
There are many hideous consequences of the doctrine of reincarnation, one pointed out by Fr. Arendzen:
Nature seems to lead men spontaneously to regard childhood as the embodiment of innocence, and infants as those who as yet know not sin. Nature, on the theory of rebirth, is the great deceiver, for a number of infants are supposed to be really deep-dyed criminals and monsters of wickedness awaiting terrible retribution, and all have some sins to expiate, otherwise they would not have been born at all.3
And you should not swat mosquitoes or tread on ants because any of them might be your grandmother, etc., etc.
History of the Doctrine of Reincarnation
As our title suggests, reincarnation in the modern West is first and foremost wishful thinking. But its beginnings were expressions of ignorance, as Paul Siwek, S.J., explains:
But how are we to conceive of human life devoid of any bodily substratum, the life of the soul alone? This is the problem which could not fail to confront the primitive mind. And we must admit that this problem was of a puzzling nature. Truly, life as experience manifests it to be, is based on matter; it depends on the body; is it not by means of the body connected with the soul that we get into contact with the world? Our first acquaintance with the world is due to our senses, our first reactions to the outside world are in the form of affections, emotions and other tendencies. Now, can the sensations and affections be conceived of as being independent of matter? How are we to imagine the life of the soul alone, a life devoid of any material support? That is the first difficulty which confronted primitive man.
But there is another difficulty. It is after death that the righteous expect to receive their full reward; and it is likewise after death that punishment will be meted out to the wicked. Now, how is it conceivable that man will enjoy real happiness if he is deprived of one of his essential parts, namely his body? On the other hand, how are we to interpret the meaning of punishment for a man who, having no body, cannot be affected by fire or frost, nor be subject to hunger or thirst?
These difficulties must have assumed a particular importance in the eyes of primitive man whose mentality was very much akin to that of a child. Like a child, primitive man does not easily grasp the intensity of mental life, its innermost joys, its silent sufferings; in his case joys and pains manifest themselves spontaneously in the noisy forms of cries, tears, and spasms. The disciple of the Avesta dreams of his paradise in radiant light and the brightest colors, with the choicest tapestries woven of the most precious material. For Homer, happiness in the next world consists of the sojourn "in the Elysian Fields situated at the earth's limits where the sweetest life is enjoyed by human beings, where there is no snow, no severe winters, no rain, only gentle breezes rising from the Ocean to cool and refresh men." The religious ideas of other nations and their conceptions of happiness and punishment in the next world were not much loftier.
One understands the strong fascination that must have been exerted on so rude a mentality by the idea of reincarnation, which did away in such a naive manner with the difficulties we have mentioned. In the place of the body buried in the ground, or reduced to ashes, the soul would be given a new body–human, animal or vegetable, no matter which; the essential being that the existence of man in another life might be conceivable, his happiness or punishment possible.
Those are the reasons–at least the principal ones–which must have influenced primitive thought in favor of the ideas of reincarnation. They are the real origin of the success of this theory which Plotinus does not hesitate to call "a Faith universally professed."4
Continuing the history of reincarnation:
Herodotus tells us in a well-known passage that "the Egyptians were the first to assert the immortality of the soul, and that it passes on the death of the body into another animal; and that when it has gone the round of all forms of life on land, in water, and in air, then it once more enters a human body born for it; and this cycle of the soul takes place in three thousand years." That the doctrine first originated with the Egyptians is unlikely. It almost certainly passed from Egypt into Greece, but the same belief had sprung up independently in many nations from a very early date.5
In Greece, Pythagoras (c.582-c.507 B.C.) borrowed the idea of transmigration of souls from Orphism, the secret mystery rites in worship of Dionysus.6 Another important representative of the doctrine was Empedocles (c.495-c.435 B.C.), a follower of Pythagoras. Plato (427-347 B.C.) learned the idea from the Pythagoreans, and the Neo-Platonists also taught it.
The two great religions of India, Hinduism and Buddhism, both contain reincarnation as an important dogma. Since the Cabala and the Talmud are deviations from Old Testament Judaism, it is not surprising to find reincarnation appear in some versions of the Cabala7 and also in the Talmud: "Some of the Talmudists invoke endless transmigration as a penalty for crime."8 "When in the 16th century Platonism became again, so to speak, the pole of philosophical thought, the idea of reincarnation reappeared. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) defend it eagerly."9 Goethe (1749-1832) also toyed with the idea: "Surely, I must have lived already before the Emperor Hadrian, for everything Roman attracts me with irresistible force."10 Skeptical philosopher David Hume (1711-76 ) was also in favor of it. German philosopher Schopenhauer (1788-1860 )
had some acquaintance with the thought of India, and a good deal of sympathy with certain of its features–in particular with its doctrine of repeated births. In the third volume of his great work, The World as Will and Idea, he has a chapter on "Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our True Nature." This true nature he conceives to be not the intellect, which is mortal, but "the character, i.e. the will" which is "the eternal part" of us and comes again and again to new births.11
Primitive religions of Africa, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand contain belief in reincarnation.
Reincarnation being a rival of the Catholic doctrine of Resurrection, it played a prominent part in many heresies. It was held by some Gnostics. The Manichaeans combine metempsychosis with belief in eternal punishment. In the Middle Ages the Albigensians and the Cathari inherited many of the cardinal doctrines of Manichaeanism, and may be considered as Neo-Manichaeans and thus reincarnationists.
The Modern Offensive AGAINST Christianity: Eastern Religions And Occultism
As Christianity, and especially the Catholic Church, had been gradually weakened during the 20th century and the flow of Christian missionaries was drying up, a missionary movement of Hinduism and Buddhism was beginning to take shape in the reverse direction. The appearance of Swami Vivekananda at the First World Parliament of Religions held at Chicago in 1893 may have been the beginning of the evangelizing of the West by Vedantic (or monistic) Hinduism. It had an important effect on intellectuals.
As far as efforts to reach the masses, we mention four: the Hare Krishna movement, Transcendental Meditation (TM), Zen, and Yoga. Of the four, Hare Krishna or the "Krishna Consciousness" movement is the most specific in its pagan religious content, emphasizing non-rational means of worship (chanting, music and dancing) in 300 temples in 71 different countries. Zen was popularized in the West by D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966). Yoga and TM (a derivative of siddha-yoga) are especially dangerous because they pretend to have nothing to do with religion. Yoga is thought to be a form of gymnastics and relaxation, and TM is also presented as a means of relaxation, both thought to be merely techniques. In fact, yoga is a spiritual discipline aimed to get man out of the cycle of reincarnations.12
This campaign was so effective that in half a century even the spiritual core of the Roman Catholic Church, monasticism, began showing signs of rapid disintegration. Cistercian monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Catholic priest and prolific Catholic writer (the story of his conversion entitled the Seven Storey Mountain was immensely popular), at the end of his life, while continuing to present himself as a Catholic contemplative, embraced and strongly supported Hinduism and Zen. Among others, he wrote a strongly sympathetic introduction to a new translation of the Bhagavad-Gita under the title The Significance of the Bhagavad-Gita.13 While this "Bible" of the Hindus contradicts every important teaching of Christianity, Merton's only complaint against it was that it "appears to accept and justify war." Merton also published enthusiastically on Zen,14 accepting the false assumption that all the "mystical experiences" in every religion are true. Thomas Merton should have known better, he knew the warnings against this error in Holy Scripture and in the Catholic spiritual classics.
As a significant part of the offensive, in the late 19th century strong and persistent efforts were beginning, initiated in the West by Westerners, to introduce into the West the doctrine of the reincarnation of souls through occultism. Movements like Theosophy and Anthroposophy, both eventually merging into and culminating in the New Age movement, promoted with extraordinary vigor everything anti-Christian, and consequently embraced the doctrine of reincarnation. Occultism often involves an anomaly, trying to graft reincarnation onto Christianity thereby hoping to ease and speed its acceptance. But occultism and Christianity remain contradictories, and consequently descriptions like "Christian occultist" or "Christian theosophist" are meaningless.
The intention was not so much to introduce into the West existing Eastern religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism but rather to undermine Christianity in the most effective way. Those false Eastern religions are incapable of leading man to God, but they have enough respect for the natural law so that, for example both Hinduism and Buddhism strongly condemn abortion. As a result, they are acceptable in the West only with modifications, and the modifications are provided by popular versions of occultism, such as Theosophy and New Age.
In our days, Western man, and especially woman, wants nothing to do with either Christianity or any other religion that takes the natural law seriously. Religions ("organized religions") are denounced as being too rigid: instead "belief-systems" and "spiritualities" are being advocated. People use these as merely sly code words for free-wheeling, do-it-yourself, private religions, failing to comprehend that "a man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."15
Such private religions are usually nothing more than fantasy, fiction, wishful thinking, and often rank nonsense. That they involve the imagination only, and do not involve reason at all just proves that they are paganism pure and simple. Again, G. K. Chesterton explains it best:
The substance of all paganism may be summarized thus. It is an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone; in its own field reason does not restrain it at all....In reality the rivers of mythology and philosophy run parallel and do not mingle till they meet in the sea of Christendom.16
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Modern Theosophy, popularized since 1875 by Russian Helena Blavatsky (1831-91) and Englishwoman Annie Besant (1847-1933), as a Western adaptation of Hinduism and Buddhism, strays far from its ancestors. Blavatsky preferred Buddhism, whereas Besant preferred Hinduism, but both were strongly influenced by Western Occultism. E. Cahill, S.J., describes the Theosophical Society as "an Occultist sect whose doctrines are a blend of Materialism, Pantheism, Gnosticism and Cabalistic Judaism."17 And Jung's summary is: "Theosophy...is pure Gnosticism in a Hindu dress."18
Fr. Martindale quotes P. Oltramare, a scholar of ancient Indian thought:
[T]he name Theosophy is affixed to the strangest wares: an amalgam of mysticism, charlatanism and thaumaturgic pretensions which have been combined, in the most unlikely fashion, with an almost childish anxiety to apply the method and terminology of science to transcendent matters. India itself could not but be besmirched by the ridicule and disfavour so justly incurred by the curious doctrines of Mme. Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant.19
The first sentence is an excellent summary of New Age as well. Martindale also cites Theosophy: History of a Pseudo-Religion, a book by French esotericist René Guenon (1886-1951), according to which Theosophic books distort oriental religions.20
Helena Blavatsky comments on occultism and Theosophy in particular: Theosophy is not a religion but "Divine Science," and "Wisdom religion was ever one, and being the last word of possible human knowledge, was therefore carefully preserved."21 Here she emphasizes that all the occult, esoteric lore had a continuous existence over thousands of years. She made clear the same by stating that her greatest work, entitled The Secret Doctrine, was not written as a revelation but rather as a compilation of fragments scattered throughout thousands of volumes describing various Asian and pre-Christian European religions and philosophies.
Theosophy was consistently anti-Christian from the beginning, although it used Protestant ideas and metaphors against Christianity such as inner individual spirituality, and denounced ritualized and clergy-mediated religious practices.
When Theosophists speak well of Christianity, it must be firmly remembered that they do so at the cost of denying its absolute, final, and unique validity, and of detecting in it an esoteric doctrine which Christians are ignorant of or deny.22
"Esoteric Christianity" is a malicious distortion of true Christianity. For example, it
really considers Christ as the Gnostics did, i.e., as chief of the Aeons....A. Besant considers that the historical Jesus was born 105 B.C., became an Essene monk, studied Indian occultist books, traveled into Egypt and at 29, surrendered his body to a Buddha of Compassion, who entered it at the Baptism. The man Jesus in his human body suffered for the services rendered to its superhuman occupant.23
Such fables are subversive of Christianity, and thus we are justified in considering Theosophy anti-Christian.
Alice Bailey (1880-1949) was born in Manchester, England. She was raised in an orthodox Anglican family which, she would say later, made her very unhappy and a bad-tempered little girl. "Life was not worth living," she said, and she attempted suicide three times before she was even 15. In 1917, after the breakup of her first marriage, she moved to the United States, where she was introduced to the teachings of Theosophy. By 1920, she became the editor of the American Theosophists' newspaper, The Messenger. In this same year she launched a fight with Annie Besant for control of Theosophy, which Alice Bailey lost when Besant's man, Louis Roger, was elected president. Immediately after the dust settled, Alice and her husband Foster Bailey founded their own Tibetan Lodge, then the Lucifer Trust, whose name was changed in 1922 to its present Lucis Trust. By the 1930's, Bailey claimed 200,000 members, and her faction of Theosophy grew even more rapidly after Krishnamurti denounced Besant's scheme to promote him as the Messiah (the World-Teacher or the Lord Matreya) in 1939.
During the early 1930's, Bailey spent her summers in Ascona, Switzerland, giving lectures at the Eranos Conferences, which later came to be dominated by Carl Jung. The Eranos Conferences were an important center of the Occult Revival, influential in shaping the forthcoming leadership of the New Age movement. The Lucis Trust promulgates the work of an "Ascended Master" who was working through Alice Bailey for some 30 years. This "Tibetan master, Djwhal Khul" (undoubtedly an infernal spirit) wrote 19 books between 1919 and 1949 through Alice Bailey.
Alice Bailey is sometimes called "the mother of New Age," and Helena Blavatsky "the grandmother of New Age," which explains the role they played. There is no better justification of the saying that "the New Age is the Kingdom of Satan on Earth" than the legend of the mythical continent Atlantis cherished by both Theosophy and New Age. At the time of the cataclysmic destruction of Atlantis, the legend says, the "White Lodge of Ascended Masters" (infernal spirits that are the sources of the occult doctrines) withdrew from the earth and left the planet temporarily in control of the "Black Lodge" which stands for their enemy, Christianity. The "White Lodge," also called "Great White Brotherhood," is now expected to return to Earth, and the New Age they are to usher in will have no room whatsoever for Christianity.
Propaganda In Favor Reincarnation
As an example, we discuss Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology by Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston, a haphazard compilation published by the Theosophical Society of America.24 The book is described on the first page as follows:
Reincarnation is frequently regarded as an Oriental concept incompatible with Western thinking and traditional belief. This encyclopedic compilation of quotations from eminent philosophers, theologians, poets, scientists, and other thinkers of every period of Western culture, and the thoroughly documented survey of reincarnation in the world religions, will serve to dispel this idea.
This argument is misleading: Western occultism has always advocated reincarnation, and it has always had a small following. But the book fails to show that reincarnation has real supporters beyond the followers of the occult. Beyond quotes from Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Karl Jung and other occultists, the rest of the compilation gives dubious support to the doctrine of reincarnation.
Many of the quotes in this book merely support the existence of the human soul, or the immortality thereof, which of course is fine, but they give no support for reincarnation. Many quotes are not quotes at all (this being a typical propaganda trick): some famous name is listed, and the reader jumps to the conclusion that he also supported reincarnation, but there is no quote at all to show such support. For example, Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist is listed because he wrote a play about Julian the Apostate, and Julian believed in reincarnation (discussed later in this paper). A quote from the play is used, presumably to insinuate that maybe Ibsen believed in reincarnation too. Well, no, he did not. If he did, they could have quoted him saying so.
And the book plays fast and loose with Catholic authors. For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa is quoted: "It is absolutely necessary that the soul should be healed and purified and if this does not take place during its life on earth it must be accomplished in future lives."25 St. Gregory is obviously talking about purgatory; the quote is clear that there is only one life on earth. The only source of confusion is the plural of the last word, but it cannot be checked because no citation is given.
Dante is deliberately misquoted: the quote from Canto XX of "Paradise" of the Divine Comedy has absolutely nothing to do with reincarnation. A miracle showing the mercy of God, the resurrection and conversion of Roman Emperor Trajan (emperor between 98-117), is described. John Ciardi, author of one of the better translations of the Divine Comedy into English, explains:
Dante follows a legend that Gregory I (Pope from 590-604, later St. Gregory) prayed so ardently for the salvation of Trajan that God's voice replied: "I grant pardon to Trajan." Since God so granted, it was, of course, predestined that he should so grant. Trajan, therefore, could never have been truly damned, for no prayer can help the damned. But since none may go from hell to heaven, it was necessary to restore Trajan to the flesh long enough to permit his conversion to Christ.26
Most quotes can possibly be checked in principle, but not in practice: the quote is said to come from a book, and only the title of the book is given. Who is willing to read through a whole book to locate a short quote? This entirely inadequate way of supplying references was done to prevent checking, which makes one suspect all the quotes that cannot be checked.
And finally, some quotes are absolutely pointless, like this from Bertrand Russell:
I find my boy still hardly able to grasp that there was a time when he did not exist; if I talk to him about the building of the Pyramids or some such topic, he always wants to know what he was doing then, and is merely puzzled when he is told that he did not exist. Sooner or later he will want to know what "being born" means, and then we shall tell him.
If this is the best propaganda the advocates of reincarnation can come up with, they do not convince.
Hindu Ritual Cremation
Long stretches of the Ganges River and its tributaries are cremation sites like this one in Kathmandu, Nepal. The Ganges spills out into the Indian Ocean, the ultimate point of dissolution and regeneration for all. However, there are special cremation sites. "Once in every lifetime an observant Hindu hopes to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Varanasi. Some come to wash away sickness and sin in the Ganges River. Others bring their dead to be burned. Still others come to live their last days here, for to die and be cremated in Varanasi guarantees eternal release from the cycle of birth and death."–From "India: Fifty Years of Independence," May 1997, National Geographic |
The Religious Background of The Doctrine Of Reincarnation
In this brief survey we shall discuss truth in various religions, in sharp contrast with the customary discussions called comparative religion, which tend to present a lot of details about similarities and dissimilarities in the religions of the world, usually emphasizing religious practices but always steering clear of religious truth.
The two most important beliefs that shape man and societies are what is believed about God, and what is believed about the nature and destiny of man.
Mortimer Adler in his Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth27 stated clearly (based on philosophical arguments only) that if one is looking for truth in religion, the only place where there is any hope of finding any truth is the monotheistic religions.
Of course, the Catholic knows that the Catholic religion is the only religion that contains the complete truth: Old Testament Judaism and Islam fall short by knowing nothing about essentials like the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Redemption. But all three are correct in saying: there is only one God, God is an infinite spiritual being, God is a person who rewards and punishes, and God is the Creator of the universe.
From monotheism the nature and destiny of man can be deduced more or less correctly. The Catholic religion states the full truth: Man is a composite of body and soul; the soul is created by God at conception; the soul is judged by God immediately after death and eventually the body will be resurrected and miraculously rejoined with the soul for an everlasting existence either in heaven or in hell.
The most important rival of the Catholic truth in modern times is what can be called secularism, theoretical atheism or materialism: God does not exist, and man has no spiritual soul, i.e., man is really an irrational animal. Marxism, Communism and Secular Humanism advocate this position. Although this position is probably dominant in Western society, paganism, the most important rival of the truth in ancient times, is gradually increasing in importance in recent times. Fr. Martindale defines the term in The Catholic Encyclopedia: "Paganism, in the broadest sense, includes all religions other than the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism." In this article, we shall use the term in the narrower sense.
Paganism has a succinct characterization in the Bible: "...all the gods of the Gentiles are devils" (Ps. 95:5), a statement echoed by St. Francis Xavier, the great Catholic missionary to India, Ceylon, Malaya and Japan, who, in a letter to St. Ignatius wrote: "All the invocations of the pagans are hateful to God because all their gods are devils."28 And if a more vivid eyewitness account is needed that the gods of the heathen are not merely stone and brass but devils, a reading of The Mark of the Beast, a short story by Rudyard Kipling, is recommended.
Paganism is hard to describe in a coherent manner because it is full of contradictions and inconsistencies. It involves distorted notions of God such as polytheism and pantheism. Usually, on the surface, to satisfy the needs of popular piety, these religions are polytheistic. They have large numbers of "deities," "gods" and "goddesses," and lots of made up stories (mythology) about them. But they are inspired by a pantheistic metaphysics. Pantheism essentially involves two assertions: that everything that exists constitutes a unity, and that this all-inclusive unity is divine. Put even more simply, it identifies God and the world. It may also be said that according to this view either God is everywhere or God is nowhere, expressing that pantheism and atheism are very close. The consequences of pantheism are: denial of a personal God, denial of divine revelation (i.e., all religious truths are derived from nature, not from revelation), denial of the miraculous, and denial of the supernatural in religion. Therefore, pantheism can also be called naturalism.
Christopher Dawson in his article The Nature and Destiny of Man discusses Eastern religions:
The Indian picture of the whole life process as an endless wheel of lives and deaths gripped in the claws of the monster Kama or desire; to be freed from that wheel is the end of all their efforts.... But how can man escape from the domination of this power which seems to be the very power of life itself? Only, it was said, by turning his back on life, by seeing in the whole sensible world nothing but illusion, and by leaving the finite and the known for the unknown infinite....Life is evil, the body is evil, sense is evil, consciousness is evil. Only in the destruction and cessation of all these can true good be found. This is no less the message of the other great spiritualist religions of the East. Whether they teach spiritual monism, like the Vedanta; spiritual nihilism, like Buddhism; or a spiritualist dualism, like Manichaeanism–they agree in this, that what is wrong with man is not the disorder or disease of his actual existence, but his very life itself.29
This denial of the reality of the world of phenomena and even of the principle of causality is characteristic of Indian thought....The material universe is, in fact, a kind of cosmic nightmare....30
Against this background, the fate of man is reincarnation, governed by the law of Karma:
As is a man's desire, so is his will, and as is his will so is his deed, and whatever deed (Karma) he does, that will he reap....The one end of life, the one task for the wise man is Deliverance; to cross the bridge, to pass the ford from death to Life, from appearance to Reality, from time to Eternity–all the goods of human life in the family or the state are vanity in comparison with this.31
According to the popular imagination, Karma means you will get what you deserve. This gloomy world view is the origin and background of the doctrine of reincarnation, and the only proper setting for it. Reincarnation goes hand in glove with paganism, pantheism and polytheism. By contrast, present-day Western efforts to combine reincarnation with monotheism are baseless and fraudulent.
Mortimer Adler examines whether any truth can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism and similar religions, and arrives at the following conclusions by an elaborate philosophical reasoning:
In the light of these principles and considerations, I would be compelled to say that there cannot be logical and factual truth in any of the Far Eastern religions that are cosmological rather than theological in their orthodoxies [Buddhism, Jainism, and Taoism], nor in any of the theological religions that are polytheistic rather than monotheistic [Confucianism, Hinduism, and Shinto].32
Adler bases his conclusion on two important observations: 1) the Far Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Shintoism) embrace contradictions, and 2) in these Far Eastern cultures there is a latent or explicit Averroism.33 Averroism involves a doctrine called that of double truth, according to which statements could be true in reason and false in faith and vice versa. St. Thomas Aquinas in his dispute with the Latin Averroists of his day refuted this doctrine: the truths of faith and truth of reason are truths of the same kind and no incompatibility can exist between them. A good history of this great medieval debate can be found in Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages by Etienne Gilson.34
We conclude that the religions that provide the background for reincarnation contain no factual truth whatsoever, or, at least truths that are so enveloped by vagaries and falsehoods that they become obscured.
OCCULTISM
Another source for belief in reincarnation is occultism, which refers to supposed knowledge, "Divine Wisdom" so-called, the principles and practice of which is held to involve the use of hidden and mysterious powers, and manifested in magic, divination, and astrology. It goes back to ancient times, both in the East and the West. Occultism involves, most of the time, diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men, which cannot be delicately side-stepped any more, but has to be discussed openly, for we see an ever increasing militancy of Satan in this world.
The following item from BBC News on the Internet is typical of the many other examples that could be given to justify, or even compel, our open discussion of Satanic activity throughout this paper.
The British Navy has officially recognized its first registered Satanist. Naval technician Chris Cranmer, 24, has been allowed to register by the captain of HMS Cumberland. The move will mean that he will now be allowed to perform Satanic rituals on board the vessel. A spokesman for the Royal Navy said: "We are an equal opportunities employer and we don't stop anybody from having their own religious values." (Published: 2004/10/23 23:52:51 GMT at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/V2/hi/ uk_news/3948329.stm)
The Church of Satan was established in San Francisco in 1966. Anton Szandor LaVey was its high priest until his death in 1997. Followers live by the Nine Satanic Statements, which include "Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence," "Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek," and "Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification."
The diabolical is not only being flaunted, it is insolently forced on society through the printed and electronic media. Probably most widely known is "channeling," referring to communications of diabolical origin, which have become so popular that entire magazines are trying to satisfy the demand for them. (We always have to allow that human fraud takes the place of truly diabolical communication, since humans are usually able to imitate the style of previous diabolical communications, and this is often the case with the popular "channeling" magazines.)
Other examples of the diabolical are UFOs, "speaking in tongues" and other manifestations of the "charismatic revival," the mass suicide at Jonestown in 1978, the demonic healers in Brazil, etc., etc.
Examples of occultism that go back to ancient times are Cabalistic Judaism, the "real" secret interpretation of the Bible (Old Testament) for Jews, and Gnostic Christianity, which is the "real" secret interpretation of the Bible (Old and New Testaments) for Christians. They both survive even today, for example the Cabala in Hassidic Judaism, and Gnosticism in the so-called Gnostic Catholic Church. Gnosticism also survives in literature hostile to the Catholic Church. For example, Anatole France (1844-1924) French Nobel-prize winner in literature, was a complete pagan, and in 1920 all his books were put on the Index of Forbidden Books. The last novel he wrote, The Revolt of the Angels (1914), is usually labeled a political satire, but it is in reality a Gnostic attack on God and the Catholic religion.
Better known manifestations of occult in modern times are Theosophy and New Age. We shall only discuss Theosophy as being an important source and also the backbone of New Age.
Modern Theosophy developed under strong demonic influences, which is clearly visible in the lives of three of its leaders, Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Alice Bailey. While "Buddhism discourages superstitious credulity; Gautama Buddha taught that no one should believe what is spoken by any sage, written in any book, or affirmed by tradition, unless it accords with reason,"35 by contrast, Theosophy rests completely on unsupported assertions provided by "Masters," or Mahatmas (Great Spirits). But who are these Masters?
[T]hese Guardians of the Immemorial Doctrine...are "Beings more completely developed than antecedent or existing humanity. These more advanced Beings have traversed the entire human course, and help their less advanced brethren. All humanity shall one day reach this degree of development, like that which Westerns assign to their anthropomorphic God," and then it will be their turn to help others. They may be called Initiates, Adepts, Magi, Hierophants, Mahatmas, Elder Brothers, Great Souls, or Masters. We are told to number among them Pythagoras, Orpheus, Moses, Christ, St. Paul, St. John, Clement and Origen, Krishna and Buddha, high-priests of various cults (including that of the Temple at Jerusalem), Alexander the Great, and many others.36
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For example, the Master of Helena Blavatsky was a certain Master Morya (the name of an infernal spirit) "who lived in Tibet" and who was the acknowledged author of The Secret Doctrine (the main work under the name of Helena Blavatsky). Blavatsky claimed that she regularly received channeled messages from Morya, including written messages that dropped from the ceiling during her channeling sessions. It should not be surprising that this sounds like Spiritism or Spiritualism, since we know that Helena Blavatsky, before founding the Theosophical Society, practiced Spiritism under Allen Kardec.37
The infant Society...made use of not a few of the methods of spiritualism, and Mme. Blavatsky was constantly accompanied by a perfect fusillade of rappings, and by other phenomena. She insisted, however, that she was no "medium," but a "mediator" (i.e., between the sages and ordinary men). She (Helena Blavatsky) wrote from Switzerland, approving of the assertion that "the Theosophical Society, minus Masters, is an absurdity," and that "I am the only means of communication with the Masters, and for giving out their philosophy–the Society, unless I continue to work for it as in the past, is a dead thing."38
Alice Bailey was a channel for Master KH (Koot Hoomi) and Tibetan Master DK (Djwhal Khul), both again infernal spirits. The latter of the two wrote 19 of the 24 books produced by Alice Bailey between the years 1919 and 1949.
So these Mahatmas are, to a large extent, the source of modern Theosophy. "Mahatmas, their existence, position, and teaching, become entirely an affair of faith."39 Although Theosophy rebels against all the traditional religious authorities and against every faith as being exoteric, it itself asserts a principle of authority and demands from its followers a blind faith. The authority of teachers and faith in teachers–this indeed is the basis of the theosophic path. But the ultimate teachers are demons, so the faith the follower of Theosophy has is faith in a manifestly demonic revelation. And this is what one of the demons, Koot Hoomi Lai Singh, writes about the "occult mysteries": "The mysteries never were, never can be, put within the reach of the general public, not, at least, until that longed for day when our religious philosophy becomes universal."40
Unfortunately, this demonic revelation is wrong about everything: about God, about man, and about the universe. Theosophy is monism, and in its pantheistic world view there is no personal God and Creator. "To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void."41 Koot Hoomi also wrote that the "very ABC of what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe are encrusted"42 is the certainty of there being "no such thing as God, either personal, or impersonal."43
The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare [i.e., the God of Christianity], to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery.44
The best Adepts have searched the Universe during millenniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such a Machiavellian schemer [i.e., the Christian God], but throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law.45
In addition, Theosophy suffers from a fatal confusion between matter and spirit. We give several quotes to show that this error is absolutely central and essential to their thinking (all of them are on the Internet).
Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are...to be regarded, not as independent realities, but as two facets or aspects of the Absolute.46
Matter is Eternal. There can be no manifestation of Consciousness...except through the vehicle of matter.47
Spirit is matter on the seventh plane; matter is Spirit on the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both are MAYA.48
The Monism of Theosophy is truly philosophical. We conceive of the universe as one in essence and origin. And though we speak of Spirit and Matter as its two poles, yet we state emphatically that they can only be considered as distinct from the standpoint of human, mayavic (i.e., illusionary) consciousness. We therefore conceive of spirit and matter as one in essence.49
The Occultists recognize but One Element which they divide into seven parts, which include the five exoteric elements and the two esoteric ones of the ancients. As to that Element, they call it, indifferently, matter or spirit, claiming that as matter is infinite and indestructible and Spirit likewise, and as there cannot exist in the infinite Universe two omnipresent Eternal elements, any more than two Indestructibles or Infinites can exist–hence Matter and Spirit must be one. "All is Spirit and all is Matter," they say: Matter, then, is but a state of Spirit, and vice-versa.50
The Eastern Occultists hold that there is but one element in the universe: infinite, uncreated and indestructible–MATTER; which element manifests itself in seven states, four of which are known to modern science....Spirit is the highest state of that matter, they say, since that which is neither matter nor any of its attributes is–NOTHING.51
In one sense every Buddhist as well as every Occultist and even most of the educated Spiritualists, are, strictly speaking, Materialists....If [Spirit] is something–it must be material, otherwise it is but a pure abstraction, a no-thing. Nothing which is capable of producing an effect on any portion of the physical–objective or subjective–Kosmos can be otherwise than material. Mind...could produce no effect were it not material; and believers in a personal God, have themselves either to admit that the deity in doing its work has to use material force to produce a physical effect, or to advocate miracles, which is an absurdity.52
Matter is the opposite pole of spirit and yet the two are one.53
It is one of the elementary and fundamental doctrines of Occultism that the two [spirit and matter] are one, and are distinct but in their respective manifestations, and only in the limited perceptions of the world of senses.54
In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of matter, and matter the crystallization of spirit.55
The existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their self existence and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit as a Being or an Existence–give it whatever name you will–is a chimera, a gigantic absurdity.56
Because of this materialism, it is not surprising that Theosophy is primarily interested in the cosmos and in a science-like description of the cosmic structure and cosmic evolution. This goes hand in hand with Theosophy being very deferential to science, but completely ignoring (or being ignorant of) philosophy. So all the time theosophists talk about spirit they are in reality talking about matter.
Words like "vibrations," "rays," "planes," "spheres," "ranges" and "dimensions" apply to matter and space; they have nothing to do with spirit. Therefore, what theosophists call spirituality has nothing in common with true spirituality. The latter consists in an intrinsic independence with regard to matter as to being and as to operation.
Being in violent contradiction not only with Christianity but with most of philosophy completely invalidates all their reasonings about man and about the universe. A single contradiction like the one we demonstrated in detail above, asserting that matter and spirit are one, has devastating consequences for the whole system of thought. From it, one can easily derive false assertions such as that the chair you are sitting on is invisible. But of course, the demons know what they are doing. Their "spiritual" universe is really an all-material universe, exactly because humans can easily imagine material things, and can then generate endless fantasies about it.
Beyond Theosophy, we shall discuss as examples of the occult Allan Kardec, a representative of Latin Spiritism (especially influential in South America), and Edgar Cayce, very influential in the United States.
(to be continued)
Dr. Gyula Mago was born in 1938 in Hungary and raised a Catholic. He lived under Communist rule for 20 years. Dr. Mago obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, England, in 1970, and was a professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1970-99). He presently lives in retirement in Durham, North Carolina, and assists at the Latin Mass at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. Part 2, appearing in the August 2005 issue will examine the apparent "justifications" and "evidence" for reincarnation.
1. Paul Edwards, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination (Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 226.
2. Gilbert K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), pp. 148-49.
3. J.P. Arendzen, What Becomes of the Dead? (Sheed & Ward, 1951), p. 236.
4. Paul Siwek, S.J., The Enigma of the Hereafter: The Reincarnation of Souls (Philosophical Library, 1952), pp. viii-ix.
5. Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), s.v. "Metempsychosis."
6. Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (Jeremy Tarcher-Penguin, 2003), pp. 74-76.
7. Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1967), s.v. "Cabala."
8. Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Metempsychosis."
9. Siwek, The Enigma of the Hereafter, pp. xii-xiii.
11. Curt Ducasse, A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death (Charles C. Thomas, 1961), Chapter 20.
12. Jean-Pierre Marie, "Yoga and Zen: Philosophies of Despair," Apropos, No. 15, Advent 1993.
13. Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (New Direction, 1975), pp. 348-53.
14. Mystics and Zen Masters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967), and Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New Direction, 1968).
15. G. K. Chesterton, Introduction to the Book of Job (1907).
16. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p. 123.
17. Rev. E. Cahill, Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement (M. H. Gill and Son, 1929), p. 240.
18. Karl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, (Harvest Books, 1933), p. 215.
19. C.C. Martindale, Theosophy (London: Catholic Truth Society). [Available on the Internet.]
21. H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy. (The Theosophical Publishing House, n.d.), p. 8.
26. Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso, trans. by John Ciardi (Mentor Book, 1979), p. 233.
28. James Brodrick, S.J., Saint Francis Xavier (Image Book, 1957), p. 85.
29. Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into Religion and Culture (Sheed & Ward, 1933), pp. 324-25.
30. Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion (Sheed & Ward), p. 143.
32. Truth in Religion, p. 107.
34. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950.
35. Christmas Humphreys, Buddhism (Penguin Books, 1951), p. 73.
37. Siwek, The Enigma of the Hereafter, p. 130.
40. A. Trevor Barker, transcriber and compiler, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett from the Mahatmas M. and K. H. Arranged and edited in chronological sequence by Vicente Hao Chin, Jr. (Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1998), p. 6, Letter 2.
46. H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (The Theosophical Publishing House, n.d.), 1:15.
49. H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings (The Theosophical Publishing House, 1950-91), 11:336.
53. H. P. Blavatsky, Studies in Occultism (Theosophical University Press, n.d.), p. 210.
54. Barker, The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 282, Letter 90.
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