Reincarnation in philosophy
This topic is particularly interesting to me, that is, how reincarnation, as one of the most ancient concepts, was able to appear in all cultures of the earth simultaneously without affecting each other. And it is also interesting how this spiritual phenomenon is related to philosophy. Frankly, I find it most unlikely that we did not exist in some spiritual form before we were born. Simply because, in the infinite time, not only that we were born, but that we exist right now and talk about it is not at all self-evident. So much so, we simply had a zero chance for it. This is a mathematical fact, not a matter of debate. All in all I saw that the time had come to deal with the topic in more depth.
Reincarnation and western philosophy
In ancient Greece and Greater Greece (Magna Graecia), the belief in reincarnation can be traced back to Pythagoras and the Orphicians (BC 570-490), whose teachings have not survived much. Their doctrines were secret, only their followers could hear them, and they were often spread only by word of mouth. The Greek philosopher and scientist Pythagoras was one of the first to deal systematically with the concept of reincarnation, and he made that one of the foundations of his teaching. The only historical data that can be seriously relied on is the religious sect he founded in Kroton, which enthusiastically supported the theory of transmigration of souls.
Here the original sin already appears, for which the soul must wander between the prisons of the body until the final catharsis, that is, purification. He believed, and expressed it, that he was Heraclides, and then Euphonius, who was killed by Menelaus during the siege of Troy.
In the Meno, Plato (BC 427-347) put his own conviction into the mouth of Socrates: “Well, there is nothing that the soul has not known, because it is immortal and has been reborn several times, and has seen the world from here on Hades and beyond, that is, in a single word: everything. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if it recalls to the mind what it previously knew about virtue and everything else, and there is nothing to prevent the soul from recollecting one thing (a memory which men call learning) by itself to discover all for others as well, if someone is brave and tireless in research.” Courage and steadfastness were essential requirements for Socrates in his search for the true self. Here, the concept of identity takes on a new meaning, which is not something we have since birth, but something we have to find.
In his works, Plato emphasizes the immortality and rebirth of the soul, as well as the possibility that the soul can clearly remember its previous existences. Regarding rebirth in an animal body, Plato writes in the Phaedo: “All those who have lived for gluttony, lasciviousness, and drunkenness will take on the body of a donkey or some other similar animal. And those who loved injustice, tyranny, and robbery; they move into the bodies of wolves or sparrow hawks.” So anything we gain with sin and weakness is just an illusion, that is, it can be stated that we gain nothing with them, but on the contrary, we lose everything.
On the same subject, we find another thought of Plato in the Republic: “Transient souls, the new generation of people is now beginning the cycle of their moral existence. The fate meted out to you will not be the work of chance, but you will choose it for yourself.” So according to Plato “the body is a grave”, in the same way as the negative interpretation of Hindu and Buddhist karma, i.e. that which sees karma as a barrier, a limitation, burden, that must be freed from.
As for the Romans, they are under the influence of the Greek philosophers. Cicero (BC 106-43) followed Platonism and writes in Hortensium: “The ancients, be they seers or mediators of the divine mind, seem to have recognized the truth in the traditions of sacred initiations when they declared that we are born in a body because we have to pay for a previous for the sins we committed in life.”
Virgil’s (BC 70-43) Aeneid VI. in chapter Anchises calls out from the underworld to teach his son, Aeneas, about the transmigration of souls: “Souls for whom destiny has ordered to take on a new body, and are just now drinking the drink of eternal oblivion.”
The idea of reincarnation, however, found its fullest expression in the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school, especially in the person of Plotion (AD 205-270) and Origen (AD 185-253 or 254).
Within early Christian philosophical thought, many authors wrote about the sensitive subject of reincarnation. St. Augustine (AD 354-430) asks in the Confessions: “I beg you, tell me, Lord, to your pleading servant, was my infancy preceded by some condition I had earlier? And before this life, oh dear Lord, was I somewhere, in some body?”
His contemporary, St. Jerome (AD 347-420), preached the doctrine of repeated life and worried that people would not be able to understand it: “It is not worth talking too much about rebirths, because the masses are not able to understand it.”
The idea of reincarnation was therefore not alien to early Christian teachings. However, the doctrine of reincarnation slowly disappeared in the West after the synods that excommunicated the teachings of Origen and banished the concept of reincarnation from the official corpus of the Catholic Mother Church, to appear again, for example, among the followers of Templars, Kabbalists, Rosicrucians and other esoteric cults, and find illustrious supporters within the Renaissance intelligentsia.
After many centuries of dormancy, the Enlightenment and Romanticism (XVIII. and XIX. Centuries) started a new wave of the concept of reincarnation, and finds a place in the works of authors such as Kant, Goethe and Schopenhauer. In particular, Schopenhauer claims that the essence of the world is the will (Wille zum Leben), the uncontrollable impulse that pushes everyone towards existence and action. And the will coincides with longing, that is, with a frenzied desire for something that is missing and that we want to get; it must end in pain and suffering.
For Schopenhauer, freedom from pain corresponds to freedom from the will to live: a person must be freed from the will, and in order to detach himself from its logic, he must arrive at no-will, to noluntas, a state similar to the Buddhist nirvana, thanks to which he can overcome pain. Schopenhauer was perhaps the first to introduce the concept of karma yoga in the West: serving our fellow man, practicing moral discipline (dharma) is an attempt to overcome egoism and sincerely commit ourselves to helping our neighbor. But according to Schopenhauer, this is not dictated to us by a categorical imperative (like for Kant), but by compassion for our neighbor. People need to understand and feel that other people are a reflection of themselves, and thus put an end to the constant competition and the way that people try to dominate other people.
And finally, the philosopher’s statement supporting the theory of reincarnation is also interesting: “If an Asian were to ask me to define Europe, I would have to answer: that part of the world that was poisoned by the incredible illusion that man arose from nothing and that at birth coming into the world for the first time.” (A. Schopenhauer: Parerga and Paralipomena, II. volume, XV. chapter.)
The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), one of the charismatic fathers of psychotherapy, uses the concept of the eternal self, which undergoes many rebirths, which are useful tools for penetrating and knowing the deepest mystery of consciousness and the self: “Reincarnation is a belief belonging to the oldest ages of humanity, based on what I define as an archetype. Basically, all perceptions of the supernatural are defined by archetypes. Therefore, it is not surprising that claims about reincarnation appear in the cultures of different peoples.”
Jung’s name is also attributed to the proposition in which the cycle of rebirths is interrupted when the soul reaches a certain level in its understanding of itself; at that point it is no longer necessary to return, the attainment of correct knowledge thus no longer gives the desire to reincarnate another chance. In this case, the soul would disappear from the three-dimensional world and reach what Buddhists call nirvana. But if a karma still remains, writes Jung, the soul returns to the vortex of desires and returns to life, since it probably has something more to accomplish: “In my case, above all, it was the passionate desire to understand that determined my being, since it is the strongest component of my nature.
He also adds: “It is easy for me to imagine that I have already lived in previous centuries and stumbled upon questions to which I cannot give the answer. So I had to be born again, because I have not yet fulfilled the task that was assigned to me. When I die – so I imagine – my actions will follow me. I will carry with me all that I have done.”
According to Jung, the content of the deep self comes to the surface in dreams, hallucinations, and visions during meditation and hypnotic induction. In particular, Jung regards the dream as a privileged domain, as it is not affected by the limitations of conscious thought, and he feels a great potency in it, which leads the individual back to the understanding of his own true nature, karma and rebirth: “In any case, lately I have observed a series of dreams that seemed to describe the process of reincarnation in a deceased person I knew.” “I have emphasized many times – continued Jung -, that the evil that we have done, thought, or wished will avenge itself in our souls in the future, as it has done up to now, regardless of the fact that the world has changed for us.”
Only by incorporating karmic therapy can psychotherapy become truly effective and start the process of not only healing, but also self-awareness and spiritual development in the individual. Karma therefore represents the dominant factors of the subconscious, interacting with the human psyche, and as such can be overcome when consciousness is freed from all forms and the power of objects. Consciousness then returns to the energy state outside of the starting time: for Buddhism the dharma-kaya (understanding the true nature of the thing) state, and for Jung, to the true Self (Selbst).
Transmigration and Christianity
The writer and Christian theologian Origen (AD 185 – 253 or 254) was the first to open a debate on reincarnation in the Christian-Catholic world. The result of the theological debate was that the church authorities rejected the theory of the multiple reincarnation of the soul. When formulating his teaching, Origen adopted many of the basic elements of Platonic philosophy, especially regarding the ideas about the soul and reincarnation. According to Origen, “The soul has no beginning and no end. Every soul re-enters the world strengthened by the victories of its previous lives or weakened by its mistakes. His place in this world – as an abode destined for glory or dishonor – is determined by his previous merits. Your actions will determine your place in the next world. Wouldn’t it make sense that every soul would end up in a body for some mysterious reason, based on its previous merits and actions?”
This theory, which essentially gave hope to man for later redemption after death by the fact that sins can be rectified in every subsequent life, was condemned by the church almost a century and a half after the death of Origen, at the Synod of Alexandria, AD 399. After that, at the Synod of Constantinople, in 543, the theory was stigmatized for the second time. The stigmatization was followed a few years later by the publication of a series of anathemas. In any case, it is noteworthy that the convening of the synod was initiated by Emperor Justinian, without Rome being an active part of the initiative. The anathemas were always wanted by the emperor, who kept the weak-handed Pope Vigil under pressure to seal the anathemas.
Saint Augustine (AD 354 – 430), the theologian and philosopher, the charismatic and knowledgeable Christian father, also openly expresses his sympathy for Platonic and Neoplatonic theories in his writings, and he himself even wrote a series on reincarnation. In his work Against the Academics, he writes: “Plato’s message is the purest and most brilliant message of all philosophy, it finally dispels the errors, and now everything is clear, especially through Plotinus, who resembles his master so much that you would think Plato was born again in his person.” He also writes in his Confessions: “I beg you, tell me, Lord, to your pleading servant, was my infancy preceded by some condition I had earlier? And before this life, oh dear Lord, was I somewhere, in some body?”
Reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the so-called Lamaism, originally called Bod-chosh (“Tibetan religion”), spread in many areas of Asia. Although it originally entered Tibet from China, later the Tibetan form of religion became dominant in China as well, then it flooded Mongolia, part of Siberia, Manchuria, the southern border areas, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal as well. In these areas, the sacred language of the religion is Tibetan, in the lama monasteries, the ceremonies and customs, appearances, and formalities of Tibetan lamaism are familiar, and the high priest of Lhasa, the Dalai Lama, is recognized as the head of the church.
The institution of the church hierarchy is relatively not old. After Conghopa’s reformation, Lamaism increasingly developed a complex organization of priestly hierarchy. In the selection of church leaders, the so-called tulku, or kubilgan principle in the Mongolian word, became common, according to which the spirits of former great saints, sages and preachers, and even some deities, reincarnated again and again, are repeatedly born to work for the doctrine and the church. Before the generalization of priestly celibacy, the heads of significant monasteries founded dynasties, and the abbot was mostly followed by his son in ecclesiastical dignity. This proved to be very harmful, it put family interests before the church’s interests. However, the kubilgan principle and the rule of monastic celibacy created a completely single-purpose organization of the church, free from any external interests.
According to the principle, a ranking was established among “reborn leading spirits” according to the high position they occupied before their earthly birth. One of Conghopa’s disciples was considered the earthly embodiment of the heavenly bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (Tibetan Chenrezig), and his successors, the high priests of Lhasa were highly respected. But even before that, the abbot of the Shakya monastery, the high priest of the red hat sect, rose to the rank of ruler: Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China, conferred princely power on him in 1252, after he himself became a Buddhist and made Buddhism the state religion in China.
The chief abbots of the Sajka monastery ruled as priest-kings in Tibet for four centuries, but after the fall of the Mongol dynasty, in the XIV. century, the Mongols elected a separate head of the church, in the person of the great lama of Urga. Tibet in the 18th century recognized the supremacy of Chinese rule, which lasted until the end of the Chinese empire, but that XIX. century, it was only nominal, the actual power was exercised by the Dalai Lama, or rather by his advisor, the Kutuktu syndicate. Because the Dalai Lamas who were appointed in childhood became puppets in the hands of the syndicate, and when they became men and wanted to rule according to their ideas, they mysteriously died. How, only Kutuktuk could tell. It is a fact that very few Dalai Lamas died of natural causes in old age.
In Buddhism, the concept of karma and the concept of reincarnation are inseparable: according to the Eastern concept of development, a person is reincarnated again and again on earth until he is purified, that is, until he repays his karmic debt, which he accumulated during his previous life. The abbots of the monasteries are also appointed based on the principle of rebirth. The lamas determine where, after the death of the kuchhog, a boy was born, whose birth is associated with certain omens.
If all the circumstances are right, the child, like the reincarnation of the deceased abbot, is taken to the monastery and raised there for his future position, and during his minor years he is replaced by one of the chief lamas. The appointment of great lamas, such as the Dalai and the Panchen Lama, is also done in the same way. The significance of this is that they make sure about the male child that he has no bad karma, since he is the reincarnation of the abbot. But then why was he reincarnated?
A bodhisattva was one whose essence (sattva) is enlightenment (bodhi) and who deliberately chooses to reincarnate, take on the karmic burdens of others and thus help others to get closer to the soul again. In other words, he could enter nirvana, what’s more, only he could enter, because only he is suitable for it, but he still decides to stay and be reborn, accepting that he will have to face the most difficult and painful fates. To become a bodhisattva is to become an altruistic hero, who lives and is reborn for others. In this approach, the person of Jesus himself represents the pinnacle of religious wisdom as the joint reincarnation of Buddha and Zarathustra.
In Buddhism, there is no figure corresponding to the creator, but there is a preordained moral order connected to the law of karma. The Christian and Buddhist concepts of sin are based on two different perspectives on the origin of man: while, according to Christianity, humanity was conceived in original sin, and according to Buddhism, in suffering. Karma acts like some sort of original sin, because we are all born with a certain karma, which is based on the good and bad behavior manifested during past existences. While Christianity teaches that salvation depends only on God’s grace, Buddhist schools teach that only we ourselves can achieve salvation.
In Buddhism, there is no purgatory in the Christian sense, but people have the opportunity to purify themselves during their next reincarnations, and they must reincarnate until they have a single bad karma, that is, until they repay all their debts. In this way, reincarnation into numerous or countless earthly existences, existence based on suffering in the biological-physical sense in the three-dimensional world corresponds to Christian purgatory, or even hell. And the bodhisattvas voluntarily undertake this suffering in order to free as many souls from the eternal vicious cycle, that is, to free them from suffering as possible.
This is somewhat similar to the concept of God becoming a man in Christianity, who redeemed our sins with his martyrdom, with some differences. Bodhisattvas are not deities, they are more like Christian saints. The other difference is that they cannot redeem the sins of all people collectively, only those who are receptive to doing something for their own redemption.
There is also an important difference, to which I have already referred, that in Christianity there is no human being who can purify himself by his own power, so there is no person who has the capacity to live without sins. In this way, everyone is guilty, but everyone can be redeemed. In Christianity, there can be no bodhisattvas, not even saints can become bodhisattvas, only Christ, who is one hundred percent God and one hundred percent human, that is, the only human without sins. Because of these differences, Buddhism is not a conversion religion, nor is it so much a religion as a philosophical and ethical system. In Buddhism, you owe nothing to any Deity but yourself. No one expects you to be good and convert others. You owe only yourself to be good and help others. In history there are very few who were harmed due to Buddhist concept, the same cannot be said about the Christian concept.
The 14th Dalai Lama summarizes the essence of karma as follows: “Karma means ‘deed’, which is accomplished physically, verbally and mentally. It takes place in two tenses: first, we think about what we are about to do, this is the intended action; and finally, mental motivation takes the form of physical or verbal action, this premeditated action. Negative actions always cause suffering, while positive actions bring good. Karmic actions follow us from lifetime to lifetime. Adequate accumulation of a certain number of positive actions will be beneficial in the future and in the lives to come, but one who does not give up harmful actions will have to face the consequences. our present happiness or unhappiness is nothing more and nothing less than the result of past actions.”
Hinduism
In a general sense, Hinduism is the traditional religion of India: this faith, which dates back to B.C. It was formed around 1500, and today it has more than 700 million followers. It cannot be linked to the name of any historical religious founder, but is the result of gradual development and personal research of a Hindu masters and sages during centuries.
Hinduism, in a narrower and more specific sense, however, is exactly what BC. It denotes a religion practiced in the 4th century, which consists of the development of two earlier stages: these are “Vedism”, which took its name from the Vedas, and “Brahmanism”, which took its name from the priestly caste, the Brahmins.
in summary, then, Hinduism can be understood as a religion in which many deities coexist with an image of an absolute God that is personalized and a concept of impersonal holiness that permeates all of reality. The Hindu religious and philosophical tradition is based on a complex concept of society and the role played by individuals. Hinduism lacks the homogeneity, continuity, and coherence characteristic of other religions, and therefore appears to be a mosaic-like combination of various schools and sects.
The basic principle of Hindu teaching can be recognized in a kind of code of conduct, which is accompanied by the command of love and generosity towards all creatures. Their essence is that according to the cycle of rebirth (samsara), every living being is reborn after death in another body, which can be human, animal, or plant. The series of rebirths is a cycle from which specific techniques can be used to escape: the first of these techniques is the practice of meditation and yoga. The name of liberation is moksha, and it occurs when the individual discovers the bond between the inner core of his own self (atman) and the supreme principle, Brahman, i.e. the soul that pervades the entire universe.
From this understanding follows the respect of all life, considering that, as already mentioned, the human soul can be reborn in a plant or animal body either. Followers of the Hindu religion try to show the utmost respect for all living beings, which in many cases includes following a strict vegetarian diet.
The Karma: according to the Hindu religion, each individual is reincarnated based on the actions he or she has performed in a previous life. During samsara, due to merits and sins accumulated during life, every person is reincarnated into a lower or higher quality level being. However, the apparently negative reality of karma can be directed towards a positive outcome with the help of religious and expiatory practices, the culmination of which are forms of asceticism; their goal is to achieve liberation (moksha) from material reality and the wrong perception of existence. The Indian tradition summarizes its essentially pessimistic view of the value of cosmic and material reality in the concepts of samsara, karma and moksha: man’s fate is not inevitable, but can be changed by following the path of redemption and renunciation of the world, which is also promoted by various ascetic currents.
Conclusion
The thesis of reincarnation is one of the most ancient traditions of humanity, which can be found independently in all religions and cultures. In some way, it is always connected with raising the fight between good and evil to a cosmic level, with striving for the realization of this good, which is almost always the result of self-denial, that is, an internal struggle between good and evil. The bottom line is that everything we do has consequences, and it is an illusion that we can commit any evil with impunity. After all, no one can do more harm to their fellow human than they do to themselves with doing so. Evil, as tempting as it is, does not pay off though, but that’s also part of the truth, no one can enter the Nirvana with having even one single bad karma, and having desire to live counts bad karma. So the vast majority of us are doomed to be reborn, and repeating the whole over and over again. Those people who can rise above the limitations of themselves, the illusion of the ego, are the heroes of all time, they are the bodhisattvas. In essence, it doesn’t matter whether we believe in the transmigration of souls or whether we believe in anything at all, because we are not and cannot be in possession of ultimate knowledge, everything we believe or think we know is just an illusion, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see the fact, in a cosmic sense our existence is insignificant, and we all have to deal with this fact. We must give meaning to our existence, and this meaning has been humanity’s most valuable, if not its only resource since ancient times, both collectively and broken down into individuals. I hope this article will help those who read it to find this meaning in the complex and contradictory world of spirituality, because the search for meaning in itself is a natural and instinctive spiritual human need.
Thanks for reading!