Since very early times some exceptional men, in India and elsewhere, have
been certain that they had lived many lives as human beings on this earth
before their birth. Such an assurance of pre-existence was usually associated
with the hope of another incarnation after death, though the one does not
necessarily imply the other. Pre-existence and reincarnation, taken together,
constitute palingenesis. Subjective certainty may be an illusion, and even
if accepted as truth need not apply to all men. Therefore palingenesis, or
the periodic return of the same spirits in human shape to earthly life, requires
special justification if it is to be accepted as a general truth.
The purpose of this book is to supply such a justification by one who
is not only fully aware and absolutely certain of his many past human lives,
extending over thousands and millions of years, but who also intends to continue
this experience, and to be reborn as many times as shall be necessary for
the fulfilment of his aims. Among these aims is to secure the universal recognition
of palingenesis, both as a dogma [tenet?] of the Church and as a scientific truth,
equal in objective certainty to anything that has ever been considered as
established beyond all doubt. Palingenesis is not a recent
invention of some modern sect, but the most universally accepted solution
of the riddle of life professed by some of the greatest sages who have ever
sought and found true wisdom as to the origin and final destiny of the human
soul.
If we could gather together the wisest men of all countries and ages in order to ask their opinion as to palingenesis, we should easily
ascertain that a great majority of them not only believed in their own pre-existence
and reincarnation, but had also made the further step of widening their personal
belief into a general theory, valid for all men, even for those who are totally
unaware of their past and uncertain of their future.
In India two great religions, succeeding each other, Brahmanism and Buddhism,
agree as to palingenesis, though on other points their believers fought each
other as passionately as later did Mussulmans and Christians, Protestants
and Catholics. Even at present men of such different types as GANDHI
and RABINDRANATH TAGORE agree in their conviction that
they are not living on earth for the first time, and that they have already
had many incarnations.
This unanimity of the sages of India in the course of more than three
thousand years is striking, for India is the cradle of Aryan culture and asceticism. This peninsula
has produced thousands of men devoted exclusively to the investigation of
True Being, as distinguished from appearance and illusion. In their quest
for a solution of the problem of life, through many meditations and mortifications,
they have attained the assurance of having passed through many successive
lives, and they hope for a complete recollection of their whole past before
reaching perfection and emancipation from earthly life.
We meet the same conviction among the magi of
Persia, the sages of China, and, according to the testimony of HERODOTUS,
also in Egypt. CÆSAR is a reliable witness (Bellum Gallicum,
vi. 14) that the old Celtic Druids in Gaul also taught palingenesis. He says
that their disciples used to spend as much as twenty years in study, and
that their chief dogma was palingenesis, which helped them to despise the
danger of death through the assurance of another better life.
The doctrine of palingenesis, common to many Aryan thinkers from India
to Gaul, found a fresh rational vindication in Greece, where it was professed
by the influential school of PYTHAGORAS and very likely taught in the Eleusinian
mysteries. PLATO undertook its experimental verification, showing,
in the dialogue Meno, that any boy knows mathematical truths not learnt
in this life, which he remembers when skilfully interrogated. In the Platonic
philosophy palingenesis was an essential dogma, and remained such in the
school of PLATO for more than nine centuries, until the Academy
was closed by the emperor JUSTINIAN in A.D. 529, when the last
successor of PLATO, DAMASKIOS, was teaching the same
doctrine. The same truth was discovered independently in the fifth century before Christ by EMPEDOCLES of Akragas, who said that
he was born many times as boy and as girl, as fish and as bird, and that
he deserved his ill fate because of sins against others. PLOTINUS also taught at Rome,
in the third century after Christ, of a succession of lives leading gradually
to the highest stage of ecstasy.
Greek philosophy was one of the greatest efforts of human intelligence
in pursuit of a thorough comprehension of reality, due to some of the greatest
thinkers of all ages ; we are able to appreciate the two deepest among them,
since at least all the works of PLATO and PLOTINUS have been completely
preserved. In the extant works of ARISTOTLE
no express mention of pre-existence or reincarnation occurs ; but many of
his writings have been lost, and he nowhere denies that truth which permeates
the whole of the philosophic and religious tradition of Greece. Therefore
the silence of ARISTOTLE cannot be fairly alleged as a disproof
of the universal acceptance of palingenesis by Greek thinkers.
Two of the most splendid civilizations of human history, in India and
in Greece, despite many other differences, agree in the recognition of the
plurality of the lives of each individual self. This dogma of the Aryan race
is, therefore, not the mere fancy of certain exceptional men, but has been
universally accepted among two of the most gifted peoples of the world by
their most eminent thinkers with an unanimity such as has not been reached
even by the faith in one Creator, because palingenesis was also accepted
by some thinkers who did not believe in the creation of the universe by a
personal God, but used the name of God to denote an everlasting world.
In Rome, which was more akin to our civilization, in a political world
of practical men, palingenesis had also many eminent believers, such as the
two philosophic writers CICERO and SENECA, and the
two great poets, VIRGIL and OVID. As all Roman literature
was under the influence of Greek thought, there is no need to dwell on the
fact that the Romans agreed with the Greeks in this respect. Such a coincidence
is not accidental, and it only confirms what might be expected.
In the first century of the Christian era palingenesis was taught in
Alexandria by the Jew PHILO, who was familiar with Platonism,
and this sufficiently accounts for its penetration into the Talmud and the
Kabala, whereby it became a dogma of Jewish esoteric teaching. Some passages of the Old Testament also admit of an interpretation
in the light of palingenesis, though in general the faith in the immortality
of the soul is not very prominent in the Hebraic Scriptures. In the Book
of JOB we read (xiv, 14) the question : If a man die, shall
he live again? immediately after the affirmation that in general the
dead do not awake. JOB then declares he will wait for his release,
and for the time when God shall remember him. This seems to imply an exceptional
possibility of reincarnation. In Psalm xc, 3, we read the strange words :
Thou turnest man to destruction, and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past. This looks
like an allusion to rebirth. JEREMIAH (i. 5) says that God appointed
him a prophet unto the nations before his birth. These passages acquire their
full meaning in the light of the ulterior development of Jewish esoteric
literature, and they seem to imply at least that pre-existence was known
to the Jewish prophets. Later, in the Kabala, came a clear acknowledgment
of reincarnation, probably under Greek influence.
Thus we know of four eminently gifted peoples which have accepted the
old dogma of palingenesis as first discovered and formulated in India. These
peoples belong to the races which have had the greatest influence on human
thought—Aryans and Semites. In the sixth century of our era all men of
education and culture knew PLATO and PLOTINUS, CICERO,
SENECA, VIRGIL, and OVID, writers who admitted
palingenesis as indubitable truth. Not only the Gnostics and Manicheans,
but some of the most eminent ecclesiastical writers, such as ST.
JUSTIN the martyr, shared the general Greco-Roman belief in a
plurality of incarnations of each soul. It would be worth
while to collect the allusions to palingenesis in early Christian literature.
This has been very insufficiently done by WALKER (Reincarnation,
1888), who quotes, CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS, NEMESIUS, SYNESIUS, HILARIUS without giving
the exact references. There is a great probability that palingenesis, being
then generally admitted, was also accepted by most Christian fathers of the
first centuries as it does not contradict Christian doctrine.
It was not until the sixth century that the emperor JUSTINIAN,
who had closed the philosophic schools in Athens and had exiled all philosophers,
took an active part in the controversy between Origenists and their adversaries
in Antiochia. The latter were more numerous and won over the emperor to their
opinion. He condemned ORIGEN in A.D. 543 by an imperial edict,
which later was confirmed by Pope VIGILIUS and many bishops in
deference to the imperial authority.
This condemnation refers only to a very peculiar form of the doctrine
of pre-existence, implying the fall of perfect spirits who had already reached
Heaven. This would practically abolish heaven and Hell and reduce the whole
destiny of each soul to Purgatory without end, excluding any eternal salvation.
Such a radical extension of palingenesis deserved condemnation, but leaves
untouched the real old tradition, according to which reincarnation corresponded
to the Christian conception of Purgatory and led each individual to a final
destiny—namely, ultimate salvation or damnation.
We must distinguish several successive generalizations, starting with
the personal assurance of pre-existence achieved by a few individuals, and
leading by degrees to that exaggeration which was rightly condemned in ORIGEN
:—
1. A few men are aware of their pre-existence, which does not necessarily
imply reincarnation.
2. They assume future reincarnation for themselves.
3. Palingenesis is acknowledged as a general truth embracing all human
beings.
4. Palingenesis is extended to spirits in Heaven.
Evidently the condemnation of the fourth thesis, coming after many centuries
of widespread acceptance of the three preceding propositions, does not amount
to the condemnation of the doctrine of palingenesis in general. A similar
condemnation of PRISCILLANUS by Pope John III in 561, at the Council
of Braga in Portugal, also refers to pre-existence of human souls in Heaven
and their descent through sin into human bodies. In neither case did the
heresy consist in the mere affirmation of pre-existence, but in the denial
of eternal salvation, which is quite another thing. We may admit reincarnation
as a purgatory for imperfect souls without affirming that perfect souls in
Heaven could sin and be punished by incarnation in human bodies. Therefore
these condemnations of pre-existence in Heaven cannot be interpreted as equivalent
to a condemnation of pre-existence in general. After these two decisions
the Church for nearly fourteen centuries remains silent on that question, though the doctrine of palingenesis became again very prominent in the
nineteenth century.
During the Middle Ages it interested only very few thinkers. We do not
find it in the writings of ST. THOMAS, nor in DANTE,
nor in SHAKESPEARE. The great Christian mystics do not ask about
the origin of their souls, and even SWEDENBORG does not speak
of it. It seems as if palingenesis were given up without discussion in the
Christian world, though in every century it had believers.
Since the sixteenth century, with the resurrection of Platonism, palingenesis
also returns. It is defended by Giordano BRUNO, CAMPANELLA,
Henry MORE, Joseph GLANVIL, SOAME JENYNS,
LESSING, beside many other writers in other countries. David HUME
considered it as the only system of immortality "that philosophy can hearken
to."
In the nineteenth century the number of those who professed belief in
palingenesis increased very considerably all over the world, but in no other
country is the unanimity in this respect so complete as in Poland. All the
greatest poets of Poland, such as MICKIEWICZ, SLOWACKI,
KRASINSKI, NORWID, WYSPIANSKI, mention their
past lives as a matter of course, and the greatest masterpiece of Polish
literature, the Spirit-King of SLOWACKI, is a mystic [?]
autobiography in which the poet narrates his past incarnations. Besides the
poets also the famous philosopher CIESZKOWSKI and the mystic TOWIANSKI
admit palingenesis.
Along with Poland, France ranks as a home of a great number of writers
who are aware of their earthly past and are ready to return in order to fulfil
the tasks set before them. The famous Count of SAINT-GERMAIN
maintained at the court of Louis XV that he remembered events of past ages.
Numerous French writers of the nineteenth century professed palingenesis,
such as FOURIER, Pierre LEROUX, Jean REYNAUD,
André PEZZANI, and others.
Two very eloquent and convincing works published in 1852 and 1854 deserve
a special mention as an original defence of this doctrine in its different
aspects and possibilities. Ph. BOUCHER, in his remarkable work
Ciel et Terre (La Haye, 1852), pleads for a resurrection of the flesh
which would be a final incarnation of the spirit in conformity with the splendid
visions of TERTULLIAN in his book De Resurrectione
Carnis. BOUCHER saw clearly the final incarnation in an everlasting
body without mentioning the intermediate stages. He criticized the doctrine
of palingenesis as presented by Jean REYNAUD in a contemporary
encycloædia. Jean REYNAUD replied in a famous book, Terre
et Ciel (Paris, Furne, 1854), in which he boldly maintains the old Druidic
teaching of palingenesis. He claims for France the mission of producing the
most convincing conception of immortality, based on the conciliation of the ancient tradition peculiar to Gaul with Christian revelation.
Poets like Victor HUGO, Théophile GAUTIER,
LAMARTINE, BÉRANGER, and novelists like BALZAC,
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, George SAND occasionally
refer to their conviction of a plurality of human lives. This belief permeated
French poetry and literature in the nineteenth century as it never had before,
and REYNAUD's claim for his country appears to be fully justified,
except that in Polish literature and philosophy palingenesis is even more
prominent. As the greatest Polish poets and the great mystic TOWIANSKI
lived in Paris after 1831, it is quite possible that they influenced French
thought in that respect, for a close relation exists between French spiritualism
and Polish Messianism.
Two Frenchmen in particular have in very different ways contributed to
the diffusion throughout the modern world of this ancient doctrine. On the
one hand, the founder of French spiritism, Hippolyte RIVAIL, writing
under the pseudonym Allan KARDEC (1803-69), influenced the masses
by his popular works, which affirmed immortality, pre-existence, and reincarnation,
but unhappily also encourage necromancy, which is usually a harmful and immoral
practice.
Thousands of people began by means of mediums to invoke spirits, and these
French spirits, with remarkable unanimity, taught pre-existence and reincarnation,
while many other spirits in other countries were rather reticent on the subject,
until the influence of French spiritism prevailed.
The latest works of that kind have been written by Gabriel DELANNE
(Documents pour servir à l'Étude de la Réincarnation,
Paris, 1924), and Pierre CORNILLIER (La Survivance de l'Âme,
Paris, 1924). They confirm the teaching of Allan KARDEC, who may
be considered as the father of international spiritism, a mighty movement
with many thousands of supporters all over the world. These thousands of
necromancers are wrong in so far as they crave for material manifestations,
and endeavour to break the law of Separation between this and the other world
;* but they are quite right in assuming
the pre-existence of incarnated spirits, and the periodical reincarnation
of those who are temporarily discarnate.
* I am writing, proceeding, from this world ; one could very well and perhaps more accurately call the 'material manifestations' the 'other' world. — (WPT)
Thus French spiritism, more than any philosophy, promoted belief in palingenesis,
while using methods which discredited that belief. More important from the
philosophical standpoint are the writings of the eminent thinker and scholar
Charles RENOUVIER (1815-1903). RENOUVIER is considered
as by far the greatest French philosopher at the beginning of the twentieth
century. He has given in his latest works a complete view of life, worked
out with a comprehensiveness greater than has been achieved by any other
French writer. Palingenesis is to him a fundamental truth which he explained
and established when his thought was at its ripest, having attained, at the
age of nearly ninety, a wider experience of life and learning than any contemporary
philosopher. These works—La nouvelle Monadologie
(Paris, 1899), Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique pure (Paris,
1901), Histoire et Solution des Problémes métaphysiques (Paris, 1901), Le Personnalisme (Paris, 1903)—are not
so popular and attractive to superficial and credulous readers as the spiritistic
literature, but they carry much more weight of strict reasoning, and, taken
as a whole, constitute a very convincing proof of the doctrine of palingenesis.
In the English-speaking world many poets, as SHELLEY, WWORDSWORTH,
LONGFELLOW, Walt WHITMAN, TENNYSON, ROSETTI,
BROWNING, recognize reincarnation. A movement, similar in some
respects to French spiritism, was initiated in America in 1875 by a Russian
medium, who founded the so-called Theosophical Society, strangely misusing
the venerable term of theosophy for an incredible mixture of gross materialism
with all kinds of false pretence of wisdom. This pseudo-theosophy has been
rightly called by a recent French scholar, Réné GUÉNON,
Théosophisme, in common with the sophists of all ages than
with true philosophy or theosophy. But certainly, though even more remote
from serious philosophy than French spiritism, it has contributed to popularize
palingenesis in English-speaking countries, although in a very crude shape.
The contrast between these two popular movements is characteristic of the difference between French and Anglo-American
mentality. Among the more scholarly presentations of the arguments for palingenesis
the articles of Francis BOWEN (Princeton Review, May 1881)
and William KNIGHT (Fortnightly Review, September 1878)
are deserving of mention. A Unitarian clergy man, William R. ALGER,
who devoted his life to the study of the immortality of the soul, presents
a curious instance of the power of truth working on a recalcitrant
mind. In his work A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life,
published in 1860, he was an opponent of palingenesis and wrote against it.
But in a later edition of the same work in 1878 he declared himself converted
to this belief. At about the same time appeared The Ways of the Spirit
(Boston, 1877), by Prof. Frederick Henry HEDGE, who in 1848 had
translated HERDER's treatise on palingenesis. He explains clearly why we do not usually remember out past lives. Many
quotations from works on reincarnation are given by E. D. WALKER
in his book Reincarnation, a Study of Forgotten Truth, published in
1888 and many times since in England and America. The Ring of Return,
published by Eva MARTIN (London : Philip Allan & Co., 1927), contains
quotations from about three hundred authors on palingenesis, but mostly without
exact references. The most weighty testimony of an eminent English thinker
in favour of rebirth is that of James WARD, Professor of Mental
Philosophy at Cambridge, who published in 1920, at the age of seventy-seven,
the third edition of his Gifford lectures of 1907-10 : The Realm of Ends,
or Pluralism and Theism. In this work he considers pre-existence and
reincarnation as certain. Also M'TAGGART, of Trinity College in
Cambridge, pleads for palingenesis in his work Some Dogmas of Religion (1906), from which two chapters were published in 1915 as Human Immortality
and Pre-existence.
For those who are interested in the relation of the Church to the dogma
of palingenesis, an Italian book, published in 1911, is of the greatest importance
: Attilio BEGEY e Alessandro FAVERO, Monsignor Arcivescovo
L. Puecher Passavalli (Milano : Fratelli Bocca, 1911). Here we find the
life and letters of a pious and learned Roman Catholic archbishop
who at the age of sixty-four accepted the truth of pre-existence and reincarnation
from two disciples of the Polish seer TOWIANSKI, namely Stanislaw
FALKOWSKI and Tancredi CANONICO. Archbishop PASSAVALLI
(1820-97) admitted that reincarnation is not condemned by the Church, and
that it is not at all in conflict with any Catholic dogma. His letters prove
that a very learned Catholic scholar can believe in reincarnation without
leaving his Church. He lived up to the age of seventy-seven, unshaken in
his conviction that he had already lived many times on earth and that he was likely to return. Another Catholic priest,
who also after long discussion gave up prejudice against reincarnation which
prevails among the Catholic clergy, was Edward DUNSKI, whose
Letters, edited by Attilio BEGEY and Józef KOMENDA,
were published by Bona in Torino in 1915. Many other priests in Poland and
Italy believe in reincarnation, being influenced by the great mystic Andrzej
TOWIANSKI (1799-1878), whose works were printed privately in three
large volumes at Torino in 1882, and are circulated among the disciples of
the master.
The literature of rebirth is now rapidly growing in England and in the
United States as well as in France, where many writers defend the doctrine
of palingenesis. Recently the subject has been dealt with in the writer's
World of Souls (1924) and in Modern Psychism by G. BASEDEN
BUTT (London : Cecil Palmer, 1925). Also in F. A. M. SPENCER's
valuable Human Ideals (Fisher Unwin, 1917) we find palingenesis implied
(pp. 5-7, 262-6) as resulting from the growth of individual souls. He says
: "Humanity is the great company of souls living and dying through the ages,
until they reach, if the supreme hope given to man does not
delude, a life beyond death," (p. 7). "Not be removing souls out of the social
environment, but by developing the existing society of souls in a continuous
process, will God give everlasting life" (p. 262). In the same author's latest work, Civilization Remade by
Christ (George Allen & Unwin, 1928), he returns to the subject (pp. 238-9,
274), as well as in Ethics of the Gospel (London : George Allen &
Unwin, 1925), though he does not use the terms of reincarnation or palingenesis.
Personal certainty of pre-existence has now become quite common even among
those who have never read any books dealing with that subject. But many efforts
will be needed before we can expect palingenesis to be as universally accepted
in Europe and America as it has been since long ago in India. The turmoil
of our busy life, centred on material cares, leaves insufficient leisure
for the necessary contemplation of one's Self, which alone reveals Reality.
Thought and reasoning reach the same goal on a much longer way with less
absolute certainty, and this has been attempted in the following chapters.