The religious argument for reincarnation is that every person is not worthy to be merged directly in God. They must first become purified. In order to achieve this, they must reincarnate numberless times, until they reach the final destination. They are bound to pay this penalty before reaching the presence of God. If human beings, in their limited sense of justice, impart punishment without stating why it was given, then how can it be that God, the Most Merciful and Just, could cause a soul to reincarnate on earth as a penalty without making them aware of their fault?
The scientific argument for reincarnation tells us that a seed sinks into the earth and produces other seeds, and that this process is repeated thousands of times, the seed always becoming seed again. In this argument there is a possibility of reincarnation. For if the seed has sufficient strength to return as a seed, why should not a person’s soul re-adorn a human body? The answer is that even the seed, until it reaches the innermost culmination, is never able to spring up again as a seed. Besides it cannot be accurately called a reincarnation of the seed, but rather a regeneration. Also, one seed produces so many; therefore, it cannot be called an incarnation, for the nature of incarnation would be one coming as one, not one turning into many.
The same is the case with the soul. After experiencing life independently through the medium of the world, formed of the five elements, the soul passes off to its own source. It carries with it the impressions of the outer world which it has gathered, and drops them at each step it takes toward its own essence, the Universal Spirit. The earth substance passes into the earth; the water returns to water; the fire takes its own element; the air takes away its own property; and the ether does the same.
When the frame of the five elements, just like the sunglass, receives the reflection of the spirit, it is dispersed; the soul then takes its own way to its original source. Nothing remains of an individual after the bodily and mental frames are broken up. After this, there is no chance of individuality, because there is none left but the Only Being.
A person may think of themself while awake and dream of themself while asleep, for all beings produced therein, besides their own self, are produced out of their own mind. Therefore, they may be called reincarnations. Yet, it would not be perfectly justified, because every thought and dream have a birth, life, and death. So, they can be understood even as individual things, a world produced from a single being.
There are some who pretend, or at least imagine, that they recollect their past. In many cases they do so in order to create a sensation among people for the sake of notoriety; or, in another case, some give expression to their whims and delusions. The Yogis, who are the introducers of this idea, will not for one moment believe that reincarnation is for them. They claim Jivan mukta, a free life. For those who can only see the objective world, this theory of reincarnation opens up to their imagination a vast field of interest and curiosity. Again, there are some who always seek for something new. This desire grows to such an extent that even if a new God were produced, they would still seek for another God.
It may appear, by noticing the world’s evolution that it is the soul that, owing to its previous experience in life, enables itself to manifest in a better condition than in the past. In reality it is not so. The evolution of the world does not depend upon the soul’s previous experience. The cause for why the world progresses at each step of evolution is that the soul partakes of the improved conditions upon its way towards manifestation, and thus it helps manifestation in the progression towards perfection.
The doctrine of reincarnation claims that its truth is in the law of action, which at once agrees with the intellect. That is to say, a person is a genius in music because of their past experience of it. If a person is lame or blind from birth, it is the penalty for their past bad actions. If a person is wise and spiritual, wealthy and powerful, it is because of their good actions in the past. This explains how every soul does good or evil and reaps its results through reincarnation until it arrives at its destiny. The above doctrine may be contradicted, saying that it was not any fault of the legs that caused them to bear the weight of the body; and it was not that the head has done better in the past, that has made it to be the crown of the whole form.
The world is the embodiment of one Being, one God. The explanation of this can be found in the following quotation from a dervish who says in Persian, “Man is in the joy of his belief in God, not knowing whether he is Friend or Foe. It seems, as it were, when the ocean is throwing up its waves joyfully and a twig floating upon it thinks that it is for the twig, that the ups and downs are caused by the ocean.” Such is the case with all conditions in life. An individual thinks, “I have done something in the past and that is why I am like this now, as it is the rule of God’s justice.” However, they are mistaken here. The ocean, like God, has many to think of and to judge. Therefore, the rise and fall of the individual are either caused by Kaza, the waves of the ocean of existence, or by that which the soul has gathered, either of good or evil, while on the way toward manifestation.
The thinkers who have taught the doctrine of reincarnation never meant it as it is understood by people in general. The reincarnation meant by them was the partaking by the fresh soul descending towards manifestation of the attributes of the souls that may be ascending towards their original source, and have given their load of impressions to the willing souls met with on their way.
The soul having once manifested in a body never again has sufficient power to manifest another time. That idea of the soul reincarnating in another form has but little truth in it. If it were true that the soul reincarnates as a matter of course, why not reincarnate in its original form, which it could easily have recollected?
The truth of the reincarnation theory can be understood in one way, that there is a possibility that the self-same proportion of Consciousness that has once been a soul may happen to form again as a soul. However, in reality there is no possibility. Just as the self-same bubble may form another bubble again, but generally it is not so. For either half, a quarter, or even a hundredth part of the first bubble may group with other atoms of water and quite another bubble may be produced, perhaps a hundred times as large as the first one. In both cases, the soul has to merge into Consciousness before it is sufficiently alive to manifest again. Therefore, we cannot call it the same soul, because it is quite pure from its previous conditions.
It is just like a drop of ink that has fallen into the ocean. The water merges into water and its inky substance sinks to the bottom. It never again remains as a distinct drop of ink, but is pure water as the ocean. If it was again taken out from the water, it would no longer show its previous substance. Such is the nature of the soul when merged in the ocean of Consciousness.
1924 (specific date unknown)
CW 1924, Vol. II, pp. 824-826.
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