FAITH AND SALVATION - PART 2
An essay by John W. Hawkins
______________________________________________
Like the event that ended the age of the dinosaurs,Velikovsky postulates a powerful agent external
to the earth was responsible for the sudden extinction of the mammoths and
other animals at the end of the Pleistocene epoch:
"We cannot imagine any cause or agent
for this, unless
it be an exogenous agent, an
extraterrestrial cause. for
the removal of the poles from
their places, or the
shifting of the axis, also, only
an external agent could
have been responsible."
From John White, “Pole Shift”, Berkley Books.
1982, p.127)
Man, who hunted these mammoths and painted
remarkable likenesses of them on the walls of caves, must have been a witness
to these events as well. Although no
written language is extant from this period, there are many legends transmitted
orally from generation to generation which confirm the reality of these
cataclysms in the past. Disruption in the normal rotation of the earth would
cause massive flooding to the coastal areas around the world. It is no
accident, therefore, that many traditions report a great deluge in the past
which "covered the earth".
Western cultures are most familiar with the
story of Noah being commanded by God to build a huge boat, the Ark, whereby he,
his wife, their three sons and their wives, and pairs of all the animals were
able to escape the "worldwide" flood.
(See Gen. Chps. 6-9). In the Chaldean
account the patriarch who constructs the ark is named, Xisuthros,
and others besides his immediate family are allowed on board. After landing on the highest mountain in
eastern Kurdistan after the waters receded, Xisuthros,
like Enoch but unlike Noah, was taken up to the heavens. Joseph Campbell tells us in his "Myths
to Live By":
"According to many of the mythologies
still
flourishing in the Orient, a
world flood occurs inevitably
at the termination of every aeon [i.e. age]" (p. 75).
The Aztecs in Central America and Mexico had
a tradition that every world cycle terminated with one of four types of
cataclysms based on the predominance of one of the four elements: earthquakes
(earth); volcanoes (fire); floods (water); or cyclonic winds (air). Similarly,
the Hopi tradition in North America tells of three prehistoric worlds with the
first being destroyed by volcanic action (fire) and the second by ice (water)
which covered the land after a shift in the earth's axis. Plato in his essay, "Timaeus", recounts a story told by an Egyptian priest
to Solon, the grandfather of Socrates:
"O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but
children. . . .
There is no old doctrine handed
down among you by ancient
tradition nor any science which
is hoary with age, and I
will tell you the reason behind
this. There have been and
will be again many destructions
of mankind arising out of
many causes, the greatest having
been brought about by
earth-fire and inundation."
(ibid, p.38)
The Egyptian priest goes on to tell Solon
that the Greeks are the remnants of "the fairest and noblest race of men
that ever lived" whose original home beyond the "Pillars of
Hercules" (i. e. the Straits of Gibraltar) had
subsided beneath the surface of the ocean.
Its name, he said, was Atlantis.
According to the occultist, Madame Blavatsky,
Atlantis had its final inundation 12,000 years ago (ibid, p. 330), which was
thus quite possibly caused by the same cataclysm which ended the age of the
mammoths.
We instinctively recoil from these stories
of past worldwide convulsions with their decimation of whole animal
populations, including man himself. Such
events do not fit in with our carefully constructed theories about the
predictability of nature and with our ability to control its awesome forces to
ends of our own choosing. In the last
two hundred years there has been considerable
controversy in scientific circles
over whether the structural changes that have occurred to the earth were due to
uniform (and hence predictable) forces acting throughout its history or whether
they were the result of catastrophic ( and hence unpredictable) events.
The Scottish geologist, James Hutton, in
his "The Theory of the Earth", published in 1785, first proposed the
idea of uniformitarianism, but it was not fully
accepted as scientific doctrine until it was championed by Sir Charles Lyell in his "The Principles of Geology",
published in three volumes between 1830 and 1833. This theory then became a cornerstone of
Darwin's theory of
evolution - hence his motto:
"Natura non facit saltum." (Nature makes no leap.) The doctrine of gradualism continues to be
scientific gospel today.
So widespread is this belief among today's
earth scientists that they discard out of hand, or rationalize away, any
evidence supporting periodic global catastrophies. In particular have they discounted (and even
vilified) carefully researched evidence of catastrophism
set forth by the late Immanuel Velikovsky. (e.g. ""Worlds in
Collision", 1950; "Ages in Chaos", 1952; and "Earth in
Upheaval", 1955.) In his
"Mankind in Amnesia" (published posthumously by Doubleday in 1982) he
elaborates his thesis that "global catastrophies
of ancient times . . . had devastating
effects on the human psyche. Collectively, mankind acts like an amnesia
victim seeking to relive a traumatic experience. Though surrounded by literary, geological and
astronomical evidence of our violent heritage, we try to avoid the realization
that earth-wrenching cataclysms have
occurred - as recently as a
hundred generations [2,700 years] ago." (from the book's jacket).
Symptomatic of an unconscious race memory
of traumatic events occurring in past ages is the fascination, sometimes even
panic, by many people following the appearance of a comet in the heavens. We have already noted the etymology of the
word "disaster" as "evil star". Therefore, comets in
earlier times were thought to be omens of sickness, disease, famine and
death. As the
author of "Cometomantia"
wrote in 1684:
"If it once be admitted that comets distemper
and inflame the air, and exhaust the succus [i.e.
juices] of the Earth, it will necessarily follow, that a barren soil, and the
corrupting and blasting of the fruits must be a product of them; and from these
will naturally ensue dearth, scarcity and famine. And, as the inevitable effect of both, we
must expect sickness, diseases, [and] mortality . ." (As found in Nigel
Calder's "The Comets are Coming", Viking Press, NY, 1981, p.23).
Earlier we quoted a few of the many
biblical prophesies about the end times which describe future global catastrophies similar to those that have occurred in the
past. Let us now turn to some examples
of what other seers and prophets predict for mankind at the end of the present
world cycle.
One of the most famous seers to arise since
biblical times was Michel de Nostredame, better known
simply as Nostradamus. He lived in France in the sixteenth century
and was a medical doctor as well as a student of the heavens. "He upheld the Copernican theory that
the world was round and circled round the sun more than 100 years before
Galileo was prosecuted for the same belief." ("The Prophesies of Nostradamus", Translated and Edited by Erika Cheetam, Berkley Books, 1981, p.6). His prophesies were written in ten groups of
100 quatrains each called Centuries (the 7th, however, contains only 42
quatrains). He wrote "that he
deliberately confused the time sequence
of the Prophesies so that their
secrets would not be revealed to the noninitiate."
(ibid, p.10). He published the first
three Centuries and part of the fourth in 1555 and the complete ten Centuries
were published in 1568, two years after his death.
Like the biblical prophets of old he
claimed to receive his revelations from God.
In the preface to "Centuries" he wrote:
"By the grace of God and the good
angels, the prophets
have had committed to them the
spirit of vaticination
[i.e. prophesy], by which they
see things at a distance,
and are enabled to forecast
future events. . . . As for
ourselves personally, who are but
human, we can attain to
nothing by our own unaided
natural knowledge, nor the best
of our intelligence, in the way
of deciphering the
recondite secrets of God the
Creator." (As found in J.
White, op. cit., p.303-4).
By design most of his prophesies are
couched in language that is a combination of French, Provencal, Italian, Greek,
Latin and even anagrams in order to prevent their plain meaning. "We must not forget that he was a Jew
deep in magic and therefore in constant danger of persecution as a sorcerer by
the Church." (ibid, p.304) Because he was a student of astrology as well
as what we
now call astronomy, he sometimes
"dated" his quatrains by giving the position of the planets in one of
the signs of the zodiac. Since these
configurations can occur more than once, multiple dates are possible for some
of his prophesies. He also dated some of
them by the appearance of a comet or unusual sighting in the heavens. For example, he writes:
"After great misery for mankind an
even greater
approaches when the great cycle
of the centuries is
renewed [1999-2000?]. It will
rain blood, milk, famine,
war and disease. In the sky will be seen a fire, dragging
a trail of sparks [a
comet?]." (II. 46)
"Mabus [?]
will then soon die and there will come a dreadful
destruction of people and animals. Suddenly vengeance will be
revealed, a hundred hands, thirst and
hunger, when the comet will pass."
(II. 62)
Many of the "end time" prophesies
refer to an "Antichrist" who, before the true Messiah comes, sets
himself up as a world ruler who will bring the long hoped for era of peace on
earth. Instead, however, he brings on even more dreadful destruction which
culminates in the final battle of Armageddon, which according to John's
Revelation (9:16) will bring 200 million soldiers into
battle and one third of humanity
will be killed. Nostradamus tells us that the leader
of the war will be Ghengis Kahn reincarnated. War, he says, will last for twenty-seven
years:
"In the year 1999, and seven months,
from the sky will
come the great King of Terror.
[The true Messiah?] He will
bring back to life the great king
of the Mongols. Before
and after Mars [War] reigns
happily." (X. 72)
"The third Antichrist [after
Napoleon and Hitler?]
will
soon be annihilated, twenty-seven years his war will
last. The unbelivers are
dead, captive, exiled; with
blood,
human bodies, water and red hail covering the
earth."
(VIII. 77)
Nostradamas
speaks more plainly about a polar shift occurring at the end of the age in his
"Epistle to Henri II":
"There will be a solar eclipse more
dark and gloomy
than any since the creation of
the world, except after the
death of Christ. And it shall be in the month of October
that a great movement of the
globe will happen, and it
will be such that one will think
the gravity of the earth
has lost its natural balance and
that it will be plunged
into the abyss and perpetual
blackness of space. There
will be portents and signs in the
spring, extreme changes,
nations overthrown, and mighty
earthquakes." (J. White,
op. cit., p.307)
Twentieth century prophets have also
predicted a shift in the earth's polar axis at the end of the age. Perhaps the most famous and gifted was Edgar
Cayce, who his biographers variously called "The Miracle Man of Virginia
Beach" and "The Sleeping Prophet". He was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1877
and died in 1945. He was raised in a
poor but very religious, Christian family.
At the age of twenty-four he found that he was able to diagnose his own
recurrent throat problem while in a hypnotic trance. He then discovered he was able to do the same
for other people even though they were not even present at the time. (Usually a
street address was sufficient for him to find them and diagnose their
problem.) In the remaining thirty-five
years of his life he gave some 16,000 "readings" for more than 8,000
people, many of which are transcribed and fill nearly 50,000 pages of text on
more than 10,000 major subjects. The
Association for Research and Enlightenment, which he founded in 1931, is the
repository for these records, many of which are available to the public. (Their address is P.O. Box 595, Virginia
Beach, VA 23451.)
Even before the polar shift at the end of
the present world cycle Cayce predicted there would be major physical changes
to planet earth. In a 1934 reading that
dealt with world affairs while under his self-induced trance he said:
"As to the changes physical again: The
earth will be
broken up in the western portion
of America. The greater
portion of Japan must go into the
sea. The upper portion
of Europe will be changed as in
the twinkling of an eye.
Land will appear off the east
coast of America. There
will be the upheavals in the
Arctic and in the Anarctic
that will make for eruption of
volcanoes in the Torrid
areas, and there will be the
shifting then of the poles -
so that where there has been
those of a frigid or the
semi-tropical will become more
tropical, and moss and fern
will grow. ..." (ibid, p.202-3)
In a reading in 1939, however, he predicted
that some of these earth changes would come about gradually:
"In
1998 we may find a great deal of the activities as
have
been wrought by the gradual changes that are coming
about
. [at] the change between the Piscean
and the
Aquarian
age. This is a gradual, not a
cataclysmic
activity
in the experience of the earth at this period."
(ibid,
p.203)
Yet in 1936 his response to the question:
"What great change, if any, is to take place in the earth in the year 2000
to 2001 A.D.?", he answered:
"When there is a shifting of the
poles. Or a new cycle begins."
(ibid)
Not only did he say that "the earth
will be broken up in the Western portion of America" but he also predicted
that New York City and the Connecticut, Georgia, South Carolina, and possibly
North Carolina, coastlines would be inundated as well. (ibid, p.197)
There are contemporary psychics and seers
that also prophesy major earth changes and a shifting of the poles at the end
of this century. Ruth Montgomery, for
example, has written through her "spirit guides" (from "The
World Before", p.271-2, as found in J. White, op. cit. p.247):
"It will be well for those there [on
earth] to
understand that it [i.e., the
polar shift] is not the end
of the world, but a process of
readjusting sunshine and
rain, the sea and the land, so
that some areas of the
earth are refreshed and others
put out to pasture, so to
speak. There will be some seas where there is now
land,
and vice versa, ice caps in new
places, and balmy breezes
at the poles. When the shift occurs, the souls then on
earth will be terrified and turn
to God in their helpless
fear, although some will unfortunately
resume their
nefarious ways. Yet on the embers of a devastated
civilization will arise a better
one based on brotherhood,
and thereafter the return to
earth of him who promised
that when he came sinners would
be separated from the near
saints, and peace would reign for
a thousand years. That
time is not too far away, in the
twenty-first century."
However, her guides go on to assure her
that:
"Those who die will not be not be
wiped out, but
returned to spirit with
opportunity for renewed spiritual
growth. for this reason, we on this side are
permitted to
tell of the coming event, so that
those in physical body
will understand the principle and
regard it in proper
light. The passage from death to spirit, and spirit
to
physical life is one and the same
process, no more to be
feared than sleeping and
wakening. Those who pass into
spirit when the axis shifts will
be free from pain and
misery, while those who escape
death will have an
interesting time of it in
restoring order and reviving the
sweetness of spiritual
knowledge." (ibid)
Will only sinners be "returned to
spirit" in these climactic events which are predicted to occur at the
close of the age? If so why do the
"spirit guides" in the last quote say they "will be free from
pain and misery"? Is there no such
place as hell as well as heaven in the
afterlife? To see what fate awaits those who "walk
through the valley of the shadow of death", let us now turn to a
discussion of what we can expect in the life hereafter and the ultimate destiny
of mankind.
Salvation in Heaven
In the course of this essay I first
discussed those concepts most readily verifiable by scientific methodology
(i.e. the world of physical science), then those ideas which although primarily
in the domain of philosophy (e.g. existentialism and humanism) are nevertheless
those in
which the life sciences and
psychology play a significant role, and finally those concepts which, for the
most part, have been the province of
traditional Judeo-Christian religious teaching and belief. It is perhaps fitting, therefore, that the
treatment of the various possibilities of life after death as well as the
discussion of the ultimate destiny of mankind be unabashedly speculative from
the point of view of traditional scientific, philosophic or religious thinking.
This does not mean, however, that the
material to be presented has no evidence to support it or that it merely
represents my personal beliefs and prejudices.
For instance, there is today an accumulating body of evidence and data
to support the reality of so called "psi"
phenomena (e.g. telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis,
and precognition) which lie outside known scientific laws.
"These psi
phenomena do not 'prove' postmortem survival, of course, but they do at least
refute the claim of materialistic science that survival of consciousness after
death is impossible in principle." (from professor of psychology, Charles
Tart's essay, "Who Survives? Implications of Modern Consciousness Research",
as found in "What Survives? Contemporary Explorations of Life after
Death", edited by Gary Doore and published by
Jeremy P.Tarcher, Inc., 1990, p.141)
There are, however, mounting data,
admittedly subjective in nature, from people who have had near-death
experiences (NDEs) that strongly suggest that our
consciousness continues to operate even after we have been declared
"clinically dead".
(Researchers George W. Gallup and William Proctor report in their 1982
book, "Adventures in Immortality" that an estimated 8 million
Americans have had near-death or out-of-body experiences.) Furthermore, those experiencing NDEs often report contact with family members and others
who have predeceased them.
"The belief that consciousness or
existence in some form continues beyond biological death is found in all the
ancient and non-Western cultures, in their religious and philosophical systems,
cosmologies, ritual practices, and various elements of social
organization. All these cultures,
although differing in their specific concepts of an afterlife, are united in a
belief that death is merely a transition or transfiguration, not a final
annihilation of the individual. Some
spiritual traditions teach that individual consciousness undergoes a complex
journey after death, through specific stages, ordeals, and abodes; others teach
that following the death of one body,
consciousness is reincarnated on
earth in a new body. In some traditions,
death is regarded as an opportunity for final liberation and merging with the
Absolute [God]." (from Stanislav Grof's essay, "Survival after Death: Observations from
Modern Consciousness Research", ibid, p.23)
We have noted earlier (p.23) that even
Neanderthal man, who lived 32,000 to 125,000 years ago, buried his dead
together with food and implements, presumably for their journey beyond the
grave. For as "Alfred Rust, the
paleontologist, who has been occupied for many decades with the primordial
religious behavior and sacrificial usages of Stone Age 'Homo sapiens' . .
explains in his description of the ice-age cultures:
'We know of some dozens of graves of
Neanderthal human
beings. The deceased were interred piously, with
their
bodies entire, up to a point as
individuals or as couples
in a sleeping posture, often in
small stone chambers or
protected under cover of stone
slabs. The dead were sent
on their journey to the eternal
hunting grounds, into a
realm where a divinity perhaps
had its residence, with
stone tools, probably also with
arms made from organic
material and pieces of game as
provision for the
journey.'" (As found in Hans
Kung, "Eternal Life?",
Doubleday, 1984, p.51)
We do not explicitly know, of course, what
Stone Age man believed concerning life after death, but we do know what ancient
Semitic people (i.e Assyrians, Babylonians,
Canaanites, Phoenicians and Hebrews) believed about such things from
translations of their various written records.
From these we can deduce that:
"The ancient Semites pictured the
world as a big house with a three-tiered structure: an upper realm of the gods
(heaven), a middle human world given to us by those gods (earth), and a lower
part consisting of a great cave situated deep below the surface of the earth
(the netherworld or Sheol). In contrast
to the upper world of the gods, Sheol housed the dead
and the infernal deities. Although ancient people pictured Sheol
as a dark and
silent place, we must not think
of it as hell. A deity called Mot,
'Death', ruled over the dead and the infernal gods. Since human beings lived between heaven and Sheol, they could expect to be influenced by both the upper
and lower worlds." (Colleen McDannell &
Bernhard Lang, "Heaven, a History", Yale University Press, 1988, p.3)
Thus, for the ancient Semites (including
the Hebrews) "Sheol... was regarded as a closed
space beneath the earth's disk: a place of darkness and silence, of powerless
and oblivion, where human beings are condemned to a ghostlike existence. ...
they are each and all merely shadows of their former selves, without fellowship
with one another, without fellowship with God.
A sad, joyless
country from which there is no
return, final resting place of all life, without hope of ever seeing the light,
the earth, again." (Hans Kung, op. cit., p.83)
This gloomy belief even carries over to the
Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, which was probably composed between 190 and
180 B.C. by a man who calls himself, "Qoheleth"
(usually translated as: "the Preacher"):
"For to him that is joined to all the living
there is
hope: for a living dog is better
than a dead lion. For
the living know that they shall
die: but the dead know not
anything, neither have they any
more a reward; for the
memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their
hatred, and their envy, is now
perished; neither have they
anymore a portion forever in any
thing that is done under
the sun. ... [Therefore,]
whatsoever they hand findeth to
do, do it with thy might; for
there is no work, nor
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom,
in the grave, whither
thou goest."
(Eccl. 9:3-10)
"Anyone who is accustomed as a
Christian, without reflection, to assume a continuity in the history of
salvation between the Old Testament and the New should be quite clear about
what this means: All the patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses
and the Judges,the kings and the prophets, Isaiah,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, for their own part passed from such an end into darkness;
and yet they had lived and acted in an unswerving belief in God. For more than a thousand years, none of the
Jews believed in a resurrection of the dead or in an eternal life in the
positive sense of the term, in a 'Christian' heaven. With remarkable consistency they concentrated
on the present world, without bothering about what was in any case a dismal,
dark, hopeless hereafter." (Hans Kung, op. cit., p.83)
The Jewish dead were not to be permanently
relegated to a shadowy existence in Sheol,
however. Even before the Northern
Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and the Southern Kingdom of
Judah to the Babylonians in 586 B.C. some of their beliefs concerning life
after
death began to appear in the
writings of the Old Testament prophets.
Hosea, for example, just before the fall of the Northern Kingdom,
preached to his people about the rescue of the dead from Sheol
by Jahweh:
"From
the power of Sheol shall I free them;
From death shall I redeem them.
Where is the sting, O death?
Where is thy doom, O Sheol?" (Hosea 13:14)
And about the same time the first Isaiah, who lived in the Southern
Kingdom of Judah, was preaching:
"Thy
dead shall come to life again;
My slain shall rise up again.
Awake and shout for joy,
Ye that dwell in the dust.
For thy dew is a dew of light;
Yea, the earth shall bring forth her dead.
The earth shall unveil her blood;
She shall cover her slain no more."
(Isa. 26:19-21)
Also in the book of Job (probably written
in the exilic period sometime between 600 B.C. and 450 B.C.) Job replies to his
sceptical friend, Bildad
the Shuite:
"I know that my Redeemer liveth;
And on the Last Day from the dust shall I rise.
Yea, again shall I be clothed with my skin;
And in my flesh shall I see God.
Him I shall see for myself,
Yea, mine eyes shall look on, not another's.
Full fraught is this hope in my bosom."
(Job 19:25-27)
Not only were the Jewish prophets
influenced by the resurrection beliefs of their Assyrian and Babylonian
neighbors, but following the triumph of Cyrus over the Babylonians at a great
battle on the Tigris River in 539 B.C. they were also exposed to the beliefs of
the Persians, who dominated the area between Greece in the West and India in
the East for the next two hundred years.
The ancient Persians were followers of the
prophet Zoroaster. Although he was an
historic personality, the period in which he lived is obsure. Some modern scholars, however, give 1,000
B.C. as the date of his birth after careful study of the available sources.
(See Encyclopedia
and that of Saoshyant,
or Savior, who will raise the dead, at the end of the 12th." (ibid, Vol.
10, p.492). Hence, if the date of Zoroaster's birth is 1,000 B.C. as now
believed, their Savior or Messiah, who will resurrect the dead according to the
Avesta, should be on the scene by 2,000 A.D.
In addition to a belief in the resurrection
of the dead by a Savior, who at the last judgment will reward some men with
eternal life and sentence others to eternal damnation, there are other striking
resemblances between Zoroastrianism and Judaism. "Ahuramazda,
supreme Ruler,with the attributes of omniscience,
omnipresence, and eternity, with creative power which he employs through his Spenta Mainya, or 'Holy Spirit',
with the best of angels and archangels in his train, suggests unmistakably the
Old Testament Yahweh ... [Also,] Ahriman, the adversary,reminds one of Satan in later epochs, and whose
future end is similar; ...[Furthermore], Zoroaster receives his law from Ahuramazda on a mountain as does Moses in Sinai. There are
six periods of creation in the Avesta like the six
days of creation in Genesis, and a single pair, Moshya
and Moshyana, like Adam and Eve. The deluge in the Bible is paralleled by the devestating winter.
Shem, Ham, and Japhet [the three sons of Noah]
are recalled by the three sons [of Zoroaster] in the Avesta."
(ibid, Vol. 29, p.733-4).
The stories in the Avesta,
like the older books of the Bible, evolved from folk tales and legends and only
gradually were committed to writing.
(Scholars believe that even the book of Genesis was not completed until
around 400 B.C.) Scholars also say that:
"Jewish apocalypses ... laid down a definite program of last things with
many features ultimately borrowed from Babylonian mythology. ... Similar
eschatological expectations of a heaven-sent ruler and savior of the
world are found in the Fourth
Eclogue of Virgil, the Priene inscription to
Augustus, Sibylline oracles, probably of pagan origin, and elsewhere."
(ibid, Vol. 10, p.492). It is thus impossible to say from which culture these
ideas of the god(s) of creation, the origin of man,a
world flood, or the resurrection of the dead originated. For as we noted
earlier (See p. 38), "the fundamental
themes of mythological thought
have remained constant and universal, not only throughout history, but also
over the whole extent of mankind's occupation of the earth."
exemplary life could look forward
to an extended stay in the "Elysian Fields" or the "Isles of the
Blest".
"Ancient writers like Plato (428-347
B.C.) and Cicero
(106-43 B.C.) located the Isles
of the Blest in a heaven
above the stars. The rationale which moved the Elysian
Fields upwards centered on
Plato's reasoning that the soul
contained the most vital aspects
of the person. Once
released from its imprisonment in
the body, the spirit
became not weaker but actually
stronger and more powerful.
Plato assumed that, as with all
that is refined and
godlike, the soul rose
upward. Rather than sink down into
the netherworld [Tartarus to the Greeks], the righteous
soul ascended. Thus, the individual spirit not only
survived death, it found its
ultimate home in the
transcendent, celestial realm of
the Platonic ideas. It
made no sense for the Elysian
Fields to remain in a lower
position." (ibid, p.16-17).
Not all the souls were allowed to ascend
directly to the Elysian Fields, however.
Plato in his Dialogues recounts the tale of a soldier "slain"
in battle who came back to life twelve days later as he lay on the funeral pyre
with vivid memories of having visited the other world. (It seems that
"near death experiences" were an ancient as well as a modern
phenomenon.)
"He said that when his soul left the
body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a
mysterious place at which there were two openings in the two other openings in
the heaven above. In the intermediate
space there were judges seated, who commanded the just ... to ascend by the
heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by
them to
descend the lower way of the left
hand. . . . Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either
opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them; and at the
two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn
with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to
have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the
meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another
embraced and conversed, the souls which came from [under] the earth curiously
enquiring about the things above, and the souls which came from
heaven about the things
beneath. And they told one another of
what had happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrowing at the
remembrance of the things which they had endured and seen in their journey
beneath the earth . . . while those from above were describing heavenly
delights and visions of inconceivable beauty." ("The Dialogues of
Plato", Great Books of the Western
World, Vol. 7, p.437-8)
Whenever those souls who were sent below
the earth and who had not been sufficiently punished tried to ascend, the mouth
leading to the upper world, instead of admitting them, gave a loud roar. "Then wild men of fiery aspect, who were
standing by and heard the sound, seized and
carried them off; ... bound
[them] head and foot and hand, and threw them down and flayed them with
scourges, and dragged them along the road at the side carding them on thorns
like wool, and declaring to the passersby what were their crimes, and that they
were being taken away to be cast into hell." (ibid)
Most people today, including many who
believe in the reality of a heaven (or heavens),discount the reality of life
beyond the grave in a place characterized by torture, suffering and terror - in
short, in the reality of Hell. Those Christians, however, who believe in a
literal interpretation of the Bible would have to accept these words of Jesus
as unquestionably true:
". . . everyone who is angry with his
brother shall be
liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother shall be
liable to the council [of
judges], and whoever says, 'You
fool!' shall be liable to the
hell of fire." (Matt. 5:22)
"And if your right eye
causes you to sin, pluck it out
and throw it away; it is better that you
lose one of your
members than that your whole body be
thrown into hell."
(Matt.
5:29)
The Apostles Creed used by many Christian denominations
(unless watered down by modern revisionists) states that after Jesus' death on
the cross and his burial in a sealed tomb, but prior to his resurrection on the
third day, he "decended into hell" where,
according to
tradition, he preached the gospel
of salvation to the captives there.
Similarly, in the Eqyptian initiation
mysteries a candidate "who successfully passed through all the trials ...
was tied on a couch in the form of a 'Tau' [cross]
... He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights,
during which time his Spiritual Ego was said ... to descend into Hades ... and
do works of charity to the invisible beings; ... his body all the time in a
temple crypt or subterranean cave."
(H.P. Blavatsky, "The Secret
Doctrine", Vol. 2, p. 558).
It is not surprising, therefore, that
"while there are many and significant variations in detail, the main
features of hell as conceived by Hindu, Persian, Eqyptian,
Grecian, Hebrew and Christian theologians are essentially the same." (Encyclopedia
Americana, Vol. 14, p. 82).
Today, however, the idea of
punishing a soul eternally finds a decreasing number of believers. Naturally, then, those "who protested
against this punishment being eternal should argue that punishment in hell should
be proportional to the offense and that the object sought should be the
redemption or reformation of the sinful soul.
This idea stands out prominently in the Persian
conception of hell, and the
institution of purgatory seems clearly to be an attempt to modify the terrible
severity of eternal punishment and square it somewhat with the sentiments of
the human heart by providing a future punishment that should purge the soul of
its remaining unfitness to enter heaven." (ibid)
The idea of purgatory as an intermediate
state between hell and heaven is not clearly stated in scripture, but it forms
a definite place in the thinking of the great medieval Catholic theologian,
Thomas Aquinas, as well as forming one-third of Dante's classic, "The
Divine Comedy"
and in the clairvoyant journeys
of the eighteenth century Swedish seer, Emanuel Swedenborg. The concept remains today a belief held by
the Roman Catholic church, whose members comprise two-thirds of all
Christendom.
Thus, for example, Thomas Aquinas in his
"Summa Theologica" states:
"It is impossible for evil to be pure
and without
admixture of good, just as the
supreme good is without any
admixture of evil. Consequently those who are to be
conveyed to Happiness, which is a
supreme good, must be
cleansed of all evil; therefore
there must be a place
where such persons are cleansed
if they go from this life
without being perfectly
clean." ("Great Books of the
Western World", Vol. 20, p.
893).
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321 A.D.) not only
was known for his writing of the great classic, "Divina
Commedia", but also for his talents as a poet, musician, painter,
theologian and linguist. Dante divided
his classic work (written in 1302 when he was 37) into three parts: Hell, Purgatory
and Heaven. The ghost ("shade"
as he calls it) of the Roman poet Virgil was his guide through the realms of
Hell and Purgatory while his journey through Heaven was conducted by his
beloved Beatrice (who had died twelve years earlier in 1290 A.D.).
"From Hell (which the poet places in
the center of the earth) he ascends to Purgatory, a solitary mountain rising
from the ocean on the side of the globe opposite to us. This mountain is
divided into terraces and its top is the terrestrial paradise, the first abode
of man. In purgatory there are still
scenes [as in Hell] of pain and suffering; but these punishments are only
temporary" since all the souls who have been purged are allowed to enter
the terrestrial paradise at the entrance to the heavenly realms. (Encyclopedia
Americana, Vol. 8, p. 465).
"Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1772) was endowed with extraordinary talents, so unique and varied that
notable scholars have placed him among the very few who qualify as a universal
genius. ..... He anticipated the modern dynamic concept of matter; suggested a
nebular theory of the formation of planets; was a mining engineer who produced
the first exhaustive works on metallurgy; a
mathematician who prepared the
first Swedish text on algebra; and he discovered the function of several areas
of the brain and ductless glands. [His book on the anatomy of the brain was the
most comprehensive ever published in his day.]"
"While reaching the outermost
boundaries of science,Swedenborg pursued his search
for a rational explanation of the workings of the soul. It eluded him until he turned to the vaster
realm of the spirit and became directly and intensely aware of spiritual
reality, which he called 'spiritual sight'." (From a translation of his "Heavenly
Arcana" published by the Swedenborg
Foundation, New York, 42nd printing, 1978, p. ii of the Foreword)
During the last twenty-two years of his
life he explored this inner world and made many journeys into the afterworlds
of hell, purgatory and heaven. He wrote
about his experiences in Latin.
Therefore, the translations of his works into English tend to be a
little stilted in
style and word usage. The whole process of purging, for example has
been translated as "vastation" meaning in
the Latin: "laying waste" - in other words, the process of removing
impurities and false ideas from the soul.
The following is a sample from his writing about this process:
"There are many persons who during
their life in this
world from simplicity and
ignorance have imbibed falsities
of religious belief, and yet have
had a kind of conscience
in accordance with the principles
of their faith, and have
not like others lived in hatred,
revenge, and adultery.
In the other life these persons
cannot be introduced into
heavenly societies so long as
they remain in these
falsities, for they would
contaminate them; and they are
therefore kept for a time in the
lower earth, in order
that they may get rid of their
false principles. The time
that they remain there is longer
or shorter according to
the nature of the falsity, and
the life contracted
thereby, and according to the
degree in which they have
confirmed themselves in their
principles. Some suffer
there severely, others not
severely. These sufferings are
what are called Vastations, of which there is frequent
mention in the Word [i.e. the
Bible]. When the period of
vastation is completed, they are taken up
into heaven, and
as newcomers are instructed in
the truths of faith, and
this by the angels by whom they
are received. ... Those
however who have lived in the
goods and truth of faith,
and have gained therefrom a conscience and a life of
charity, are taken up by the Lord
into heaven immediately
after death." (ibid,
p.583-5).
This paranormal faculty of being able to
travel into other realms of being is called "clairvoyance", which
literally means "clear seeing".
It also includes being able to see and hear things at a distance not
possible with our normal senses of seeing and hearing. Swedenborg, for
example, while on the continent of
The Scotch say those who have
their "spiritual" eyes opened have "second sight".
Not only have many poets and seers (like
Dante and Swedenborg) developed this "second
sight" but also writers, philosophers, mystics, artists and others who
have learned how to divert their attention from the outer world and focus on
the inner worlds through dreams, prayer, fasting and meditation. For example, on the front page of my newspaper
this morning was a quote from Henry
David Thoreau which indicates
that he had this faculty: "Our truest life is when we are in dreams
awake." For another instance, we
have previously quoted from Robert Browning's poem, "Paracelsus" that
"Truth lies within ourselves ..." (See complete quotation above)
The Bible is replete with stories of the
prophets and others who had developed the power of inward seeing. For instance, after speaking to the
multitudes in parables Jesus tells his disciples:
"This is why I speak
to them [the people] in parables,
because seeing they do not see, and hearing
they do not
hear, nor do they understand. ... But blessed
are your
eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they
hear."
(Matt.
13:13-16)
And
Another who had evidently developed the
faculty of "second sight" was Socrates. Shortly before taking the hemlock in his
prison cell he tells his followers about the journey he will shortly undergo
after his death (399 B.C.):
"When the dead arrive at the place to
which the genius [angel] of each severally guides them, first of all they have
sentence passed on them, as they have lived well and piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither
well nor ill, go to the river Acheron, and embarking in any vessel which they
may find, are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are
purified
of their evil deeds, and having
suffered the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, they are
absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds, each of them according
to his deserts." ("The Dialogues of Plato, Great Books Vol. 6, p.
249.)
To reinforce the idea that Socrates had
"second sight" he begins the discussion above by describing what the
earth looks like when viewed from space:
"Now the earth has divers wonderful
regions, and is
indeed in nature and extent very
unlike the notions of
geographers". . . who at
that time believed the earth was
flat. He then goes on to state that "the earth
is a round
body in the center of the
heavens, and therefore has no
need of air or any similar force
to be a support ... [and
that] when looked at from above,
[it] is in appearance
streaked like one of those balls
which has leather
coverings in twelve pieces, and
is decked with various
colors, of which the colors used
by painters on earth are
in a manner samples." (ibid,
p. 247-8) (We had to wait
until the twentieth century space
explorations to verify
the beauty of the spherical earth
with its mighty blue
oceans, green forests, brown
deserts, snow capped
mountains and billowy white
clouds - looking indeed from
space like a multicolored ball.)
Some modern explorers of the inner worlds
refer to this intermediate realm which we enter after death (and which we also
enter in our dreams, in a state of meditation or trance, and in near death
experiences ) as the "astral plane" or fourth dimension. Astral matter (which they say has seven
subdivisions or levels) is the medium through which our emotional nature and
desires
express themselves. Thus, in this realm it is no longer possible
to disguise emotions such as lust, avarice, greed and envy. Our outward appearance immediately reflects
what we are feeling. Just as we would
not permit someone to attend a formal affair who was not appropriately dressed,
so would we exclude those from our company in the afterworld whose very nature
and appearance is abhorrent to us. We
can therefore better appreciate one of Jesus' parables where he tells us:
"The kingdom of heaven is like unto a
certain king,
which made a marriage for his son;
and he sent forth his
servants to call them that were
bidden to the wedding, and
they would not come. .... So
those servants went out into
the highways and gathered
together all as many as they
found, both good and bad, and the
wedding was furnished
with guests; and when the king
came in to see the guests,
he saw there a man which had not
on a wedding garment.
And he saith
unto him: 'Friend, how camest thou in hither
without a wedding garment?' And
he was speechless. Then
said the king to the servants:
'Bind him hand and foot,
and take him away and cast him
into outer darkness. There
shall be weeping and gnashing of
teeth. For many are
called but few are chosen.'"
(Matthew 22:1-14)
Since astral matter interpenetrates and
surrounds all physical matter, it can be seen by clairvoyants as a field of
colored lights around an individual, which they call an "aura". It reflects not only our current emotional
state but our general state of health as well.
Halos painted around the heads of saints and other religious figures
were perhaps an attempt by artists to depict this "aura" of astral
matter surrounding their face and heads.
During meditation, deep sleep, trance, near
death experiences or after the ingestion of hallucenogenic
drugs it is possible to separate the astral body (which is an travel is then
possible, leaving the physical body in a state of suspended animation. (This
explains how the
clairvoyant is able to see things
at a distance.) At death the magnetic bond which links the astral double to the
physical body is severed and is no longer able to express itself in the
physical world of three dimensions. The
astral entity, however, is still able to see his former
world, his home, and his family
and friends because of the astral matter which everything and everybody
contains. People still in the flesh though cannot see him because he no longer
is connected to a physical body.
Contact can still be made between the
living and the "dead", however, at night when those still in the
physical body are asleep. In deep sleep
we enter the astral world although seldom do we recall what transpires during
that period. Most of our recalled dreams
occur while we are in
what is known as "rem" (rapid eye movement) sleep, which we enter shortly
after going to sleep or just before waking up.
Those who have ingested hallucenogenic drugs, on
the other hand, often have vivid recollections of their experiences in the
astral plane - a "bad trip" reflecting a journey to the lower
subdivisions and a "good trip" one to the higher levels leading to
what Dante calls the "terrestrial paradise" and Plato calls the
"Elysian Fields" - in other words, the entrance into the heavenly
realms.
Above the "terrestrial paradise"
of Dante lay the heavenly realms. The
structure of Heaven to medieval writers like Dante as well as to the early
Greeks consisted of a series of concentric levels or shells surrounding the
earth. Each successive level was the
abode of a god represented by a heavenly body.
The first sphere above the earth (which was the center of the universe)
contained the Moon; the second, the planet Mercury; the third, Venus; the
fourth, the Sun; the fifth, Mars; the sixth, Jupiter; and the seventh sphere or
heaven was the abode of the last visible planet, Saturn. An eighth sphere or level beyond Saturn
contained the "fixed stars" (so called, because they appeared to stay
in the same place relative to each other), and still beyond the visible stars
was a ninth realm called the "primum
mobile", which contained all the lower spheres within it and as it turned
itself it imparted motion to all the other spheres below it so that they
rotated around the earth every 24 hours.
Surrounding the "primum mobile" (the
realm of original movement) was a tenth level called by the Greeks the
"Empyrean". It represented the
highest heaven and contained the purest and most rarefied elements of fire and
light.
To Dante it was the home of the highest
order of angels (the Seraphim) and of God Himself (the Unmoved Mover). This geocentric view of the universe or
cosmology persisted with only a few variations nearly two thousand years - from
the time of Plato (born in 428 B.C.) until the publication of Copernicus'
"Revolution of Heavenly Spheres" in 1543 A.D., which placed the sun
and not the earth at the center of our planetary system. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church did not
officially abandon the geocentric belief until the middle of the 19th century
300 years after Copernicus' epic work; and it did not officially grant a pardon
to Galileo (who died in 1642
A.D.) for his belief in heliocentrism until a few years ago (late 1992).
Although the early Greeks (like Aristotle
and Eudoxus, for example) with their various
cosmological models were primarily concerned with explaining the motions of the
moon, sun, planets and stars in the visible heavens, it was only natural for
theologians like Aquinas and writers
like Dante to structure the
invisible heavenly realms after the earlier models. It is remarkable, in fact, that modern seers
like Edgar Cayce still associated stages in the afterlife to
"sojourns" among the various planetary bodies. Of course, the practitioners of the
pseudoscience of Astrology still insist that the constellation of planets and
stars in the heavens at the time of birth have a major influence on our lives,
both as individuals and as nations.
However, they claim that although "the stars impel, they do not
compel."
Serious minded scientists, who have
studied the
cyclical nature of events, have
not only succeeded in
precisely predicting the timing
of lunar and solar
eclipses and the effect of the
moon and the sun on the
tides, but have also investigated
such esoteric phenomena
as the effect of the periodic
appearance of "sunspots" on
the ionosphere and the world's
weather. [Some years ago an
engineer by the name of John
Nelson was given the
assignment by his company (RCA)
to see if he could
determine the dates when
interference with
telecommunication signals due to
solar flares would occur.
To his surprise (and to everyone
else's) the highest
correlation of these events
occurred when the planets
Jupiter and Mars were at a 90
degree angle with the sun as
a center (an alignment the
astrologers refer to as
"square"). By using this information he was able to
predict subsequent periods of
interference with a high
degree of accuracy.]
If the physical mass of the sun, moon and
planets have
measurable and predictable
effects on our tides, weather
and communication systems, it is
certainly not
inconceivable that they also
affect the astral matter
through which it is said we
express our emotions and an
even finer grade, called by
psychics "mental matter", by
means of which we are able to
"visualize" and conceive
ideas. "Imagination", after all, is the
ability to
construct "images" in
our mind's eye. As a further
indication of the effect of
planetary bodies on our
emotional nature, the words
"lunatic" and "looney" are
derived from the Latin word
"luna" meaning of course
"moon". (Some of my readers will think, therefore,
that
it is no doubt the moon that has
been influencing me as I
commit these unorthodox ideas to
writing.)
Just as there is a definite separation
between the physical level or dimension and the astral level, so is there a
separation between the astral and mental levels. The result of purging the
lower grades of astral matter from the astral body, therefore, is to approach
the heavenly realms where the focus becomes not elimination or purging of undesirable
emotions and beliefs but one of
assimilation and integration of
the lessons learned in both the physical and astral experiences. Since the heaven world permits a greater
degree of freedom than even the fourth dimension of the astral world, it would
not be inappropriate to refer to it as a "fifth" dimension of
being. It is possible for a soul or
spirit on this level to converse with one still on the astral level, but they
now appear more as a body of light than as having a body similar to the one
they had while on earth.
In Ruth Montgomery's book, "A World
Beyond", one of her spirit guides who had advanced into the heaven world
described his appearance and ability to communicate with her as follows:
"We are eager to tell you more about what
occurs as
the soul advances from this
intermediate [astral] state
from which we are communicating
with you. In the higher
[heavenly] state this two-way
communication is impossible,
except for some such soul in the
earth plane as Edgar
Cayce, who was able so to step up
his vibrations that by
lowering our vibrations we could
meet him halfway, so to
speak. When I wish to summon the talents of one with
whom
we would commune, I return from
the higher to this
intermediate state. .... In the
next phase [i.e. heaven]
where I spend most of my life I
am transfigured, so to
speak, wearing light rather than
astral form. This is
because of the intensity of our
devotion to the work of
the Creator and since we slip
easily from the vibrations
of one planet to others, we are
best fitted for that work
as a beam of light. Whatever form we wear, we never cease
to be our own ego, for the self
is what we will never
escape." (op. cit., Coward,
McCann, &
1971, p. 183-4)
In contrast with descriptions of heaven
which entail sojourns among the various planets Emanuel Swedenborg
describes the various levels of heaven as being progressively
"inward" experiences. Just as
the process of involution requires that the spiritual man (who was
created in the image of God) put
on successive garments composed of mental, astral, etherial
and finally physical matter (the "coats of skin" referred to on
p.42), so does the process of evolution from the physical to the spiritual
realms involve the successive taking off of these outer garments. Even in the heavenly realm this process
continues until the soul at last stands naked before the Lord without shame -
just as he was when first created. In
fact, the angels in the highest level of heaven often appeared to Swedenborg as naked children - the personification of
innocence. As Jesus reminds us:
"Unless you turn and
become like children, you will
never enter the kingdom of heaven."
(Matt. 18:3)
Even though Swedenborg
experienced the heavenly realms as degrees of "inwardness" rather
than spacially oriented "sojourns" among
the various planetary orbs, he determined that there were three levels of
heaven and many different "societies" within each level. (As Jesus told his
disciples: "In my Father's
house are many mansions . ." - John 14:2).
He explains the various levels as follows:
"There
are three heavens; the First is the abode of
good spirits, the Second of angelic
spirits, and the Third
of angels.
And one heaven is more interior and pure than
another, so that they are most
distinct. Each heaven ...
is distinguished into innumerable
societies; and each
society consists of many
individuals, who by their harmony
and unanimity constitute as it
were one person; and all
the societies together are as one
man. The societies are
distinct from one another
according to the differences of
mutual love, and of faith in the
Lord. These differences
are so innumerable that not even
the most universal genera
of them can be computed; and
there is not the least of
difference that is not disposed
in most perfect order, so
as to conspire most harmoniously
to a common unity, and
the common unity to unanimity of
individuals, and thereby
to the happiness of each, and of
each from all. Each
angel and each society is
therefore an image of the
universal heaven, and is as it
were a little heaven."
(op. cit. p.308)
He too like many other seers reports
increasing intensity of light as one enters the more inward levels. Just as
there was no admixture of those with differing grades of astral matter in the
intermediate realm which most of us enter after death, so there is no one
allowed to stay in the more inward levels of heaven whose character is of a
lower order than the members who make up
a society there. A person who prematurely enters a level too
inward for his current status experiences a great deal of pain and thus leaves
that level of his own volition:
"Certain spirits longed to know the
nature of heavenly
joy, and were therefore allowed
to perceive the inmost of
their own, to such a degree that
they could bear no more;
and yet it was not angelic joy,
being scarcely equal to
the least angelic joy, as was
given me to perceive by a
communication of their joy. It was so slight as to be as
it were chilly, and yet being
their inmost joy they called
it most heavenly. From this it was evident not only that
there are degrees of joys, but
also that the inmost of one
scarcely approaches the outmost
or middle of another, and
that when any one receives his
own inmost joy, he is in
his heavenly joy, and cannot
endure that which is still
more interior, for it becomes
painful." (op. cit., p.230)
Are some of us then forever barred from
these "inward most" realms of heaven?
Do we spend eternity in a particular heavenly society consistent with
our highest experience of inward joy or is progress possible even in
heaven? We will conclude this essay by
attempting an answer to these questions and by speculating on the ultimate
destiny of mankind.
The Ultimate Destiny of Mankind
To even venture an opinion about our
ultimate destiny would appear to be the height of folly - particularly by one
who brings few, if any, credentials to bear upon such a weighty matter. Even among those who through years of study,
contemplation or mystic experience claim to have climbed higher up the mountain
than most of us, there is a wide range of belief about our ultimate destiny -
either individually or collectively.
The traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic
(and even Zoroastrian) eschatology (i.e. beliefs concerning last things such as
death, resurrection, immortality and judgment) is that at the end of the age
both the living and the dead will face judgment. Those souls deemed worthy will either
participate in an extended reign of the Messiah on earth (Christians say for
1,000 years) or else
they will be transported to
heaven to spend eternity with the Lord.
On the other hand, those souls judged unworthy (whose names are not found
in "The Book of Life") will be banished from participation in the
millennial reign and will spend an eternity of torment in hell with the
archfiend, Satan, and his fallen
angels. (See Revelation 20:12-15) There are naturally many variations on the above
theme even among Christians. (e.g. Hal Lindsay's "There's a New World
Coming".)
For those who reject this traditional
eschatology whereby after judgment we spend an eternity in either paradise
(whether on earth or in heaven) or in hell there would appear to be only two
choices: (1) that there is no survival of individuals after death; or (2) that
if the individual survives death, there must be a way to progress toward an
ever higher realm of truth and being.
Since we have already discussed the beliefs of those atheistic
existentialists and secular humanists who do not believe in a life beyond the
grave in the section on "Faith in Man", we will confine our attention
here to the second alternative.
Before discussing "ultimates",
however, it would be well to address just what (or who) it is that survives
death. From our discussion in the last
section it would appear that after the loss of the physical body and the shedding
of false beliefs and the astral body in the purgatorial realm that only a
portion of the person we were on earth survives in the heavenly realms. In a sense this may be true, but it is also
true that while in a physical body on earth, we are only able to project
through our personality a portion of our true self.
The very word, "personality",
comes from two Latin words: "per" (through) and "sonare" (to sound).
To the ancient Romans (and to the Greeks as well) the
"persona" was a mask worn by actors on the stage through which they
were able to portray or "sound" their parts. Thus the earthly personality is only a
partial and incomplete expression of the true self or actor behind the outer
mask of personality that we present to others in a three dimensional world.
As Shakespeare reminds us in his play,
"As You Like
It" (Act II, Scene VII):
"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts
..."
And in a more melancholy mood his Macbeth tell us:
"All our yesterdays have
lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief
candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing." (Act V, Scene V)
Socrates (in Plato's "Republic
VII") attempted to tell his listeners about the reality of the fourth
dimensional world by his well-known analogy of people living in a cave who from
birth have been restrained from looking toward the entrance from which the
light enters that illuminates
the wall in front of them. On that wall they see shadows flitting across
the screen in two dimensions, which they fancy to be real, unaware that the
images are caused by the shadows of three dimensional figures on a parapet
behind them. In our modern age we would
say it is as if
the images shown on our movie
screens were real instead of being two dimensional representations of three
dimensional reality. The pictures on the
movie screen are in fact a remarkable analogy to the one Socrates used to
depict the fact that behind the apparent reality of this world there
lie other more real ones behind
it.
Not only are the worlds above this one more
real but the beings there even animate and move the "walking shadows"
and "poor players" that play upon our worldly stage. ("... in
whom we live and move and have our being.") Not that we are simply automatons or puppets
but that unless we identify our worldly selves with, and subordinate ourselves
to, our higher selves there is no
real meaning to the words,
"salvation" and "eternal" life. As Jesus reminded
Nicodemus:
"Except a man be born again [as a
spiritual being], he
cannot see the
the flesh is flesh; and that
which is born of the Spirit
is spirit." (John 3:3-6)
To achieve salvation, therefore, is to
quicken the spirit, the Eternal Man, within us.
As the Yaqui indian
shaman, tells his protege, Carlos Castaneda, in his
"The Tales of Don Juan": "A warrior has no personal
history." I remember vividly a dream I had a number of years ago in
which I was sitting in a theater
on the aisle about midway between the front and back rows. On the stage the actors were performing a
play. I was connected to one of the
actors on the stage by some kind of pneumatic tube by means of which he spoke
his lines. The tube did not end with me,
however. It continued to the back of the
theater where it was connected to another person who apparently knew everything
both the actor on the stage and I were thinking, feeling and doing. I sensed his presence but was constrained
from turning around to look at him. (Those who have read my previous essays
will not be surprised that there were three persons involved in the dream,
since I believe that all manifestation involves a trinity of beings.) My interpretaion of
the dream was that the person acting on the stage in front of me was my worldly
self, while the person in the back row was the Lord. Since I was not on the
stage, my "I" in the dream was my "higher self". ( I
hesitate to use the word "Soul" when so many of us seem to have
forgotten that there is such a thing.) To reinforce this interpretation I will
call your attention to the "pneumatic" tubes connecting the three of
us. The root of the word,
"pneumatic", comes from the Greek word, "pneuma",
meaning "the soul or vital spirit".
Earlier (p.43) I referred to the
possibility of "a hierarchy of celestial beings with each higher level
integrating the beings of a lower level into a new and more complex
being." I have just run across a
similar idea in Dr. Huston Smith's book, "Beyond the Post-Modern
Mind" (Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, 1989, p. 53) where he quotes from Arthur Lovejoy's "The Great Chain of Being" as
follows:
"The conception of
the universe as ... ranging in
hierarchical
order from the meagerest kind of existents
...
through 'every possible' grade up to the 'ens
perfectissimum' [the most perfect being] ... has, in one
form
or another, been the dominant official philosophy of
the
larger part of civilized mankind through most of its
history."
A similar motif is found in the Psalms of
David, where he tells us:
"The LORD said unto my Lord, sit thou
at my right hand
until I make thine
enemies thy footstool." (110:1)
"The" LORD in the verse above
refers to "God" while "my" Lord refers to "the Christ
man" or "Messiah". For as
Jesus taught the people in the temple:
"How say the scribes that Christ is the
son of David?
For David himself said by the Holy Ghost,
'The LORD said
to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I
make thine
enemies thy footstool.' David therefore
himself calleth
him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And
the common
people heard him gladly." (Mark
12:35-37)
Ralph Waldo Emerson echoed this
interpretation of God and the Messiah being in the heart of all men when he
addressed the graduating class of the Harvard Divinity School in 1838 wherein
he emphasised the human nature of the historical
Jesus while at the same time in no way denying his (or, for that matter, our)
divine nature:
"Jesus Christ belonged to the true
race of prophets.
He saw with open eye the mystery
of the soul. Drawn by
its severe harmony, ravished with
its beauty, he lived in
it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he
estimated the greatness of
man. One man was true to what
is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in
man, and evermore goes forth anew
to take possession of
his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion,
'I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me,
speaks.
Would you see God, see me; or,
see thee, when thou also
thinkest as I now think'. .... He felt respect for Moses
and the prophets; but no unfit
tenderness at postponing
their initial revelations, to the
hour and the man that
now is; to the eternal revelation
in the heart. Thus was
he a true man. Having seen that the law in us is
commanding, he would not suffer
it to be commanded.
Boldly, with hand, and heart, and
life, he declared it was
God. Thus was he a true man. Thus is he, as I think, the
only soul in history who has
appreciated the worth of a
man." (As found in Pelikan,
op. cit., p.250-1)
Emerson, in addition to being a noted
lecturer, author and philosopher, was at one time a Unitarian minister in
nearly all other Christian
bodies. Unitarians thus echo the basic
teaching of Judaism which says:
"Hear O Israel; the Lord our God is
One Lord." (Deut. 6:4)
and the sentiment expressed in
"God is Spirit and they that worship
Him must worship
Him in spirit and in truth." (John
4:24)
They also note that although the King James
Version of the Bible quotes John in one of his epistles as saying:
"For there are three that bear witness
in heaven: the
Father, the Word [read Son], and the Holy
Ghost; and these
three are one." (1 John 5:7)
The modern Revised Standard
Version translates the very same Septuagint text simply as:
"... the Spirit is the
witness, because the Spirit is the truth."
"They [further] point out that, as far
as is known,Jesus himself did not teach the doctrine
of the Trinity, neither did the Apostles. ... They also point out that it was
at least 150 years after the crucifixion of Jesus before the term Trinity began
to be used by Christian teachers, and it was considerably later than this
before the Trinitarian formula was decided on as the Christian
conception of deity."
(Encyclopedia
Even though Emerson was a Unitarian, he
believed that a third being stood between God and man: namely, the soul. In
fact "the relationship of the soul to the divine spirit was the only thing
that mattered to Emerson. For him no
facts as such were sacred; none worthy but which became
instantly important when they
indicated or symbolized the history of the living soul. ... He believed that
the worth of any individual man was derived from the universe which contained
all human life and was therefore mysterious.
He regarded every man as the entrance to the universal mind, capable of
feeling and comprehending that which at any time befell any man." (Dagobert D. Runes, "Pictorial History of
Philosophy",
It would be instructive (and perhaps
inspiring) to let Emerson himself tell us about the relation between the soul
(i.e. the higher self) and the "poor player that struts and frets his hour
upon the stage" (i.e. our earthly personality):
"If we consider what happens in
conversation, in
reveries, in remorse, in times of
passion, in surprises,
in the instructions of dreams,
wherein often we see
ourselves in masquerade - the
droll disguises only
magnifying and enhancing a real
element and forcing it on
our distant notice- we shall
catch many hints that will
broaden and lighten into
knowledge of the secret of
nature. All goes to show that the soul in man is not
an
organ, but animates and exercises
all the organs; is not a
function, like the power of
memory, of calculation, of
comparison, but uses these as
hands and feet; is not a
faculty, but a light; is not the
intellect or the will,
but the master of the intellect
and the will; is the
background of our being, in which
they lie - an immensity
not possessed and that cannot be
possessed. From within
or from behind, a light shines
through us upon things and
makes us aware that we are
nothing, but the light is all.
A man is the facade of a temple
wherein all wisdom and all
good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating,
drinking, planting, counting man,
does not, as we know
him, represent himself, but
misrepresents himself. Him we
do not respect, but the soul,
whose organ he is, would he
let it appear through his action,
would make our knees
bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is
genius; when it breathes through
his will, it is virtue;
when it flows through his
affection, it is love. And the
blindness of the intellect begins
when it would be
something of itself. The weakness of the will begins when
the individual would be something
of himself. All reform
aims in some one particular to
let the soul have its way
through us; in other words, to
engage us to obey." (from
his essay, "The Oversoul" as found in "Man and Man, The
Social Philosophers", Random
House, NY, 1947, p.411-412).
The entity which survives death, then, is
more than our earthly personality - it
is our higher self or soul. It is this greater life that lives within us,
therefore, that we must address concerning immortality and ultimate
destiny. Furthermore, as was noted
above, Emerson "regarded every man as the entrance to the universal mind,
capable of feeling and comprehending that which at any time befell any
man." In addition therefore to the
close relationship between our worldly self and the soul there is also an
intimate connection between the Universal Mind or Soul and the individual
soul. This Soul Emerson and his fellow
Transcendentalists called the "Over-Soul".
This concept, it seems to me, is very
similar to how John describes the resurrected Christ (i.e. Word or Logos) in
his gospel:
"and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was
in the beginning with God; all
things were made through
him, and without him not anything
was made that was made."
(John 1:1-3)
It is also similar to the concept
of the Universal Man, the Heavenly Adam, the "Grand Etre",
the
Atman of the Hindus, the immanent
God of the mystics, and the Collective Unconscious postulated in the psychology
of C. G. Jung. Reference was also made
earlier to a quote from Lovejoy's "The Great Chain of Being" (p.81)
wherein he states that the chain-of-being reaches from the very
least thing (e.g. an electron) to
the highest conceivable being (i.e. the unmanifest
Godhead). I also postulated earlier that
each higher level of being integrates and incorporates the beings below it into
a new and more complex being. (See p.43).
If this concept is a correct one, we can therefore state that God,
Universal Consciousness, and the Universe form a single, indivisible
being. (In the context of this essay equivalent
concepts would be: God-Man-Nature; Spirit-Mind-Matter; and even
Father-Son-Mother.)
Christians in their rituals speak about
being "very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is
the blessed company of all faithful people" (Anglican Book of Common
Prayer) and in a familiar hymn that "We are not divided, all one body we." All that separates us, then, from the
Universal Being (by whatever name) and our fellow man is our sense of being an
independent self. As the "Theologica Germanica" puts it: "Nothing burns in hell but
the self." (as found in Aldous Huxley's
"The Perennial Philosophy", p.177).
Thus while the Unitarians, Jews and
Moslems may be correct in
believing in the unitary nature of God, in manifestation we always find three
aspects: spirit, mind (or consciousness) and matter - or from our individual
standpoint it manifests itself as: intuition (or inner perceptions),
self-awareness, and outer perceptions.
As Lao Tsu (the founder of Taoism) expressed
the nature of creation and manifestation:
"The Tao [the Unmanifest
God above all gods]
is hidden and without name. ... [Then]
The Tao begot one
One begot two
Two begot three,
And three begot the ten thousand
things."
"Tao Te Ching",
Vintage Books, 1972, Chp. 41-2)
The Hindus designate "the Unmanifest God above all gods" by the name of
Brahman. Brahman cannot be said to exist
since Brahman is beyond mere existence.
In Christian Trinity, is personified by three beings in one: Shiva
(Father), Vishnu (Son) and Brahma (Mother or Holy
Spirit). Brahma represents the
divine power of creation, Vishnu preservation, and Shiva the power of
dissolution or destruction. The creative
power of Brahman is also known as Prakriti by means
of which the worlds of matter, mind and emotion are formed. Prakriti, in turn,
has three modes of being known as "gunas". 'The three gunas in
the Sanskrit language are: "sattwa"
(goodness), "rajas" (passion), and "tamas"
(darkness). (For more information on the Hindu cosmology and the action of the gunas consult Appendix I, "The Song of God:
Bhagavad-Gita", translated by Swami Prabhavananda
and Christopher Isherwood, Mentor Books, NY, 1954.)
Next (with more than a little trepidation)
let us briefly consider the nature of immortality. In view of the hierarchical nature of
"the Great Chain of Being" and the trinitarian
nature of all manifestation discussed above it follows that the very least
essence (e.g. an atom) as well as the aggregate of all essences - from the microcosm
to the macrocosm - consist not only of matter and mind (or consciousness) as
believed by Teilhard de Chardin
and others (p.21) but also of the life giving Spirit which animates the
cosmos. Without the out-breathing of the
Spirit the universe (and therefore all manifestation) would collapse upon
itself. In fact, if the Hindus are
correct in their belief in a pulsating universe ("the day and night of
Brahman"), that is exactly what happens every 35 billion years or so by
the inbreathing of Shiva.
It follows then that the concept of
immortality (i.e. that which is beyond time, space, and mere existence) properly
applies only to the Godhead (the Unmanifest
God). In the manifest universe, however,
(visible and invisible) as we move up the hierarchy of being, the sphere of
inclusiveness, as well as the
time to complete one cycle about the various centers of being, increases. For example, in the realm measurable by
scientific methods the incredibly small unit of matter called the electron
circles around its atomic nucleus at a rate of a million million
times per second. A mountain, on the
other hand, circles around the axis of the earth only once in 24 hours while
the much larger earth itself takes 365 1/4 days to make one revolution around
its center, the sun. Our star, the sun,
which is more than one million times the volume of the earth but only one of some
150-200 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, takes an estimated 224 million
years to complete one revolution around its center. Our galaxy,in turn,
is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies, which for all we know are
circling around one or more
supergalaxies, etc., etc. until we reach the
limits of the universe (the etymology of which, interestingly, is from two
Latin words meaning "one turn").
Repetitive cycles at these various levels
of manifestation seem to imply a universe in perpetual motion; and, in fact,
there is a great truth behind this idea (e.g. the countless inventors who claim
to have developed perpetual motion machines).
Not only is there a
hierarchy of physical cycles,
but, as we have discussed earlier (p. 41-43), a hierarchy of superphysical cycles as well which involve not only cycles
in time at one level of being but cycles of involution and evolution as
well.
Thus we have "sons of God"
descending to mate with the daughters of men (see p.40) and God himself, who,according to various traditions, incarnates in human
form in order to instruct mankind concerning his divine heritage and to show,
by example, how he should think,speak and act. (For
Christians this has occurred only once in history while for Hindus it has occurred
many times.) Mystic traditions (as well as many people from all religions both
ancient and modern that subscribe to what Aldous
Huxley calls "The Perennial Philosophy") hold that God has the
ability to incarnate in and manifest through every human being if he or she is
willing to subordinate the little "i" to
the eternal "I AM" at the center of our being. Nevertheless, for most of us at least, this
is not simply a matter of making a one-time pledge to try to live more
responsible, healthy, meaningful, helpful, and Christlike
lives. As Jesus admonished his hearers:
"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your
Father which is
in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)
and as
"... work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling."
(Phillipians 2:12)
How, you may well ask, can any of us mere
mortals hope to attain perfection in one short lifetime? The answer, for most of us at least, is that
we can't; but given many lifetimes coupled with a sincere desire to "sit
thou at My [Father's] right hand while I make thy enemies thy
footstool", we can perhaps,
by the grace of God and in the fullness of time, approach the heavenly
throne. There are a number of reasons to
believe that we (i.e. our higher selves) may be given more than one lifetime in
which to become perfect "even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect". We can reach this conclusion by an
examination of: (1) ancient myths and religious teachings; (2) the
Judeo-Christian scriptures; (3) modern consciousness research; (4) clairvoyant
investigations; (5) the writings of numerous authors, philosophers and poets;
and (6) the justice and reasonableness of such a belief.
The incarnation of a god in human form, his
death and resurrection appears in many ancient mythologies as well as forming
the basis for the teaching of modern Christianity. In
1969, p. 309).
"Cadmus,
king of Grecian Thebes, learned of a liason
between his daughter Semele and Zeus, the greatest of the
Olympian Gods, enclosed her in a
chest which was thrown
into the sea. Carried by the waves to Prasiae,
it was
opened, Semele
was found to be dead, but the child of the
union was alive and came to be
known as the god Dionysius.
In his turn, the young god and
creator of the Greek
Pantheon was murdered and torn
into fragments by the
Titans, the great gods. He also was restored by his
mother in a mystical resurrection
and ascension." (ibid)
In India Krishna (an incarnation of the God
Vishnu)"follows very closely this [same] pattern. He, in his turn, suffered an unnatural death,
being wounded in the heel by the arrow of a hunter who mistook him for a deer.
After telling the hunter not to grieve, he rose all radiant into Heaven."
(ibid)
"The life story of Jesus contains
similar incidents, including the prophesies in the Old Testament; the pre-birth
announcement of John the Baptist; the Annunciation to his mother; the
immaculate conception and Nativity; the childhood beset by enemies; the flight
to Egypt; the return in youth; the growth to maturity and the exercise of
supernormal powers. Then came the
Transfiguration, attack by
enemies, death upon the cross, Resurrection, reappearances and the Ascension to
the right hand of God. Thus is portrayed
in many scriptures and myths the same story of forthgoing
and return of a hero or Savior, which was also recounted by Jesus himself in
the
Parable of the Prodical Son." (ibid, p. 310)
The point of all these mythological and
scriptural allegories is to validate the reality of what Nietzsche called
"Eternal Recurrence", Mircea Eliade conceived as "The Cyclical Nature of
Time", Heraclitus called "enantiodromia" (the running of opposites), the
alchemists named the "circulatio" (the
circulating process), and what the ancient Chinese symbolized by their trigrams
and hexagrams the universal forces of "yin" (female) and
"yang" (male) in constant motion - wherein the "yang"
forces are constantly moving downward from the spiritual level and changing
into "yin" ones while the "yin" forces are constantly
moving upward from the material level and
changing into "yang"
(spiritual) ones. Thus the cycle of all
creation begins with the spiritual, descends through ever lower levels of being
until it reaches the physical and then begins its ascent once more from the the physical to it original starting point as spirit.
This cycle of involution down the
"Great Chain of Being" and the return to its Source through the
process of evolution is a cosmic law that applies to all manifested life. We have alluded earlier to those
philosophers, mystics and seers who envision God and even the entire Universe
as a gigantic man (p.43-4). The Old
Testament affirms that man was created
in the image of God, and
"Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the
earth? Tell me, if you have understanding ....
[about the
time] when the morning stars sang
together, and all the
sons of God shouted for
joy?" (Job 38:4-7)
These same "sons of God" were the
ones who descended from the heavenly realms to mate with the daughters of men.
(See p.40). Similarly, Adam and Eve were
driven out of their original home in the
Garden of Eden, which according to Dante lies above the earth at the top of
"All souls were created in the
beginning, and are
finding their way back whence
they came." ( "Selections
from the Edgar Cayce
Readings", A.R.E. Press, Virginia
Beach, VA, 1981, p.11)
Another argument for the pre-existence of
the soul can be made from our previous observations about the "Great Chain
of Being" and about the higher up an entity is in the chain the longer it
takes to complete a cycle. Since the
human soul stands between mortal man and the Oversoul,
its period of revolution (from its creation to its final perfection) must
therefore be greater than the birth to death cycle of mortal man.
Furthermore, a number of ancient religions
and traditions taught that the human soul must not only undergo involution and
evolution along with all the rest of creation, but that it must also experience
rebirths in a material body. In Hinduism,
for example, Lord Krishna(an incarnation of the god Vishnu) tells his protege,
Arjuna, that:
"Worn-out garments are shed by the
body;
Worn-out bodies are shed by the dweller
within the body;
New bodies are donned by the dweller
like garments." (Bhagavad-Gita)
Similarly, Gautama,
the Buddha, tells us about the saint who:
"with his heart thus serene, made
pure, translucent,
cultured, devoid of evil, supple
ready to act, firm and
imperturbable, he directs and
bends down his mind to the
knowledge of the memory of his
previous temporary states.
He recalls to his mind .... one
birth, or two or three
.... or a thousand or a hundred
thousand births, through
many an aeon
of dissolution, many an aeon of both
dissolution and
evolution." (from the "Samannophala
Sutta", as found in
"Reincarnation, an East-West
Anthology", The Julian
Press, NY, 1961, p.13)
Similarly, in the Egyptian
mystical tradition the "Books of Hermes" confirm that:
"The Soul passeth
from form to form; and the mansions
of her pilgrimage are
manifold. Thou puttest
off thy
bodies as raiment; and as vesture
dost thou fold them up.
Thou art from old, O Soul of Man;
yea, thou art from
everlasting." (ibid, p. 23)
Socrates (in Plato's "Phaedo") also taught the concept of the soul's rebirth
in more than one human body but only as a result of the soul's failure to rid
itself of worldly pleasures and pains:
"The soul of the true philosopher . .
. abstains as
much as possible from pleasures
and desires, griefs and
fears . . . because each pleasure
and pain, having a nail,
as it were, nails the soul to the
body, and fastens it to
it, and causes it to become
corporeal, deeming those
things to be true whatever the
body asserts to be so.
For, in consequence of its
forming the same opinions with
the body, and delighting in the
same things . . . it can
never pass into Hades [i.e. the
afterlife] in a pure
state, but must ever depart
polluted by the body, and so
quickly falls into another body .
. . and consequently is
deprived of all association with
that which is divine, and
pure, and uniform." (ibid,
p.81)
The Judeo-Christian scriptures provide
little information, one way or the other, about the human soul undergoing
periodic rebirths in a mortal body. They
do support a belief in the resurrection of the dead at the time of judgment,
however; and in the final book of the
Old Testament the prophet Malachi
tells us that Elijah will be brought back just prior to that time:
"Behold, I will send you Elijah the
prophet before the
great and terrible day of the Lord
comes." (Malachi 4:5)
In the New Testament Jesus goes even
further than Malachi by announcing that Elijah had already returned as John the
Baptist:
"Truly, I say to you, among those born
of women there
has risen no one greater than John the
Baptist; .... and
if you are willing to accept it, he is
Elijah who is to
come.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
(Matthew
11:11-15 RSV)
There are passages in both the Old and New
Testaments which can be interpreted as supporting the idea of the periodic
return of a soul into a new body. For
example, in the book of Psalms we read:
"The Lord will keep your going out and
your coming in
from this time forth and for
evermore." (Psalm 121:8 RSV)
And in the New Testament book of the Apocalypse (also known as "The
Revelation to John"), from which much of the Christian doctrine about
judgment and the "last days" is drawn, an inference can be made about
many sojourns by the soul in a body of flesh where the risen Christ tells John:
"Him that overcometh
will I make a pillar in the
temple of my God, and he shall go no more
out." (Rev. 3:12) )
That the idea of the reincarnation was not
unknown in biblical times even to the disciples of Jesus can be deduced from
their asking him about the reason why a certain man had been born blind:
"Which did sin, this man or his parents?" (John 9:34) Obviously, the only way the man could have
sinned was to have done so in a previous existence.
Current surveys in the
Perhaps the best documented investigation
and screening of cases which involve spontaneous recall of past-life
experiences have been those published by Professor Ian Stevenson of the
University of Virginia in his now classic "Twenty Cases Suggestive of
Reincarnation" (University of Virginia Press, Charlottsville,
1974)In some of these cases a person (usually between the ages
of four and nine) spontaneously
recalls living an earlier life as a different person. In each of these cases the information given
about the previous life has been verified either by the person returning to the
location where he or she claimed to have lived before and correctly identifying
former family members, houses, etc., or if the person claimed to have lived
prior to the current period by a search of existing birth records, historical
documents, and so on which could not have been known by the individual prior to
such investigations. Not only can such
memories often be verified, but in cases of those age regressed by hypnosis it
often occurs that in the hypnotic
state they are able to speak
fluently the language of the country where they claimed to have lived and even
in the correct dialect of the region of the country which prevailed at the time
although the language was completely unknown to the person in a conscious
state. (e.g. See Dr.Ian
Stevenson's "Xenoglossy",
Some clairvoyants also possess the ability
to identify previous incarnations of individuals while in a state of altered
consciousness. Edgar Cayce, for example,
during his lifetime gave more than 2,000 "life readings" for people
wherein he was able to explain many current problems or situations in terms of
past-life experiences. A number of years ago I attended a lecture given by Hugh
Lynn Cayce (Edgar Cayce's son) in which he told about a problem he had had as a
young man of a choking sensation in his throat which made it very difficult at
times for him to swallow. His father,
while in one of his daily self-induced trances, told him that the reason why he
was
experiencing this problem was the
result of his choking a man to death in a former life. Thus, in this life he was getting back what
he had given to someone else.
It was not at all unusual for people to be
told by Cayce that their present difficulties were the result of their own
behavior in a previous life. In fact it
appeared to be an inexorable law analogous to the third law of motion expounded
by Isaac Newton 300 years ago in his treatise on physics:
"For every action there is an equal
and opposite
reaction."
Or as expressed by
"Do not be deceived; God is not mocked,
for whatever a
man sows, that he will also reap."
(Galatians 6:7)
Thus, although it may appear that some
people escape being punished for crimes they commit in this life, a belief in
the idea of reincarnation reassures us that no one really ever escapes
responsibility for his (or her)own actions whether in this life or a subsequent
one.
This inevitability of the law of action and
reaction in the moral sphere is called "karma" by the Hindus and
Buddhists and "kismet" by Mohammedans. In Greek and Roman mythology the concept was
personified by the three Fates and by the three Furies and by the Greek
goddess, Nemesis.
However, in the Judeo-Christian
tradition one's fate may be ameliorated by God's goodness and mercy. For example, in the Old Testament Book of Job
we learn that:
"Happy is the man whom God reproves;
therefore despise not the chastening of
the Almighty.
For He wounds, but He binds up;
He smites, but His hands heal." (Job
5:17-18)
In a similar vein the prophet
Isaiah quotes Jehovah directly as saying:
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do
not be
dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you
and help you; I will uphold you with my
righteous
right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)
and in the New Testament when a
bed-ridden paralytic was brought in for Jesus to heal, he said to him:
"Take heart, my son; your sins are
forgiven."
When he perceived that scribes in
the group were accusing him of blaspheming, he replied:
"Why do you think evil in your hearts?
For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins
are
forgiven' or to say, 'Rise and walk'? .... he
then said to the paralytic: 'Rise, take up
your
bed and go home.' and he rose and went
home."
(Matthew 9:1-7)
In this manner Jesus illustrated
that the consequences of a man's past sins (i.e. the law of karma) could be
overcome by God's grace.
Innumerable authors, philosophers and poets
down through the ages, regardless of whether they were pagans, Hindus,
Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, or Christians, whether devout or sceptic,
have expressed an interest or a belief in the ideas of the preexistence of the
soul and its periodic return to a body of flesh. Early Christian divines such as as Justin Martyr, St. Clement of
heresy. The Council concluded its proclamation by
saying:
"Anathema to Origen and to that Adamantius,
who set
forth these opinions together with their
nefarious and
execrable and wicked doctrine, and to
whomsoever there is
who thinks thus, or defends these opinions, or
in any way
hereafter at any time presume to protect
them."
Of course, the Church also condemned
Galileo for teaching that the sun and not the earth was the center of our
planetary system, and it was only late last year (1992), three hundred and
fifty years after the death of Galileo (1642), that the church finally granted
him a pardon for his belief in heliocentrism. (See p. 74.) In spite of this condemnation a
number of groups and
individuals within the Christian
community over the years have continued to teach the principles of preexistence
and reincarnation.
Many well-known Americans have also written
about their belief in these concepts.
Benjamin Franklin, for example, who was one of the five major framers of
our Declaration of Independence in 1776, expressed his belief in reincarnation
by an epitaph he composed at the age of twenty-two:
"The Body of B. Franklin,
Printer,
Like the Cover of an Old Book,
Its Contents Torn Out
And
Stripped of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies Here
Food for
But the Work shall not be Lost,
For it Will as He Believed
Appear Once More
In a New and more Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author."
(As found in Head and
Oliver Wendell Holmes, for another example,
concludes his poem, "The Chambered Nautilus" (which each year built
itself a new and larger chamber in which to dwell) with this stanza:
"Build thee more
stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine
outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!"
(The
entire poem may be found on page 5 of the Appendix.)
Other poets have echoed similar
thoughts. For example: William
Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in
Finally, there is the justice and
reasonableness of a belief in the ancient teachings of reincarnation and its
related doctrine of karma. Does it not
agree with our own sense of justice that we reap exactly what we sow? Does it not bring home to us the ancient
belief that each of us creates his own destiny, that "as [a man] thinketh in
his heart, so is he." (Proverbs 23:7)?
Does it not agree with our sense of mercy and forgiveness that we look
upon our trials and tribulations in this short life not as punishment for past
sins but as an opportunity to correct
past mistakes and learn from
them? Does it not give us deeper insight into the Galilean's words that
"it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that [even] one of
these little ones should perish." (Matt.
death of anyone". (Exekiel 18:32).
Therefore, we should "... not despise the Lord's discipline or be
weary of his reproof for the Lord reproves him who he loves as a father the son
in whom he delights." (Proverbs 3:11-12).
However, even if one considers the case for
reincarnation compelling, the gradual perfection and ultimate salvation of all
humanity would appear to be far from certain.
For example, if it is true that we each have been given the power by our
creator(s) to choose
between life and death (See p.
26-28 supra), it follows that some (and perhaps many) will choose death and
non-being in preference to life and fuller being even if given many lifetimes
to amend the errors of past choices. As the poet-philosopher Goethe expresses
it:
"Sow a thought, and reap a deed.
Sow a deed, and reap a habit.
Sow a habit, and reap a character.
Sow a character, and reap a destiny."
Perhaps then for a given lifetime
or even a number of lifetimes it is possible to regress toward the bestial or
toward our lowest natures. Still, as
Jesus tells us: "it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that
[even] one of these little ones should perish." (Matt.18:14); and
knowledge of truth." (1
Timothy 2:4). Nevertheless,whether
through the action of one's "karma" within a given lifetime or in the
process of selecting one's next incarnation, there is a mechanism by which our
current thoughts, words and deeds are judged to the benefit or detriment of our
souls. For as
"Every man's work shall be made
manifest: for the day
shall declare it, because it
shall be revealed by fire;
and the fire shall try every
man's work of what sort it
is. If any man's work abide which he hath built
upon [the
foundation of Christ], he shall
receive a reward. If any
man's work shall be burned, he
shall suffer loss: but he
himself shall be saved; yet so as
by fire."
(1 Corinthians 3:13-15).
Even though it is not the will of the
Father that any man should perish, it appears in scripture repeatedly that it
nevertheless is a very real possibility.
While most of the dire warnings about the consequences of transgressing
the laws of Moses are found in the Old Testament, even Jesus admonishes us to:
"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the
way is easy that leads to
destruction, and those who enter
by it are many." (Matthew
7:13)
And he reminds us that:
"Many are called, but few are
chosen." (Matthew 22:14)
"Know you not that you are the
the Spirit of God dwells in
you? If any man defiles the
is holy, which temple you
are." (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
You may recall my conclusion earlier (p.
84-5) that only God is immortal.
Immortality of the soul, we found, was essentially a Greek idea and not
one in the Judeo-Christian tradition. (See page 66 supra.) To reinforce this interpretation about the
nature of immortality let us go back to the creation story found in the second
chapter of Genesis. In the very center
of the Garden of Eden were two trees: one which was called the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, and the other the tree of life. After Adam and Eve (i.e. mankind) ate the
fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they were banished from
paradise so they would not also be able to eat the fruit from the tree of life:
"Then the Lord God [Elohim] said:
'Behold, the man has
become like one of us, knowing
good and evil; and now,
lest he put forth his hand, and
take also of the tree of
life, and eat, and live forever,
therefore [let us send]
him forth from the Garden of
Eden, to till the ground from
whence he was taken.' So he drove
out the man; and at the
east of the Garden of Eden he
placed the cherubim, and a
flaming sword which turned every
way, to guard the way to
the tree of life." (Genesis
3:22-24)
Nonetheless, it is possible for men and
women to choose life, to follow their higher angels, and so to return to their
former status as a companions of God in their original state before the
fall. For Christians this means to die
to the old self and to be reborn as the spiritual Self, to become one with the
Christ, even as he is one with the Father.
As Jesus prayed:
"That they may all be one; even as thou,
Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they also may be in
us, so that
the world may believe that thou hast sent
me."
John 17:21
For Hindus this means that one must learn
to identify one's real self with the Atman at the center of one's being, who in
turn is one with Brahman. In a story
told in one of the Upanishads by a father to his son, Svetaketu:
"When Svetaketu was twelve years old he
was sent to a
teacher, with whom he studied
until he was twenty-four.
After learning all the Vedas [the
Hindu scriptures], he
returned home full of conceit in
the belief that he was
consummately well educated, and
very censorious.
His father said to him, 'Svetaketu, my child, you who
are so full of your learning and
so censorious, have you
asked for that knowledge by which
we hear the unhearable,
by which we perceive what cannot
be perceived and know
what cannot be known?'
'What is that knowledge, sir?' asked Svetaketu.
His father replied, 'As by knowing one lump
of clay
all that is made of clay is
known, the difference being
only in name, but the truth being
that all is clay - so,
my child, is that knowledge,
knowing which we know all.'
But surely these venerable teachers of mine
are
ignorant of this knowledge; for
if they possessed it they
would have imparted it to
me. Do you, sir, therefore give
me that knowledge.'
'So be it,' said the father . . . And he
said, 'Bring
me a fruit of the nyagrodha
tree.'
'Here is one, sir.'
'Break it.'
'It is broken, sir.'
'What do you see there?'
'Some seeds, sir, exceedingly small.'
'Break one of these.'
'It is broken, sir.'
'What do you see there?'
'Nothing at all.'
The
father said,
'My son, that subtle essence which you do not
perceive there
in that very essence stands the
being of the huge nyagrodha tree.
In that which is the subtle
essence all that exists has its self.
That is the True, that is the
Self, and thou, Svetaketu, art That.'
(From the Chandogya
Upanishad as found in A. Huxley, op. cit., p.3-4)
Just as Christ and the Father for
Christians are one being, so for Hindus the Atman and Brahman are one. Just as Jesus, the Christ, admonishes his
followers to become one with him and the Father, so does Hinduism teach the
necessity of its followers to become one with the Atman
(God within you) who in turn is
one with Brahman (the Father). Hindus
express this fundamental identity by the words spoken above by the father to
his son: "tat tvam asi"
(Thou art That.) In the words of Shankara, the great Hindu
saint and philosopher of the ninth century:
"Liberation cannot be achieved except by the perception
of the identity of the individual
spirit with the
Universal Spirit. It can be achieved neither by Yoga
(physical training), nor by Sankhya (speculative
philosophy), nor by the practice
of religious ceremonies,
nor by mere learning . . . The
wise man is one who
understands that the essence of
Brahman and of Atman is
Pure Consciousness, and who
realizes their absolute
identity. The identity of Brahman and Atman is affirmed
in hundreds of sacred
texts." (As found in "ibid", p.6)
But intellectual acceptance of the identity
of man with the Christ within who in turn is one with God is still not
sufficient for liberation. As Shankara continues to tell us:
"The truth [about the nature] of Brahman may be
understood intellectually. But (even in those who so
understand) the desire for
personal separateness is
deep-rooted and powerful, for it
exists from beginingless
time. It creates the notion, 'I am the actor, I am
he who
experiences.' This notion is the cause of bondage to
conditional existence, birth and
death. It can be removed
only by the earnest effort to
live constantly in union
with Brahman. By the sages, the eradication of this
notion and the craving for
personal separateness is called
Liberation." (ibid p.6-7)
However , since it is highly unlikely that
anyone can achieve salvation or liberation by his own efforts, it is necessary
that there appear from time to time those individuals (whether God Himself or
lesser gods incarnated in the form of a man or merely spiritually and morally
advanced humans) to serve as
examples, as showers of the way, whereby the great mass of humanity might be
lifted up and inspired by their life, their teaching and heroic acts.
Whether from legend, mythology or recorded history there have therefore
appeared those who have known and
exemplified the reality of the
immanence of God within each of us.
Thus when the god, Saturn, was cast out of
heaven by his son, Jupiter, he descended to earth to found
In the mythology and legends of Hinduism
the god Vishnu incarnated (for the eighth time) "as
The establishment of Judaism, its precepts
and laws, the formation of the Hebrew people into a formidable and coherent
fighting force, the worker of miracles who made it possible for them to escape
the yoke of the Egyptians after 430 years of subjugation - all revolve around
the man, Moses (who was born circa 1370 BC if the date of the Exodus occured in 1290 BC as now generally believed). Although no divine incarnation or
supernatural birth for Moses is asserted by the Judaiac
scriptures, his rescue from an ark of bulrushes near the bank of the
encounter with the Lord came when
he was 80 years old and living in the
The date of birth of the prophet Zoroaster
is uncertain. "Pliny the Elder,
following Aristotle, asserts that Zoroaster lived six thousand years before the
Trojan War. Direct Zoroastrian tradition
places him between 600 and 583 B.C." (See John A. Hardon,
opus cit., p. 206)
while some modern scholars
estimate his birth around 1,000 B.C. (see p. 65 supra). In any event in the
writings attributed to him (which are part of the Zoroastrian scriptures known
as the Avesta") he tells about the revelations
received by him from Ahura Mazda (the "Lord
Wisdom"). In contrast to the
worship of the forces of nature prevalent at that time he "proclaimed that
there was one God alone, who was holy and almighty. Every man was faced with one supreme duty: to
choose between truth and falsehood. By
his own witness Zoroaster chose truth and on this foundation built his message
of conversion." (ibid) Although
there are relatively few extant followers of Zoroastrianism, his philosophy had
a profound influence on Western thought including Greeks such as Plato and
Aristotle and the eschatology found in the Judeo-Christian scriptures.
The fifth and sixth centuries B.C. produced
a remarkable outpouring of the Spirit in the persons of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) in
as "Christ" (Greek) or
"Messiah" (Hebrew) refers to "the anointed one". Gautama was also
called "Bhagavat" ("the blessed
one"), and he called himself, "Tathagata"
("the one who has arrived"). (See ibid p.99). Although he was the son of a wealthy Indian
king, at the age of twenty-nine he forsook wife and family "to find, in
his own words, 'the incomparable security of a Nirvana free
from birth' and endless
reincarnation." (ibid, p.100)
When years of study with Hindu masters of
yoga and rigorous fasting and ascetic practices suggested by others proved
fruitless, he struck out on his own. One
day when he was in his thirty-sixth year "as he sat in meditation under a
wide-spreading bodhi tree, the light suddenly
dawned" (ibid). As he explained his enlightenment: "In
my emancipated self arose the knowledge of my deliverence.
... Ignorance was dispelled, knowledge welled up. Darkness disappeared, light
had risen." (ibid, p.101).
Thereafter until his death forty-five years later he instructed others
on his four noble truths and the eightfold path to salvation. His last words reportedly were:
"Behold now brethren, I
exhort you, saying, 'Decay
is inherent in all component
things!' Work out your
salvation with diligence."
(ibid, p.102).
Today his followers number around 300 million,
and Buddhism forms the dominant religion in the countries of
the study and practice of Zen
Buddhism is even making inroads in the Western world.
Confucius (K'ung-Fu-Tze
in Chinese) was no doubt the most influential and revered figure in Chinese
history. Neither he nor his followers
made any claim to a divine incarnation nor are his teachings (mostly written
down by others after his death) considered to be supernatural revelations like
the Hindu Vedas, the Judeo-Christian scriptures, or the Koran of Islam. Furthermore, his disciples created no
temples, creeds or ecclesiastical organization.
Therefore, "Some historians prefer to consider Confucianism neither
a religion properly so called nor a system of philosophy, but a way of life
that for over two thousand years has inspired the religious sentiments of the
Chinese people and given them ethnic solidarity." (ibid, p.156). Confucius was nonetheless a remarkable man
who by his life and example inspired those around him. As the "minister of justice in the
principality of Lu, [his] adminstration brought on an
amazing change of manners. Men were
recognized for their faithfulness and sincerity, and women for their chastity
and submissiveness. Merchants dealt
honestly with their customers and employers with their workmen." (ibid,
p.158)
In contrast to the outwardly focused social
and ethical behavior taught by Confucius his contemporary, Lao- Tsu, the founder of Taoism, taught "that the
individual should ignore the dictates of society and seek only to conform with
the underlying pattern of the universe, the Tao ('The Way'), which can neither
can be described in words nor conceived in thought. To be in
accord with Tao, one has to 'do
nothing' ('wu-wei'), that is, nothing strained,
artificial, or unnatural. Through
spontaneous compliance with the impulses of one's own essential nature and by
emptying oneself of all doctrines and knowledge, one achieves unity with the
Tao and derives from it a mystical power (T^).
This power enables one to transcend all mundane distinctions, even the
distinction of life and death." (from Funk & Wagnall's 1993
Encyclopedia as recorded on Microsoft's CD-ROM, "Encarta")"Among
native Chinese schools of thought the influence of Taoism has been second only
to that of Confucianism." (ibid).
The most dominant and influential
personality in the last 2,000 years (and arguably that ever lived) was Jesus of
Little is known of his early life from the
New Testament gospels, but some scholars believe that both he and his cousin,
John the Baptist, and their families were members of the ascetic Jewish sect
known as the Essenes. In any event one of the
scriptures attributed to them ("The Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs" written circa 130 B.C.) "was widely used for two or three
centuries by early Christian congregations as one of their own sacred
documents." (Martin A. Larson, "The Essene
Heritage", Philosophical Library, NY, 1967, p.22). Furthermore, prophesies contained in these
writings remarkably parallel events in the life of Jesus as recorded in the
Christian synoptic gospels. For example,
in this document attributed to the Essenes we find:
"In thee shall be fulfilled the prophecy of heaven
concerning the Lamb of God, even
the Saviour of the world,
that spotless shall He be
delivered up for transgressors,
and sinless shall He be put to
death for ungodly men in
the blood of the covenant, for
the salvation of the
Gentiles and of
Satan] and them that serve
him."
"This [doctrine of vicarious
atonement] is the central doctrine of Christianity; the Essene
god-man is the 'Saviour of the world' who gave his
blood as an atonement for the elect to take their guilt upon himself and so
accomplish their redemption." (ibid p.112). The same work not only prophesized that the
god-man (whom they call "The Teacher of Righteousness") would be put
to death by hanging from a tree but that he would be resurrected from death,
ascend into heaven and send his Holy Spirit to spread like fire upon the
non-Jewish world.
"the Most High . . . shall enter into
the front of the
temple and there shall the Lord be treated
with outrage,
and he shall be lifted upon a tree [the
cross]; and the
veil of the temple shall be rent, and the
Spirit of God
[the Holy Spirit] shall descend upon the
Gentiles as fire
poured forth; and he shall arise from the
grave, and shall
ascend from earth into heaven; and I know
how lowly He
shall be upon the earth, and how glorious in
heaven." –ibid
We have already recounted how after Jesus'
death and resurrection the Holy Spirit descended upon his disciples like
tongues of fire (p. 33 supra). Through
them and other converts like
As a final example of men whose lives have
profoundly affected not only those with whom they had personal contact but
succeeding generations as well, we choose the prophet Mohammed, who was born in
Mecca between 570 and 580 A.D. Although
uneducated, he was solitary and contemplative by nature. One night in the year 610 (when he was
between 30 and 40 years of age) in a cave outside
'Read, for thy Lord is the most
bounteous, who teacheth
man that which he knew not.' ...
The voice which to
Mohammed first sounded like the
'reverberating of bells'
was soon identified as that of
[the archangel] Gabriel."
(Encyclopedia
Since
he was unable to write down what he heard, he memorized what he he heard and taught his followers to do the same. "When the prophet died, the oracles were
found on scattered bits of leather, ribs of palm leaf, and even on
stones." (Hardon, op.cit.,
Vol 2, p.70)
It
wasn't until thirty years after his death that an official compilation of his
utterances was decided on which
we know today as the Koran.
"The impact of his personality, the
trust he engendered in his followers, the enthusiasm he awakened in those with
whom he came in contact, are all unmistakable. ... Even at the height of his
glory Mohammed lived a simple, unpretentious life. His behavior has been imitated by millions
upon millions of men and women, in different places and times, who looked upon
him as the
perfect man." (Encyclopedia
Today
his followers worldwide number over one billion and are increasing rapidly. "Mohammedanism [therefore] is the most
powerful force among the living religions outside of Christianity, and to many
observers its greatest competitor for the spiritual domination of the
world." (Hardon, op.cit.,
p.66).
Thus, throughout history there have
appeared those whose words and acts have inspired others to live more
spiritually aware, God-centered and other-centered lives. In fact nearly all world religions teach that
we should subordinate our own wills to the will of God, and that we should
"do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
We have already alluded to the parallel
between the teachings of Hinduism and Christianity concerning the identity of
God transcendent and God immanent (i.e. between Brahman and Atman on the one
hand and between the Father and the indwelling Christ on the other). We should also note a parallel in the lives
of many of the founders of world religions.
Prior to their going forth into the world to teach and preach they
retired from the world and had a personal encounter with
the supernatural (usually with
either God, an angel or the devil).
Thus Gautama, the
Buddha, spent six of the seven years prior to his enlightenment in a hermitage
and even after his solitary enlightenment under the bodhi
tree he reputedly sat motionless under the tree for thirty-five days before "the
god Brahma descended from the zenith to
implore that he should become the
teacher of gods and men." (Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a Thousand
Faces", Bollingen Series XVII, Princeton Press,
1968, p.33)
When Moses received his calling from the Lord
at the age of eighty, he was alone in the wilderness of the
he neither ate bread or drank
water. And he wrote upon the tables the
words of the covenant, the ten commandments." (Exodus 34:28)
After Jesus was baptized in the river
encounter with the archangel
Gabriel, he was alone in a cave outside the city of
Thus, in his own way each of these founders
of world religions re-enacts what Joseph Campbell in his "The Hero with a
Thousand Faces" calls "the cosmogonic
cycle". This is similar to the
cosmic cycle described earlier beginning in this case, however, in the world, then
ascending to the realm of the supernatural world, and finally after attaining
the prize (e.g. enlightenment, the Word of God, or overcoming all temptations)
returning to earth to share what he has attained or learned with his fellow
man.
Likewise, the heroes of myth and legend
allegorically re-enact the same cosmogonic
cycle. Regardless of culture, time or
place, the trials and tribulations of legendary heroes, their eventual success
in obtaining the prize (e.g. the golden fleece, the water of immortality,or the holy grail) and their return in triumph
to their fellow countrymen combine to form "one composite adventure ...
[and thus the hero is] the world's symbolic carrier of the destiny of
Everyman." (Joseph Campbell, op.cit., p.36).
"Whether the hero be ridiculous or
sublime, Greek or barbarian, gentile or Jew, his journey varies little in
essential plan. Popular tales represent
the heroic action as physical; the higher religions show the deed to be moral;
nevertheless, there will be found astonishingly
little variation in the
morphology of the adventure, the character roles involved, the victories
gained." (ibid, p.38).
"The cosmogonic
cycle is presented with astonishing consistency in the sacred writings of all
the continents, and it gives to the hero a new and interesting turn; for now it
appears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but rediscovery. The godly powers sought and dangerously won
are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time. He is 'the king's son' who has come to know
who he is and therewith has entered into the exercise of his proper power -
'God's son', who has learned to know how much the title means. From this point of view the hero is symbolical
of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden within us all,
only waiting to be known and rendered into life." (ibid, p.39).
So even though the cyclical path of the
hero begins on earth and ends with his triumphant return back to the earth, it
is in reality only a rediscovery, a mirror image, a recollection, of his
original fall from paradise to earth and his eventual return to his Father's house.
As the risen Christ through John reminds the angel of the church at
"Remember then from what you have
fallen, repent and
do the works you did at first."
(Revelation 2:5)
Similarly, the Lord admonishes Job to
remember his origin when he speaks to him out of the whirlwind:
"Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the
earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who
determined its measurements -
surely you know! [emphasis
added] Or who stretched the line upon it? On what
were
its bases sunk, or who laid its
cornerstone, when the
morning stars sang together and
all the sons of God
shouted for joy?" (Job
38:4-7)
If Job had possessed wisdom (or better, had
Wisdom
possessed him) he would have been
able to answer:
"The Lord created me at the beginning
of his work, the
first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the
first, before the beginning of
the earth. When there were
no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs
abounding with water. Before the mountains had been
shaped, before the hills, I was
brought forth; .... when
he marked out the foundations of
the earth, then I was
beside him, like a master
workman." (Proverbs 8:22-30 RSV)
It is not only the mythical hero or an historical
world redeemer, however, who experiences such primordial recollections. In one of Plato's essays Meno
asks Socrates:
"What do you mean that what we call
learning is only a
process of recollection? Can you teach me how this is?"
Socrates responds by taking an
uneducated slave boy from Meno's household and by
merely asking him questions causes him to discover for himself what the length
of one side of a square is whose area is eight. (We continue to use this
Socratic method in teaching even today.
The very word "education" comes from two Latin words,
"e" and "ducare", meaning
"to draw forth out of".) He explains this ability of the mind to
solve a problem it apparently has never thought about by the knowledge inherent
in the soul:
"The soul, then, as being immortal,
and having been
born again many times, and having
seen all things that
exist .... has knowledge of them
all; and it is no wonder
that she [i.e. the soul] should
be able to call to
remembrance all that she ever knew
.... about everything;
for as all nature is akin, and
the soul has learned all
things, there is no difficulty in
her eliciting, or as men
say learning, out of a single
recollection all the rest
.... for all enquiry and learning
is but recollection."
(from Plato's essay "Meno", Great Books, Vol. 7, p. 180).
By tapping our soul memories, therefore, we
can discover that the ultimate (at least the potential) destiny of us all is to
ascend back to the Father's house from whence we as spirit beings first decended. Hence once
again we encounter the paradoxical idea of the circularity of time (See p. 42-3
supra). As the medieval theologian,
Thomas Acquinas, expressed it:
"The name of being wise is reserved to
him alone whose
consideration is about the end of
the universe, which end
is also the beginning of the
universe." (From his "Summa
Contra Gentiles" as found in
Joseph Campbell, op. cit.,
p.269)
And as Jesus tells his disciples prior to
his death and resurrection:
"I came from the Father and have come
into the world;
again, I am leaving the world and going to
the Father." (John 16:28)
Similarly, Teilhard
de Chardin describes the ultimate
destiny of mankind as the Omega
point (See p.20 supra.),
that "center of centers"
to which we are all being drawn
by the universal force of God's
love and from which point,
based on the circularity of time,
all the sons of God
began their descent at the
beginning of the universe into
ever denser levels of materiality
through the process of
involution. He who realizes his true self as the
spiritual Self, as one with the
Christ within him, can
therefore agree with
"in Christ Jesus you are all sons of
God, ..... that
you are all one in Christ
Jesus." (Galatians 4:26-8 RSV).