Part 16 (1/2)

There is one very important point to consider; and this is that in the earlier centuries, outside the circles of initiation, there was not that precision which the present-day teaching of theosophy has given to the doctrine of Reincarnation; this latter, in the mind of the people, became confused with the doctrine of Pre-existence, which affirms that the soul exists before coming into the present body, and will exist in other bodies after leaving this one. This confusion has continued up to the present time, and we find schools of spiritualism in England and America, as well as in other countries, teaching that existence on earth has been preceded and will be followed by a great number of existences on the invisible planes.

In reality, this is the doctrine of Rebirths, though there is nothing precise about the teaching. Whether the soul has a single physical body, or takes several in succession, it is none the less continually evolving as it pa.s.ses into material vehicles, however subtle the matter be; the difference is, therefore, insignificant, unless we wish to enter into details of the process involved, as was the case in the West in the early centuries of Christianity.

Did the Fathers of the Church teach Pre-existence? There can be no doubt on this point. In a letter to St. Anastasius, Rufinus said that ”this belief was common amongst the early Christian fathers.”

Arn.o.bius[197] shows his sympathy with this teaching, and adds that St.

Clement, of Alexandria, ”wrote wonderful accounts of metempsychosis”; and afterwards, in other pa.s.sages of the same book, he appears to criticise the idea of the plurality of lives. St. Jerome affirms that ”the doctrine of transmigration has been secretly taught from ancient times to small numbers of people, as a traditional truth which was not to be divulged.”[198] A. Franck quotes this pa.s.sage on page 184 of his _Kabbale_; Huet, too, gives it in _Origeniana_.[199] The same Father proves himself to be a believer in Pre-existence, in his 94th _Letter to Avitus_, where he agrees with Origen on the subject of the interpretation of a pa.s.sage from St. Paul,[200] and says that this means ”that a divine abode and true repose are to be found in Heaven,”

and ”that there dwell creatures endowed with reason in a state of bliss, before coming down to our visible world, before they fall into the grosser bodies of earth....”

Lactantius, whom St. Jerome called the Christian Cicero, though he opposed pagan doctrines, maintained that the soul was capable of immortality and of bodily survival only on the hypothesis that it existed before the body.[201]

Nemesius, Bishop of Emissa in Syria, stoutly affirmed the doctrine of Pre-existence, declaring that every Greek who believed in immortality believed also in the pre-existence of the soul.

St. Augustine said: ”Did I not live in another body, or somewhere else, before entering my mother's womb?”[202]

In his _Treatise, on Dreams_, Synesius states that ”philosophy a.s.sures us that our past lives are a direct preparation for future lives....”

When invited by the citizens of Ptolemais to become their bishop, he at once refused, saying that ”he cherished certain opinions of which they might not approve, as, after mature reflection, they had struck deep root in his mind. Foremost among these, he mentioned the doctrine of Pre-existence.”

Dr. Henry More, the famous Platonist of the seventeenth century, quotes Synesius as one of the masters who taught this doctrine,[203]

and Beausobre reports a typical phrase of his,[204] ”Father, grant that my soul may merge into Light and be no more thrust back into the illusion of earth.”

St. Gregory of Nysa says it is absolutely necessary that the soul should be healed and purified, and if this does not take place during its life on earth, it must be accomplished in future lives.

St. Clement of Alexandria says that, although man was created after other beings, ”the human species is more ancient than all these things.”[205] In his _Exhortations to the Pagans_, he adds:

”We were in being long before the foundation of the world; we existed in the eye of G.o.d, for it is our destiny to live in him. We are the reasonable creatures of the divine Word; therefore, we have existed from the beginning, for in the beginning was the Word.... Not for the first time does He show pity on us in out wanderings. He pitied us from the very beginning.”

He also adds:[205]

”Philolaus, the Pythagorean, taught that the soul was flung into the body as a punishment for the misdeeds it had committed, and his opinion was confirmed by the most ancient of the prophets.”

As regards Reincarnation, _i.e._, the descent of the human soul into successive physical bodies, and even its temporary a.s.sociation with the physical bodies of animals, more than one Christian writer advocated this teaching.

Chalcidius, quoted by Beausobre in the book just mentioned, says:

”The souls, that are not able to unite with G.o.d, are destined to return to life until they repent of their misdeeds.”

In the _Pistis Sophia_, a Christian treatise on the mysteries of the divine Hierarchies and the evolution of souls in the three worlds, we find the doctrine of Rebirth frequently mentioned:

”If he is a man who (after pa.s.sing out of his body)[206] shall have come to the end of his cycles of transmigrations, without repenting, ... he is cast into outer darkness.”

A few pages earlier, in the same work, we find:

”The disincarnate soul which has not solved the mystery of the breaking of the bonds and of the seals is brought before the virgin of light, who, after judging it, hands it over to her agents (_receivers_), who carry it into a new body.”

Let us now see what Origen says on the matter[207]:

”Celsus, then, is altogether ignorant of the purpose of our writings, and it is therefore upon his own acceptation of them that he casts discredit and not upon their real meaning; whereas if he had reflected on what is appropriate[208] to a soul which is to enjoy an everlasting life, and on the idea which we are to form of its essence and principles, he would not so have ridiculed the entrance of the immortal into a mortal body, which took place, not according to the metempsychosis of Plato, but agreeably to another and higher order of things.”