Part 16 (2/2)

The teaching of Origen is not easy to set forth clearly, for he is very reticent about many things, and employs a language to which present-day philosophy cannot always find the key; still, the teaching seems full and complete. It comprises pre-existence and even those special a.s.sociations of certain human souls with animal souls, which we have just spoken of and which form one of the chief mysteries of metempsychosis.

In the following words he explains the existence of souls in previous worlds:

”The soul has neither beginning nor end....

”Rational creatures existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in those (ages) which are invisible and eternal. And if this is so, then there has been a descent from a higher to a lower condition on the part not only of those souls who have deserved the change, by the variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones, although against their will. 'For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope'

(_Rom._, chap. 8, v. 20); so that both sun and moon and stars and angels might discharge their duly to the world, and to those souls who, on account of their excessive mental defects, stood in need of bodies of a grosser and more solid nature; and for the sake of those for whom this arrangement was necessary, this visible world was also called into being.

”This arrangement of things, then, which G.o.d afterwards appointed not being understood by some, who failed to perceive that it was owing to preceding causes originating in free will, that this variety of arrangement had been inst.i.tuted by G.o.d, they have concluded that all things in this world are directed either by fortuitous movements or by a necessary fate, and that nothing is in the power of our own will.”[209]

”Is it not rational that souls should be introduced into bodies, in accordance with their merits and previous deeds, and that those who have used their bodies in doing the utmost possible good should have a right to bodies endowed with qualities superior to the bodies of others?”[210]

All souls will arrive at the same goal;[211] it is the will of souls that makes of them angels, men or demons, and their fall can be of such a nature that they may be chained down to the bodies of animals.[212] Certain souls, on attaining to perfect peace, return to new worlds; some remain faithful, others degenerate to such a degree that they become demons.[213]

Concerning bodies, he says:

”The soul, which is immaterial and invisible in its nature, exists in no material place, without having a body suited to the nature of that place; accordingly, it at one time puts off one body which was necessary before, but which is no longer adequate in its changed state, and it exchanges it for a second.”[214]

Although _metensomatosis_ (re-embodiment of the soul), _i.e._, the true teaching of Origen, was not clearly expounded, it considerably influenced the early Christian philosophers, and was favourably received up to the time of its condemnation by the Synod of Constantinople. It appeared in most of the sects of that time and in those of the following centuries: Simonians, Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Gnostics, Manichaeans, Priscillianites, Cathari, Patarins, Albigenses, Bogomiles, &c....

Chivalry, too, in these ages of darkness and persecution, was an instrument for the dissemination of esoteric doctrines, including Reincarnation. The heart of this n.o.ble inst.i.tution consisted of students of divine Wisdom, pure devoted souls who communicated with one another by means of pa.s.swords.

The Troubadours were their messengers of the sacred Teaching, which they skilfully concealed in their songs, carrying it from group to group, from sect to sect, in their wanderings. ”Sons of the teachings of the Albigenses and of the Manichaean-Marcion tradition”[215] they kept alive belief in the rebirths of the soul, ”Izarn the Monk,” in his book _Historie d' un Heretique_,[216] apostrophised an Albigensian bishop in the following terms:

”Tell me what school it was in which you learnt that the spirit of man, after losing his body, pa.s.ses into an ox, an a.s.s, a sheep, or a fowl, and transmigrates from one animal to another, until a new human body is born for it?”

Izarn was acquainted with only so much of the teachings of the Troubadours as had got abroad and been distorted and misrepresented by ignorant or evil-minded persons; still, his criticism plainly shows traces of the teachings of palingenesis in the darkest and most blood-stained periods of the Middle Ages.

The Inquisition put an end to the Troubadours, though certain of them, Dante and St. Francis of a.s.sisi, for instance, by reason of their popularity or the special circ.u.mstances of the case, were left in peace. In Europe the secret teaching was continued by the Rosicrucians; the _Roman de la Rose_ is pure Hermetic esotericism. The struggle of official Christianity--that of the letter--against those who represented the spirit of the Scriptures, raged ever more bitterly, and the idea of Rebirth disappeared more and more from the Church; its sole representatives during the Middle Ages were St.

Francis of a.s.sisi, the learned Irish monk, Johannes Scotus Erigena, and St. Bonaventura, ”the Seraphic Doctor.” At the present time there remains nothing more than a disfigured and misunderstood fragment of this idea: the dogma of the _Resurrection of the Body_.

ISLAMISM.[217]

It has been said that the Arabs believed in Reincarnation before Mohammed forbade it. Some, however, think that the Koran was written only after the death of the Prophet, and that the latter committed nothing to writing, but taught by word of mouth. Besides, it is clear that Mohammedanism is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism and Christianity.

Like these, it teaches the Unity of the Whole, the divine Presence in all creatures and things (_Ubiquity_), Predestination, which is only one form of _Karma_, and Resurrection, which expresses one phase of Palingenesis.

Mohammed, like all great mystics, had discovered or learnt many of the truths of esotericism. The verses of the Koran that refer to the ”Companions of the Cave”[218] indicate that he knew more than he taught in public, and that there may be some ground for certain Asiatic nations holding the exaggerated belief that he was an Avatar,[219] the tenth incarnation of the _Aum_--the Amed, the Nations' Desire.[220] He was a Disciple.

Had there not been in the heart of Islamism a strong germ of esoteric teaching, Sufism could never have sprung from it. The Sufis are the saints of Mohammedanism, they are those who aspire after the union of the individual ”I” with the cosmic ”I,” of man with G.o.d; they are frequently endowed with wonderful powers, and their chiefs have almost always been thaumaturgists.

The _New Koran_, a modern exposition of part of the secret doctrine of Islam, shows the correctness of this view. In it we find the following pa.s.sages on the subject of Palingenesis:

”And when his body falleth off altogether, as an old fish-sh.e.l.l, his soul doeth welt by the releasing, and formeth a new one instead.

”The disembodied spirits of man and beast return as the clouds to renew the young streamlets of infancy....

”When a man dieth or leaveth his body, he wendeth through the gate of oblivion and goeth to G.o.d, and when he is born again he cometh from G.o.d and in a new body maketh his dwelling; hence is this saying:

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