Once Is Not Enough

Do you believe in reincarnation and rebirth?

Reincarnation: “to be made flesh again”, is a belief that some essential part of a living being (the spirit or soul, the ‘higher’ or ‘true’ self, the ‘divine spark’, or simply ‘I’) survives death to be reborn in a new body. Accordingly, a new personality is developed during each life in the physical world, but some part of the self remains constant throughout the successive lives.

Although Eastern religions accept reincarnation as part of their doctrine, Christianity has rejected it since 553 AD. Sufi mystics and poets in the Islamic tradition celebrate reincarnation:

‘I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear?
When was I less by dying?’

Reincarnation is a subject that has captured the popular imagination and the creative world. Many feature films revolve around the theme, including The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Karan Arjun (1995) and The Mummy Returns (2001) to name but a few.

THE FEAR OF UNHAPPINESS
The Upanishads hold that we live in accordance with our deep, driving desires and it is those desires that are predominant at the time of death that determine what our next life is to be. In short, we come back to earth to achieve the satisfaction of that desire.

Buddhism expounds that desire causes suffering. If we examine our thoughts and feelings we will see that there is not one moment when we are not continually wishing for something or pushing something away.

This constant state of craving and aversion doesn’t allow us to live in the moment. We are so afraid that we will experience unhappiness by not getting what we want, that we go to great lengths trying to make sure the world provides for us what we think we need to be happy — love, security, money, sex, recognition, whatever. 

As our egos drive us continuously in the search for happiness in the outside world, we create a lot of drama and pain in this journey. A turning point can come when we no longer look to the outside world to give us happiness and turn inward on our paths to find the Universal Consciousness.

FACT FINDING
Many Lives, Many Masters is the true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient, and the past-life therapy that changed both their lives.

As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr Brian Weiss, spent years in the disciplined study of human psychology.

He held steadfastly to conservatism in his profession, distrusting anything that could not be proved by traditional scientific method. But when he met his 27-year old patient, Catherine, in 1980, who came to his office seeking help for her anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias, it jolted him out of his conventional systems of thought and psychiatry.

For the first time, he came face-to-face with the concept of reincarnation and the many tenets of Hinduism, which, as he says in the last chapter of the book, “I thought only Hindus… practised.”

If you’d like to know who you were in your last life, log on to  http://www.thebigview.com/pastlife and just type in the date when you were born in your present life and share your experience with us.

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Thought for the Week

“I used to believe in reincarnation,
but that was long ago, in another life”
Dave Schinbeckler
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times