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."
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: