A CASE FROM REINCARNATION BY FAMOUS THINKERS

About 18 months ago the CBS Sunday show did a survey and discovered that 1 in 5 Americans believe in reincarnation and 1 in 10 believe they can remember a past life they lived? Check out what famous people like Jesus of Nazareth, Rumi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Gustav Jung, and others said. Certainly food for thought. Jesus of Nazareth: “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” And the disciples answered: “Some say that thou art Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” “Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist. And if you will receive it, this is Elijah who was destined to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Matthew 16:13-14; 11:11, 14-15 Hermes Trismegistus: The Soul passes from form to form; and the mansions of her pilgrimage are manifold. Thou puttest off the bodies as raiment; and as vesture doest thou fold them up. Thou are from old, O Soul of man, yea, thou art from everlasting. Egyptian Hermetic Fragments Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai: All souls are subject to the trials of reincarnation. They know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it. They do not know how many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo. The souls must re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in them; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth. The Zohar or Kabalistic Book of Light Rumi: There have been thousands of changes in form. Look always to the form in the present; for, if you think of the forms in the past, you will separate yourself from your true Self. These are all states of the permanent which you have seen by dying. Why then do you turn your face from death? Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form. Like the sun, only you set in the West can you rise again with brilliance in the East. Mathnawi Ralph Waldo Emerson: It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do no die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new strange disguise. Jesus in not dead; he is very well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go. “Nominalist and Realist” Benjamin Franklin: Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall in some shape or other always exist; and, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected. Letters Thomas Huxley: In the doctrine of transmigration, whatever its origin, Brahmanical and Buddhist speculation found, ready to hand, the means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the Cosmos to man. None but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the group of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality. “Evolution and Ethics” Carl Gustav Jung: My life as I lived it had often seems to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding test was missing. I encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me. When I die, my deeds will follow along with me—that is how I imagine it. I will bring with me what I have done. In the meantime it is important to insure that I do not stand at the end with empty hands. “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”