35. Reincarnation (I)

A well-known actress, not too long ago, declared in the interview granted to a magazine: “I’m Catholic, but I believe in reincarnation. I found out that this is my third life. First, I was an Egyptian princess. Then, a midwife of the Roman Empire. And now I reincarnated as an actress.” The faith in reincarnation, of Hindu origin, is becoming more widespread in the world. We will devote two chapters to remove this belief.

The faith in reincarnation, then, is a global phenomenon. And since this is an excellent article of consumption, both radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and more recently, the cinema, are permanently responsible for have it among their offerings. But why does this doctrine seduce people?

Reincarnation is the belief according to which, on the death of a person, his soul is separated from the body momentarily, and after some time it takes another different body to be reborn on earth. Therefore, the men would spend many lives in this world.

And why the soul needs to reincarnate? Because in a new existence he must pay for the sins committed in this life, or pick up the prize of having had good conduct. The soul is, they say, in continuous evolution. And the successive reincarnations allow progress to reach perfection. Then it becomes a pure spirit, you no longer need more reincarnations, and plunges forever in the infinity of eternity.

This blind law, which obliges us to reincarnate in an unavoidable fate, is called the law of “karma” (=act). For this doctrine, the body would be nothing more than a disposable gown that expires and that the immortal soul woven by necessity, and that once worn leaves to weave another. There is an even more chilling form of reincarnation, called “metempsychosis,” according to which if one has been a bad sinner his soul can reincarnate into an animal, and even into a plant! Those who believe in reincarnation believe that this offers advantages. In the first place, gives us a second (or third, or fourth) opportunity. It would be unfair to risk all our future at once. In addition, he would anguish to have to settle for one existence, sometimes mostly sad and painful. Reincarnation, on the other hand, allows you to start again.

On the other hand, the time of a single human life is not sufficient to achieve the necessary perfection. This requires a long apprenticeship, which is acquired little by little. Even the best men are, at the moment of death, are not in such a state of perfection. The reincarnation, on the other hand, allows you to achieve that perfection in other bodies.

Finally, the reincarnation helps to explain certain incomprehensible facts, as for example that some people are more intelligent than others, that the pain is so unequally distributed among men, the sympathies or antipathies between people, that some marriages are unhappy, or early death of children. All this is best understood if they are paying debts or reaping merits of previous lives.

Reincarnation, therefore, is a mesmerizing and seductive doctrine, because it seeks to “solve” intricate issues of human life. In addition, because it is exciting for the curiosity of the common people to discover that one was famous in antiquity. This expectation helps, in some way, to forget our inconsequential life, and escaping from the routine and gray existence in which we are sometimes immersed. But how was the belief in reincarnation born?
Ancient civilizations such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese and Persian, did not know each other. The enormous effort that was dedicated to the building of the pyramids, tombs and other funerary constructions, shows that they believed in a single earthly existence. If you would have thought that the deceased would reincarnate in another, it would have made the colossal waste of temples and other decorative objects with which they prepared for their life in the hereafter.

The first time that appears the idea of reincarnation is in India, in the 7th century a.C those primitive men, closely linked to the agricultural mentality, saw that all things in nature, after completing its cycle, returned to it. The seasons of summer and winter leave and come on time. The fields, flowers, floods, everything had a circular movement of eternal return. This realization led man to think, that he, upon dying, should again come back to earth. But as they saw that the body of the late decomposed, they imagined that it was the soul that came back to take a new body to continue living. With time, they took advantage of this belief to also clarify certain vital issues (such as the human inequalities, mentioned above), which were inexplicable to the nascent and fragile mentality of that time. When Buda appeared in India, in the 5th century a.C., he adopted the belief in reincarnation. And from him, it spread to China, Japan, Tibet, and later in Greece and Rome. And so, it penetrated also into other religions, that assumed it among the basic elements of their faith.

But the Jews never wanted to accept the idea of reincarnation, and in their writings, they rejected it absolutely. For example, Psalm 39, which is a meditation on the brevity of life, says: “Lord, don’t look at me with anger, so that you can rejoice, before I go and no longer exist” (v.14). Also, the poor Job, in the midst of his terrible disease, pleads with God, to whom he believed guilty for his suffering: “Depart from me. So, I can smile a little, Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the region of darkness and shadows” (10,21.22). And a more modern, the Book of Wisdom, teaches: “The man, in his evil, you can remove his life, it is true; but it cannot return to the spirit that was, or releasing the soul snatched away by death” (16.14). The belief that we are born once, also appears in two episodes of the life of King David. The first, when a woman, in an audience granted, makes you think: “We all have to die, and we will be like water poured out that can no longer be collected  2 Sm” (14.14). The second, when on the death of the son of the monarch exclaims: “While the child was alive, I fasted and wept. But now that he is dead for what I’m going to fast? Perhaps can I do it again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Sm 12,22.23).

We see, then, that in the Old Testament, and even if one did not know the idea of the resurrection, he knew at least that from death he will not be ever return to the earth.