CHAPTER 1 -

Do we reincarnate again and again?

 

 

 

As far as the doctrine of reincarnation is concerned, we can find many logical inconsistencies and question marks in it. The same also applies to the research that has been done on reincarnation and that has been done using hypnosis and spontaneous recollections. We will study this in the light of the next examples:

 

Why do we not remember? The first and certainly the most justifiable question concerning our former lives is; “Why do we not usually remember anything about them?” If we really have behind us a chain of past lives, would it not be logical that we could remember many details of these past lives such as family, schools, residences, jobs, old age? Why do we not remember these things from our former lives, even though we can easily remember hundreds, even thousands of events from this life? Therefore, is this not a clear piece of evidence that those former lives never existed, because otherwise we certainly would remember them? 

   If you are a member of the New Age movement and you believe in reincarnation, you should ask yourself why you do not remember anything about these former lives. Take also into consideration the fact that several supporters of reincarnation deny the possibility that we could remember these former lives. Even H.B. Blavatsky, the founder of the theosophical society, who perhaps more than anybody else made reincarnation known in the Western countries in the 1800s, wondered why we cannot remember:

 

Maybe we can say that in the life of a mortal person, there is no such suffering of the soul and body that would not be the fruit and consequence of some sin that has been committed in a previous form of existence. But on the other hand, his current life does not include even one memory of those. (1)

 

Population growth. The second problem we have to face is population growth. If reincarnation is true and someone always achieves moksha and leaves the cycle, the number of people on Earth should decrease – or at least it should not increase. In other words, there should now be fewer people on Earth than earlier.

   Why is the situation just the opposite? When the population should all the time decrease because people leave the cycle, it is, instead, increasing all the time, so that there are now about 10 times more people than 500 years ago and about 30 times more than 2,000 years ago. Actually, right now there are more people on Earth than ever before and their number has increased all the time through the centuries.

   As a matter of fact, we would not have to go further back than some thousands of years – basing calculations on the current population growth – before we would achieve the zero point where there would be no people. (Compare Genesis  1:28, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth...”).

   Population growth is a real problem from the point of view of reincarnation – especially if some souls are freed from the cycle. This does not support reincarnation, but contradicts it.

 

Oriental and Western reincarnation. One feature of the Oriental view is that a man can become an animal or even a plant, while in the Western countries, humans are assumed to remain humans. The older and more original Asian view includes all forms of life; that is why it is called the transmigration of souls. For example, Olavi Vuori (p. 82, Hyvät henget ja pahat) provided this description of the Chinese popular religion:

 

Chinese popular religion includes a view about reincarnation. After having gone through all tribunals, the soul will reincarnate to the world. The form in which a person will reincarnate depends on the person’s previous life. Those who have treated domestic animals badly will be born as domestic animals. For this reason, the religious Chinese do not kill animals. Laotse already advised, “Be friendly to animals. They can be your ancestors."

 

We might ask why Western believers have not placed much emphasis on this side? Very seldom – or never – have we read that someone has been a fish or a bacterium, for example, in his previous life; and who would remember such a former life as an animal? Another question that seems obvious is: If we lived as bacteria or even trees during our previous lives, what did we learn then? Certainly, bacteria and trees have no understanding. Many people believe that they were kings or other notable people but in studies of reincarnation, we do not usually hear that someone has been an animal in his former life – these kinds of stories are completely missing.

   We might justifiably wonder why there is such a big difference between the Western and the Oriental view. Isn’t that another proof that people do not know any concrete facts? Their ideas are based on beliefs that are difficult or impossible to prove true.

 

Interval between reincarnations. Another contradiction within reincarnation is the different intervals between reincarnations, the time that is spent in the other world. Opinions greatly vary, depending on the culture or society. The following examples illustrate these differences:

 

- In the community of Druus in the Middle East, people believe in direct reincarnation; there is no interval.

- In the Rose Cross movement, reincarnation is expected to happen every 144 years.

- Anthroposophy believes in reincarnation at an interval of 800 years.

- Reincarnation researchers estimate that the interval is usually between 5 and 60 years.

 

So a good question is: Which of these beliefs is right? Are none of them right? Do these contradictions not prove that these people have no factual information about this, and demonstrate that it is a question of everyone’s own false beliefs? Perhaps these intervals and former lives never existed.

   Another more serious problem is that if we have been in the other world tens or hundreds of years and even several times, why do we not have any recollections from them? Why are we as unaware of these intervals in the spirit world as we are of our former lives? Some explain this absence of memory by saying that our memory has maybe been wiped away. But if our memory was wiped away how can we prove that reincarnation takes place? If we do not remember anything from our former lives and the intervals between them, the evidence supporting reincarnation remains very meager.

 

Connection beyond the border and reincarnation. It is typical that many members of the New Age movement who believe in reincarnation also believe that they get messages from the spirits of the dead. They really believe that they can be in connection with the dead, even though they also think reincarnation is true. They may arrange special spiritualist sessions in which they believe they receive messages from people who have already moved beyond the border. For example, one of the best known mediums, the late Leslie Flint, established contact with such persons as Marilyn Monroe, Valentino, Queen Victoria, Mahatma Gandhi, Shakespeare, Chopin, and other famous people.

   What many members of the New Age movement do not take into account is how these two issues – reincarnation and contact with the dead – can be simultaneously valid. If we try to put them together we will only have a mess on our hands. We can see this from the next examples:

 

With whom might we be in contact? The first difficulty is identifying the person with whom we are in contact. If some person has behind him ten different incarnations on the Earth and he has just moved beyond the border as a person called Matthew, with which of these ten persons are we in contact?

   Look at the following list, which describes this. Incarnations have been arranged chronologically – only the names change during his different lives. His last incarnation on Earth was Matthew and the first one was Aaron. 

1. Aaron

2. Adam

3. Ian

4. Walt

5. Richard

6. Wayne

7. James

8. Edward

9. William

10. Matthew

 

The main problem is that since these ten persons are actually only one person, can we then be in contact with all ten persons or only with Matthew who lived last? Or does this same person beyond the border always present different roles according to what is needed, so that he is sometimes Matthew, sometimes Aaron, sometimes Richard, and sometimes somebody else?

   It is strange that those who believe they are in contact with people beyond the border do not generally ask these kinds of questions. They always believe they are in contact with those people they seek. However, as this example illustrates, this is quite unlikely.

 

What if the person has been reincarnated and is living on the Earth now? If we continue with the previous line of thinking, and consider the example of the same person who has been reincarnated ten times, now he’s back on Earth as Gary. This would be his eleventh reincarnation.

   The problem in this kind case is that if we now try to make contact with one of the ten persons before the current one (Aaron, William, etc, ending with Matthew), how can we succeed since the person is now on Earth? For example, the above-mentioned Leslie Flint believed to have been in contact with Marilyn Monroe and other famous people but if these people had already reincarnated back on Earth, how could this connection have been made? Should it not have been quite impossible? (It could have happened if Leslie Flint had met these people on Earth in their new incarnations.) Therefore, there are great problems if we try to put these two philosophies together.

 

Can a person be in contact with himself? We might also be faced with a situation in which Gary, the eleventh incarnation, were to contact one of his previous incarnations. It is really possible that he would try to have contact with one of his previous incarnations or even with all of them at the same time. The question is: how is it possible because this person himself is now on Earth and not beyond the border? This is a problem with two places: how can the same person be in two places at once? We can see that it cannot be possible.

 

Why are people still in the circle? One thought in reincarnation is that we are in a continuous circle of development, and that the law of karma rewards and punishes us according to how we have lived our previous lives. Civilized behavior and goodness should, therefore, constantly increase in the world as we develop.

   This is one major problem. The world is not going toward a better direction at all but toward the worse (as Paul said, "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 2 Tim 3:1,2). Crime rate is not decreasing but increasing. For example, you did not have to lock the doors or to use burglar alarms in the countryside in the past, but nowadays you do. Or, during the last century we experienced two of the most destructive wars in history that killed millions of people. If there has been any development in this area, it has been only in weapons and technology, not in people.

   On the other hand, if we have already reincarnated thousands of times, should all evil not have already been driven out? If bad karma together with illnesses, poverty, and other suffering is always the consequence of the wrong actions in our previous lives, should not all of us already have learned our lesson? So why are we still "in the cycle" and why has development not proceeded to increase the good if each of us have already had thousands of chances to learn from our mistakes? There is an apparent conflict between these two, and it is one of the most powerful objections to reincarnation.

 

Our life on Earth and beyond the border. Especially the Western idea of reincarnation says that we sometimes go beyond the border to spend time there after our death. Usually, when it is a question of life after death beyond the border, it is in the Western countries described as a place that is filled with harmony, peace, and love. For example, in well-known book Kuolemaa ei ole by Rauni Leena Luukanen this view is clearly presented. The next quote is from the book (p. 209, 221), where the writer’s supposed "grandmother" (In fact, it was a deceiving spirit who appeared as the grandmother of the writer) transmits a message from beyond the border through automatic writing. The message refers to life beyond the border, which is then compared with life on Earth, a loveless and cold environment:

 

    The love connects people. Words, gestures, and explanations are not needed. There is no physical love. All love is spiritual. People love each other in the same way regardless of whether they are men, women, or children. True love is like that even on Earth but is manifested in various ways because of our limited bodies.

   People on Earth live in a loveless and cold environment. On Earth, we learn, however, and here we must return again and again to learn the lesson of true love, to learn and to behave according to our development, serving and loving our neighbors.

   (…) On Earth one cannot imagine the love and beauty in the other reality. When people come here, they are surprised by the colors, peace, and beauty, which cannot be described with mere words.

 

However, if life beyond the border is like that (what about unrepentant evildoers who may have tortured others, people like Hitler who was guilty of killing millions; do they experience the same?) Why does not the same atmosphere prevail here on the Earth? If we all have been beyond the border where everything is different, why does not the same thing happen also here on Earth? This should not be a problem because it is a question of the same persons both there and here – only the place has changed.

   This is another problem with reincarnation. Why do the same people live in these two places in a different way (sometimes happy and sometimes miserable depending on the place)? It is an equally big problem since we do not even remember anything about these intervals or our previous lives.

 

Why be born on Earth if it’s not necessary? Especially in the Western countries they teach that life after death is happiness, peace, and freedom from all the chains of material things (we referred to this already in the previous paragraph), and that we can always choose when we will reincarnate on the Earth, especially "because of our mental growth." This can be seen, for example, in Mitä on New Age? (by Kati Ojala, p. 22). The book states that we can even choose the conditions of living when we reincarnate back on the Earth.

 

  Also because of them, we will leave the astral after a certain time and return to a lower level of vibration, into physical matter and a new incarnation. However, before that we will choose the circumstances and the period of our future life.

  (…) We choose our parents, friends, neighbors...

 

However, if life after death is all happiness and peace, why would we want to reincarnate back on Earth? If we know that there is suffering waiting for us because of bad karma (for example, Hitler and many other evildoers), nobody would want to reincarnate back on the Earth. We would rather spend "happy days" beyond the border – since we are selfish – and would not come back here. Then, the Earth would certainly be quite deserted and there would not be the current great multitude of people.

   It is also questionable that we would reincarnate back here because of our desire for mental development. This is questionable because perhaps 90% of people do not ever think about it. If it was the most important reason behind our reincarnation, it would certainly occupy our minds from the very beginning, but that is not the case.

   One problem that appears particularly in the Western view of reincarnation is that it is not in line with the original Asian view. In the East, the goal is to leave the cycle but why would they want to reincarnate on the Earth if they had already achieved their goal? They would achieve their goal simply by deciding not to be born on the Earth anymore. In the East, they do not believe in this possibility, and this view is again one of those contradictions that appear around the doctrine of reincarnation.

 

How does the law of karma work? If we look at the mysteries of reincarnation, one of them is the law of karma. According to the typical view, it should function so that it will always reward or punish people according to how they have lived their former life. If a person has done bad things or thought bad thoughts, the result of it will be negative; on the other hand, good thoughts will result in a positive development.

   However, the mystery is how any impersonal law can function like that. No impersonal power or law can think, differentiate between actions, or even remember anything what we have done – just like a book of statutes cannot do that: you always need an executor of the law, a personal being; mere law cannot do that.

   Neither can the impersonal law make any plans for our future lives or determine the conditions we will be born to and live in. These activities always require a person, and the law of karma is not a person. How can mere law function in the above-mentioned way?

   The second problem is that if the law of karma will reward and punish us always according to how we have lived in our previous lives, why can we not remember anything about our past? If we are punished because of our former life, we should also know why we are being punished. What is the basis of a law if the reasons for punishments are not clear? This is one of those mysteries and question marks that are connected to the doctrine of reincarnation.

 

What about the beginning? Above, we considered bad karma that is created only in this life on Earth. We learned that reincarnation means we return here to the Earth again and again, and that our reincarnations are always based on how we lived before. It is generally thought, at least in the East, that the karma of the previous lives determines our destiny and our role in this life. Because bad karma is the result of our previous lives, people try to get rid of it, especially in the East. Their goal is to be freed from reincarnation, so that they do not have to reincarnate on the Earth any more. For example, Buddha taught that the eight-part road is one of the ways to do this.

   One point people do not usually think about is the beginning. What was the beginning like, when no-one had yet lived on the Earth and there was no bad karma because of previous lives? Somewhere there must be a beginning, with nothing and no-one on the Earth.

   A good question is: what was the starting point? The verified history of the mankind does not go back in time for more than 5,000 years when farming, the ability to write, ceramics, buildings, and towns were created, nor can the globe, life on its surface, or the Sun be everlasting – otherwise the energy reserves of the Sun and thus life on the Earth would have ended a long time ago.

   So one mystery is how was bad karma born? How was it able to come on Earth because we did not have any preceding lives from which we could have gotten it? We are generally led to believe that we must, during this life, reap what we have sown in our previous lives but if in the beginning there were no preceding lives, how could this doctrine about the law of karma be true? Actually, this would mean that if we in the beginning had no bad karma from our previous lives, we would have then already been perfect, and there would not have been any need for the cycle of reincarnation. If it is true, how was the cycle created if only the bad karma from our former bad lives creates it and keeps it going? What was the initiator?

   These points may be explained by the next quote. It refers to how the cycle can perhaps start from the middle but it does not take into account the problem of the beginning. The author of this description discusses with Buddhist monks:

 

I sat in the Buddhist temple of Pu-ör-an with a group of monks. The conversation turned to the question of where does the spirit of man come from. (…) One of the monks gave me a long and detailed explanation about the great cycle of life that continuously flows through thousands and millions of years, appearing in new forms, developing either higher or coming lower, depending on the quality of individual actions. When this answer did not satisfy me, one of the monks replied, “The soul has come from Buddha from the western heaven."  I then asked, "From where has Buddha come and how does the soul of man come from him?" There was again a long lecture on the previous and future Buddhas who will follow each other after a long period, as an endless cycle. As this answer did not satisfy me either, I told them, “You start from the middle, but not from the beginning. You already have a Buddha who is born to this world and then you have another one Buddha ready. You have a complete person who goes through his cycle endless times.” I wanted to get a clear and short answer to my question: from where has the first man and the first Buddha come? Where has the large cycle of development started from?

  (…) None of the monks answered, they were all silent. After a while I said, "I will tell you this, even though you do not observe the same religion as I. The beginning of life is God. He is not like your Buddhas who as an endless series follow each other in the large cycle of development but He is eternally the same and unchangeable. He is the beginning of all, and from Him comes the beginning of a man’s spirit."  (…) I do not know whether my answer satisfied them. However, I got a possibility to speak to them about the source of life, the living God whose existence alone is able to resolve a question of the source of life and the origin of the universe. (2)