The question of reincarnation was
self-evident to many great poets and philosophers of the western world like
Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Grillparzer, Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Voltaire and
many others. The knowledge of the reincarnation of the soul is also
self-evident to the religions of Buddhism and Hinduism, for Chinese
universalism and for the old Egyptian religion. The thought of reincarnation is
represented in all large esoteric groups like the followers of Rudolf Steiner,
Theosophists, Rosicrucians, the Lorber groups and many others.
Which spiritual laws are
connected with reincarnation? Does the teaching of reincarnation answer, for
example, the questions concerning the law of karma, the law of cause and
effect? Does it also possibly answer the questions concerning the fate of a
person, divine justice and the questions concerning life after death? Why is
the memory of our former earthly lives hidden from us? Are there differences in
the knowledge held by the Christian and Eastern religion regarding
reincarnation? Do these create a better understanding of God, a better
understanding for everything related to creation and to the purpose of our
lives? It has been proven that the knowledge of re-embodiment was common to the
first Christians.
The Bible has often been revised
but we are still told about reincarnation in a few passages. For example in
Math.16:14 and Mark 8:27-28, where Jesus asks the question: "Who do the
people say that l am?" In answer to this, the people told Him that some
people think He is John the Baptist who has returned (this means, reincarnated)
and others think He is Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the great prophets. In any
case, the knowledge of the repeated earthly embodiment of the soul was also widespread
in Christianity in the first few centuries of our chronology.
Something decisive occurred which
led to the beginning of the condemnation and removal of the teaching of
reincarnation from the teachings of the church. It was the Synod of the Eastern
Church in the year 543 in Constantinople. There the teaching of
reincarnation was rejected with nine
anathemas. Anathemas are bans or curses. This occurred accordingly to the
instructions of the East Roman Emperor, Justinian l, who considered himself the
supreme ruler of the church.
The following is one of the bans:
"If a person states or is of the opinion that the souls of people have
been pre-existent, inasmuch as they were former spiritual beings and holy
powers who became bored with God's presence and turned to evil, for which the
divine love became cold in them and they received the name "souls",
being sent down into a human body as punishment, he is banned". This means
that he is cursed.
Expressed more simply, this means
that the Catholic Church teaches: "He who believes that the souls of
people have already existed in earlier times as pure beings of the heavens and
who have fallen from God and who then incarnated in human bodies, is
cursed".
Emperor Justinian ordered these
bans. The Synod of the Eastern Church in the year 543 A.D. confirmed them and
ten years later Pope Vigilius signed these bans, even though they were not
dealt with in the general council of Constantinople in 553 A.D. (according to
council reports).
Emperor Justinian's personality,
the general war conditions in the Fast Roman Empire and the threatening danger
of an additional domestic political-religious war in Palestine, formed the political
motive for the removal of the knowledge of reincarnation.
New dogmas had to be created and
old ones extended, in order to fill the gap left by the damnation of
reincarnation and in order to solidify the teaching about a single life of a
human being. These dogmas concerned especially original sin, the creation of
the soul at the time of conception, mortal sin, judgement day, purgatory and
eternal damnation. At the same time this underlined the need for priests as
mediators for the salvation of the people because this entire teaching system
could never have functioned without them.
So, the Christians who lived in
the first five centuries knew about the pre- existence of the soul. About
repeated incarnations and the return of all souls to the pure spiritual
heavenly worlds.
We possess the immortal soul in
the innermost being of our human body. It is a fine-material body which was
once at home in the pure heavenly worlds as a pure spiritual being, in unity
with God, our origin.
What has become of this knowledge
that was drawn from the first original texts of Christianity?
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