Afterlife

"Blavatsky began by exploding the theory that men are born equal. If this one life were all, then this great error ought, in common justice, to be absolute truth, and every man should possess common rights in the community, and one man ought to be as good as another. If every soul born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course of time pass away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only fitted to obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule? One is born with a tendency to vice and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a genius, another is born to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social foundation ever be built up on this utter disregard of nature? How treat, as having right to equal power, the wise and the ignorant, the criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once it would be very unjust to build on any other foundation. Re-incarnation implies the evolution of the soul, and it makes the equality of man a delusion. In evolution time plays the greatest part, and through evolution humanity is climbing. "Souls while eternal in their essence are of different ages in their individuality.""

"Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered. O Jatavedas, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers... let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him With thine auspicious forms, o Jatavedas, bear this man to the region of the pious... Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jatavedas then."

"It claims that infancy brings to earth, not a blank scroll for the beginning of an earthly record, nor a mere cohesion of atomic forces into a brief personality, soon to dissolve again into the elements, but that it is inscribed with ancestral histories, some like the present scene, most of them unlike it and stretching back into the remotest past. These inscriptions are generally undecipherable, save as revealed in their moulding influence upon the new career; but like the invisible photographic images made by the sun of all it sees, when they are properly developed in the laboratory of consciousness they will be distinctly displayed. The current phase of life will also be stored away in the secret vaults of memory, for its unconscious effects upon the ensuing lives."

"According to a Harrris Poll taken in 1998, 23 percent of American public professed belief in reincarnation, including 23 percent of Christians and 32 percent of non-Christians. Similar surveys recently taken in the United Kingdom indicate that 30 to 35 percent of the British population believe in reincarnation."

"I (my ghost) was taken to the place where the sun sets (the west).... While at that place, I thought I would come back to earth again, and the old man with whom I was staying said to me, “My son, did you not speak about wanting to go to the earth again?” I had, as a matter of fact, only thought of it, yet he knew what I wanted. Then he said to me, “You can go, but you must ask the chief first.” Then I went and told the chief of the village of my desire, and he said to me, “You may go and obtain your revenge upon the people who killed your relatives and you.” Then I was brought down to earth.... There I lived until I died of old age.... As I was lying [in my grave], someone said to me, “Come, let us go away.” So then we went toward the setting of the sun. There we came to a village where we met all the dead. … thence I came to this earth again for the third time, and here I am. I am growing through the same that I knew before."

"As far back as I can remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence."

"The case of Thunder Cloud exemplifies another recurrent theme: that those who die in battle are especially privileged or likely to be reborn with their memory of previous life intact."

"It may be that no life is found, Which only to one engine bound Falls off, but cycles always round."

"Consider for example the past-life memories of people under hypnosis. Whether these are actual memories of previous lives or not has yet to be proved, but the fact remains, the human inconscious has a natural propensity for generating at least apparent memories of previous incarnations. In general, the orthodox psychiatric community ignores this fact. Why?"

"Two Voices: Or, if through lower lives I came-- Tho' all experience past became, Consolidate in mind and frame-- I might forget my weaker lot; For is not our first year forgot? The haunts of memory echo not."

"As we live through thousands of dreams in out present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life... and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real life of God."

"The idea of reincarnation forms an important principle in the religion of Hinduism adhered to by the great majority of the inhabitants of India...Its doctrines and practices do not differ much today than what they were thousands of years ago. The persuasions of Muslim and Christian conquerors and missionaries have had little impact on the continuing belief of all Indians in the basic ideas of Hinduism."

"Yoga says instinct is a trace of an old experience that has been repeated many times and the impressions have sunk down to the bottom of the mental lake. Although they go down, they aren’t completely erased. Don’t think you ever forget anything. All experiences are stored in the chittam [mind]; and, when the proper atmosphere is created, they come to the surface again. When we do something several times it forms a habit. Continue with that habit for a long time, and it becomes your character. Continue with that character and eventually, perhaps in another life, it comes up as instinct."

"Opinions differ whether human souls can be reincarnated on the earth or not. In 1936 a very interesting case was thoroughly investigated and reported by the government authorities in India. A girl (Shanti Devi from Deli) could accurately describe her previous life (at Muttra, five hundred miles from Deli) which ended about a year before her 'second birth'. She gave the name of her husband and child and described her home and life history. The investigating commission brought her to her former relatives, who verified all her statements. Among the people of India reincarnations are regarded as commonplace; the astonishing thing for them in this case was the great number of facts the girl remembered. This and similar cases can be regarded as additional evidence for the theory of the indestructibility of memory."

"Galileo's head was on the block... The crime was looking up for truth... And then you had to bring up reincarnation... How long 'til my soul gets it right... Can any human being ever reach that kind of light... I call on the resting soul of Galileo... King of night vision, king of insight... I'm not making a joke, you know me...I take everything so seriously... If we wait for the time 'til all souls get it right... Then at least I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation... Can any human being ever reach the highest light... Except for Galileo — God rest his soul... Except for the resting soul of Galileo... King of night vision, king of insight."

"Thus, we should find that the law of Reincarnation was rejected by the Council of Constantinople in the sixth century A.D., in spite of the fact that the Gospel itself contains words of Christ that have obvious reference to the law of Reincarnation. If people would take the trouble to study seriously the fundamental Teaching of Christ, and if possible in the original language of the Gospels instead of being satisfied with the school textbooks, they would discover a new meaning in the words, and the true, great Image of Christ would be revealed to their spiritual sight."

"Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. The child weaned from mother’s milk Now drinks wine and honey mixed. God’s joys move from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed And roses, up from ground."

"Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge.. It has nothing to do with individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further – when man dies his karma lives and creates for itself another carrier."

"Unending Love I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times... In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever. Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain, It's ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time. You become an image of what is remembered forever. You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played along side millions of lovers, Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting, the distressful tears of farewell, Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever. Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man's days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours - And the songs of every poet past and forever."

"Some one happened to mention to me that a certain Madame Blavatsky had just arrived in London, bringing with her a new religion... I set off to call upon her... I asked her to explain her new religion... I explained to her my difficulties, which she proceeded to solve by expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma. They jumped instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just God, of whom I had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I gather, the more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief that such provide the only rational explanation of this life, the only natural hope in the world to come. I have offered those beliefs to very many people whom I discovered to be on the same quest as I had been. I have never once had them rejected by any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them passed on and on by these people to others, forming enormous ramifications which became lost to view in the passage of time and their own magnitude."

"Belief in reincarnation is present in all schools of Buddhism, initially stemming from Buddha’s experience of enlightenment. He concluded that three things are necessary for the emergence of a human psyche and the formation of a human embryo; the parents sexual intercourse; ovulation in the mother; the presence of a being in the intermediate state who has the karma to be reborn to those parents at the time. While such beings are influenced by their karma, or actions in their past lives, they also choose the parents to whom they shall be born. So reincarnation is not a matter of predetermination where the future is totally determined by past events."

"A fully developed psychology will not exist until reincarnation is accepted as a fact."

"The theory of metempsychosis plays almost as great a part in Greek as in Indian religious thought. Both Pythagoras and Empedocles claimed to possess the power of recollecting their past births. Metempsychosis is refered to in many places in Pindar, and, with the complementary doctrine of Karma, it is the key-stone of the philosophy of Plato. The soul is for ever travelling in a “cycle of necessity”. The evil it does in one semicircle of its pilgrimage is expiated in the other. “Each soul”, we are told in the Phaedrus, “returning to the election of a second life, shall receive one agreeable to his desire”. But most striking of all is the famous apologue of Er the Pamphylian, with which Plato appropriately ends the Republic […] “In like manner, some of the animals passed into men, and into one another, the unjust passing into the wild, and the just into the tame.”’"

"Although the law of Reincarnation was a cornerstone of every ancient religion of the East, and of course the religion of the Jews was no exception, already in the days of Jesus this law was badly distorted by the priesthood and maintained its purity only among individual sects."

"Serious scientific study of reincarnation has spanned the last several decades. There are many interesting cases of children remembering details they could not have obtained from anywhere else. For example, a report published in 2016 in the journal Explore titled “The Case of James Leininger: An American Case of the Reincarnation Type” published by Jim B. Tucker, MD from the University of Virginia, explains, Numerous cases of young children who report memories of previous lives have been studied over the last 50 years. Though such cases are more easily found in cultures that have a general belief in reincarnation, they occur in the West as well."

"Sikhs believe in reincarnation. This means when you die, your soul moves on to another body. This cycle of dying and being born again happens over and over again. It goes on until with God’s help you become close enough to God to break out of the cycle."

"Soul is older than body. Souls are continually born over again into this life. The idea of Reincarnation was spread widely in Greece and Italy by Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Virgil and Ovid. It was known to the Neo-Platonists, Plotinus and Proclus. Plotinus says: "The soul leaving the body becomes that power which it has most developed. Let us fly then from here below and rise to the intellectual world, that we may not fall into a purely sensible life by allowing ourselves to follow sensible images....""

"In the New Testament we have plenty of proof regarding this knowledge of the Jews; Christ Himself confirms it. For instance, in the Gospel of St. Matthew (17:10-13), "And his disciples asked him, saying, why then say the scribes that Elias must come first? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist."...St. John (9:1-3): "As Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Indeed, how could a person blind from birth be responsible for his sins without the law of Reincarnation! There are other very clear hints, but you should find them for yourself."

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."

"Morya, Aum, Agni Yoga (1936)"

"You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.""

"Even reincarnation is still regarded as a curiosity or a superstition. All the indications regarding the laws of nature have yet to lead to significant conclusions. I am repeating this not for you but for the timid ignoramuses who attempt to cover crime in a cloak of irresponsibility. How they dread death! In fact, they are even afraid to cross to the other side of the river. Their ignorance needs to be disturbed once in a while. 458."

"Through the travail of the ages, Midst the pomp and toil of war, Have I fought and strove and perished countless times upon this star. In the form of many people In all panoplies of time Have I seen the luring vision Of the Victory Maid, sublime. I have sinned and I have suffered, Played the hero and the knave; Fought for belly, shame, or country, And for each have found a grave... I cannot name my battles For the visions are not clear, Yet, I see the twisted faces And I feel the rending spear. I have fought with gun and cutlass On the red and slippery deck, With all Hell aflame within me And a rope around my neck... So as through a glass, and darkly, The age long strife I see Where I fought in many guises, Many names, but always me... And I see not in my blindness What the objects were I wrought, But as God rules o'er our bickerings, It was through His will I fought. So forever in the future, Shall I battle as of yore, Dying to be born a fighter, But to die again, once more."

"The Pythagorean doctrine prevails among the Gauls' teaching that the souls of men are immortal, and that after a fixed number of years they will enter into another body."

"Believing in reincarnation makes a difference to what Sikhs believe about death. They say it is like going to sleep. You go to sleep when you are tired, and wake up ready for another day. In the same way, you die, and are born again to a new life. Of course, friends and relations are sad that the person they love is not with them, but Sikhism teaches them to remember that the person has gone on to another life."

"Late planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator Carl Sagan, who was well known for being a “hard” and rigid scientist, was actually a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Not many scientists even entertain the possibility that what we call “paranormal” may in fact be real and in some way provable using the scientific method. Sagan was quite famous, yet his interest in the paranormal was and is not really known amongst the general population. He once wrote that “there are three claims in the (parapsychology) field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study with the third being that young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.” He wrote this in 1996. It’s now more than two decades later and the number of examples and evidence accumulated suggesting that reincarnation, or at least some form it, is real is quite eye-opening."

"The company of disembodied souls is distributed in various orders. The law of some of them is to enter mortal bodies, and after certain prescribed periods be again set free. Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Christ, preached amongst the Hebrews the Platonic idea of the pre-existence and rebirth of human souls."

"The strength of the doctrine of reincarnation lies in itself, in its appeal to our intellectual and logical faculties, in its own persuasiveness, in the manner in which it answers problems, in the hope that it gives, in the light that it sheds upon collateral questions of human life, and indirectly upon the problems of the physical world surrounding us. It is through and by reincarnation as a natural fact, that we learn the beauty of the inner life and thereby grow, developing a larger comprehension, not only of ourselves, but of the loveliness inherent in the harmony of the universal laws."

"I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life."

"The human soul continues to live after death precisely in the same manner as before. The souls of animals also, to a certain degree, seem to have been considered as having an existence independent of the body, and continuing after its death. Here and there traces have also been found of a belief in the migration of souls, both between dead and living men, and between men and animals."

"One may know how loftily the Teachers have regarded the transition to future manifestations, and least of all have They been concerned about a cemetery site. The attitude toward death is a very important indicator of the character of the Teaching, for in it is contained the understanding of reincarnation. I urge you to consider reincarnation strictly scientifically. If you can propound any other structure of the universe, We shall reserve for you a chair as professor of theology and promise you a first-class funeral; for indeed in the eyes of the enlightened you will have already decided to die. Read attentively the writings of the Teachers published by you, and you will be amazed at how unanimously in all ages They speak about the change of life. The Path of Light will appear when you venture to look scientifically and without prejudices."

"Just think! Only in the sixth century A.D. was the dogma of Reincarnation rejected by the Second Council of Constantinople! Thus the contrivances of greedy and petty minds were stratified and become dogma for the following generations which did not yet dare to think independently... And there are so many affirmations in the Gospel about Reincarnation, actually in the words of Christ himself. The Fathers of the Church committed great sin by eliminating this law of the Highest Justice from the consciousness of the flocks entrusted to them. But we are no less sinful in our passive indulgence, and non-resistance to evil."

"I died as a mineral and became a plant,I died as a plant and rose to animal, I died as an animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?"

"At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images 'projected' at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation. I pick these claims not because I think they're likely to be valid (I don't), but as examples of contentions that might be true. The last three have at least some, although still dubious, experimental support. Of course, I could be wrong."

"Reincarnation is one of the most extraordinary and potentially significant religious concepts. I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence."

"I am confident in the belief that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil."

"There is no death. How can there be death if everything is part of the Godhead? The soul never dies and the body is never really alive."

"John the Baptist was according to the Jews a second Elijah; Jesus was believed by many to be the re-appearance of some other prophet. (See Matt, xvi, 14, also xvii, 12.) Solomon says in his Book of Wisdom: "I was a child of good nature and a good soul came to me, or rather because I was good I came into an undefiled body.""

"To Indians the idea of the transmigration of the soul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and so from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished as a sentimental exaggeration. When I am in close touch with Nature in the country, the Indian in me asserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joy of life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tiny bird."

"Frequently you hear absurd tales of how there occur simultaneous incarnations of one and the same person—a conclusion both ignorant and harmful. Deniers of incarnation make use of such fictions to dispute the possibility of reincarnation. Besides, they forget the reason—which somewhat lessens the guilt—namely imaginative invention. Certain people remember the details of a definite epoch; when they dream of being a well-known person, their remembrance of the dream molds the imagining of an incarnation. The resulting error is in the person, but not in the epoch. A child imagines himself a field marshal, and such a representation already sinks into his Chalice.Many remember their past lives, but through obscuration of consciousness they call forth their own past imaginings. One needs to be careful also not to censure too greatly the mistakes of others. 491."