There Is No Death: The Soul Never Dies And The Body is Never Really Alive

                                                                   

                                                    DG Farnsworth

         "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." —Isaac Bashevis Singer, Stories from Behind the Stove

If you realize the resurrection of all in nature, reincarnation remains at center stage. Reincarnation was very prominent and well respected in the first 500 years of Christianity. In his "Confessions" even St. Augustine wonders about the viability of reincarnation. Emperor Constantine omitted the earliest references to reincarnation in the New Testament -- when Christianity replaced Rome's official religion. This concept of reincarnation proved too threatening to the stability of the empire. Citizens might act less obedient and law-abiding if they believe they had another chance to live--than those who believe in a single Judgment Day. In the 6th Century (553 A.D.) the 2nd Council of Constantinople made it heresy by declaration: the Christian Church officially banished the reincarnation doctrine. The banishment reflected it had too much Eastern influence. By doing so, the church could increase its power and tighten its grip upon the human mind: by informing people they must accomplish salvation in just one incarnation -- and not reaching salvation in one lifetime meant going to Hell. Basically, reincarnation threatens the church; for it undermines its growing power and influence by allowing followers too much time to seek salvation. 

The repression of past-life teachings has been political, not spiritual. Recall the story of The Blind Men from John 9: 1-2, NIV: "As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.'" This offers two possibilities to Jesus: the man was either blind because of his parents or he was blind because of sins that were his own -- karma. So, if our souls do not exist before this birth and if the man was born blind, then why or where could he have committed sins that caused blindness? He had a previous life. John 3, 3 from the Bible solidifies the argument: "No one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again." If one is programmed to think he or she may not get a second chance...well, one can readily and easily put all kinds of guilt upon you: give one a damnation feeling, collect tithes in abundance -- all the things one is not worthy of or doesn't deserve. Early Christians believed with honor reincarnation proved formidable (before increased organization of religion). People often remark one could not believe in reincarnation and be a Christian both. In essence, it is better to be good...do good wherever that may be in lieu of having to return to do everything over, again, just to get it right. The likes of Carl Jung feed these beliefs: "My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was an historical fragment, and excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me."

Reincarnation remains much easier to grasp once one understands "we are not our bodies"--that in the field of our own primal awareness, the body arises as a manifestation. The soul is forever evolving -- with each soul having (most likely) no beginning and no end. In conclusion, desire fuels all our births and deaths. And our desires do not end at death: they continue and request urgently and forcefully another body, to behave as a device to fulfill our desires. What is at the end of desires is spiritual wisdom. And in a peace beyond all understanding, there we abide in God. The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson express it well: "The soul comes from without into the human body, as into a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal...It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals...and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise."