Understand death to better live your life

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Chapter 4: Reincarnation (first part)

“To be born, to die, to be reborn again and to progress unceasingly, such is the Law”

Allan Kardec

“Don’t cry anymore my little mama, I didn’t leave you forever. I’ll come back to you, little one, just like that.”

Little Alexandrina thus appeared to her mother in a dream, to announce her return. She had just been killed three days earlier, at the age of five, by meningitis.

Madame Samona does not believe in reincarnation. Moreover, her gynecologist, following a miscarriage the previous year, expressed serious reservations about her ability to carry a pregnancy to term. However, Alexandrina is not discouraged. She specifies, in another dream, the date of this return:

“Mom, before Christmas, I will be with you. »

But the story does not end there. Mom Samona does become pregnant and Alexandrina predicts a twin pregnancy:

“Mom, there is a second little girl in you. »

On November 22, Mrs. Samona gives birth, after 8 months of gestation, to two heterozygous twins (false twins). The smallest physically, turns out to be a real “copy-pasted” of the disappeared. Also, the parents, shaken, decide to rename her Alexandrina. She presents the same hyperaemia (redness) of the left eye, the same slight facial asymmetry, the same seborrhoea (probably an eczema) on the auricle of the right ear. This physical similarity is also psychological. Indeed, Alexandrina II, like her “predecessor”, is calm, a little introverted, does not want to play with dolls and hates cheese. She has “kept” this habit of washing her hands all the time. Alexandrina II remembers certain events experienced by the first, such as this family visit to Montreal, shortly before her death. When the Samonas announce this trip to their two daughters, now ten years old, Alexandrina, who like her twin sister, has never set foot in Quebec since birth, declares to her stunned parents:

– But, Mom, I know Montreal! Do you remember the big church, with on the roof, a huge statue of a man who opens his arms? Do you remember the lady with the big pimples on her forehead? And the little priests all in red?

This story, which takes place in Palermo, Sicily in 1910, was recorded in great detail by the girl’s father, a well-known doctor and scientist at the time. It was communicated to Dr. Innocenzo Calderone who published it in an Italian periodical “Filosofa della Scienza”. It also appeared in the “Journal du Magnétisme” French magazine of the time, of Dr. Gaston Durville. Finally, we find it in the work of Gabriel Delanne entitled “Documents to be used for the study of reincarnation”.

There are many more striking, much more recent and better documented facts. Social networks are teeming with them these days. It is estimated that over the past forty years, more than 2,500 children worldwide have made statements and provided clues relating to an alleged past life.

What does the theory of reincarnation or rebirth say?

The doctrine of the transmigration of souls or reincarnation is based on the idea that we are a “Spirit”, a “Soul” or, to speak scientific language, a “Consciousness” inhabiting a physical body which we reject at the moment of dead. According to the Bhagavad Gita, sacred text of Hinduism, this Spirit, after a certain time spent in the “beyond”, chooses a new garment, that is to say, a new physical body, to be reborn. Thus begins another life in the womb of a pregnant woman. In the example cited above, the rebirth occurred in the same family, which would be the exception rather than the rule. The same goes for the physical similarities between the two Alexandrinas. The time of incarnation varies according to theories and traditions. For some, it occurs during conception, that is to say at moment zero, when in a sexual relationship (or in vitro fertilization), the man’s spermatozoon fertilizes the woman’s egg. For others, it would be during the first trimester of pregnancy and, for a third group, at delivery, during the first cry of the newborn. Reincarnation must therefore be distinguished from the phenomenon of possession where an external entity, an intruder, after birth, temporarily takes the place of the spirit which already occupies the body of a child or an adult.

Each of us would have already lived many lives even if we have lost our memory of them. Just as we barely remember our dreams every morning when we wake up. Some individuals, in particular circumstances or using certain processes, manage to remember periods of their past existence(s). Reincarnation is a spiritualist concept that goes against the materialist thesis that we are only a physical body which annihilates at death. However, this theory has many nuances depending on the cultures and religions that profess it. Thus some religions claim that one can reincarnate in the body of an animal or a plant, while others deny this possibility. Moreover, in Buddhism, where the expression “rebirth” is used instead, it is not exactly the previous personality that is revived as such. It would be a “stream of consciousness” draining with him, the memory and the experience of the past incarnation or incarnations.

Why should we live so many times on earth?

According to the reincarnationist thesis, a single life on earth would be too short to allow the soul or spirit (the word matters little) to reach the knowledge, maturity, wisdom necessary before joining “the Creator” or “Consciousness”. universal”. Hence the need to return a certain number of times in order to acquire knowledge, but also to evolve and repair the faults committed in previous lives. The doctrine of reincarnation is intimately linked to the concept of “Karmed according to which our present life is the result of all our previous existences and that our future existences are conditioned by our actions, our thoughts and our emotions in the current incarnation. It is the Law of Causation which differs from predeterminism. If, in your current life, you harm someone, it is very likely that in your future existence, you will be placed in a position to do them good, in order to “purify your karma”. Reparation, rather than regret and forgiveness! There is no “sin” but faults or errors to be corrected and of which we pay the consequences. These faults result from a lack of maturity, from a misunderstanding of existence. Also the enlightened followers of reincarnation, they attach great importance to wisdom, knowledge, love and compassion. They attach themselves to the present, the only lever allowing them to shape the future. Life’s trials are seen as opportunities to learn and grow. As one only very rarely remembers one’s past existences, it is advisable to do good as much as possible in order to free oneself, in fine, from the cycle of incarnations, from “the wheel of successive lives”. “Samsara”, to use Buddhist terminology. At this time, we merge with the Universal Spirit or Cosmic Intelligence. Once again, “the word is not the thing” according to the expression of the sage Jiddu Krishnamurti who did not believe in reincarnation.

Some spirits having reached perfection, decide, out of compassion, to return to earth at different times in order to guide Humanity. These are the Bodhisattvas, the Avatars or Great Masters. These beings who are characterized by their humanity, their understanding of life and their great wisdom play an important role in the evolution of the world. Among the greatest are: Jesus Christ and Buddha.

Where does this theory of reincarnation come from?

For many researchers, the theory of reincarnation comes from the East and dates from around a millennium or more before the arrival of Jesus Christ. It is thus found in the three major religions of this geographical area: Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, which would have inherited it from Brahmanism.

For others, this belief has its origins in ancient Egypt and was taught in the “Schools of Mysteries” to which adherents of the Rose-Croix and Freemasonry claim today. Egypt would have drawn it from the survivors of Atlantis who came to settle there. It is about this mythical continent that disappeared after a great cataclysm, to which some historians refer, but whose existence has not been proven. Egypt would then have transmitted this belief to Greek civilization, mother of the Christian West.

In Ancient Greece, it was around the 6th century BC that the thesis of “metempsychosis” or transmigration of souls flourished. The Greeks believed that one could incarnate in an animal or a vegetable and on other planets. Plato mentions it in several of his writings, notably in “The Myth of Er”.

The Gnostics and early Christians or Church Fathers like St. Augustine, Clement of Alexandria and Origen seem to have adopted the doctrine of reincarnation. Let us quote the latter:

“As to why the human soul obeys sometimes evil, sometimes good, we must seek the cause in a birth prior to the current bodily birth. »

In the Bible, certain passages have been interpreted as allusions to reincarnation.

Nevertheless, during the Second Council of Constantinople which took place in 553 AD, the Catholic Church categorically rejected reincarnation in favor of the “dogma of the resurrection of the body”. The Cathars, a group of anti-Roman Christians believing in the theory of rebirth, were then declared heretics and exterminated in the Middle Ages, the period of the Inquisition and the Crusades.

(To be continued)

Dr Erold Joseph

Emails: eroldjoseph2002@yahoo.fr and eroldjoseph2002@gmail.com