Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
(From Shamanism to Quantum Science)
I would sing the pre-existence
Human souls, and live once o’er again
By recollection and quick memory
Of all that is passed since first we all began.
But all too shallow be my wits to scan
So deep a point and mind too dull to clear
So dark a matter. . . .
Tell what we mortals are. Tell what of old we were.
A spark or ray of Divinity
Clouded in earthly fogs, and clad in clay.
A precious drop sunk from eternity
Henry More (1614 – 1687)
Thanks to modern archeology and anthropology we can now discover when Shamans first began to record their experiences and concepts in the artifacts they created out of bone, stone, ivory and clay. Wikipedia gives us a pretty good description of Shamanism to get us started in our understanding of Shamanism and its history. [15]
“Shamanism (/ˈʃɑːmən/ SHAH-mən or /ˈʃeɪmən/ SHAY-mən) is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to encounter and interact with the spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.[2] A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing.[3]
The term "shamanism" was first applied to the ancient religion of the Turks and Mongols, as well as those of the neighboring Tungusic and Samoyedic-speaking peoples. The word "shaman" originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia and was introduced to the west after Russian forces conquered the shamanistic Khanate of Kazan in 1552. Upon learning more about religious traditions across the world, western scholars also described similar magico-religious practices found within the ethnic religions of other parts of Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas as shamanism. Various historians have argued that shamanism also played a role in many of the pre-Christian religions of Europe, and that shamanic elements may have survived in popular culture right through to the Early modern period. Various archaeologists and historians of religion have also suggested that shamanism may have been a dominant pre-religious practice for humanity during the Paleolithic.
Mircea Eliade writes, "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = 'technique of religious ecstasy'."[4] Shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment.[4]”
Wikipedia provides us with a brief outline as to the history of Shamanism in this quote from the same article as above:
“Shamanic practices may originate as early as the Paleolithic, predating all organized religions,[84][85] and certainly as early as the Neolithic period.[85] Early anthropologist studies theorize that shamanism developed as a magic practice to ensure a successful hunt or gathering of food. Evidence in caves and drawings on walls support indications that shamanism started during the Paleolithic era. One such picture featured a half-animal, with the face and legs of a man, with antlers and a tail of a stag.[86]
Archaeological evidence exists for Mesolithic shamanism. The oldest known Shaman grave in the world is located in the Czech Republic at Dolni Vestonice (National Geographic No 174 October 1988). This grave site was evidence of a female shaman.
In November 2008, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced the discovery of a 12,000-year-old site in Israel that is perceived as one of the earliest known shaman burials. The elderly woman had been arranged on her side, with her legs apart and folded inward at the knee. Ten large stones were placed on the head, pelvis and arms. Among her unusual grave goods were 50 complete tortoise shells, a human foot, and certain body parts from animals such as a cow tail and eagle wings. Other animal remains came from a boar, leopard, and two martens. "It seems that the woman … was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits", researchers noted. The grave was one of at least 28 graves at the site, located in a cave in lower Galilee and belonging to the Natufian culture, but is said to be unlike any other among the Epipaleolithic Natufians or in the Paleolithic period.[87]”
This article on Prehistoric Shamanism indicates that shaman symbols begin to show up in the archeological record 70,000 years ago which would be Homo sapiens not Homo erectus that would go even further back in time. [16]
“Upon entering trance, many people see geometric shapes, and these are formed entirely within the eye itself with no outside stimulus. Scientists call them phosphenes. Discovering these patterns allowed archaeologists to recognize them in the past and they turned up in contexts ranging from the first scratched art anywhere in the world, on 70,000 year-old stones from South Africa, to fine designs engraved onto Iron Age mirrors. It seems that, once we knew where to look, the shapes of trance were everywhere.”
Upon continuing my search on the Internet back in time, we find that Homo erectus was using Red Ochre which would possibly indicate use by a Homo erectus shaman. [17]
“During laboratory examination of the finds under a stereoscopic light microscope, a quartzite hammer stone was shown to have a peculiar line of reddish ochre along a well-defined and particularly striking side. Natural sediment retention in the cobble itself was excluded, and it suddenly became obvious that what was being observed was the outline of the ball and thumb of a 500,000 year-old hand.
The use surface was compatible with it being held in such a way that the hand would have covered the rest of the cobble, leaving only a partial outline in red ochre, echoing the famous hand prints in the cave paintings of France and Spain. The hammer stone user was right-handed and the resulting curved trace of color on the stone was caused by trituration (the process for reducing particle size of a substance by grinding) of ochre with liquid, showing Homo erectus was undoubtedly using this as a form of paint at the site of Lehberg. Constant use of the hammer stone in the same way and for the same purpose allowed the ochre particles to become ingrained along the same point where the hand would have rubbed against the stone.”
An article titled The World of Neanderthal People points that the Neanderthals, a species of Homo erectus, had shamans. [18]
“What did Neanderthal people do to combat illnesses and infirmities? Hunter-gatherers had a keen eye for medicinal plants found in the natural environment. They knew which plants or roots had narcotic properties to relieve pain, which could reduce fever, and which could aid digestion. Usually, a medicine woman was responsible for selecting these plants and roots and keeping them on hand in a medicine bag. Iza, the Neanderthal medicine woman in Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear had a medicine bag fashioned from the pelt of a beaver. Animal skin bags go far back in prehistory and were used for many purposes including cooking vessels, water bags, and tote bags. A modern day ox-hide milk bag appears on Botswana (Scott 335.) Medicine women could pull teeth too and maybe even fill them. An astonishing article on Stone Age dentistry appeared in a recent issue of the Washington Post.
The Neanderthal people were the first to bury their dead. The use of red ochre played a prominent role in Neanderthal burials. Bones found at many Neanderthal burial sites were stained with the red pigment. It is unknown if this furnished evidence of some sort of body painting or whether a red wrap originally covered the body but disintegrated with time, leaving its color on the bones. Evidence of prehistoric pollen from Shanidar cave in northern Iraq indicated that Neanderthal people used flowers in burial rites.
What religious ceremonies, if any, took place at Neanderthal burials is a matter of speculation. A shaman or magician, acting as an intermediary between the clan and the spirit world, may have officiated.”
Wikipedia pretty well sums it all up in its entry on Paleolithic religion; so it does seem that there were shamans before Homo sapiens evolved but we just don’t know much about them to inquire much further at this point. It is clear; however, that shaman communication with the spirit world or quantum world is going on here already maybe at least before 300,000 years ago. [19]
“Religious behavior is thought to have emerged by the Upper Paleolithic, before 30,000 years ago at the latest,[1] but behavioral patterns such as burial rites that one might characterize as religious - or as ancestral to religious behavior - reach back into the Middle Paleolithic, as early as 300,000 years ago, coinciding with the first appearance of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. Religious behavior may combine (for example) ritual, spirituality, mythology and magical thinking or animism - aspects that may have had separate histories of development during the Middle Paleolithic before combining into "religion proper" of behavioral modernity.”
“Likewise a number of archeologists propose that Middle Paleolithic societies - such as that of the Neanderthals - may also have practiced the earliest form of totemism or animal worship in addition to their (presumably religious) burial of the dead. Emil Bächler in particular suggests (based on archeological evidence from Middle Paleolithic caves) that a widespread Neanderthal bear-cult existed (Wunn, 2000, p. 434-435). Animal cults in the following Upper Paleolithic period - such as the bear cult - may have had their origins in these hypothetical Middle Paleolithic animal cults.[6] Animal worship during the Upper Paleolithic intertwined with hunting rites.[6] For instance archeological evidence from art and bear remains reveals that the bear cult apparently had involved a type of sacrificial bear ceremonialism in which a bear was shot with arrows and then was finished off by a shot in the lungs and ritualistically buried near a clay bear statue covered by a bear fur - with the skull and the body of the bear buried separately.[6]”
Psychoactive Drug Use in Prehistory
Today we seem to just be scratching the surface in our understanding that psychoactive drugs were used frequently by primitive societies in these early religious practices and up to the present day for enlightenment, as well as for entertainment. An archeological study referred to in the publication Ancient Origins shows that anthropologists and archeologists are becoming ever more involved in studying and testing for psychoactive drug use in prehistory.
“ Neanderthals on speed 60,000 years ago; Paleolithic art inspired by psilocybin or Amanita muscaria mushroom trips; and alcohol-fueled religious worship all over the world down through the ages – these are just some of the drug-taking behaviors reported in a new research paper which looked at decades of archaeological evidence to see how prevalent the use of psychoactive substances and other reality-bending practices was in prehistory. The paper also explores the link between religion and hallucinogens, stimulants, alcoholic beverages and other substances.
Elisa Guerra-Doce, an archaeologist at the University of Valladolid in Spain, says that altered states of consciousness were very nearly ubiquitous in societies throughout prehistory and history. An anthropologist who studied 488 human societies published a paper in 1973 that said 437 or 90 percent of them reportedly incorporated altered states of consciousness (ASC) into their fundamental belief systems.
Cohoba, a hallucinogen made of ground tree seeds, was used by Taino shamans. Users put cohoba powder on a carved pedestal and inhaled through the nose via an inhaler like this piece, from between 1000 and 1500 A.D. This carved stone shows a shaman or behique in a trance. Guerra-Doce looked at four types of archaeological evidence to do her study of altered states among prehistoric societies: ◦Fossils of burned, waterlogged or desiccated leaves, seeds, fruits or wood of psychoactive plants ◦Psychoactive alkaloids in skeletal remains and artifacts ◦Residues of alcoholic beverages ◦Depictions of drinking scenes or mood-altering plants inspired by altered states of consciousness
She found chemical residue from and parts of much psychoactive plant in levels of dwellings from various eras and in artifacts and human remains from thousands of years ago. People used alcoholic beverages nearly everywhere for thousands of years, mildly stimulating betel leaves in Asia as far back as 13,000 B.C., hallucinogens derived from the San Pedro cactus in the Andes as far back as 10,600 years, hallucinogenic mescal beans in Texas and northern Mexico 11,000 years ago, and peyote from between 9,000 and 5,600 years ago.
People also apparently got high on opium as the poppy was domesticated in the western Mediterranean 8,000 years ago; the mildly stimulating (among other benefits) coca leaves for tea and chewing in South America from at least 6,000 B.C.; cannabis (marijuana) in central Asia 7,000 years ago and hallucinogenic nightshade all over the world as long ago as 5,000 years. There were tobacco in the New World 4,000 years ago, hallucinogenic yopo snuff from the New World more than 4,000 years ago, and hallucinogenic mushrooms from various places and times around the world.
Guerra-Doce states in her report: Ethnographic studies have long been exploring the place of fermented beverages (beer, fruit wines, rice wine, mead, koumiss, pulque, chicha, among many others) and psychoactive plants, not only hallucinogenic but also narcotic and stimulant (peyote cactus, morning glories seeds, sacred mushrooms, ayahuasca or yaje brew, cohoba, Virola snuffs, coca, tobacco, mescal beans, San Pedro cactus, iboga, betel, kat, pituri, cannabis, nightshade plants, opium poppy, and ephedra, just to offer a few examples) within traditional societies in every corner of the planet, above all in the Americas.
Published in Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, Guerra-Doce’s article is titled 'Psychoactive Substances in Prehistoric Times: Examining the Archaeological Evidence' (PDF link). While the article focuses on entheogens, or plants and alcoholic beverages that 'generate the divine within,' it also refers to other practices that people used to alter their reality, including auditory stimulation, exposure to extreme temperatures, food restrictions, breathing techniques, extreme physical exercise, or meditation.”
Many people that have heard or studied about the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greek culture are unaware that under the Temple of Apollo two fault lines cross. Ancient writers wrote that vapors rose from the basement putting the Oracle into a trance from which she guided Greek civilization for thousands of years.
Early ancient writers said it was believed that hundreds of years prior to the Temple, there was a crevice at Delphi that lead into the underworld that was first discovered by goat herders. Goat herders observed that their goats were acting crazy at this spot and when they themselves were there they had visions and premonitions. Archeologists have found that Delphi was first occupied around 1600 BCE. Later the Temple of Apollo was built.
Up until recently scientific skeptics had denounced and scoffed about these claims until a group of scientists, archeologists and a science historian discovered that the ancients were correct. In his book titled The Oracle science historian William Broad and his scientist team prove the existence of the crossed fault lines and the presence of an intoxicating gas called ethylene in the rocks below the Temple.
As to the spiritual, political, and visions of the future guidance given by the Oracle, the scientists were skeptical. However, from their experiences in this investigation they were forced to recognize that there were other forms of valid inquiry besides scientific reductionism.
One scientist while sitting in his study, suddenly heard a booming voice in the room predicting the result of a coming horse race. Even though very skeptical of the experience, he went to the race and made a small 30 dollar bet on the very longshot horse called Hero. The horse won and he pocketed over 500 dollars. J
Broad wrote a short very moving epilogue tribute to the Oracle in his book. It is well worth repeating here. Keep in mind that the Oracle of Delphi was an institution of many female oracles, each who took turns guiding Greek culture through the ages.
“It was more than three millennia ago that the Oracle began speaking on behalf of the gods. For much of that time, she enjoyed a reputation that was literally stellar, joined as she was to Apollo and the wonders of the firmament. But then, as the light of Greek civilization faded, her image fell into various states of disrepair and left her stained, demonized, lost, mocked, romanticized, and, after the French excavations, pitied and at times ridiculed.
In a way, the four scientists brought her back to life. Gone were images of the waif, the fool, the knave. In the aftermath of the team’s find, she regained respectability as an intelligent woman and came back as – if nothing else – a serious historical figure. As the old claims took on new substance, so did the Oracle’s air of mystery ad spirituality, perhaps even some of her repute for navigating all time and space, for exploring the hidden powers of the mind. It was as if smart, sophisticated Clea had come back to preside over the sanctuary and wander the surrounding hills.
Be sensitive to the lessons of liberality, she seemed to be saying. Cherish your science but understand it as a finite guide to the immensities of time and space. It’s not a religion, not a worldview. Will it save you? Can it explain my insights and actions? With Delphi, do not let knowledge of the vapors blind you to other truths, other vistas. Look far. dance with the world rather than trying to explain it away. Consider the boat, not just the planks. Seize knowledge. Ask hard questions. But know, too, that your intellect is a small window and that its views can be surprisingly incomplete. Feel deeply. Revere truth in all its forms.
Yes, she seemed to be saying. You have discovered one of my secrets, I have others."
The Essence of the Shaman’s World
Carlos Castaneda in my opinion is a shaman’s shaman, an enigmatic individual, who in his own right has had a very positive impact on millions with his stories of the teachings of Don Juan Matus. The popular spiritual teacher, Deepak Chopra, writes on the back cover of Carlos’ last book The Wheel of Time. “Carlos Castaneda is one of the most profound and influential thinkers of this century. His insights are paving the direction for the future evolution of human consciousness. We should all be deeply indebted to him.”
We really don’t know if Don Juan is a real figure in our holographic reality or a symbolic figure arising in the consciousness of Carlos Castaneda. It’s as if the shamanic tradition with its millions of shamans, male and female, reaches out and pulls us into the shaman’s world through the Don Juan books. As I write this book, material has literally woken me up at two in the morning and compelled me to write down these words. I have found in writing my series of books that my subconscious gets so roiled and active that I have to quit writing for weeks, even months.
The Don Juan books certainly have had a powerful positive impact on my life when I devoured them in my twenties and they still do today. Throughout my life I have confirmed in personal experience what I have read. So it really does not matter in my opinion if Don Juan is a fictional character arising from quantum reality through the consciousness of Carlos Castaneda or a real living breathing individual tutoring Carlos on the Shamanic traditions of Southern Mexico.
We all should keep in mind like any other subject or discipline that only a few individuals really understand well the subject matter that they study. This certainly pertains to shamans past and present where you find corrupt dark shamans that have used psychoactive drugs to prey on students to control, manipulate and even rape. Just as in any other field there are charismatic frauds out to take advantage to fleece the unaware and the unprotected. Humanity like nature is a brutal mix of completion and cooperation where one is predator one moment and prey the next.
In the introduction to the Wheel of Time, Carlos has this to say about his experiences with Don Juan and the other shamans of southern Mexico that he came in contact with.
“In the most effective manner he could afford, Don Juan Matus ushered me into his world, which was, naturally, the world of those shamans of antiquity. Don Juan was, therefore, in a key position. He knew about the existence of another realm of reality, a realm which was neither illusory, nor the product of outbursts of fantasy. For Don Juan and the rest of his shaman companions (there were fifteen of them)-the world of the shamans of antiquity was as real and as pragmatic as anything could be.”
“It took thirteen years of hard labor on his part and on mine to discombobulate my trust in the normal system of cognition that makes the world around us comprehensible to us. This maneuver pushed me into a very strange state: a state of quasi-distrust in the otherwise implicit acceptance of the cognitive processes of our daily world.
After thirteen years of heavy onslaughts, I realized, against my very will that don Juan Matus was indeed proceeding from another point of view. Therefore, the shamans of ancient Mexico must have had another system of cognition. To admit this burned my very being. I felt like a traitor. I felt as if I were voicing the most horrendous heresy.”
“To see energy as it flows in the universe meant, to don Juan, the capacity to see a human being as a luminous egg or luminous ball of energy, and to be able to distinguish, in that luminous ball of energy, certain features shared by men in common, such as a point of brilliance in the already brilliant luminous ball of energy. The claim of shamans was that it was on that point of brilliance, which those shamans called the assemblage point, that perception was assembled. They could extend this thought logically to mean that it was on that point of brilliance that our cognition of the world was manufactured. Odd as it may seem, Don Jaun Matus was right, in the sense that this is exactly what happens.”
In a nutshell what Don Juan explains is that the true purpose of man is to become a man of knowledge but first he must become a fearless impeccable warrior with a powerful intent and purpose in life. To become a man or woman of knowledge one must have the warrior’s discipline, awareness, insight and fearlessness in order to expand the small known realm of everyday existence far into the vast realm of the unknown. A warrior accumulates personal power by not wasting it on trivial pursuits. Filled with this personal power he or she is able to perceive and act on a fundamental reality beneath and underlying our normal state of perception.
This warrior discipline and awareness leads to an enlightened state of being, true happiness and a life worth living. Once a man or woman becomes a man or woman of knowledge, this person then seeks to enlighten others through a process of direct mentoring. In this manner, knowledge and wisdom is passed from one generation to the next with each building on the wisdom and knowledge of those that came before.
There is so much in these Castaneda books that there is no way I can really summarize all this information in this book. Folks if they have not read the books, should understand that the first book The Teachings of Don Juan is a bit confusing reflecting Carlos’ own confusion and distress with his early encounters with such a powerful individual as Don Juan. Don Juan also had to use psychoactive drugs on Carlos because he was a strong willed, hard headed person to break down his conventional belief system.
When asked later why he used these drugs, Don Juan said in Carlos’ case it was because he was so hard headed but there were other students that he did not have to use the drugs. In the book A Separate Reality and onward, drugs were not used just techniques of persuasion. The second book A Separate Reality is in my opinion Carlos’ best book as he really clears things up and articulates the teachings very well. If one is only to read one of Castaneda’s books it should be A Separate Reality, the rest are just frosting on the cake so to speak.
One thing that one notices in the shamanistic literature and throughout time in religious disciplines is the importance of slowing down the incessant mental dialogue in our heads. This is what keeps us awake at night thinking about one thing or another, but it is also the glue that holds a superficial understanding of reality together. So enlightened teachers have developed techniques to slow down and even stop this mental dialogue like meditation so that we can develop an expanded state of awareness, perception and consciousness. Psychoactive drugs seem to be effective in changing consciousness by slowing down and stopping this mental dialogue, but their use must be limited because of negative long term side effects.
However, in the beginning psychoactive drugs can be quite useful in some instances, but soon need to be left behind in favor of mental and emotional disciplines that carry us forward to enlightenment. Drugs can temporarily open a window or door into the subconscious or quantum reality, but they cannot be used to get us where we want to go. Many are those who have died or harmed themselves greatly, trying to achieve a permanent state of consciousness expansion through psychoactive drugs.
Native American Shaman Black Elk’s Near Death Experience
The near death experience of Black Elk is a good example of how throughout history humans have been having NDEs and OBEs as well as extraterrestrial contact and in this case it was a NDE that initiated Black Elk into a life as a shaman. This account is quite long but here is some quoted material from the article Native American Black Elk’s Near-death Experience. [20]
“The near-death experiences of the Native American medicine man, Black Elk, of the Lakota Sioux nation, echo with the enchanting poetic language of an ancient society. His story reveals a traditional natural world culture, yet also many of the familiar phenomena of near-death experiences that leap across eras. Living between 1863 and 1950, Black Elk survived the collision of two eras, when the ancient primal world of his people was shattered by the violent invasion of the new industrial culture. This remarkable medicine man did not even speak English when he told his visionary experience to the author, John Neihardt, who told it in his book, Black Elk Speaks, in 1932. In this classic of Native American literature, Black Elk's near-death experience glows through his perceptions of a sacred natural world.”
“"The next morning the camp moved again, and I was riding with some boys. We stopped to get a drink from a creek, and when I got off my horse, my legs crumpled under me and I could not walk. So the boys helped me up and put me on my horse; and when we camped again that evening, I was sick. The next day the camp moved on to where the different bands of our people were coming together, and I rode in a pony drag, for I was very sick. Both my legs and both my arms were swollen badly and my face was all puffed up."
"When we had camped again, I was lying in our tepee and my mother and father were sitting beside me. I could see out through the opening, and there two men were coming from the clouds, headfirst like arrows slanting down, and I knew they were the same that I had seen before. Each now carried a long spear, and from the points of these a jagged lightning flashed. They came clear down to the ground this time and stood a little way off and looked at me and said, 'Hurry! Come! Your Grandfathers are calling you!'
"Then they turned and left the ground like arrows slanting upward from the bow. When I got up to follow, my legs did not hurt me anymore and I was very light. I went outside the tepee, and yonder where the men with flaming spears were going, a little cloud was coming very fast. It came and stooped and took me and turned back to where it came from, flying fast. And when I looked down I could see my mother and my father yonder, and I felt sorry to be leaving them.
"Then there was nothing but the air and the swiftness of the little cloud that bore me and those two men still leading up to where white clouds were piled like mountains on a wide blue plain, and in them thunder beings lived and leaped and flashed.
"Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers. "Then the two men spoke together and they said, 'Behold him, the being with four legs!'
"I looked and saw a bay horse standing there, and he began to speak, 'Behold me!' he said, 'My life-history you shall see.' Then he wheeled about to where the sun goes down, and said, 'Behold them! Their history you shall know.'
After being shown the visions of the future, Black Elk returned to his body among the members of the tribe and his parents.
"Then the oldest of them all said, 'Grandson, all over the universe you have seen. Now you shall go back with power to the place from whence you came, and it shall happen yonder that hundreds shall be sacred, hundreds shall be flames! Behold!' "I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself. Then the oldest Grandfather sang, and his song was like this:
"'There is someone lying on earth in a sacred manner. There is someone - on earth he lays In a sacred manner I have made him to walk.' "Now the tepee, built and roofed with cloud, began to sway back and forth as in a wind, and the flaming rainbow door was growing dimmer. I could hear voices of all kinds crying from outside: 'Eagle Wing Stretches is coming forth! Behold him!'
"When I went through the door, the face of the day of earth was appearing with the day-break star upon its forehead; and the sun leaped up and looked upon me, and I was going forth alone. "And as I walked alone, I heard the sun singing as it arose, and it sang like this:
"'With visible face I am appearing. In a sacred manner I appear. For the greening earth pleasantness I make. The center of the nation's hoop I have made pleasant. With visible face, behold me! The four-leggeds and two-leggeds, I have made them to walk; The wings of the air, I have made them to fly. With visible face I appear. My day, I have made it holy.'
"When the singing stopped, I was feeling lost and very lonely. Then a Voice above me said, 'Look back!' It was a spotted eagle that was hovering over me and spoke. I looked, and where the flaming rainbow tepee, built and roofed with cloud, had been, I saw only the tall rock mountain at the center of the world.
"I was all alone on a broad plain now with my feet upon the earth, alone but for the spotted eagle guarding me. I could see my people's village far ahead, and I walked very fast, for I was homesick now. Then I saw my own tepee, and inside I saw my mother and my father bending over a sick boy that was myself. And as I entered the tepee, someone was saying: 'The boy is coming to; you had better give him some water.' "Then I was sitting up; and I was sad because my mother and my father didn't seem to know I had been so far away."
The article The Testimony of Zulu Shaman Credo Mutwa: A Life of Mystery and Alien Contact is a good example showing that extraterrestrial contact ,like the OBE and NDE, is a primary driver of consciousness impacting shamans down through the ages just as it is still affecting modern humans today. [21]
“The Zulu sangoma (a shaman or healer) and high sanusi (clairvoyant and lore-master) Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa is recognized by many as one of the most distinguished African traditional healers around today. He is, in fact, the spiritual leader of the sanusis and sangomas of South Africa.
As well as being a successful artist, author and historian, Mutwa is also an outspoken victim of alien abduction, having allegedly been in contact by entities his people call the mantindane (‘the tormentors’), which are similar in nature to what we in the English speaking world call ‘the grays’. Stories of UFOs and alien beings make up a big part of African tribal culture, he says.”
“Mutwa claims that much of the knowledge he now possesses – of art, science, medicine, engineering and so on – can be attributed to the fact that, when he was child, he was taught by “strange companions.” These “little people,” he says, some of whom were blue in colour, used to make their presence known to other children as well. In fact, “all African children used to see such things.” Thanks to the help of these beings, he says, he was often more knowledgeable than some of his teachers at school.
Modern Shamanism and Its Dangers
Because humanity is so predatory and because shamanism has become so popular, folks need to know of the dangers posed by unscrupulous individuals through fraud and criminal activity taking advantage in the renewed interest in the topic. The article The Dark Side of Ayahuasca spells out some of the dangers inherent in the use of psychoactive substances especially when taken under the influence of an incompetent or criminal calling themselves shamans. In particular while a person is under psychoactive substances they are very sensitive to their environment and great care must be taken to be in a safe, secure environment while under the influence. A very positive experience can quickly turn into a very bad experience. An old friend of mine now once told me that while walking down a street tripping on LSD he looked down and saw a cigarette butt in a puddle next to a curb and he found himself in a horrible mental state triggered by this simple factor. Needless to say he never touched the stuff again. J The Dark Side of Ayahuasca article should not be ignored and people should proceed with caution in all aspects of their journey to enlightenment. [22]
“Pilgrims like Nolan are flocking to the Amazon in search of ayahuasca, either to expand their spiritual horizons or to cure alcoholism, depression, and even cancer, but what many of them find is a nightmare. Still, the airport in Iquitos is buzzing with ayahuasca tourism. Vans from shamanic lodges pick up psychedelic pilgrims from around the world, while taxi drivers peddle access to Indian medicine men. "It reminds me of how they sell cocaine and marijuana in Amsterdam," one local said. "Here, it's shamans and ayahuasca. “Devotees talk about ayahuasca cathartic and life-changing power, but there is a dark side to the tourism boom as well.
With money rolling in and lodges popping up across Peru's sprawling Amazon, a new breed of shaman has emerged – and not all of them can be trusted with the powerful drug. Deaths like Nolan's are uncommon, but reports of molestation, rape, and negligence at the hands of predatory and inept shamans are not. In the past few years alone, a young German woman was allegedly raped and beaten by two men who had administered ayahuasca to her, two French citizens died while staying at ayahuasca lodges, and stories persist about unwanted sexual advances and people losing their marbles after being given overly potent doses. The age of ayahuasca as purely a medicinal, consciousness-raising pursuit seems like a quaint and distant past.”
The Shaman’s Natural and Political Environment
As in natural ecosystems, all individuals and groups are interconnected affecting each other in often unforeseen cascading ways that become apparent when humanity manipulates natural ecosystems to his advantage. In the same manner, not only is the Shaman being influenced by other external and internal realities such as extraterrestrial contact, OBE and NDE experiences, psychoactive drugs, meditation disciplines but he or she is also being influenced and impacted by the tribe and other surrounding tribes. There are political and economic realities that play on the effectiveness of the shaman’s path to enlightenment and that of others that she seeks to influence.
In tribal society one is confronted every day by nature’s challenges and at the same time by political and economic challenges within and without the tribe. The shaman has to navigate these human challenges just as effectively as the natural ones. Once again if we break down tribal influence to its component parts, the chief and council, the traders and producers and the shamans we observe dynamics between these components that impact the effectiveness of each component. There has always been a struggle between political and financial power that begins in tribal society has evolved into our space age society. Sometimes in the past the chief and the shaman were one individual or privileged group, yet at other times political and spiritual seekers operate somewhat independently of each other.
If we are going to understanding these internal political, economic and spiritual dynamics of today’s complex society, we need to understand these same dynamics in simple tribal society from which the more complex dynamics evolved. Because the shaman does have considerable influence in tribal society that extends beyond the spiritual and into the economic and political realm of the tribe, the chief and council are affected and react accordingly. A struggle that begins in tribal society between politics and spirituality mushrooms into the more complex society of today.
A chief and council must control the political and economic life of the tribe if they are to retain their privileged position in that society for them and their families. The shaman on the other hand must maintain some independence of the political and economic process in order to carry out his or her investigations into the dynamic realm of subconscious or spiritual realm. Sometimes the shaman is captured by the chief and sometimes the chief is captured by the shaman with all the variations in between. We can observe everyday how this play between politics, economics and religion in today’s society plays out in very complex ways, this struggle for control for the hearts and minds and bodies of the less privileged classes and between competing privileged groups across the globe.
This struggle can be seen to use the obvious hard power of the military between nation states and competing groups within those nation states. It is not as obvious and in many ways more potent are the exercise of soft covert power like propaganda. In tribal society both the chief and the shaman exercise both hard and soft power between them as both seek to influence or avoid influence by the other using their soft power propaganda and the symbols and rituals of their status in society.
This struggle moves beyond the tribe in the dealings with other tribes where an attack might not come with bows, arrows and spears but by enemy propaganda, or some exercise of covert spiritual or political power in which the tribe can find itself battling on both a material and an immaterial front against a neighboring tribe in competition for resources, slaves, sex or wives. This is a complex enough process between tribes but these processes evolve in complexity over time to what we can observe today.
At least with the exercise of tyranny or influence by hard power, one knows the predator and his methods but with soft covert power the attack can be unnoticed until it is too late. This is no different than a lion exercising covert power to sneak up in the grass to a herd of feeding antelope until close enough to exercise hard power. After all we are a part of nature and we still act as such in both group dynamics and against and for other groups. We are a predator prey society still amongst ourselves even though we have mostly risen to top predator in today’s society unless of course (which seems likely) that there are other exopolitical predators of which we are still are unaware because of their effective use of soft power. J
I have already addressed the exopolitical dynamics of all this in a previous book and in the future I will address the national and international political aspects in another book. In this book my intention is to concentrate on these dynamics that directly impact, suppress or aid in the enlightenment process. Hopefully my whole series of books if I live to write them all will give a comprehensive understanding not only about how nature operates but how man as a part of nature operates as well. Younger generations can build on this knowledge just as I have built on those that came before me.
Reincarnation and the Eternal Existence in Religion
Sylvia Cranston’s book Reincarnation, The Phoenix Fire Mystery only briefly comments on extraterrestrial intervention in regards to religion but is the most rigorous account of the history of reincarnation or pre-existence that I am aware of. This is a detailed rigorous book full of factual material that makes it very clear that the thread of reincarnation also known as pre-existence runs through the heart and soul of all religions.
This is just another indicator in spite of serious suppression by murderous religious fanatics the doctrine reemerges because the doctrine is well rooted in reality and cannot be stamped out for long. The doctrine is being continuously supported and rejuvenated by the shared experience by those large numbers of people having NDE and OBE experiences and fewer numbers of people, especially young children who have reincarnational memories before losing them by the age of six along with other early memories of the present life. It’s the same for extraterrestrial contact, where suppression of the truth can never be completely suppressed by governments because people are still having contact in large numbers that support and rejuvenate the belief in extraterrestrial life.
I will draw heavily on Sylvia Cranston’s well researched material in this chapter to show the reader just how fundamental and pervasive reincarnation and the eternal life of the individual is throughout the history of all religions including Christianity. In the case of Christianity It took 1500 years of repression and suppression of reincarnational truth by orthodox murderous deluded Christian leaders and rulers like emperor Justinian in the 6th century to stamp out the truth and wisdom of the free thinkers known by the Greek word heretic. Only now are a few Christians going back to study their history reviving the fundamental truths of the Gnostics in order to make Christianity whole again and in harmony with other religions in regards to reincarnation doctrine and eternal life.
Sumerian Religion
The Sumerian religion is outlined in the following Wikipedia entry: Notice that there is little argument that Sumer goes back about 6000 years approaching the times indicated in the Vedic texts which are still in dispute. [23]
“Sumerian myths were passed down through the oral tradition until the invention of writing. Early Sumerian cuneiform was used primarily as a record-keeping tool; it was not until the late early dynastic period that religious writings first became prevalent as temple praise hymns[1] and as a form of "incantation" called the nam-šub (prefix + "to cast").[2]”
“In the Sumerian city-states, temple complexes originally were small, elevated one-room structures. In the early dynastic period, temples developed raised terraces and multiple rooms. Toward the end of the Sumerian civilization, Ziggurats became the preferred temple structure for Mesopotamian religious centers.[3] Temples served as cultural, religious, and political headquarters until approximately 2500 BCE, with the rise of military kings known as Lu-gals (“man” + “big”)[2] after which time the political and military leadership was often housed in separate "palace" complexes.[3]
“Until the advent of the Lugals, Sumerian city states were under a virtually-complete theocratic government controlled by independent groups of En, or high priests. Priests were responsible for continuing the cultural and religious traditions of their city-state, and were viewed as mediators between humans and the cosmic and terrestrial forces. The priesthood resided full-time in temple complexes, and administered to matters of state including the large irrigation processes necessary for the civilization’s survival.”
“According to Sumerian mythology, the gods originally created humans as servants for themselves, but freed them when they became too much to handle.
“The earliest historical records of Sumer do not go back much further than ca. 2900 BC, although it is generally agreed that Sumerian civilization started between ca. 4500 and 4000 BC.[7] The earliest Sumerian literature of the 3rd millennium BC identifies four primary deities; Anu, Enlil, Ninhursag and Enki. Lists of large numbers of Sumerian deities have been found. Their order of importance and the relationships between the deities has been examined during the study of cuneiform tablets.[9]”
The Sumerian texts make it very clear that these so called “Sumerian deities” were extraterrestrial and that the people at the time were indoctrinated and educated by them, same as in the Hindu Vedic texts. We can see here that there does seem to be a clear overt intrusion of extraterrestrial reality into earth human religions about ten to eight thousand years ago that seems to have decreased to a more covert nature into modern times.
Perhaps the reason for this is to allow earth humans to develop their own culture without excessive interference from other extraterrestrial races. This seems to be an indication that these other interfering ET races are also evolving and becoming more civilized and respectful of the integrity of other races of beings other than themselves. All this is covered in my Exopolitics book so no point in really getting too deep into UFO/ET reality issue here.
Still, it would appear that even before the opening of the Silk Road around 200 BC something else had happened that impacted on human religions and politics as addressed in the Hindu Sutras and in the ancient texts of Sumer. According to these texts, human extraterrestrials traveled about earth in flying machines about 8000 years ago teaching earth humans the fundamentals of civilization.
Not only that, these extraterrestrial clans called Annunaki by the Sumerians as indicated in their texts and also in the Hindu texts warred amongst themselves and on earth humans by using earth humans as proxies in their conflicts and as their servants and slaves. It would appear that these wars occurred all over the world with similar accounts from the Middle East as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah described in the Bible and Vedic accounts from India are quite similar. See how similar these quotes are in spite of being very distant from each other.
"Gurkha flying in his swift and powerful Vimana hurled against the three cities of the Vrishis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousands suns, rose in all its splendor. It was the unknown weapon, the Iron Thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas." The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Mahabharata
“By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah – from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities – and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.” Genesis 19: 23 – 27
It may be that the Annunaki were responsible for the rise and destruction of city states in both Sumer and India at least this is what the religious texts relate. The God and angels of the bible look like; walk and talk like humans and involve earth humans in their conflicts imploring their followers to put no other gods before them. It would seem that the concept of the one God above all other gods has extraterrestrial roots as rogue extraterrestrial human clans attempted to control and use religion as just another means to control earth humans as slaves and servants.
Even in the bible it says, “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and had children by them.” This indicates a close genetic relationship that is well described in the Sumerian clay tablets where earlier humans were genetically modified in order to better serve their Annunaki masters. This knowledge then filters into the Jewish texts as the Adam and Eve story of the creation of man. However, even in the bible it says that when Cain killed Able and was banished from the Garden of Eden he married elsewhere. Things like this make little sense without the larger context being described here.
The religion of the shaman still exists just as ancient plants and animals still exist in nature finding niches in the modern world along with more recently evolved plants and animals. The new religions incorporated and built on extraterrestrial knowledge, NDE, OBE, reincarnational experiences and altered states of consciousness as these realities continued to impact on society just as they already had been doing with shamanism.
Hindu Religion
Sylvia Cranston in her book The Phoenix Fire Mystery did an excellent job of addressing the thread of reincarnation and the eternal life of the individual through world religions to the present day. The Phoenix Fire Mystery references reincarnation in the earliest of the Hindu Vedas that grow ever stronger in later Vedic sacred texts. My thinking that this is due to the fact that we are dealing with a fundamental overall reality that is continuously intruding into human experience supporting the reincarnational doctrine while false doctrines with little relationship to reality eventually fade away into history.
“However, the eminent philosopher and scholar Radhakrishnan, former president of India, in the introduction to his translation of The Principal Upanishads, observes that the elements of reincarnation are to be found even in the earliest of the Vedas, the Rig: “The passage of the soul from the body, its dwelling in other forms of existence, its return to human form, the determination of future existence by the principle of Karma are all mentioned.” “Mitra is born again. The Dawn (Usas) is born again and again (I.92.10). “I seek neither release or return.” “The immortal self will be reborn in a new body due to its meritorious deeds.” “
What many people don’t realize is that the Vedic Religion has had a huge impact on modern science, religion and technology. Many of the scientific and technical genius of the modern world took inspiration from the Vedas and in fact have validated these teachings as real and not imaginary. Sylvia has the following to say as she proceeds through the later Hindu religious texts.
“The Upanishads present the intimate yet profoundly impersonal instructions of the master to disciple. They are viewed as philosophic interpretations of the Vedas, and are a portion thereof, although composed much later. Together with the Bhagavad-Gita, next to be considered, they have over the centuries achieved such importance and stature in India as to be regarded as the Hindu Bible.”
“The Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad tells of a visit of the sage Yajnavalkya to the kingdom of King Janaka. . . “. King Janaka asks, “But when the sun has set, Yajnavalkya , and the moon is also set, and the fire sinks down, and the voice is stilled, what is then the light of the spirit of man? Yajnavalkya replies, “What is the Soul? It is the Consciousness in the life-powers. It is the Light within the heart. . . . The Sprit of man has two dwelling-places: both this world and the other world. The borderland between them is the third, the land of dreams. . . . The Spirit of man wanders through both worlds, yet remains unchanged. Leaving the bodily world through the door of dream, the sleepless Spirit views the sleeping powers. . . . Soaring upward and downward in dreamland, the god makes manifold forms; now laughing and rejoicing with fair beauties. Now beholding terrible things. . . . Then clothed in radiance, returns to his old home. . . .”
“And like the skin of a snake lies lifeless, cast forth upon an anthill, so lies his body, when the Spirit of man rises up bodiless and immortal, as the life, as the Eternal, as the Radiance. . . . As a worker in gold, taking an ornament, molds it to another form newer and fairer; so in truth the soul, leaving the body here, and putting off unwisdom, makes for itself in the heavenly state another form newer and fairer: a form like the forms of departed souls, or of the seraphs, or of the gods”. . . . “Through his past works he shall return once more to birth, entering whatever form his heart is set on.”
The doctrine of reincarnation pervades much of the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita especially the second chapter that is devoted to rebirth. Sylvia Cranston points out that this scripture appeals to the minds of very diverse people from Robert Oppenheimer to Henry David Thoreau. The Gita is only a small part of the much larger work the Mahabharata perhaps the longest epic poem known to man. It is three times the length of the Bible. The Gita is considered the heart and soul of the Mahabharata. Bhagavad is one of the titles of Krishna the great spiritual teacher of the Hindus.
Krishna is regarded as an avatar that descended - incarnated to teach people on the eve of the Kali Yuga the spiritual dark age the first five thousand years which ended in 1897, according to the Brahmanical calendar. Cranston says. “Krishna is said to have incarnated in order to strike the keynote of those moral and philosophical ideas that should resound in people’s minds and hearts throughout the revolution of the entire age, at the end of which a new golden age is to begin.” Here is an example of the doctrine of reincarnation and ethereal life being taught by Krishna:
“ARJUNA Now, O Krishna, that I have beheld my kindred thus standing anxious for the fight, my members fail me, my countenance withereth, the hair standeth on end upon my body, and all my frame trembleth with horror! Even Gandiva, my bow, slips from my hand, and my skin is parched and dried up. I am not able to stand; for my mind as it were, whirleth round, and I behold on all sides adverse omens. When I shall have destroyed my kindred, shall I longer look for happiness? . . . I would rather patiently suffer that the sons of Dhritarashtra. . . kill me unresisting in the field. . . . I shall not fight, O Govinda. . . .”
KRISHNA Whence, O Arjuna, cometh upon thee this dejection in matters of difficulty, so unworthy of the honorable, and leading neither to heaven nor to glory? . . . . Abandon this despicable weakness of thy heart , and stand up. . . . . Thou grieves for those who may not be lamented. . . . I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be. As the Lord of this mortal frame experienceth therein infancy, youth and old age, so in future incarnations will it meet the same. One who is confirmed in this belief is not disturbed by anything that may come to pass. . . . . As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new. . . .”
Sylvia Cranston goes on to point out references to reincarnation throughout other sacred Hindu texts; Anugita, Puranas, Laws of Manu, Hitopadesa, Kapila, and Sankaracharya. We are talking about a huge amount of literature involving eternal life and reincarnation that has inspired so many down through the ages and influenced religions that have sprung up over time.
Egyptian Religion
Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch and other ancient writers said that reincarnation was the general belief of the Egyptians. According to Sir Flinders Petrie, “The Greek testimony is so strong that it seems unlikely to have all been derived from the metamorphoses section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.” In addition Dr. Margaret Murray in her book The Splendor That Was Egypt that the Ka-names of the first two kings of the xx-th dynasty far back in Egyptian history show that reincarnation goes back to earliest times. “Ammonemhat I’s name was ‘he who repeats births,’ and Sensusert I’s name was ‘he whose births live.’ In the xix-th dynasty the ka-name of Setekhy I was repeater of births.”
While the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the most celebrated scripture of Egypt, has discovered copies only dating back to the eleventh and twelfth dynasties according to historian C. C. Bunsen he says and believes that the originals trace back to the first dynasties. James Bonwick in his chapter Reincarnation or Transmigration of Souls from the book Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought tells us regarding the Book of the Dead.
“The Ritual is full of allusions to the doctrine. Chapters 26 -30 relate to the preservation of the heart or life for this purpose. . . . Deveria, the French Egyptologist shows how this esoteric doctrine was revealed in that portion of Egyptian sacred Scripture, known as the ‘Book of that which is in the Lower Hemisphere.’ He admits that ‘the funeral books show us clearly that resurrection and a new youth.’ He says further, ‘the sahou was not (merely) the mortal body. It was a new being (or personality) formed by the re-union of corporeal elements elaborated by nature, and in which the soul was reborn in order to accomplish a new terrestrial existence under many forms.’”
The following passage of the Book of the Dead is from the Papyrus of Ani the scribe and treasurer of the Egyptian temples around 1450 B.C.
“I am the Benu, the soul of Ra, and the guide of the gods in the Tuat (underworld). Their divine souls come forth upon earth to do the will of their kas, let therefore the soul of Osiris Ani come forth to do the will of his ka. . . . Homage to thee Osiris, O Governor of those who are in Amenti (heaven), who maketh mortals to be born again, who renewest thy youth. . . . Nebensi, the lord of reverence, saith: ‘I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, (and I have) the power to be born a second time; (I am) the divine hidden Soul who createth the gods. . . .’”
Buddhism
As I continue to quote and draw on Sylvia Cranston’s Reincarnation book, it’s important for those who really want to get into all this to read her long chapter three The Religious View- East and West. I am just briefly skimming through this rigorous detailed scholarly work for a synopsis of this huge amount of information on the history of reincarnation and eternal life. (Whew)
Buddhists do not consider Buddha or his teachings as unique as we can already see that the enlightened teachings go back much further in time before Buddha was born. Furthermore Buddha is Sanskrit for someone who is fully enlightened about life so as the noted Buddhist scholar Edward Conze says:
“Numerous “Buddhas” appear successively at suitable intervals. Buddhism sees itself not as the record of the sayings of one man who lived in Northern India about 500 B.C. His teachings are represented as the uniform result of an often repeated irruption of spiritual reality into the world. . . . The state of a Buddha is one of the highest possible perfection. It seems self-evident to Buddhists that an enormous amount of preparation over many lives is needed to reach it.”
Sylvia Cranston in her introduction to the Buddhist teachings makes the very good point that Buddhist teachings are surprisingly modern and as she points out provide a basis for a kind of future neo-Buddhism world religion validated by modern science. While Cranston wrote this way back in the 1970s it now can be seen to be quite prophetic.
What was once a trickle, has now become an avalanche of scientists working to validate eternal spiritual evolution using modern scientific research, psychology and physics. Many of these scientists themselves have gotten into this field because of their own personal experiences validating this subject matter. Sylvia in the introduction What Buddha Taught says:
“After 2500 years, the teachings of Gotama Buddha are being regarded as really quite modern. This Indian sage perhaps more than any other who has ever lived, provided a meeting-ground for all extremes of persuasion – Gnosticism and agnosticism, belief and the skepticism of caution, appreciation of intuition, and devotion to logic. While the world of the mind is still quivering from abrupt change – transition from too much other worldly religion to too much physical science – a man who recognized, as parts of a larger whole, the valid emphases of each, is a man whose thoughts are worth knowing today.”
“In the 1890s Lafcadio Hearn wrote in Gleanings in Buddha – Fields: ‘I remember that when I first attempted, years ago, to learn the outlines of Buddhist philosophy, one fact which particularly impressed me was the vastness of the Buddhist concept of the universe. Buddhism, as I read it, had not offered itself to humanity as a saving creed for one inhabited world, but as the religion of ‘innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kotis of worlds.’ And the modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution then seems to me, and still seems, like a prodigious confirmation of certain Buddhist theories of cosmical law. . . . By its creed the Oriental intellect has been better prepared than the Occidental to accept this tremendous (astronomical) revelation. . . . And I cannot but think that out of the certain future union of Western knowledge with Eastern thought there must eventually proceed a Neo-Buddhism inheriting all the strength of Science, yet spiritually able to recompense the seeker after truth. . . . “
It’s important to note that Buddha stressed enlightenment as the means to free oneself from suffering. He did not want to get caught up in the debates of his time as to the eternal life of the individual and reincarnation thought. As Buddhist scholar Edward Conze points out it has been incorrectly reported that the Buddha denied the concept of eternal evolution when in fact it is obvious that the Buddha just wanted to avoid the debate in order to focus on the current task at hand, that being enlightenment and freedom from suffering.
“‘Preparation over many lives?’ Would this not suggest an immortal soul or self-undergoing such preparation? Yet Buddha is accused by the missionaries of teaching there is no soul, and many Buddhists themselves believe there is no soul. ‘This anatta (no soul) doctrine,’ says Huston Smith, ‘has. . . . caused Buddhism to look like a peculiar religion, if indeed deserving of the name at all.’
“The mission of this latest Buddha was evidently not to teach metaphysical truths to the people at large; hence his frequent silence when asked about such concepts as the soul. Again and again he turns attention to the individual, his suffering, and his search for spiritual freedom. In the Pali text of the Majjhima-Nikaya, the Buddha speaks in typical fashion:”
“Malunkyaputta, bear always in mind what it is that I have not elucidated and what it is that I have elucidated. . . . I have not elucidated that the world is eternal, I have not elucidated that the world is not eternal. . . . I have not elucidated that the saint exists after death, I have not elucidated that the saint does not exist after death. . . . And what, Malunkyaputta, have I elucidated? Misery . . . the origin of misery . . . the cessation of misery . . . the path leading to the cessation of misery.”
As Max Muller correctly points out, “The most important element of Buddhist reform has always been its moral and social code, not its metaphysical theories.” Sylvia devotes many pages to the discussion as to what Buddha taught and what he did not but it’s just too much to get into here at this point and I want to move on.
Taoist Religion
Lao-tze the father of Taoism is believed to have been born around 604 B. C. According to Sylvia Cranston Lao-tze appeared at the time of Buddha, Pythagoras, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. He was born into the Chou dynasty, the longest in China’s history and a period of momentous change. Lao-tze is known and honored because of his small volume The Tao Te King. Taoist traditions say that Lao-tze practiced Tao in previous incarnations: as Kwang Chang Tze in the era of Hwang-Ti, the Yellow Emperor; also as Po-Chang in the time of Yao. . . . The following is from The Tao Te King:
“The Great Way is very smooth, but the people love the by-paths. . . . The wearing of gay embroidered robes, the carrying of sharp swords, fastidiousness in food and drink, superabundance of property and wealth: - this I call flaunting robbery; most assuredly it is not Tao. . . . He who acts in accordance with Tao, becomes one with Tao. . . . Being akin to Heaven, he possesses Tao. Possessed of Tao, he endures forever. . . . Being great Tao passes on; passing on, it becomes remote; having become remote, it returns.”
Persian Religion
Sylvia Cranston points out that if the Christian legends are based on facts, then the first men to be aware of Christ’s birth were heathens – the three wise men from the East called the Magi. “They saw his star,” says the gospel of Matthew. They also were likely to have been reincarnationalists, according to the Neoplatonist Porphyry:
“Among the Persians those who are wise in divine concerns, and worship divinity, are called Magi. . . . But so great and so venerable are these men thought to be by the Persians, that Darius (558? – 486 B.C.), the son of Hystaspes, had among other things this engraved on his tomb, that he had been the master of the Magi. They are divided into three genera, as we are informed by Eubulus, who wrote the history of Mithra, in a treatise consisting of many books. In this work he says. . . the dogma with all of them which ranks as the first is this, that there is a transmigration of souls; and this they also appear to indicate in the mysteries of Mithra.”
Sylvia speculates and wonders, is it not probable, then that the three Magi would have honored Jesus as the return to earth life of some great teacher or prophet of the past?
“The Magi were disciples of Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) who founded the religion variously called Maganism, Mazdaism, Parseeism, and Zoroastrianism. Like Hermes in Egypt, Zarathustra appears to have been a generic name for great Iranian teachers and reformers. The hierarchy may have begun with the diving Zarathustra of the Zend-Avesta, and ended with the latest one, who is conceded to have lived about eight thousand years ago. Bunsen describes him as ‘one of the mightiest intellects and one of the greatest men of all time.’ Only fragments of the immense body of Zoroastrian literature remain. More would exist if Alexander the Great had not destroyed so many sacred and precious works.
Under Islamic rule many of the Zorastrians fled from Iran in the seventh century and their modern successors are the Parsis of India, a highly respected community living chiefly in Bombay. . . . In Zarathustra’s teachings the expression of Fire-Soul is used for the eternal self in man. As an ever-living flame, it has over the years been beautifully and impressively symbolized in certain sacred temples as a perpetual fire that must never be allowed to go out. Although the Magi held that the Fire-Soul returned to earth life again and again , the present day Parsi priest do not accept reincarnation. A few Parsi scholars do, and point confirmation of the idea in ancient works.”
Judaism
In Judaism, as with other religions, the thread of reincarnation and eternal life of the individual stands out throughout the existence of Judaism. In the Kabala reincarnation is called metempsychosis, an essential part of the teachings. The Kabala is the hidden wisdom behind the Old Testament derived by the rabbis of the Middle Ages from still older secret doctrines. These secret doctrines go back to at least the third century B.C to the Tanaiim who first called themselves Kabalists.
The first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus talks about reincarnation in his work called The Jewish War. Flavius was a general that survived this war and he addresses his soldiers who are about to commit suicide rather than be captured by the troops of the Roman commander Vespasian.
“The bodies of all men are, indeed mortal, and are created out of corruptible matter; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies. . . . Do not you know, that those who depart out of this life according to the law of nature. . . . enjoy eternal fame: that their houses and their posterity are sure; that their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of the ages, they are again sent into pure bodies.”
In his work, The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus says that the Pharisees believe that souls have immortal vigor and that the virtuous have the power to revive and live again on earth. As to the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scroll fame, he states in the Jewish War that the Essenes taught the soul’s pre-existence. Other scholars have pointed out that the Essenes had come under the influence of Buddhist monks who flooded into the Middle East in the centuries before the Christian era.
The Pythagoreans doctrines and communal practices also had influence on Essene thought because of similarities of lifestyle. It really can’t be underestimated just how much various thinking, concepts and doctrines traveled along the trading routes of the time to all extremities of the known world at that time prior to the Christian era and into the future. In The Jewish War Josephus states:
“The Essenes condemn the miseries of life, and are above the pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials. They smiled in their very pains and laughed to scorn those who inflicted torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again. For their doctrine is this, that bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. . . . These are the divine doctrines of the Essenes about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.”
Rabbi Moses Gaster in his work The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics discusses reincarnation Judaic doctrine.
“There cannot be any doubt that these views are extremely old in Judaism, Simon Magus raises the claim of former existence, his soul passing through many bodies before it reaches that know as Simon. The Samaritan doctrine of the taheb teaches the same doctrine of a pre-existing soul which was given to Adam, but which, through successive incarnations in Seth, Noah, and Abraham, reached Moses, for whom it was originally formed and for whose sake the world had been created. . . . This doctrine of migration is nowhere to be found systematically developed in Jewish writings. Wherever it occurs it is tacitly assumed as well known, and no explanation is given in detail.”
Before we move on into the Christian era, Sylva Cranston gives a few quotes from the Kabala that show us the importance of reincarnation to the overall enlightenment process. We will see that early Christianity was steeped in reincarnational thought with many of the early fathers of the Church realizing that people changed slowly and so it takes many lifetimes to achieve perfection.
It was only after 1500 years of murderous civil war in the Church before the free thinkers “heretics” and reincarnational thought were stamped out only to rise up once again as eastern doctrines of reincarnation and eternal evolution became known again to Christians in the 1800s.
History will show that the murderous, orthodox, power hungry Christians may have won many battles over the centuries but in the end they will have lost the war as more and more Christians study their history to once again incorporate reincarnational thought into Church doctrine. This in turn follows in the same manner the steps of other heretical thought outlawed such has the ability to have a personal relationship with God. Some passages from the Kabala:
“Most souls being at present in a state of transmigrations, God requites a man now for what his soul merited in a bypast time in another body, by having broken some of the 613 precepts. . . . Thus we have the rule: - no one is perfect unless he has thoroughly observed all the 613 precepts. If this be so, who is he and where is he that has observed all the 613 precepts? For even the lord of the prophets, Moses our Rabbi – peace on him! - Had not observed them all. . . . He who neglects to observe any of the 613 precepts, such as were possible for him to observe, is doomed to undergo transmigration (once or more than once) till he has actually observed all he had neglected to do in a former state of being. Kitzur Sh’lu, p. 6, col. I and II”
“The sages of truth (the Kabbalists) remark that Adam, contains the initial letters of Adam, David and Messiah; for after Adam sinned his soul passed into David, and the latter having also sinned, it passed into the Messiah.” Nishmath Chaim, fol. 152, col. 2
“Know thou that Cain’s essential soul passed into Jethro, but his spirit into Korah, and his animal soul into the Egyptian. This is what Scripture saith. ‘Cain. . . . shall be avenged sevenfold’ (Gen. iv. 24) . . . . i.e. the initial letters of the Hebrew word rendered ‘shall be avenged,’ form the initials of Jethro, Korah, and Egyptian. . . . Samson the hero was possessed by the soul of Japhet, and Job but that of Terah. Yalkut Reubeni, Nos. 9, 18, 24.”
“All souls are subject to the trials of transmigration; and men do not know the designs of the Most High with regard to them; they know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it. They do not know how many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo; how many souls and spirits come into this world without returning to the palace of the divine king.
The souls must re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in the; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth, until they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God.” This passage is from Zohar the last of the five sections called Book of the Revolutions of Souls."
Christianity
Studying Sylvia Cranston’s works really has been an eye opener as to the enlightenment process through the ages especially articulating how widespread and pervasive the doctrine of reincarnation and individual eternal life has been through all religions. As I have said before, the reason for this is because the doctrine is deeply rooted in reality as evidenced by so much witness testimony since the beginning of human history. Nowhere in her books has she so well risen to the task or chronicling this subject as on her chapters detailing the history of Christianity and the civil war within the Catholic church over doctrine.
She shows how this war over ideas began soon after Christ’s death and lasted for 1500 years before most vestiges of reincarnation doctrine were finally stamped out by murderous massacre after massacre of the advocates of reincarnational doctrine and a personal relationship with God, not needing an orthodox priest class to mediate. Before this she gave kudos to Judaism and Buddhism for their tolerance of diverse viewpoints regarding doctrine maintaining a wholeness and continuity of thought. Whereas Christianity and Islam both quickly fractured into civil war and bloodshed between factions taking different views on history and doctrine that continues to this day.
It has been a grave mistake for today’s Christians to accept the content of the Bible without question ignoring the overall context and history of other Christian sacred texts and teachings. If they did they would soon see that this is just another case of history being rewritten by the victors in a long struggle over Church doctrine. Christianity will never become whole again unless there is a critical review of Church teachings and doctrine in light of the true history of Christianity that has emerged over the centuries.
St. Augustine made his views very clear when he said, “That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity.” How different from the same orthodox Christians who decried and suppressed their Christian pagan beginnings with murderous intent not unlike some fanatical sects that exist today in the Muslim world. I think Christianity gives us a very good example of what happens to a world religion when violent fanatics gain control to suppress all doctrine and teachings to which they do not agree within and without the religion.
There is so much information given here on religious history in general and Christianity specifically by Sylvia that the best I can do is to just skim over all this material for a brief synopsis. Those who want to know more should get her book Reincarnation: the Phoenix Fire Mystery. In the introduction to her chapter on early Christianity, Sylvia Cranston writes speaking of reincarnation in Christianity:
“Two main sources of information are available: the New Testament together with the writings of the Church Fathers; and the teachings of the Christian Gnostics. The New Testament was not recorded until long after Jesus died, and its books subsequently passed through the censoring hands of church councils. In the sixth and later centuries when the present bible was decided on, a number of differing gospels existed. Those deemed unacceptable were destroyed. By that time there was a strong antireincarnationist sentiment in the Church and it would be surprising if anything on reincarnation managed to survive. Nevertheless let us see what the record reveals and whether the reincarnationist is justified in claiming that the New Testament teaches a plurality of lives.
But first a preview is offered as to what this ‘Early Christian’ chapter contains. After a consideration of the New Testament and some of the so called apocryphal texts, there will be a section on the Church Fathers and their views on rebirth. Thus far, we will have considered the path taken by Christian orthodoxy and will then take up a parallel Christian movement that also claimed a close connection with primitive Christianity. We refer to what is known in history as the widespread Gnostic movement, which among modern scholars today is receiving some extra attention as a result of new archaeological discoveries and the unearthing of lost Gnostic texts. It may be that in light of these findings the story of the early beginnings of Christianity may have to be substantially rewritten; Reincarnation was a universal teaching among the Gnostics, as we shall learn.
Following the Gnostics, the line of orthodoxy will be resumed, and consideration will be given to ‘The Anathemas against Preexistence.’ Here will be told what occurred at the important church council of A.D. 553. The chapter will conclude with ‘Reincarnation in the Dark Ages,’ which deals with the wide scale rebirth in Western Europe and Asia Minor of numerous Gnostic sects, generally known as the Cathari. By the thirteenth century they had grown to such proportions that ecclesiastical Christianity was in danger of becoming permanently eclipsed. Few today are aware that it was to stamp out the Gnostic Cathari that the first of the Holy Inquisitions was set up by the Church.”
Sylvia Cranston goes on to give us some quotes from the Bible after stating that the reincarnationalists believe that in the ninth century B.C. the Hebrew prophet Elijah is supposed to have lived. Four centuries later, Malachi recorded this prophecy in the closing lines of the Old Testament: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” The book of Matthew refers to this prophecy on three occasions, and the remaining Gospels speak of it seven times.
"When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. Matthew 16:13 – 14
And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered 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 (who had already been beheaded by Herod). Matthew 17:9 – 13
Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John. . . . this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare the way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist. . . . And if you will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Matthew 11:7, 10 – 11, 14 – 15
After some detailed discussion on the early Church Fathers who believed in reincarnation, along with quoted material, Sylvia Cranston moves on to the Gnostics. She points out that the Christian Gnostics were all reincarnationists including the followers of Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, the Simonists, Priscillians of Spain, the half-Gnostic Manicheans; and many lesser known groups. She says according to Radhakrishnan, “Gnosticism was one of the most powerful currents of thought which influenced Christian Doctrine and practice and remained a power down to the fifth century through its alliance with Neoplatonism.” Gnostics were not content to be just believers but, as the most learned Christians, believed in direct, personal experience of the Gnosis (knowledge).
On the Gnostics, Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography states:
"We have no reason to think that the earliest Gnostics intended to found sects separated from the Church and called after their own names. Their disciples were to be Christians, elevated above the rest as acquainted with deeper mysteries, and called Gnostikoi because possessed of a Gnosis superior to the simple faith of the multitude. . . . They also basted to be in passion of genuine apostolical traditions, deriving their doctrines, some from St. Paul, others from St. Peter and others again from Judas, Thomas, Philip, and Matthew. In addition moreover, to this secret doctrine which they professed to have received by oral tradition, they appealed also to alleged writings of the apostles themselves or their disciples."
Sylvia Cranston points out:
“Basilides, who taught in Alexandria about A.D. 125, and around whom the founders of the various Gnostic schools grouped themselves, maintained that he had all his doctrines from the Apostle Matthew and from Peter through Glaucus, his disciple. The orthodox Eusebius reports that Basilides published twenty-four volumes of Interpretations of the Gospels, which were later burned by the Church. Such a loss seems incalculable in the light it would throw upon Christian beginnings and original Christian doctrine. ‘Of the actual writings of the Gnostics, which were extraordinarily numerous, very little has survived. They were sacrificed to the destructive zeal of their ecclesiastical opponents’ “
The most prominent Gnostic historian in his book called Fragments of a Faith Forgotten gives this summary of Gnostic teaching:
“The whole of Gnosticism revolved around the conception of cyclic law for both the individual and universal soul. Thus we find the Gnostics teaching the doctrine not only of pre-existence but also of the rebirth of human souls.. . . The held rigidly to the infallible working of the great law of cause and effect. It is somewhat curious that these two main doctrines of (reincarnation and karma) which explain so much in Gnosticism and throw light on so many dark places. Have been either entirely overlooked or, when not unintelligently slurred over, dispatched with a few hurried remarks in which the critic is more at pains to apologize for touching on such ridiculous superstitions as “metemphychosis” and “fate,” than to elucidate tenets which are key to the whole position.”
Moving along, Sylvia Cranston discusses in her chapter Reincarnation in the Dark ages and on into the Middle ages the attempts by the church to finally and effectively destroy the Gnostics and their teachings. One of the most brutal and murderous campaigns was the murdering of millions of Cathars and Albigenses. Cranston quotes Henry Lea from his three-volume History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages:
“Despite the ruthless policies of both the Eastern and Western churches, the ideas of the Gnostic sects proved almost irrepressible. On several occasions, both the reasonableness of these teachings and the personal qualities of their followers made them a serious threat to the orthodox religion, and their suppression, as known under various names, was accomplished only by mass execution, torture, and the dreaded methods of the Hold Inquisition, an institution that had its beginnings in the thirteenth century as a weapon devised to seek out Gnosticizing heretics and punish or destroy them. During the latter part of the Middle Ages, the various Gnostic groups “spread so rapidly and resisted so stubbornly the sternest efforts of suppression that at one time it may be fairly said to have threatened the permanent existence of Christianity itself”.”
I think it would be well to end this discussion of the history of Christianity by Sylvia Cranston showing that this horrible Gnostic eradication campaign still lingers in the mind and souls of those with reincarnational memories of this period today. This is just another example of the continuous reinforcement of reality to human experience that makes all forms of deluded repression of enlightenment “truths”, subject to eventual failure.
“(This unusual story is told by a British psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Guirdham, who reveals that the case history of the woman patient under consideration left him no alternative but to accept reincarnation. He met her first in 1961 when he was chief psychiatrist at Bath Hospital, England, where she came to consult him about persistent nightmares. These dreams were accompanied by shrieks, so loud that she and her husband feared they would wake the street. Our source material is a published interview with Dr. Guirdham, and one of his lectures; also his book on the case, The Cathars and Reincarnation. In the interview, from which we first quote, he opens by telling the background of his patient;)
“She had been suffering for years from dreadful dreams of murder and massacre. . . . I examined the woman for neuroses. She had none, but as the dreams had occurred with such regularity since the age of 12, she was worried about them. She was a perfectly sane, ordinary housewife. There was certainly nothing wrong with her mental faculties.
After a few months, she told me that when she was a girl. . . . she had written (the dreams) down. She had also written things that came into her mind, things she couldn’t understand about people and names she had never heard of. She gave me the papers and I started to examine them. (What first amazed him, Dr. Guirdham says, was the verses of songs she had written as a schoolgirl. They were in medieval French, a subject she had never taken at school, as he later checked.)
I sent a report of her story to Professor Pere Nellie of Toulouse University and asked his opinion. He wrote back immediately that this was an accurate account of the Cathars, or Cathari, a group of (people of) Puritan philosophy in Toulouse in the 13th Century. (See “Reincarnation in the Dark Ages” in chapter 3)
She also told me of the massacre of the Cathars. She told in horrid detail of being burned at the stake. . . . . I was astounded. I had never thought of reincarnation, never believed in it or disbelieved. . . . She also said that in her previous life she was kept prisoner in a certain church crypt. Experts said it had never been used for this purpose. Then further research showed that so many religious prisoners were taken on one occasion, that there was not room for all of them in regular prisons. Some had been kept in that very crypt. . . .
In 1967 I decided to visit the south of France and investigate. I read the manuscripts of the 13th Century. Those old manuscripts – available only to scholars who have special permission – showed she was accurate. She gave me names and descriptions of people, places and events, all of which turned out to be accurate to the last detail. There was no way she could have known about them. Even so the songs she wrote as a child, we found four in the archives. They were correct word for word. . . . .
I started this as a clinical exercise, and I have proved that what a 20th Century person told me about a 13th Century religion – without any knowledge of it – was correct in every detail.
(In The Cathars and Reincarnation, Dr. Guirdham accumulates much evidence of the girl’s knowledge of thirteenth century practices. She had made correct drawings of old French coins, jewelry worn, and the layout of buildings. She was able to place accurately in their family and social relationships, people who were by no means historical characters, who do not appear in the textbooks, but who were ultimately traced by going back to the records, of the Inquisition. These minor characters “are still traceable owing to the ant-like industry of the Inquisitors and their clerks.” As to her burning, the patient transcribed for Dr. Guirdham this dream written in shorthand many years previously: )
The pain was maddening. You should pray to God when you’re dying, if you can pray when you’re in agony. In my dream I didn’t pray to God. . . . I didn’t know when you were burnt to death you’d bleed. I thought the blood would all dry up in the terrible heat. But I was bleeding heavily. The blood was dripping and hissing in the flames. I wished I had enough blood to put the flames out. The worst part was my eyes. I hate the thought of going blind. . . . . In this dream I was going blind. I tried to close my eyelids but I couldn’t. They must have been burnt off, and now those flames were going to pluck my eyes out with their evil fingers. . . .
The flames weren’t so cruel after all. They began to feel cold. Icy cold. It occurred to me that I wasn’t burning to death but freezing to death. I was numb with the cold and suddenly I started to laugh. I had fooled those people who though they could burn me. I am a witch. I had magicked the fire and turned it into ice.”
Islam
Islam like most other religions carries the thread of reincarnation and eternal life. It has been most prevalent in the secret teachings of the Sufis. Again quoting Sylvia Cranston:
“It is a well-known historical fact,” states Abdi, “that Muslims were divided on the question of succession of the Prophet, which ultimately resulted in the establishment of the two main sects of the Sunnis and the Shias” or Shiites. “The significant fact has however been that there has always existed a cementing class that brought the two sects and their sub-sects together and that was the class known as Sufis. . . . The soul of Islam always yearned after them. . . . Even now Rumi, Hafiz, Jami, Ibne Sina and a host of other Sufis command universal respect.”
It was among the Sufis – from Sophia, wisdom – that the teaching of reincarnation was especially preserved. The Sufis claimed to possess the esoteric philosophy of Islam and to have preceded Mohammed by several thousand years. Saadi, Rumi, Hafiz, and other celebrated Sufi poets apparently concealed many of their ideas behind the symbolism of “the Beloved,” a practice later adopted by the Troubadours, and by Dante and Raymond Lully. “The sufi doctrine, “ says C.W. King, “involved the grand idea of one universal creed which could be secretly held under any profession of outward faith. . . “
“The seventeenth century Oriental treasure-house The Dabistan states that the eastern school of Sufis was derived from certain ancient Zoroastrian mystics. These Sufis taught; “When the souls not yet come forth from the pit of the natural darkness of bodily matter, are nevertheless in a state of increasing improvement, then, in an ascending way, they migrate from body to body, each purer than the former one, until the time of climbing up to the steps of the wished-for perfection of mankind. . . after which, purified of the defilement of the body, they join the world of sanctity. .
In the chapter “Religion of the Sufis,” the master Said Muhammed Nurbakhsh is shown distinguishing between Tanasukh, or ordinary reincarnation, and buruz, the reincarnation of a perfect soul “for the sake of perfecting mankind.”
I could go on and on here with many of the lesser known religions where almost all have this thread of reincarnation and eternal life running through them.
EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
(From Shamanism to Quantum Science)
I would sing the pre-existence
Human souls, and live once o’er again
By recollection and quick memory
Of all that is passed since first we all began.
But all too shallow be my wits to scan
So deep a point and mind too dull to clear
So dark a matter. . . .
Tell what we mortals are. Tell what of old we were.
A spark or ray of Divinity
Clouded in earthly fogs, and clad in clay.
A precious drop sunk from eternity
Henry More (1614 – 1687)
Thanks to modern archeology and anthropology we can now discover when Shamans first began to record their experiences and concepts in the artifacts they created out of bone, stone, ivory and clay. Wikipedia gives us a pretty good description of Shamanism to get us started in our understanding of Shamanism and its history. [15]
“Shamanism (/ˈʃɑːmən/ SHAH-mən or /ˈʃeɪmən/ SHAY-mən) is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to encounter and interact with the spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.[2] A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing.[3]
The term "shamanism" was first applied to the ancient religion of the Turks and Mongols, as well as those of the neighboring Tungusic and Samoyedic-speaking peoples. The word "shaman" originates from the Tungusic Evenki language of North Asia and was introduced to the west after Russian forces conquered the shamanistic Khanate of Kazan in 1552. Upon learning more about religious traditions across the world, western scholars also described similar magico-religious practices found within the ethnic religions of other parts of Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas as shamanism. Various historians have argued that shamanism also played a role in many of the pre-Christian religions of Europe, and that shamanic elements may have survived in popular culture right through to the Early modern period. Various archaeologists and historians of religion have also suggested that shamanism may have been a dominant pre-religious practice for humanity during the Paleolithic.
Mircea Eliade writes, "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = 'technique of religious ecstasy'."[4] Shamanism encompasses the premise that shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit worlds. Shamans are said to treat ailments/illness by mending the soul. Alleviating traumas affecting the soul/spirit restores the physical body of the individual to balance and wholeness. The shaman also enters supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans may visit other worlds/dimensions to bring guidance to misguided souls and to ameliorate illnesses of the human soul caused by foreign elements. The shaman operates primarily within the spiritual world, which in turn affects the human world. The restoration of balance results in the elimination of the ailment.[4]”
Wikipedia provides us with a brief outline as to the history of Shamanism in this quote from the same article as above:
“Shamanic practices may originate as early as the Paleolithic, predating all organized religions,[84][85] and certainly as early as the Neolithic period.[85] Early anthropologist studies theorize that shamanism developed as a magic practice to ensure a successful hunt or gathering of food. Evidence in caves and drawings on walls support indications that shamanism started during the Paleolithic era. One such picture featured a half-animal, with the face and legs of a man, with antlers and a tail of a stag.[86]
Archaeological evidence exists for Mesolithic shamanism. The oldest known Shaman grave in the world is located in the Czech Republic at Dolni Vestonice (National Geographic No 174 October 1988). This grave site was evidence of a female shaman.
In November 2008, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced the discovery of a 12,000-year-old site in Israel that is perceived as one of the earliest known shaman burials. The elderly woman had been arranged on her side, with her legs apart and folded inward at the knee. Ten large stones were placed on the head, pelvis and arms. Among her unusual grave goods were 50 complete tortoise shells, a human foot, and certain body parts from animals such as a cow tail and eagle wings. Other animal remains came from a boar, leopard, and two martens. "It seems that the woman … was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits", researchers noted. The grave was one of at least 28 graves at the site, located in a cave in lower Galilee and belonging to the Natufian culture, but is said to be unlike any other among the Epipaleolithic Natufians or in the Paleolithic period.[87]”
This article on Prehistoric Shamanism indicates that shaman symbols begin to show up in the archeological record 70,000 years ago which would be Homo sapiens not Homo erectus that would go even further back in time. [16]
“Upon entering trance, many people see geometric shapes, and these are formed entirely within the eye itself with no outside stimulus. Scientists call them phosphenes. Discovering these patterns allowed archaeologists to recognize them in the past and they turned up in contexts ranging from the first scratched art anywhere in the world, on 70,000 year-old stones from South Africa, to fine designs engraved onto Iron Age mirrors. It seems that, once we knew where to look, the shapes of trance were everywhere.”
Upon continuing my search on the Internet back in time, we find that Homo erectus was using Red Ochre which would possibly indicate use by a Homo erectus shaman. [17]
“During laboratory examination of the finds under a stereoscopic light microscope, a quartzite hammer stone was shown to have a peculiar line of reddish ochre along a well-defined and particularly striking side. Natural sediment retention in the cobble itself was excluded, and it suddenly became obvious that what was being observed was the outline of the ball and thumb of a 500,000 year-old hand.
The use surface was compatible with it being held in such a way that the hand would have covered the rest of the cobble, leaving only a partial outline in red ochre, echoing the famous hand prints in the cave paintings of France and Spain. The hammer stone user was right-handed and the resulting curved trace of color on the stone was caused by trituration (the process for reducing particle size of a substance by grinding) of ochre with liquid, showing Homo erectus was undoubtedly using this as a form of paint at the site of Lehberg. Constant use of the hammer stone in the same way and for the same purpose allowed the ochre particles to become ingrained along the same point where the hand would have rubbed against the stone.”
An article titled The World of Neanderthal People points that the Neanderthals, a species of Homo erectus, had shamans. [18]
“What did Neanderthal people do to combat illnesses and infirmities? Hunter-gatherers had a keen eye for medicinal plants found in the natural environment. They knew which plants or roots had narcotic properties to relieve pain, which could reduce fever, and which could aid digestion. Usually, a medicine woman was responsible for selecting these plants and roots and keeping them on hand in a medicine bag. Iza, the Neanderthal medicine woman in Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear had a medicine bag fashioned from the pelt of a beaver. Animal skin bags go far back in prehistory and were used for many purposes including cooking vessels, water bags, and tote bags. A modern day ox-hide milk bag appears on Botswana (Scott 335.) Medicine women could pull teeth too and maybe even fill them. An astonishing article on Stone Age dentistry appeared in a recent issue of the Washington Post.
The Neanderthal people were the first to bury their dead. The use of red ochre played a prominent role in Neanderthal burials. Bones found at many Neanderthal burial sites were stained with the red pigment. It is unknown if this furnished evidence of some sort of body painting or whether a red wrap originally covered the body but disintegrated with time, leaving its color on the bones. Evidence of prehistoric pollen from Shanidar cave in northern Iraq indicated that Neanderthal people used flowers in burial rites.
What religious ceremonies, if any, took place at Neanderthal burials is a matter of speculation. A shaman or magician, acting as an intermediary between the clan and the spirit world, may have officiated.”
Wikipedia pretty well sums it all up in its entry on Paleolithic religion; so it does seem that there were shamans before Homo sapiens evolved but we just don’t know much about them to inquire much further at this point. It is clear; however, that shaman communication with the spirit world or quantum world is going on here already maybe at least before 300,000 years ago. [19]
“Religious behavior is thought to have emerged by the Upper Paleolithic, before 30,000 years ago at the latest,[1] but behavioral patterns such as burial rites that one might characterize as religious - or as ancestral to religious behavior - reach back into the Middle Paleolithic, as early as 300,000 years ago, coinciding with the first appearance of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. Religious behavior may combine (for example) ritual, spirituality, mythology and magical thinking or animism - aspects that may have had separate histories of development during the Middle Paleolithic before combining into "religion proper" of behavioral modernity.”
“Likewise a number of archeologists propose that Middle Paleolithic societies - such as that of the Neanderthals - may also have practiced the earliest form of totemism or animal worship in addition to their (presumably religious) burial of the dead. Emil Bächler in particular suggests (based on archeological evidence from Middle Paleolithic caves) that a widespread Neanderthal bear-cult existed (Wunn, 2000, p. 434-435). Animal cults in the following Upper Paleolithic period - such as the bear cult - may have had their origins in these hypothetical Middle Paleolithic animal cults.[6] Animal worship during the Upper Paleolithic intertwined with hunting rites.[6] For instance archeological evidence from art and bear remains reveals that the bear cult apparently had involved a type of sacrificial bear ceremonialism in which a bear was shot with arrows and then was finished off by a shot in the lungs and ritualistically buried near a clay bear statue covered by a bear fur - with the skull and the body of the bear buried separately.[6]”
Psychoactive Drug Use in Prehistory
Today we seem to just be scratching the surface in our understanding that psychoactive drugs were used frequently by primitive societies in these early religious practices and up to the present day for enlightenment, as well as for entertainment. An archeological study referred to in the publication Ancient Origins shows that anthropologists and archeologists are becoming ever more involved in studying and testing for psychoactive drug use in prehistory.
“ Neanderthals on speed 60,000 years ago; Paleolithic art inspired by psilocybin or Amanita muscaria mushroom trips; and alcohol-fueled religious worship all over the world down through the ages – these are just some of the drug-taking behaviors reported in a new research paper which looked at decades of archaeological evidence to see how prevalent the use of psychoactive substances and other reality-bending practices was in prehistory. The paper also explores the link between religion and hallucinogens, stimulants, alcoholic beverages and other substances.
Elisa Guerra-Doce, an archaeologist at the University of Valladolid in Spain, says that altered states of consciousness were very nearly ubiquitous in societies throughout prehistory and history. An anthropologist who studied 488 human societies published a paper in 1973 that said 437 or 90 percent of them reportedly incorporated altered states of consciousness (ASC) into their fundamental belief systems.
Cohoba, a hallucinogen made of ground tree seeds, was used by Taino shamans. Users put cohoba powder on a carved pedestal and inhaled through the nose via an inhaler like this piece, from between 1000 and 1500 A.D. This carved stone shows a shaman or behique in a trance. Guerra-Doce looked at four types of archaeological evidence to do her study of altered states among prehistoric societies: ◦Fossils of burned, waterlogged or desiccated leaves, seeds, fruits or wood of psychoactive plants ◦Psychoactive alkaloids in skeletal remains and artifacts ◦Residues of alcoholic beverages ◦Depictions of drinking scenes or mood-altering plants inspired by altered states of consciousness
She found chemical residue from and parts of much psychoactive plant in levels of dwellings from various eras and in artifacts and human remains from thousands of years ago. People used alcoholic beverages nearly everywhere for thousands of years, mildly stimulating betel leaves in Asia as far back as 13,000 B.C., hallucinogens derived from the San Pedro cactus in the Andes as far back as 10,600 years, hallucinogenic mescal beans in Texas and northern Mexico 11,000 years ago, and peyote from between 9,000 and 5,600 years ago.
People also apparently got high on opium as the poppy was domesticated in the western Mediterranean 8,000 years ago; the mildly stimulating (among other benefits) coca leaves for tea and chewing in South America from at least 6,000 B.C.; cannabis (marijuana) in central Asia 7,000 years ago and hallucinogenic nightshade all over the world as long ago as 5,000 years. There were tobacco in the New World 4,000 years ago, hallucinogenic yopo snuff from the New World more than 4,000 years ago, and hallucinogenic mushrooms from various places and times around the world.
Guerra-Doce states in her report: Ethnographic studies have long been exploring the place of fermented beverages (beer, fruit wines, rice wine, mead, koumiss, pulque, chicha, among many others) and psychoactive plants, not only hallucinogenic but also narcotic and stimulant (peyote cactus, morning glories seeds, sacred mushrooms, ayahuasca or yaje brew, cohoba, Virola snuffs, coca, tobacco, mescal beans, San Pedro cactus, iboga, betel, kat, pituri, cannabis, nightshade plants, opium poppy, and ephedra, just to offer a few examples) within traditional societies in every corner of the planet, above all in the Americas.
Published in Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, Guerra-Doce’s article is titled 'Psychoactive Substances in Prehistoric Times: Examining the Archaeological Evidence' (PDF link). While the article focuses on entheogens, or plants and alcoholic beverages that 'generate the divine within,' it also refers to other practices that people used to alter their reality, including auditory stimulation, exposure to extreme temperatures, food restrictions, breathing techniques, extreme physical exercise, or meditation.”
Many people that have heard or studied about the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greek culture are unaware that under the Temple of Apollo two fault lines cross. Ancient writers wrote that vapors rose from the basement putting the Oracle into a trance from which she guided Greek civilization for thousands of years.
Early ancient writers said it was believed that hundreds of years prior to the Temple, there was a crevice at Delphi that lead into the underworld that was first discovered by goat herders. Goat herders observed that their goats were acting crazy at this spot and when they themselves were there they had visions and premonitions. Archeologists have found that Delphi was first occupied around 1600 BCE. Later the Temple of Apollo was built.
Up until recently scientific skeptics had denounced and scoffed about these claims until a group of scientists, archeologists and a science historian discovered that the ancients were correct. In his book titled The Oracle science historian William Broad and his scientist team prove the existence of the crossed fault lines and the presence of an intoxicating gas called ethylene in the rocks below the Temple.
As to the spiritual, political, and visions of the future guidance given by the Oracle, the scientists were skeptical. However, from their experiences in this investigation they were forced to recognize that there were other forms of valid inquiry besides scientific reductionism.
One scientist while sitting in his study, suddenly heard a booming voice in the room predicting the result of a coming horse race. Even though very skeptical of the experience, he went to the race and made a small 30 dollar bet on the very longshot horse called Hero. The horse won and he pocketed over 500 dollars. J
Broad wrote a short very moving epilogue tribute to the Oracle in his book. It is well worth repeating here. Keep in mind that the Oracle of Delphi was an institution of many female oracles, each who took turns guiding Greek culture through the ages.
“It was more than three millennia ago that the Oracle began speaking on behalf of the gods. For much of that time, she enjoyed a reputation that was literally stellar, joined as she was to Apollo and the wonders of the firmament. But then, as the light of Greek civilization faded, her image fell into various states of disrepair and left her stained, demonized, lost, mocked, romanticized, and, after the French excavations, pitied and at times ridiculed.
In a way, the four scientists brought her back to life. Gone were images of the waif, the fool, the knave. In the aftermath of the team’s find, she regained respectability as an intelligent woman and came back as – if nothing else – a serious historical figure. As the old claims took on new substance, so did the Oracle’s air of mystery ad spirituality, perhaps even some of her repute for navigating all time and space, for exploring the hidden powers of the mind. It was as if smart, sophisticated Clea had come back to preside over the sanctuary and wander the surrounding hills.
Be sensitive to the lessons of liberality, she seemed to be saying. Cherish your science but understand it as a finite guide to the immensities of time and space. It’s not a religion, not a worldview. Will it save you? Can it explain my insights and actions? With Delphi, do not let knowledge of the vapors blind you to other truths, other vistas. Look far. dance with the world rather than trying to explain it away. Consider the boat, not just the planks. Seize knowledge. Ask hard questions. But know, too, that your intellect is a small window and that its views can be surprisingly incomplete. Feel deeply. Revere truth in all its forms.
Yes, she seemed to be saying. You have discovered one of my secrets, I have others."
The Essence of the Shaman’s World
Carlos Castaneda in my opinion is a shaman’s shaman, an enigmatic individual, who in his own right has had a very positive impact on millions with his stories of the teachings of Don Juan Matus. The popular spiritual teacher, Deepak Chopra, writes on the back cover of Carlos’ last book The Wheel of Time. “Carlos Castaneda is one of the most profound and influential thinkers of this century. His insights are paving the direction for the future evolution of human consciousness. We should all be deeply indebted to him.”
We really don’t know if Don Juan is a real figure in our holographic reality or a symbolic figure arising in the consciousness of Carlos Castaneda. It’s as if the shamanic tradition with its millions of shamans, male and female, reaches out and pulls us into the shaman’s world through the Don Juan books. As I write this book, material has literally woken me up at two in the morning and compelled me to write down these words. I have found in writing my series of books that my subconscious gets so roiled and active that I have to quit writing for weeks, even months.
The Don Juan books certainly have had a powerful positive impact on my life when I devoured them in my twenties and they still do today. Throughout my life I have confirmed in personal experience what I have read. So it really does not matter in my opinion if Don Juan is a fictional character arising from quantum reality through the consciousness of Carlos Castaneda or a real living breathing individual tutoring Carlos on the Shamanic traditions of Southern Mexico.
We all should keep in mind like any other subject or discipline that only a few individuals really understand well the subject matter that they study. This certainly pertains to shamans past and present where you find corrupt dark shamans that have used psychoactive drugs to prey on students to control, manipulate and even rape. Just as in any other field there are charismatic frauds out to take advantage to fleece the unaware and the unprotected. Humanity like nature is a brutal mix of completion and cooperation where one is predator one moment and prey the next.
In the introduction to the Wheel of Time, Carlos has this to say about his experiences with Don Juan and the other shamans of southern Mexico that he came in contact with.
“In the most effective manner he could afford, Don Juan Matus ushered me into his world, which was, naturally, the world of those shamans of antiquity. Don Juan was, therefore, in a key position. He knew about the existence of another realm of reality, a realm which was neither illusory, nor the product of outbursts of fantasy. For Don Juan and the rest of his shaman companions (there were fifteen of them)-the world of the shamans of antiquity was as real and as pragmatic as anything could be.”
“It took thirteen years of hard labor on his part and on mine to discombobulate my trust in the normal system of cognition that makes the world around us comprehensible to us. This maneuver pushed me into a very strange state: a state of quasi-distrust in the otherwise implicit acceptance of the cognitive processes of our daily world.
After thirteen years of heavy onslaughts, I realized, against my very will that don Juan Matus was indeed proceeding from another point of view. Therefore, the shamans of ancient Mexico must have had another system of cognition. To admit this burned my very being. I felt like a traitor. I felt as if I were voicing the most horrendous heresy.”
“To see energy as it flows in the universe meant, to don Juan, the capacity to see a human being as a luminous egg or luminous ball of energy, and to be able to distinguish, in that luminous ball of energy, certain features shared by men in common, such as a point of brilliance in the already brilliant luminous ball of energy. The claim of shamans was that it was on that point of brilliance, which those shamans called the assemblage point, that perception was assembled. They could extend this thought logically to mean that it was on that point of brilliance that our cognition of the world was manufactured. Odd as it may seem, Don Jaun Matus was right, in the sense that this is exactly what happens.”
In a nutshell what Don Juan explains is that the true purpose of man is to become a man of knowledge but first he must become a fearless impeccable warrior with a powerful intent and purpose in life. To become a man or woman of knowledge one must have the warrior’s discipline, awareness, insight and fearlessness in order to expand the small known realm of everyday existence far into the vast realm of the unknown. A warrior accumulates personal power by not wasting it on trivial pursuits. Filled with this personal power he or she is able to perceive and act on a fundamental reality beneath and underlying our normal state of perception.
This warrior discipline and awareness leads to an enlightened state of being, true happiness and a life worth living. Once a man or woman becomes a man or woman of knowledge, this person then seeks to enlighten others through a process of direct mentoring. In this manner, knowledge and wisdom is passed from one generation to the next with each building on the wisdom and knowledge of those that came before.
There is so much in these Castaneda books that there is no way I can really summarize all this information in this book. Folks if they have not read the books, should understand that the first book The Teachings of Don Juan is a bit confusing reflecting Carlos’ own confusion and distress with his early encounters with such a powerful individual as Don Juan. Don Juan also had to use psychoactive drugs on Carlos because he was a strong willed, hard headed person to break down his conventional belief system.
When asked later why he used these drugs, Don Juan said in Carlos’ case it was because he was so hard headed but there were other students that he did not have to use the drugs. In the book A Separate Reality and onward, drugs were not used just techniques of persuasion. The second book A Separate Reality is in my opinion Carlos’ best book as he really clears things up and articulates the teachings very well. If one is only to read one of Castaneda’s books it should be A Separate Reality, the rest are just frosting on the cake so to speak.
One thing that one notices in the shamanistic literature and throughout time in religious disciplines is the importance of slowing down the incessant mental dialogue in our heads. This is what keeps us awake at night thinking about one thing or another, but it is also the glue that holds a superficial understanding of reality together. So enlightened teachers have developed techniques to slow down and even stop this mental dialogue like meditation so that we can develop an expanded state of awareness, perception and consciousness. Psychoactive drugs seem to be effective in changing consciousness by slowing down and stopping this mental dialogue, but their use must be limited because of negative long term side effects.
However, in the beginning psychoactive drugs can be quite useful in some instances, but soon need to be left behind in favor of mental and emotional disciplines that carry us forward to enlightenment. Drugs can temporarily open a window or door into the subconscious or quantum reality, but they cannot be used to get us where we want to go. Many are those who have died or harmed themselves greatly, trying to achieve a permanent state of consciousness expansion through psychoactive drugs.
Native American Shaman Black Elk’s Near Death Experience
The near death experience of Black Elk is a good example of how throughout history humans have been having NDEs and OBEs as well as extraterrestrial contact and in this case it was a NDE that initiated Black Elk into a life as a shaman. This account is quite long but here is some quoted material from the article Native American Black Elk’s Near-death Experience. [20]
“The near-death experiences of the Native American medicine man, Black Elk, of the Lakota Sioux nation, echo with the enchanting poetic language of an ancient society. His story reveals a traditional natural world culture, yet also many of the familiar phenomena of near-death experiences that leap across eras. Living between 1863 and 1950, Black Elk survived the collision of two eras, when the ancient primal world of his people was shattered by the violent invasion of the new industrial culture. This remarkable medicine man did not even speak English when he told his visionary experience to the author, John Neihardt, who told it in his book, Black Elk Speaks, in 1932. In this classic of Native American literature, Black Elk's near-death experience glows through his perceptions of a sacred natural world.”
“"The next morning the camp moved again, and I was riding with some boys. We stopped to get a drink from a creek, and when I got off my horse, my legs crumpled under me and I could not walk. So the boys helped me up and put me on my horse; and when we camped again that evening, I was sick. The next day the camp moved on to where the different bands of our people were coming together, and I rode in a pony drag, for I was very sick. Both my legs and both my arms were swollen badly and my face was all puffed up."
"When we had camped again, I was lying in our tepee and my mother and father were sitting beside me. I could see out through the opening, and there two men were coming from the clouds, headfirst like arrows slanting down, and I knew they were the same that I had seen before. Each now carried a long spear, and from the points of these a jagged lightning flashed. They came clear down to the ground this time and stood a little way off and looked at me and said, 'Hurry! Come! Your Grandfathers are calling you!'
"Then they turned and left the ground like arrows slanting upward from the bow. When I got up to follow, my legs did not hurt me anymore and I was very light. I went outside the tepee, and yonder where the men with flaming spears were going, a little cloud was coming very fast. It came and stooped and took me and turned back to where it came from, flying fast. And when I looked down I could see my mother and my father yonder, and I felt sorry to be leaving them.
"Then there was nothing but the air and the swiftness of the little cloud that bore me and those two men still leading up to where white clouds were piled like mountains on a wide blue plain, and in them thunder beings lived and leaped and flashed.
"Now suddenly there was nothing but a world of cloud, and we three were there alone in the middle of a great white plain with snowy hills and mountains staring at us; and it was very still; but there were whispers. "Then the two men spoke together and they said, 'Behold him, the being with four legs!'
"I looked and saw a bay horse standing there, and he began to speak, 'Behold me!' he said, 'My life-history you shall see.' Then he wheeled about to where the sun goes down, and said, 'Behold them! Their history you shall know.'
After being shown the visions of the future, Black Elk returned to his body among the members of the tribe and his parents.
"Then the oldest of them all said, 'Grandson, all over the universe you have seen. Now you shall go back with power to the place from whence you came, and it shall happen yonder that hundreds shall be sacred, hundreds shall be flames! Behold!' "I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself. Then the oldest Grandfather sang, and his song was like this:
"'There is someone lying on earth in a sacred manner. There is someone - on earth he lays In a sacred manner I have made him to walk.' "Now the tepee, built and roofed with cloud, began to sway back and forth as in a wind, and the flaming rainbow door was growing dimmer. I could hear voices of all kinds crying from outside: 'Eagle Wing Stretches is coming forth! Behold him!'
"When I went through the door, the face of the day of earth was appearing with the day-break star upon its forehead; and the sun leaped up and looked upon me, and I was going forth alone. "And as I walked alone, I heard the sun singing as it arose, and it sang like this:
"'With visible face I am appearing. In a sacred manner I appear. For the greening earth pleasantness I make. The center of the nation's hoop I have made pleasant. With visible face, behold me! The four-leggeds and two-leggeds, I have made them to walk; The wings of the air, I have made them to fly. With visible face I appear. My day, I have made it holy.'
"When the singing stopped, I was feeling lost and very lonely. Then a Voice above me said, 'Look back!' It was a spotted eagle that was hovering over me and spoke. I looked, and where the flaming rainbow tepee, built and roofed with cloud, had been, I saw only the tall rock mountain at the center of the world.
"I was all alone on a broad plain now with my feet upon the earth, alone but for the spotted eagle guarding me. I could see my people's village far ahead, and I walked very fast, for I was homesick now. Then I saw my own tepee, and inside I saw my mother and my father bending over a sick boy that was myself. And as I entered the tepee, someone was saying: 'The boy is coming to; you had better give him some water.' "Then I was sitting up; and I was sad because my mother and my father didn't seem to know I had been so far away."
The article The Testimony of Zulu Shaman Credo Mutwa: A Life of Mystery and Alien Contact is a good example showing that extraterrestrial contact ,like the OBE and NDE, is a primary driver of consciousness impacting shamans down through the ages just as it is still affecting modern humans today. [21]
“The Zulu sangoma (a shaman or healer) and high sanusi (clairvoyant and lore-master) Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa is recognized by many as one of the most distinguished African traditional healers around today. He is, in fact, the spiritual leader of the sanusis and sangomas of South Africa.
As well as being a successful artist, author and historian, Mutwa is also an outspoken victim of alien abduction, having allegedly been in contact by entities his people call the mantindane (‘the tormentors’), which are similar in nature to what we in the English speaking world call ‘the grays’. Stories of UFOs and alien beings make up a big part of African tribal culture, he says.”
“Mutwa claims that much of the knowledge he now possesses – of art, science, medicine, engineering and so on – can be attributed to the fact that, when he was child, he was taught by “strange companions.” These “little people,” he says, some of whom were blue in colour, used to make their presence known to other children as well. In fact, “all African children used to see such things.” Thanks to the help of these beings, he says, he was often more knowledgeable than some of his teachers at school.
Modern Shamanism and Its Dangers
Because humanity is so predatory and because shamanism has become so popular, folks need to know of the dangers posed by unscrupulous individuals through fraud and criminal activity taking advantage in the renewed interest in the topic. The article The Dark Side of Ayahuasca spells out some of the dangers inherent in the use of psychoactive substances especially when taken under the influence of an incompetent or criminal calling themselves shamans. In particular while a person is under psychoactive substances they are very sensitive to their environment and great care must be taken to be in a safe, secure environment while under the influence. A very positive experience can quickly turn into a very bad experience. An old friend of mine now once told me that while walking down a street tripping on LSD he looked down and saw a cigarette butt in a puddle next to a curb and he found himself in a horrible mental state triggered by this simple factor. Needless to say he never touched the stuff again. J The Dark Side of Ayahuasca article should not be ignored and people should proceed with caution in all aspects of their journey to enlightenment. [22]
“Pilgrims like Nolan are flocking to the Amazon in search of ayahuasca, either to expand their spiritual horizons or to cure alcoholism, depression, and even cancer, but what many of them find is a nightmare. Still, the airport in Iquitos is buzzing with ayahuasca tourism. Vans from shamanic lodges pick up psychedelic pilgrims from around the world, while taxi drivers peddle access to Indian medicine men. "It reminds me of how they sell cocaine and marijuana in Amsterdam," one local said. "Here, it's shamans and ayahuasca. “Devotees talk about ayahuasca cathartic and life-changing power, but there is a dark side to the tourism boom as well.
With money rolling in and lodges popping up across Peru's sprawling Amazon, a new breed of shaman has emerged – and not all of them can be trusted with the powerful drug. Deaths like Nolan's are uncommon, but reports of molestation, rape, and negligence at the hands of predatory and inept shamans are not. In the past few years alone, a young German woman was allegedly raped and beaten by two men who had administered ayahuasca to her, two French citizens died while staying at ayahuasca lodges, and stories persist about unwanted sexual advances and people losing their marbles after being given overly potent doses. The age of ayahuasca as purely a medicinal, consciousness-raising pursuit seems like a quaint and distant past.”
The Shaman’s Natural and Political Environment
As in natural ecosystems, all individuals and groups are interconnected affecting each other in often unforeseen cascading ways that become apparent when humanity manipulates natural ecosystems to his advantage. In the same manner, not only is the Shaman being influenced by other external and internal realities such as extraterrestrial contact, OBE and NDE experiences, psychoactive drugs, meditation disciplines but he or she is also being influenced and impacted by the tribe and other surrounding tribes. There are political and economic realities that play on the effectiveness of the shaman’s path to enlightenment and that of others that she seeks to influence.
In tribal society one is confronted every day by nature’s challenges and at the same time by political and economic challenges within and without the tribe. The shaman has to navigate these human challenges just as effectively as the natural ones. Once again if we break down tribal influence to its component parts, the chief and council, the traders and producers and the shamans we observe dynamics between these components that impact the effectiveness of each component. There has always been a struggle between political and financial power that begins in tribal society has evolved into our space age society. Sometimes in the past the chief and the shaman were one individual or privileged group, yet at other times political and spiritual seekers operate somewhat independently of each other.
If we are going to understanding these internal political, economic and spiritual dynamics of today’s complex society, we need to understand these same dynamics in simple tribal society from which the more complex dynamics evolved. Because the shaman does have considerable influence in tribal society that extends beyond the spiritual and into the economic and political realm of the tribe, the chief and council are affected and react accordingly. A struggle that begins in tribal society between politics and spirituality mushrooms into the more complex society of today.
A chief and council must control the political and economic life of the tribe if they are to retain their privileged position in that society for them and their families. The shaman on the other hand must maintain some independence of the political and economic process in order to carry out his or her investigations into the dynamic realm of subconscious or spiritual realm. Sometimes the shaman is captured by the chief and sometimes the chief is captured by the shaman with all the variations in between. We can observe everyday how this play between politics, economics and religion in today’s society plays out in very complex ways, this struggle for control for the hearts and minds and bodies of the less privileged classes and between competing privileged groups across the globe.
This struggle can be seen to use the obvious hard power of the military between nation states and competing groups within those nation states. It is not as obvious and in many ways more potent are the exercise of soft covert power like propaganda. In tribal society both the chief and the shaman exercise both hard and soft power between them as both seek to influence or avoid influence by the other using their soft power propaganda and the symbols and rituals of their status in society.
This struggle moves beyond the tribe in the dealings with other tribes where an attack might not come with bows, arrows and spears but by enemy propaganda, or some exercise of covert spiritual or political power in which the tribe can find itself battling on both a material and an immaterial front against a neighboring tribe in competition for resources, slaves, sex or wives. This is a complex enough process between tribes but these processes evolve in complexity over time to what we can observe today.
At least with the exercise of tyranny or influence by hard power, one knows the predator and his methods but with soft covert power the attack can be unnoticed until it is too late. This is no different than a lion exercising covert power to sneak up in the grass to a herd of feeding antelope until close enough to exercise hard power. After all we are a part of nature and we still act as such in both group dynamics and against and for other groups. We are a predator prey society still amongst ourselves even though we have mostly risen to top predator in today’s society unless of course (which seems likely) that there are other exopolitical predators of which we are still are unaware because of their effective use of soft power. J
I have already addressed the exopolitical dynamics of all this in a previous book and in the future I will address the national and international political aspects in another book. In this book my intention is to concentrate on these dynamics that directly impact, suppress or aid in the enlightenment process. Hopefully my whole series of books if I live to write them all will give a comprehensive understanding not only about how nature operates but how man as a part of nature operates as well. Younger generations can build on this knowledge just as I have built on those that came before me.
Reincarnation and the Eternal Existence in Religion
Sylvia Cranston’s book Reincarnation, The Phoenix Fire Mystery only briefly comments on extraterrestrial intervention in regards to religion but is the most rigorous account of the history of reincarnation or pre-existence that I am aware of. This is a detailed rigorous book full of factual material that makes it very clear that the thread of reincarnation also known as pre-existence runs through the heart and soul of all religions.
This is just another indicator in spite of serious suppression by murderous religious fanatics the doctrine reemerges because the doctrine is well rooted in reality and cannot be stamped out for long. The doctrine is being continuously supported and rejuvenated by the shared experience by those large numbers of people having NDE and OBE experiences and fewer numbers of people, especially young children who have reincarnational memories before losing them by the age of six along with other early memories of the present life. It’s the same for extraterrestrial contact, where suppression of the truth can never be completely suppressed by governments because people are still having contact in large numbers that support and rejuvenate the belief in extraterrestrial life.
I will draw heavily on Sylvia Cranston’s well researched material in this chapter to show the reader just how fundamental and pervasive reincarnation and the eternal life of the individual is throughout the history of all religions including Christianity. In the case of Christianity It took 1500 years of repression and suppression of reincarnational truth by orthodox murderous deluded Christian leaders and rulers like emperor Justinian in the 6th century to stamp out the truth and wisdom of the free thinkers known by the Greek word heretic. Only now are a few Christians going back to study their history reviving the fundamental truths of the Gnostics in order to make Christianity whole again and in harmony with other religions in regards to reincarnation doctrine and eternal life.
Sumerian Religion
The Sumerian religion is outlined in the following Wikipedia entry: Notice that there is little argument that Sumer goes back about 6000 years approaching the times indicated in the Vedic texts which are still in dispute. [23]
“Sumerian myths were passed down through the oral tradition until the invention of writing. Early Sumerian cuneiform was used primarily as a record-keeping tool; it was not until the late early dynastic period that religious writings first became prevalent as temple praise hymns[1] and as a form of "incantation" called the nam-šub (prefix + "to cast").[2]”
“In the Sumerian city-states, temple complexes originally were small, elevated one-room structures. In the early dynastic period, temples developed raised terraces and multiple rooms. Toward the end of the Sumerian civilization, Ziggurats became the preferred temple structure for Mesopotamian religious centers.[3] Temples served as cultural, religious, and political headquarters until approximately 2500 BCE, with the rise of military kings known as Lu-gals (“man” + “big”)[2] after which time the political and military leadership was often housed in separate "palace" complexes.[3]
“Until the advent of the Lugals, Sumerian city states were under a virtually-complete theocratic government controlled by independent groups of En, or high priests. Priests were responsible for continuing the cultural and religious traditions of their city-state, and were viewed as mediators between humans and the cosmic and terrestrial forces. The priesthood resided full-time in temple complexes, and administered to matters of state including the large irrigation processes necessary for the civilization’s survival.”
“According to Sumerian mythology, the gods originally created humans as servants for themselves, but freed them when they became too much to handle.
“The earliest historical records of Sumer do not go back much further than ca. 2900 BC, although it is generally agreed that Sumerian civilization started between ca. 4500 and 4000 BC.[7] The earliest Sumerian literature of the 3rd millennium BC identifies four primary deities; Anu, Enlil, Ninhursag and Enki. Lists of large numbers of Sumerian deities have been found. Their order of importance and the relationships between the deities has been examined during the study of cuneiform tablets.[9]”
The Sumerian texts make it very clear that these so called “Sumerian deities” were extraterrestrial and that the people at the time were indoctrinated and educated by them, same as in the Hindu Vedic texts. We can see here that there does seem to be a clear overt intrusion of extraterrestrial reality into earth human religions about ten to eight thousand years ago that seems to have decreased to a more covert nature into modern times.
Perhaps the reason for this is to allow earth humans to develop their own culture without excessive interference from other extraterrestrial races. This seems to be an indication that these other interfering ET races are also evolving and becoming more civilized and respectful of the integrity of other races of beings other than themselves. All this is covered in my Exopolitics book so no point in really getting too deep into UFO/ET reality issue here.
Still, it would appear that even before the opening of the Silk Road around 200 BC something else had happened that impacted on human religions and politics as addressed in the Hindu Sutras and in the ancient texts of Sumer. According to these texts, human extraterrestrials traveled about earth in flying machines about 8000 years ago teaching earth humans the fundamentals of civilization.
Not only that, these extraterrestrial clans called Annunaki by the Sumerians as indicated in their texts and also in the Hindu texts warred amongst themselves and on earth humans by using earth humans as proxies in their conflicts and as their servants and slaves. It would appear that these wars occurred all over the world with similar accounts from the Middle East as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah described in the Bible and Vedic accounts from India are quite similar. See how similar these quotes are in spite of being very distant from each other.
"Gurkha flying in his swift and powerful Vimana hurled against the three cities of the Vrishis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousands suns, rose in all its splendor. It was the unknown weapon, the Iron Thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas." The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Mahabharata
“By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah – from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities – and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s wife looked back and she became a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.” Genesis 19: 23 – 27
It may be that the Annunaki were responsible for the rise and destruction of city states in both Sumer and India at least this is what the religious texts relate. The God and angels of the bible look like; walk and talk like humans and involve earth humans in their conflicts imploring their followers to put no other gods before them. It would seem that the concept of the one God above all other gods has extraterrestrial roots as rogue extraterrestrial human clans attempted to control and use religion as just another means to control earth humans as slaves and servants.
Even in the bible it says, “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and had children by them.” This indicates a close genetic relationship that is well described in the Sumerian clay tablets where earlier humans were genetically modified in order to better serve their Annunaki masters. This knowledge then filters into the Jewish texts as the Adam and Eve story of the creation of man. However, even in the bible it says that when Cain killed Able and was banished from the Garden of Eden he married elsewhere. Things like this make little sense without the larger context being described here.
The religion of the shaman still exists just as ancient plants and animals still exist in nature finding niches in the modern world along with more recently evolved plants and animals. The new religions incorporated and built on extraterrestrial knowledge, NDE, OBE, reincarnational experiences and altered states of consciousness as these realities continued to impact on society just as they already had been doing with shamanism.
Hindu Religion
Sylvia Cranston in her book The Phoenix Fire Mystery did an excellent job of addressing the thread of reincarnation and the eternal life of the individual through world religions to the present day. The Phoenix Fire Mystery references reincarnation in the earliest of the Hindu Vedas that grow ever stronger in later Vedic sacred texts. My thinking that this is due to the fact that we are dealing with a fundamental overall reality that is continuously intruding into human experience supporting the reincarnational doctrine while false doctrines with little relationship to reality eventually fade away into history.
“However, the eminent philosopher and scholar Radhakrishnan, former president of India, in the introduction to his translation of The Principal Upanishads, observes that the elements of reincarnation are to be found even in the earliest of the Vedas, the Rig: “The passage of the soul from the body, its dwelling in other forms of existence, its return to human form, the determination of future existence by the principle of Karma are all mentioned.” “Mitra is born again. The Dawn (Usas) is born again and again (I.92.10). “I seek neither release or return.” “The immortal self will be reborn in a new body due to its meritorious deeds.” “
What many people don’t realize is that the Vedic Religion has had a huge impact on modern science, religion and technology. Many of the scientific and technical genius of the modern world took inspiration from the Vedas and in fact have validated these teachings as real and not imaginary. Sylvia has the following to say as she proceeds through the later Hindu religious texts.
“The Upanishads present the intimate yet profoundly impersonal instructions of the master to disciple. They are viewed as philosophic interpretations of the Vedas, and are a portion thereof, although composed much later. Together with the Bhagavad-Gita, next to be considered, they have over the centuries achieved such importance and stature in India as to be regarded as the Hindu Bible.”
“The Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad tells of a visit of the sage Yajnavalkya to the kingdom of King Janaka. . . “. King Janaka asks, “But when the sun has set, Yajnavalkya , and the moon is also set, and the fire sinks down, and the voice is stilled, what is then the light of the spirit of man? Yajnavalkya replies, “What is the Soul? It is the Consciousness in the life-powers. It is the Light within the heart. . . . The Sprit of man has two dwelling-places: both this world and the other world. The borderland between them is the third, the land of dreams. . . . The Spirit of man wanders through both worlds, yet remains unchanged. Leaving the bodily world through the door of dream, the sleepless Spirit views the sleeping powers. . . . Soaring upward and downward in dreamland, the god makes manifold forms; now laughing and rejoicing with fair beauties. Now beholding terrible things. . . . Then clothed in radiance, returns to his old home. . . .”
“And like the skin of a snake lies lifeless, cast forth upon an anthill, so lies his body, when the Spirit of man rises up bodiless and immortal, as the life, as the Eternal, as the Radiance. . . . As a worker in gold, taking an ornament, molds it to another form newer and fairer; so in truth the soul, leaving the body here, and putting off unwisdom, makes for itself in the heavenly state another form newer and fairer: a form like the forms of departed souls, or of the seraphs, or of the gods”. . . . “Through his past works he shall return once more to birth, entering whatever form his heart is set on.”
The doctrine of reincarnation pervades much of the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita especially the second chapter that is devoted to rebirth. Sylvia Cranston points out that this scripture appeals to the minds of very diverse people from Robert Oppenheimer to Henry David Thoreau. The Gita is only a small part of the much larger work the Mahabharata perhaps the longest epic poem known to man. It is three times the length of the Bible. The Gita is considered the heart and soul of the Mahabharata. Bhagavad is one of the titles of Krishna the great spiritual teacher of the Hindus.
Krishna is regarded as an avatar that descended - incarnated to teach people on the eve of the Kali Yuga the spiritual dark age the first five thousand years which ended in 1897, according to the Brahmanical calendar. Cranston says. “Krishna is said to have incarnated in order to strike the keynote of those moral and philosophical ideas that should resound in people’s minds and hearts throughout the revolution of the entire age, at the end of which a new golden age is to begin.” Here is an example of the doctrine of reincarnation and ethereal life being taught by Krishna:
“ARJUNA Now, O Krishna, that I have beheld my kindred thus standing anxious for the fight, my members fail me, my countenance withereth, the hair standeth on end upon my body, and all my frame trembleth with horror! Even Gandiva, my bow, slips from my hand, and my skin is parched and dried up. I am not able to stand; for my mind as it were, whirleth round, and I behold on all sides adverse omens. When I shall have destroyed my kindred, shall I longer look for happiness? . . . I would rather patiently suffer that the sons of Dhritarashtra. . . kill me unresisting in the field. . . . I shall not fight, O Govinda. . . .”
KRISHNA Whence, O Arjuna, cometh upon thee this dejection in matters of difficulty, so unworthy of the honorable, and leading neither to heaven nor to glory? . . . . Abandon this despicable weakness of thy heart , and stand up. . . . . Thou grieves for those who may not be lamented. . . . I myself never was not, nor thou, nor all the princes of the earth; nor shall we ever hereafter cease to be. As the Lord of this mortal frame experienceth therein infancy, youth and old age, so in future incarnations will it meet the same. One who is confirmed in this belief is not disturbed by anything that may come to pass. . . . . As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new. . . .”
Sylvia Cranston goes on to point out references to reincarnation throughout other sacred Hindu texts; Anugita, Puranas, Laws of Manu, Hitopadesa, Kapila, and Sankaracharya. We are talking about a huge amount of literature involving eternal life and reincarnation that has inspired so many down through the ages and influenced religions that have sprung up over time.
Egyptian Religion
Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch and other ancient writers said that reincarnation was the general belief of the Egyptians. According to Sir Flinders Petrie, “The Greek testimony is so strong that it seems unlikely to have all been derived from the metamorphoses section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.” In addition Dr. Margaret Murray in her book The Splendor That Was Egypt that the Ka-names of the first two kings of the xx-th dynasty far back in Egyptian history show that reincarnation goes back to earliest times. “Ammonemhat I’s name was ‘he who repeats births,’ and Sensusert I’s name was ‘he whose births live.’ In the xix-th dynasty the ka-name of Setekhy I was repeater of births.”
While the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the most celebrated scripture of Egypt, has discovered copies only dating back to the eleventh and twelfth dynasties according to historian C. C. Bunsen he says and believes that the originals trace back to the first dynasties. James Bonwick in his chapter Reincarnation or Transmigration of Souls from the book Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought tells us regarding the Book of the Dead.
“The Ritual is full of allusions to the doctrine. Chapters 26 -30 relate to the preservation of the heart or life for this purpose. . . . Deveria, the French Egyptologist shows how this esoteric doctrine was revealed in that portion of Egyptian sacred Scripture, known as the ‘Book of that which is in the Lower Hemisphere.’ He admits that ‘the funeral books show us clearly that resurrection and a new youth.’ He says further, ‘the sahou was not (merely) the mortal body. It was a new being (or personality) formed by the re-union of corporeal elements elaborated by nature, and in which the soul was reborn in order to accomplish a new terrestrial existence under many forms.’”
The following passage of the Book of the Dead is from the Papyrus of Ani the scribe and treasurer of the Egyptian temples around 1450 B.C.
“I am the Benu, the soul of Ra, and the guide of the gods in the Tuat (underworld). Their divine souls come forth upon earth to do the will of their kas, let therefore the soul of Osiris Ani come forth to do the will of his ka. . . . Homage to thee Osiris, O Governor of those who are in Amenti (heaven), who maketh mortals to be born again, who renewest thy youth. . . . Nebensi, the lord of reverence, saith: ‘I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, (and I have) the power to be born a second time; (I am) the divine hidden Soul who createth the gods. . . .’”
Buddhism
As I continue to quote and draw on Sylvia Cranston’s Reincarnation book, it’s important for those who really want to get into all this to read her long chapter three The Religious View- East and West. I am just briefly skimming through this rigorous detailed scholarly work for a synopsis of this huge amount of information on the history of reincarnation and eternal life. (Whew)
Buddhists do not consider Buddha or his teachings as unique as we can already see that the enlightened teachings go back much further in time before Buddha was born. Furthermore Buddha is Sanskrit for someone who is fully enlightened about life so as the noted Buddhist scholar Edward Conze says:
“Numerous “Buddhas” appear successively at suitable intervals. Buddhism sees itself not as the record of the sayings of one man who lived in Northern India about 500 B.C. His teachings are represented as the uniform result of an often repeated irruption of spiritual reality into the world. . . . The state of a Buddha is one of the highest possible perfection. It seems self-evident to Buddhists that an enormous amount of preparation over many lives is needed to reach it.”
Sylvia Cranston in her introduction to the Buddhist teachings makes the very good point that Buddhist teachings are surprisingly modern and as she points out provide a basis for a kind of future neo-Buddhism world religion validated by modern science. While Cranston wrote this way back in the 1970s it now can be seen to be quite prophetic.
What was once a trickle, has now become an avalanche of scientists working to validate eternal spiritual evolution using modern scientific research, psychology and physics. Many of these scientists themselves have gotten into this field because of their own personal experiences validating this subject matter. Sylvia in the introduction What Buddha Taught says:
“After 2500 years, the teachings of Gotama Buddha are being regarded as really quite modern. This Indian sage perhaps more than any other who has ever lived, provided a meeting-ground for all extremes of persuasion – Gnosticism and agnosticism, belief and the skepticism of caution, appreciation of intuition, and devotion to logic. While the world of the mind is still quivering from abrupt change – transition from too much other worldly religion to too much physical science – a man who recognized, as parts of a larger whole, the valid emphases of each, is a man whose thoughts are worth knowing today.”
“In the 1890s Lafcadio Hearn wrote in Gleanings in Buddha – Fields: ‘I remember that when I first attempted, years ago, to learn the outlines of Buddhist philosophy, one fact which particularly impressed me was the vastness of the Buddhist concept of the universe. Buddhism, as I read it, had not offered itself to humanity as a saving creed for one inhabited world, but as the religion of ‘innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of kotis of worlds.’ And the modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution then seems to me, and still seems, like a prodigious confirmation of certain Buddhist theories of cosmical law. . . . By its creed the Oriental intellect has been better prepared than the Occidental to accept this tremendous (astronomical) revelation. . . . And I cannot but think that out of the certain future union of Western knowledge with Eastern thought there must eventually proceed a Neo-Buddhism inheriting all the strength of Science, yet spiritually able to recompense the seeker after truth. . . . “
It’s important to note that Buddha stressed enlightenment as the means to free oneself from suffering. He did not want to get caught up in the debates of his time as to the eternal life of the individual and reincarnation thought. As Buddhist scholar Edward Conze points out it has been incorrectly reported that the Buddha denied the concept of eternal evolution when in fact it is obvious that the Buddha just wanted to avoid the debate in order to focus on the current task at hand, that being enlightenment and freedom from suffering.
“‘Preparation over many lives?’ Would this not suggest an immortal soul or self-undergoing such preparation? Yet Buddha is accused by the missionaries of teaching there is no soul, and many Buddhists themselves believe there is no soul. ‘This anatta (no soul) doctrine,’ says Huston Smith, ‘has. . . . caused Buddhism to look like a peculiar religion, if indeed deserving of the name at all.’
“The mission of this latest Buddha was evidently not to teach metaphysical truths to the people at large; hence his frequent silence when asked about such concepts as the soul. Again and again he turns attention to the individual, his suffering, and his search for spiritual freedom. In the Pali text of the Majjhima-Nikaya, the Buddha speaks in typical fashion:”
“Malunkyaputta, bear always in mind what it is that I have not elucidated and what it is that I have elucidated. . . . I have not elucidated that the world is eternal, I have not elucidated that the world is not eternal. . . . I have not elucidated that the saint exists after death, I have not elucidated that the saint does not exist after death. . . . And what, Malunkyaputta, have I elucidated? Misery . . . the origin of misery . . . the cessation of misery . . . the path leading to the cessation of misery.”
As Max Muller correctly points out, “The most important element of Buddhist reform has always been its moral and social code, not its metaphysical theories.” Sylvia devotes many pages to the discussion as to what Buddha taught and what he did not but it’s just too much to get into here at this point and I want to move on.
Taoist Religion
Lao-tze the father of Taoism is believed to have been born around 604 B. C. According to Sylvia Cranston Lao-tze appeared at the time of Buddha, Pythagoras, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. He was born into the Chou dynasty, the longest in China’s history and a period of momentous change. Lao-tze is known and honored because of his small volume The Tao Te King. Taoist traditions say that Lao-tze practiced Tao in previous incarnations: as Kwang Chang Tze in the era of Hwang-Ti, the Yellow Emperor; also as Po-Chang in the time of Yao. . . . The following is from The Tao Te King:
“The Great Way is very smooth, but the people love the by-paths. . . . The wearing of gay embroidered robes, the carrying of sharp swords, fastidiousness in food and drink, superabundance of property and wealth: - this I call flaunting robbery; most assuredly it is not Tao. . . . He who acts in accordance with Tao, becomes one with Tao. . . . Being akin to Heaven, he possesses Tao. Possessed of Tao, he endures forever. . . . Being great Tao passes on; passing on, it becomes remote; having become remote, it returns.”
Persian Religion
Sylvia Cranston points out that if the Christian legends are based on facts, then the first men to be aware of Christ’s birth were heathens – the three wise men from the East called the Magi. “They saw his star,” says the gospel of Matthew. They also were likely to have been reincarnationalists, according to the Neoplatonist Porphyry:
“Among the Persians those who are wise in divine concerns, and worship divinity, are called Magi. . . . But so great and so venerable are these men thought to be by the Persians, that Darius (558? – 486 B.C.), the son of Hystaspes, had among other things this engraved on his tomb, that he had been the master of the Magi. They are divided into three genera, as we are informed by Eubulus, who wrote the history of Mithra, in a treatise consisting of many books. In this work he says. . . the dogma with all of them which ranks as the first is this, that there is a transmigration of souls; and this they also appear to indicate in the mysteries of Mithra.”
Sylvia speculates and wonders, is it not probable, then that the three Magi would have honored Jesus as the return to earth life of some great teacher or prophet of the past?
“The Magi were disciples of Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) who founded the religion variously called Maganism, Mazdaism, Parseeism, and Zoroastrianism. Like Hermes in Egypt, Zarathustra appears to have been a generic name for great Iranian teachers and reformers. The hierarchy may have begun with the diving Zarathustra of the Zend-Avesta, and ended with the latest one, who is conceded to have lived about eight thousand years ago. Bunsen describes him as ‘one of the mightiest intellects and one of the greatest men of all time.’ Only fragments of the immense body of Zoroastrian literature remain. More would exist if Alexander the Great had not destroyed so many sacred and precious works.
Under Islamic rule many of the Zorastrians fled from Iran in the seventh century and their modern successors are the Parsis of India, a highly respected community living chiefly in Bombay. . . . In Zarathustra’s teachings the expression of Fire-Soul is used for the eternal self in man. As an ever-living flame, it has over the years been beautifully and impressively symbolized in certain sacred temples as a perpetual fire that must never be allowed to go out. Although the Magi held that the Fire-Soul returned to earth life again and again , the present day Parsi priest do not accept reincarnation. A few Parsi scholars do, and point confirmation of the idea in ancient works.”
Judaism
In Judaism, as with other religions, the thread of reincarnation and eternal life of the individual stands out throughout the existence of Judaism. In the Kabala reincarnation is called metempsychosis, an essential part of the teachings. The Kabala is the hidden wisdom behind the Old Testament derived by the rabbis of the Middle Ages from still older secret doctrines. These secret doctrines go back to at least the third century B.C to the Tanaiim who first called themselves Kabalists.
The first century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus talks about reincarnation in his work called The Jewish War. Flavius was a general that survived this war and he addresses his soldiers who are about to commit suicide rather than be captured by the troops of the Roman commander Vespasian.
“The bodies of all men are, indeed mortal, and are created out of corruptible matter; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies. . . . Do not you know, that those who depart out of this life according to the law of nature. . . . enjoy eternal fame: that their houses and their posterity are sure; that their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of the ages, they are again sent into pure bodies.”
In his work, The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus says that the Pharisees believe that souls have immortal vigor and that the virtuous have the power to revive and live again on earth. As to the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scroll fame, he states in the Jewish War that the Essenes taught the soul’s pre-existence. Other scholars have pointed out that the Essenes had come under the influence of Buddhist monks who flooded into the Middle East in the centuries before the Christian era.
The Pythagoreans doctrines and communal practices also had influence on Essene thought because of similarities of lifestyle. It really can’t be underestimated just how much various thinking, concepts and doctrines traveled along the trading routes of the time to all extremities of the known world at that time prior to the Christian era and into the future. In The Jewish War Josephus states:
“The Essenes condemn the miseries of life, and are above the pain, by the generosity of their mind. And as for death our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials. They smiled in their very pains and laughed to scorn those who inflicted torments upon them, and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again. For their doctrine is this, that bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. . . . These are the divine doctrines of the Essenes about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.”
Rabbi Moses Gaster in his work The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics discusses reincarnation Judaic doctrine.
“There cannot be any doubt that these views are extremely old in Judaism, Simon Magus raises the claim of former existence, his soul passing through many bodies before it reaches that know as Simon. The Samaritan doctrine of the taheb teaches the same doctrine of a pre-existing soul which was given to Adam, but which, through successive incarnations in Seth, Noah, and Abraham, reached Moses, for whom it was originally formed and for whose sake the world had been created. . . . This doctrine of migration is nowhere to be found systematically developed in Jewish writings. Wherever it occurs it is tacitly assumed as well known, and no explanation is given in detail.”
Before we move on into the Christian era, Sylva Cranston gives a few quotes from the Kabala that show us the importance of reincarnation to the overall enlightenment process. We will see that early Christianity was steeped in reincarnational thought with many of the early fathers of the Church realizing that people changed slowly and so it takes many lifetimes to achieve perfection.
It was only after 1500 years of murderous civil war in the Church before the free thinkers “heretics” and reincarnational thought were stamped out only to rise up once again as eastern doctrines of reincarnation and eternal evolution became known again to Christians in the 1800s.
History will show that the murderous, orthodox, power hungry Christians may have won many battles over the centuries but in the end they will have lost the war as more and more Christians study their history to once again incorporate reincarnational thought into Church doctrine. This in turn follows in the same manner the steps of other heretical thought outlawed such has the ability to have a personal relationship with God. Some passages from the Kabala:
“Most souls being at present in a state of transmigrations, God requites a man now for what his soul merited in a bypast time in another body, by having broken some of the 613 precepts. . . . Thus we have the rule: - no one is perfect unless he has thoroughly observed all the 613 precepts. If this be so, who is he and where is he that has observed all the 613 precepts? For even the lord of the prophets, Moses our Rabbi – peace on him! - Had not observed them all. . . . He who neglects to observe any of the 613 precepts, such as were possible for him to observe, is doomed to undergo transmigration (once or more than once) till he has actually observed all he had neglected to do in a former state of being. Kitzur Sh’lu, p. 6, col. I and II”
“The sages of truth (the Kabbalists) remark that Adam, contains the initial letters of Adam, David and Messiah; for after Adam sinned his soul passed into David, and the latter having also sinned, it passed into the Messiah.” Nishmath Chaim, fol. 152, col. 2
“Know thou that Cain’s essential soul passed into Jethro, but his spirit into Korah, and his animal soul into the Egyptian. This is what Scripture saith. ‘Cain. . . . shall be avenged sevenfold’ (Gen. iv. 24) . . . . i.e. the initial letters of the Hebrew word rendered ‘shall be avenged,’ form the initials of Jethro, Korah, and Egyptian. . . . Samson the hero was possessed by the soul of Japhet, and Job but that of Terah. Yalkut Reubeni, Nos. 9, 18, 24.”
“All souls are subject to the trials of transmigration; and men do not know the designs of the Most High with regard to them; they know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it. They do not know how many transformations and mysterious trials they must undergo; how many souls and spirits come into this world without returning to the palace of the divine king.
The souls must re-enter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in the; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth, until they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God.” This passage is from Zohar the last of the five sections called Book of the Revolutions of Souls."
Christianity
Studying Sylvia Cranston’s works really has been an eye opener as to the enlightenment process through the ages especially articulating how widespread and pervasive the doctrine of reincarnation and individual eternal life has been through all religions. As I have said before, the reason for this is because the doctrine is deeply rooted in reality as evidenced by so much witness testimony since the beginning of human history. Nowhere in her books has she so well risen to the task or chronicling this subject as on her chapters detailing the history of Christianity and the civil war within the Catholic church over doctrine.
She shows how this war over ideas began soon after Christ’s death and lasted for 1500 years before most vestiges of reincarnation doctrine were finally stamped out by murderous massacre after massacre of the advocates of reincarnational doctrine and a personal relationship with God, not needing an orthodox priest class to mediate. Before this she gave kudos to Judaism and Buddhism for their tolerance of diverse viewpoints regarding doctrine maintaining a wholeness and continuity of thought. Whereas Christianity and Islam both quickly fractured into civil war and bloodshed between factions taking different views on history and doctrine that continues to this day.
It has been a grave mistake for today’s Christians to accept the content of the Bible without question ignoring the overall context and history of other Christian sacred texts and teachings. If they did they would soon see that this is just another case of history being rewritten by the victors in a long struggle over Church doctrine. Christianity will never become whole again unless there is a critical review of Church teachings and doctrine in light of the true history of Christianity that has emerged over the centuries.
St. Augustine made his views very clear when he said, “That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist, from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion which already existed began to be called Christianity.” How different from the same orthodox Christians who decried and suppressed their Christian pagan beginnings with murderous intent not unlike some fanatical sects that exist today in the Muslim world. I think Christianity gives us a very good example of what happens to a world religion when violent fanatics gain control to suppress all doctrine and teachings to which they do not agree within and without the religion.
There is so much information given here on religious history in general and Christianity specifically by Sylvia that the best I can do is to just skim over all this material for a brief synopsis. Those who want to know more should get her book Reincarnation: the Phoenix Fire Mystery. In the introduction to her chapter on early Christianity, Sylvia Cranston writes speaking of reincarnation in Christianity:
“Two main sources of information are available: the New Testament together with the writings of the Church Fathers; and the teachings of the Christian Gnostics. The New Testament was not recorded until long after Jesus died, and its books subsequently passed through the censoring hands of church councils. In the sixth and later centuries when the present bible was decided on, a number of differing gospels existed. Those deemed unacceptable were destroyed. By that time there was a strong antireincarnationist sentiment in the Church and it would be surprising if anything on reincarnation managed to survive. Nevertheless let us see what the record reveals and whether the reincarnationist is justified in claiming that the New Testament teaches a plurality of lives.
But first a preview is offered as to what this ‘Early Christian’ chapter contains. After a consideration of the New Testament and some of the so called apocryphal texts, there will be a section on the Church Fathers and their views on rebirth. Thus far, we will have considered the path taken by Christian orthodoxy and will then take up a parallel Christian movement that also claimed a close connection with primitive Christianity. We refer to what is known in history as the widespread Gnostic movement, which among modern scholars today is receiving some extra attention as a result of new archaeological discoveries and the unearthing of lost Gnostic texts. It may be that in light of these findings the story of the early beginnings of Christianity may have to be substantially rewritten; Reincarnation was a universal teaching among the Gnostics, as we shall learn.
Following the Gnostics, the line of orthodoxy will be resumed, and consideration will be given to ‘The Anathemas against Preexistence.’ Here will be told what occurred at the important church council of A.D. 553. The chapter will conclude with ‘Reincarnation in the Dark Ages,’ which deals with the wide scale rebirth in Western Europe and Asia Minor of numerous Gnostic sects, generally known as the Cathari. By the thirteenth century they had grown to such proportions that ecclesiastical Christianity was in danger of becoming permanently eclipsed. Few today are aware that it was to stamp out the Gnostic Cathari that the first of the Holy Inquisitions was set up by the Church.”
Sylvia Cranston goes on to give us some quotes from the Bible after stating that the reincarnationalists believe that in the ninth century B.C. the Hebrew prophet Elijah is supposed to have lived. Four centuries later, Malachi recorded this prophecy in the closing lines of the Old Testament: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” The book of Matthew refers to this prophecy on three occasions, and the remaining Gospels speak of it seven times.
"When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. Matthew 16:13 – 14
And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead. And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered 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 (who had already been beheaded by Herod). Matthew 17:9 – 13
Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John. . . . this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare the way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist. . . . And if you will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Matthew 11:7, 10 – 11, 14 – 15
After some detailed discussion on the early Church Fathers who believed in reincarnation, along with quoted material, Sylvia Cranston moves on to the Gnostics. She points out that the Christian Gnostics were all reincarnationists including the followers of Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, the Simonists, Priscillians of Spain, the half-Gnostic Manicheans; and many lesser known groups. She says according to Radhakrishnan, “Gnosticism was one of the most powerful currents of thought which influenced Christian Doctrine and practice and remained a power down to the fifth century through its alliance with Neoplatonism.” Gnostics were not content to be just believers but, as the most learned Christians, believed in direct, personal experience of the Gnosis (knowledge).
On the Gnostics, Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography states:
"We have no reason to think that the earliest Gnostics intended to found sects separated from the Church and called after their own names. Their disciples were to be Christians, elevated above the rest as acquainted with deeper mysteries, and called Gnostikoi because possessed of a Gnosis superior to the simple faith of the multitude. . . . They also basted to be in passion of genuine apostolical traditions, deriving their doctrines, some from St. Paul, others from St. Peter and others again from Judas, Thomas, Philip, and Matthew. In addition moreover, to this secret doctrine which they professed to have received by oral tradition, they appealed also to alleged writings of the apostles themselves or their disciples."
Sylvia Cranston points out:
“Basilides, who taught in Alexandria about A.D. 125, and around whom the founders of the various Gnostic schools grouped themselves, maintained that he had all his doctrines from the Apostle Matthew and from Peter through Glaucus, his disciple. The orthodox Eusebius reports that Basilides published twenty-four volumes of Interpretations of the Gospels, which were later burned by the Church. Such a loss seems incalculable in the light it would throw upon Christian beginnings and original Christian doctrine. ‘Of the actual writings of the Gnostics, which were extraordinarily numerous, very little has survived. They were sacrificed to the destructive zeal of their ecclesiastical opponents’ “
The most prominent Gnostic historian in his book called Fragments of a Faith Forgotten gives this summary of Gnostic teaching:
“The whole of Gnosticism revolved around the conception of cyclic law for both the individual and universal soul. Thus we find the Gnostics teaching the doctrine not only of pre-existence but also of the rebirth of human souls.. . . The held rigidly to the infallible working of the great law of cause and effect. It is somewhat curious that these two main doctrines of (reincarnation and karma) which explain so much in Gnosticism and throw light on so many dark places. Have been either entirely overlooked or, when not unintelligently slurred over, dispatched with a few hurried remarks in which the critic is more at pains to apologize for touching on such ridiculous superstitions as “metemphychosis” and “fate,” than to elucidate tenets which are key to the whole position.”
Moving along, Sylvia Cranston discusses in her chapter Reincarnation in the Dark ages and on into the Middle ages the attempts by the church to finally and effectively destroy the Gnostics and their teachings. One of the most brutal and murderous campaigns was the murdering of millions of Cathars and Albigenses. Cranston quotes Henry Lea from his three-volume History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages:
“Despite the ruthless policies of both the Eastern and Western churches, the ideas of the Gnostic sects proved almost irrepressible. On several occasions, both the reasonableness of these teachings and the personal qualities of their followers made them a serious threat to the orthodox religion, and their suppression, as known under various names, was accomplished only by mass execution, torture, and the dreaded methods of the Hold Inquisition, an institution that had its beginnings in the thirteenth century as a weapon devised to seek out Gnosticizing heretics and punish or destroy them. During the latter part of the Middle Ages, the various Gnostic groups “spread so rapidly and resisted so stubbornly the sternest efforts of suppression that at one time it may be fairly said to have threatened the permanent existence of Christianity itself”.”
I think it would be well to end this discussion of the history of Christianity by Sylvia Cranston showing that this horrible Gnostic eradication campaign still lingers in the mind and souls of those with reincarnational memories of this period today. This is just another example of the continuous reinforcement of reality to human experience that makes all forms of deluded repression of enlightenment “truths”, subject to eventual failure.
“(This unusual story is told by a British psychiatrist, Dr. Arthur Guirdham, who reveals that the case history of the woman patient under consideration left him no alternative but to accept reincarnation. He met her first in 1961 when he was chief psychiatrist at Bath Hospital, England, where she came to consult him about persistent nightmares. These dreams were accompanied by shrieks, so loud that she and her husband feared they would wake the street. Our source material is a published interview with Dr. Guirdham, and one of his lectures; also his book on the case, The Cathars and Reincarnation. In the interview, from which we first quote, he opens by telling the background of his patient;)
“She had been suffering for years from dreadful dreams of murder and massacre. . . . I examined the woman for neuroses. She had none, but as the dreams had occurred with such regularity since the age of 12, she was worried about them. She was a perfectly sane, ordinary housewife. There was certainly nothing wrong with her mental faculties.
After a few months, she told me that when she was a girl. . . . she had written (the dreams) down. She had also written things that came into her mind, things she couldn’t understand about people and names she had never heard of. She gave me the papers and I started to examine them. (What first amazed him, Dr. Guirdham says, was the verses of songs she had written as a schoolgirl. They were in medieval French, a subject she had never taken at school, as he later checked.)
I sent a report of her story to Professor Pere Nellie of Toulouse University and asked his opinion. He wrote back immediately that this was an accurate account of the Cathars, or Cathari, a group of (people of) Puritan philosophy in Toulouse in the 13th Century. (See “Reincarnation in the Dark Ages” in chapter 3)
She also told me of the massacre of the Cathars. She told in horrid detail of being burned at the stake. . . . . I was astounded. I had never thought of reincarnation, never believed in it or disbelieved. . . . She also said that in her previous life she was kept prisoner in a certain church crypt. Experts said it had never been used for this purpose. Then further research showed that so many religious prisoners were taken on one occasion, that there was not room for all of them in regular prisons. Some had been kept in that very crypt. . . .
In 1967 I decided to visit the south of France and investigate. I read the manuscripts of the 13th Century. Those old manuscripts – available only to scholars who have special permission – showed she was accurate. She gave me names and descriptions of people, places and events, all of which turned out to be accurate to the last detail. There was no way she could have known about them. Even so the songs she wrote as a child, we found four in the archives. They were correct word for word. . . . .
I started this as a clinical exercise, and I have proved that what a 20th Century person told me about a 13th Century religion – without any knowledge of it – was correct in every detail.
(In The Cathars and Reincarnation, Dr. Guirdham accumulates much evidence of the girl’s knowledge of thirteenth century practices. She had made correct drawings of old French coins, jewelry worn, and the layout of buildings. She was able to place accurately in their family and social relationships, people who were by no means historical characters, who do not appear in the textbooks, but who were ultimately traced by going back to the records, of the Inquisition. These minor characters “are still traceable owing to the ant-like industry of the Inquisitors and their clerks.” As to her burning, the patient transcribed for Dr. Guirdham this dream written in shorthand many years previously: )
The pain was maddening. You should pray to God when you’re dying, if you can pray when you’re in agony. In my dream I didn’t pray to God. . . . I didn’t know when you were burnt to death you’d bleed. I thought the blood would all dry up in the terrible heat. But I was bleeding heavily. The blood was dripping and hissing in the flames. I wished I had enough blood to put the flames out. The worst part was my eyes. I hate the thought of going blind. . . . . In this dream I was going blind. I tried to close my eyelids but I couldn’t. They must have been burnt off, and now those flames were going to pluck my eyes out with their evil fingers. . . .
The flames weren’t so cruel after all. They began to feel cold. Icy cold. It occurred to me that I wasn’t burning to death but freezing to death. I was numb with the cold and suddenly I started to laugh. I had fooled those people who though they could burn me. I am a witch. I had magicked the fire and turned it into ice.”
Islam
Islam like most other religions carries the thread of reincarnation and eternal life. It has been most prevalent in the secret teachings of the Sufis. Again quoting Sylvia Cranston:
“It is a well-known historical fact,” states Abdi, “that Muslims were divided on the question of succession of the Prophet, which ultimately resulted in the establishment of the two main sects of the Sunnis and the Shias” or Shiites. “The significant fact has however been that there has always existed a cementing class that brought the two sects and their sub-sects together and that was the class known as Sufis. . . . The soul of Islam always yearned after them. . . . Even now Rumi, Hafiz, Jami, Ibne Sina and a host of other Sufis command universal respect.”
It was among the Sufis – from Sophia, wisdom – that the teaching of reincarnation was especially preserved. The Sufis claimed to possess the esoteric philosophy of Islam and to have preceded Mohammed by several thousand years. Saadi, Rumi, Hafiz, and other celebrated Sufi poets apparently concealed many of their ideas behind the symbolism of “the Beloved,” a practice later adopted by the Troubadours, and by Dante and Raymond Lully. “The sufi doctrine, “ says C.W. King, “involved the grand idea of one universal creed which could be secretly held under any profession of outward faith. . . “
“The seventeenth century Oriental treasure-house The Dabistan states that the eastern school of Sufis was derived from certain ancient Zoroastrian mystics. These Sufis taught; “When the souls not yet come forth from the pit of the natural darkness of bodily matter, are nevertheless in a state of increasing improvement, then, in an ascending way, they migrate from body to body, each purer than the former one, until the time of climbing up to the steps of the wished-for perfection of mankind. . . after which, purified of the defilement of the body, they join the world of sanctity. .
In the chapter “Religion of the Sufis,” the master Said Muhammed Nurbakhsh is shown distinguishing between Tanasukh, or ordinary reincarnation, and buruz, the reincarnation of a perfect soul “for the sake of perfecting mankind.”
I could go on and on here with many of the lesser known religions where almost all have this thread of reincarnation and eternal life running through them.