Reincarnation E-Book

F. Homer Curtiss

• Herausgeber: Andura Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of F. Homer Curtiss with this unforgettable book.

Leseprobe

Reincarnation

F. Homer Curtiss

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

So many have asked for a brief and direct, though comprehen­sive treatment of a subject that especially concerns all thinking people—namely Reincarnation—that it becomes almost impera­tive that we, The Universal Religious Fellowship, Inc., issue such a treatise. However, instead of writing one, it occurs to us that since we have not found any treatment of this vital subject in clearer or more definitely organized form than in the four pam­phlets issued some time ago by Dr. F. Homer Curtiss, our late beloved teacher and friend, we could do no better than to combine these four booklets into one, and put this valuable information forth for the blessing of all who read it.

REINCARNATION

Part I.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar,”

Intimations of Immortality, Wordsworth.

“Think not, when’er material forms expire,

Consumed by wasting age or funeral fire,

Aught else can die; souls, spurning death’s decay,

Freed from their old, new tenements of clay

Forthwith assume, and wake to life again.”

Metamorphoses, Ovid, Book 15, line 156.

THE DOCTRINE

This book is not written to convince the skeptics with long arguments and masses of evidence, as there are nearly fifty more or less elaborate volumes and count­less articles on the subject available for those who honestly wish to investigate the subject seriously, wherein all phases are treated. We simply set forth our own interpretations of the Law of Reincarnation to give you a clear understanding of the doctrine, clarify disputed points, and to summarize briefly the best available concepts of the subject from many sources.

THREE THEORIES

There are three main theories which attempt to account for the appearance of man on Earth. The materialistic theory is that man is the product of a blind and purposeless evolution, and that his mind—and Soul if such is admitted—is the result of the chemical and molecular activity going on within the body. With the cessation of those activities the body dies and the body and mind—and Soul—disintegrate and disappear forever.

The one life theory holds that each Soul is created brand new by God and enters die body at the time of birth. On this basis the Soul is a slave to a heredity and environment that is not of its own choosing and with which it had nothing to do. According to this theory, at death the Soul remains in the grave “until the last trump,” when it is released to pass into purgatory or into heaven or into a hell of everlasting torment.

The third theory is that of reincarnation or the repeated incarnations of the same Soul in one body after another from time to time in various eras.

FACTS EXPLAINED

The supreme test of any theory is: How completely does it explain the facts? Reincarnation explains apparently discordant and irreconcilable phenomena, the inequality of life, the appar­ent injustice of God, the great differences in personality, from the idiot to the child prodigy and the genius, and assures the certainty of future lives here on earth in which to correct our mistakes, right our wrongs and attain our cherished ambitions and ideals. This removes all fear of death as the certainty of the coming of spring removes the fear of winter.

THE DOCTRINE

Reincarnation is a simple doctrine which is a natural corol­lary to that of the immortality of the Soul. Briefly, it gives the reasons for, the method and the proof of the repeated, cyclic embodiments on Earth in human form, of the same Spiritual Being or individual Soul. In thus incarnating you do not be­come someone else but are always yourself, but manifesting through various human bodies from age to age, just as you dress in different clothes at different seasons of the year. As the most sacred of the Hindu scriptures puts it: “As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the dweller in the body, having quitted its old mortal frames, en- tereth into other which are new.”[1]

These new garments make you appear outwardly quite dif­ferent, yet you are always yourself no matter how many outer garments become worn out and are discarded incarnation after incarnation. Your body is merely your outer garment which you don in order to manifest in this material world. When you are through using it you discard it and withdraw to your home in the higher worlds whence you came. After a period of rest and assimilation of your life’s experience you don an­other body for use during another “day” of experiences in the material world. It is not your present personality—perhaps called “John Smith”—which reincarnates, but the Spiritual Self which animated “John Smith” which is reborn in a new body. The incarnating Ray is the spiritual thread on which all the transient personalities are strung.

The reincarnation of man is as simple and natural as the reincarnation of Nature in the Spring. And rebirth is no more a miracle than is birth.

TRANSMIGRATION

Opposed to reincarnation is the repulsive doctrine of trans­migration of Souls or the incarnation of the Soul in the body of some lower animal. Although held by numbers of the less educated and superstitious Asiatics, this doctrine is a fallacy; for once having reached the human stage of unfoldment, no body less evolved than the human would have the centers and faculties necessary to accommodate and give expression to a human Soul. A pint cup cannot hold a quart. The lesser can never contain the greater. No doubt this doctrine arose because the cultivation of gross animal traits in this life will carry those qualities over into the next incarnation. The glutton will look like a pig, a schemer like a fox, a miser like a vulture, etc.

TESTIMONY OF THE AGES

Aside from the fact that this doctrine most satisfactorily solves the problems and includes all the facts of our life here on Earth, how else do we know that the doctrine is true? 1st, there is the testimony of the ages. No doctrine or theory can survive critical examination and application from age to age if it is not founded on truth. Theories of science, religion and philosophy arise, flourish for a time, then pass away, but re­incarnation eternally remains. In fact, it reaches back beyond recorded history. It is found in the most ancient writings of Egypt, Babylonia, India, Greece, China, Japan, even in Atlantis and Lemuria. Alexander found it among the Gymnosophists of India, Caesar among the Druids of Gaul, and Herodotus among the Egyptians and the Magi of Persia. It was also taught in the mystery schools of Eleusis, Baccus and Isis.

TESTIMONY OF TODAY

Reincarnation is believed in today by more than two-thirds of all mankind, approximately 750 millions in the Orient and over 10 millions in the Occident. But as these numbers in­clude great masses of the uneducated, the mere fact of numbers is not convincing. But when we find the greatest minds of age after age following this doctrine it merits our greatest respect. Among spiritual teachers it was taught by Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Laotsze and Jesus. Among the ancient philosophers,

[1]  The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter ii.

Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, Hermes, Proclus, Iamblicus, Porphory and Hirocles. Among the early Church Fathers, Origen, Ammonius Saccus, Justin Martyr, Philo Judeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Arnobius, Pamphilius, Bruno, St. Bonaventure, St. Francis and St. Gregory, etc. Among later philosophers, Schopenhauer, Lessing, Swedenborg, Hagel, Leibnitz, Boehme, Herder, Fitchte, Descartes, Voltaire, More, etc. Among great authors, Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Gautier, Sardou, Goethe, Bacon, Scott, Shelley, Flammarion, Poe, Haggard, Corelli, Coleridge, Franklin, Emerson, Ghandi, Tagore, Henry Ford, etc. Thus the fact that we have the almost universal testimony of the greatest and most acute minds the human race has produced throughout the ages to testify to the truth of the Law of Reincarnation, should have great weight with us.

LAW OF CYCLES

The Law of Cycles rules the world, for all manifestation takes place in cycles. Day and night, summer and winter, birth, death and rebirth follow one another in endless succession. First there is expression and manifestation, then withdrawal, assimilation and growth. The tree clothes itself with a body of leaves. This body dies in winter but the tree returns into manifestation in a new body of leaves in the next spring. It is the same tree, but with an entirely new body. The butterfly grub dies as the chrysalis is formed, but it is the same entity that is reborn in the entirely different body of the butterfly. The body is no more you than the caterpillar is the butterfly or the grub which enabled the butterfly to manifest. The water- breathing tadpole is reincarnated in the entirely different body of the air-breathing frog, and the wriggling larva reincarnates in the entirely different body of the mosquito. Your life here on Earth is but one summerperiod or “day-at-school” for the Soul. Just as it takes many summer-periods of expression, or incarnations, to perfect the oak, so does it take many summer- periods of expression, or incarnations, to perfect the Soul’s expression on Earth.

LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY