That re-incarnation and Karma formed part of the original teaching is, I think, abundantly evident. In Gnosticism and Manicheism they were apparent. The Christian Fathers speak plainly of these doctrines, and Origen refers to Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles as holding them. Moreover, Jesus Christ is made to utter a clear statement concerning John the Baptist, that implies the doctrine of re-incarnation, and his answer to the question about a blind man, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” shows the acceptance in the early Church of both doctrines. The whole incident reveals that the subject of re-incarnation was familiar to the followers of Christ, and Josephus expressly states that the Pharisees held the doctrine of re-birth. There is then little doubt that in the early Church the belief was widely spread, but later at a General Council—a Council held after darkness had begun its reign—it was formally condemned and stamped as a heresy.
Bearing in mind the view that all the great religions come from the same spiritual source, it is significant to find the following in the writings of a rigid Roman Catholic historian, viz. A. F. Ozanam: “Having burst over the borders of the country to which it had once been confined, Buddhism at the year 61 B.C. made a new appearance on the scene, and invaded all Northern Asia.... This great movement could not but influence the West. It effected its entrance (into Christendom) through the Gnostic sects. The Gnosis was the designation of a higher science or initiation reserved for a handful of chosen spirits.” Again, speaking of the Manicheans, he says: “It is difficult to decide whether Manes drew his system originally from these Buddhist sources or found the teaching which he handed down to his disciples held by former Gnostic sects, themselves impregnated with the Oriental doctrine.” (Ozanam’s History of Civilization in the Fifth Century, vol. i. pp. 247 and 254.) It is easy to see that this Oriental doctrine was none other than the hidden wisdom of Jesus and Paul as well as of Buddha.
The special doctrine of re-incarnation is said to be absent in the fragments of the Avesta and in the Zend commentaries, and absent also in the latter Pahlavi doctrines. It is not held by the modern Parsis. “On the other hand,” says G. R. S. Mead, B.A., M.R.A.S., “Greek writers emphatically assert that the doctrine of re-incarnation was one of the main tenets of the Magian tradition.” The same author elsewhere remarks: “Since Bardaisan, like all the great Gnostics, believed in re-incarnation, such a conception as the resurrection of the physical body was nothing but a gross superstition of the ignorant.” (The Theosophical Review for March, 1898, p. 17.)
To judge Christianity fairly, it was necessary to know something of its origin, its antecedents and the early phases of its life. We had to follow the history of its early sects and observe the changes effected in the Church by forces playing upon it from without. The Church gradually rose into a position of social influence and authority, from which it again declined, and it was during the latter condition that in its struggles to maintain power and supremacy amid adverse forces it dropped out the mystic beliefs difficult of apprehension by Western minds; it ceased to order and classify its adherents, and it ultimately adapted its doctrines to the materialistic spirit of the dawning era of modern science.[[16]] Nevertheless, the Church retained its pure ethical teaching. It has held up to view the noble unselfish life of its founder Jesus of Nazareth. No one could deny that during the period even of its degradation, this religion has proved to millions of human beings a source of vital comfort and joy, and to some extent of spiritual light.
[16]. Tertullian complains: “They have all access alike; they hear alike, they pray alike, even heathens if any such happen to come among them.”
The tendency of Protestantism was to assert the claims of all men—the weak and childish as well as the thoughtful and intellectually strong—to a clear understanding of the Church’s whole teaching. In pursuance of a policy to meet this demand, the Church gave forth a simplified presentation of God and Nature that contradicts the plainest facts of science, and creates within minds of deeper, more expanded faculty, a conscientious revolt from the Christian faith to an attitude of honest scepticism. Outside the Church, however, other forces of evolution have prevailed to carry man forward, and to-day there exists an earnest and devout spirit of inquiry, and a strong dissatisfaction with the purely materialistic theory of Nature.
Conspicuous among the forces of change are, first, the study of physical phenomena on scientific methods, a study which, by convincing the Western mind of a profound mystery behind all phenomena, gives fresh impulse to speculative thought, and rouses effort to reach and apprehend the law of evolution. Second, the study of psychic phenomena revealing modes of consciousness hitherto ignored, and impelling science to penetrate the hidden recesses of our psychic activities and investigate some of the heights and depths of man’s inner constitution. Third, the historical studies that throw new light on the marvellous civilizations of the past and those religions that are more ancient than Christianity.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of these studies may prove, it is clear that the perspective of early faiths—their range and reach—was vaster than that of current Christianity, and this perception is creeping into our popular literature and laying hold of public thought. For instance, a recent writer remarks: “The modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution seems a prodigious confirmation of Buddhist theories of cosmical law.” And again, “With the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution old forms of thought crumbled, new ideas arose to take the place of worn-out dogmas, and we have a general intellectual movement in directions strangely parallel with Oriental philosophy.” (Lafcadio Hearn’s Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life.)
This movement necessarily will advance only by carrying with it, i.e. convincing step by step, the reason of man, and seeing that Oriental philosophy has the doctrines of re-incarnation and Karma at its foundation, these must be tested and the fact ascertained whether or not they are consistent with the laws of phenomenal existence already discovered and believed in by the Occidental mind. “To-day,” says Lafcadio Hearn, “for the student of scientific psychology, the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of theory into the realm of fact,” and he quotes in corroboration of this statement Professor Huxley’s opinion of the theory—“None but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its roots in the world of reality, and it may claim such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying.” (Evolution and Ethics, p. 61, Ed. 1894.)
At this epoch of the world’s history, the humanity that exists is of an infinitely varied character. At one end of the scale, we have in savages the simplest forms of racial types, at the other the most complex forms, and between these every conceivable variant. The distinctions go deeper as we ascend the scale, and there are no two beings alike in their powers of abstract thinking, the nature of their intellectual, emotional and moral qualities, and the groupings of these qualities—in a word, their individualities. Now one thing demanded by the developed intellects of this age is a generalization that will cover and explain these perplexing differences. The law of heredity does this to a very limited extent only. So far as the physical structure is concerned it explains much; but when we come to the mental and moral developments, its insufficiency is apparent. Genius and idiocy may be found springing up from the same parent stock and under identical conditions of training in childhood. Variety of character will appear in children of the same family from almost the moment of birth. One infant comes into the world handicapped by a sullen temper and vicious disposition, another with the most lovable traits. It is inconceivable that these incongruous effects flow from congruous causes on the physical plane. And were we able to logically accept these physical causes as adequate, no civilized being could morally respect the ordering of a universe wherein innocent souls newly created enter life handicapped by vicious propensities. Either the Power behind all phenomena is a malevolent Power, or the universe is a chaos—the inconsequent outcome of random chance.