Are We Volunteers?

A stunningly elegant emanationist cosmology results if we picture the Whole as a spiral-shaped creation divided into cycles. Each cycle of emanation, call it creative outflow, ends with the completion of an open circle, its beginning point is on the spiral below, its end point at the termination of the spiral above. Each cycle transcends the previous, thus represents either another degree of perfection or a new divine idea. The emanation itself contains the idea, a means of its realization, and the agencies required for its manifestation. The agencies may be understood in two ways: as laws designed for the present cycle and as free agents who may indeed oppose the divine intention—and, if they do, that too is part of the creative idea: it is foreseen, it is permitted (to use one of Swedenborg’s favorite notions), it is part of the creative intent. Whatever is is because God is.

Concerning the last point, I’d draw attention to “Ainulindalë,” the creation story in Tolkien’s Silmarillion. That title translates as “The Music of the Ainur,” beings created by Ilúvatar, the ultimate divine. One of the Ainur, the brightest and the best, Melkor, represents Lucifer, ever intent on destroying the splendid harmonies the Ainur produce, but Ilúvatar introduces themes in which the discord becomes the source of yet finer harmonies, showing how, despite the freedom of that the Ainur enjoy, nothing destroys the divine intent and everything contributes to Ilúvatar’s foresight.

This cosmological conception would assert that creation is eternal delight—of which Blake’s energy is merely a facet. Creation, even at the human scale, is an inexpressible totality in which intellect, love, and act are permanently fused. That the act of creation expresses itself through agencies and takes places with their free participation—of which opposition is itself a contribution—is also a matter of human experience. In religious cosmologies it is clearly mirrored in Mazdaism, the oldest higher religion, and echoed in the Kabbalistic tradition of Judaism.

If agencies participate in the creation, their descent into the void of possibilities is not some kind of punishment, fall, or banishment but is, instead, a freely chosen act. Thus it is depicted in Mazdaism, where each human is seen as a volunteer—and voluntarily assumes great risk in leaving the mansions of light to battle with chaos to save the creation; nay, it is also echoed in Tolkien’s great myth, where the Ainur are shown visions of Arda and invited to participate in its shaping. Now Tolkien was a devout Catholic. Ah, yes!

On Awe

Readers of this blog who find it obscure and difficult should turn to the Zohar, the Sefer ha-Zohar, to give it its full name, The Book of Radiance, one of the great books of the Kabbalah. Now there is something really difficult. Thanks to my wife’s thoughtful generosity, I have one volume of this work masterfully translated by Daniel C. Matt, himself a Master, indeed the foremost master in our language on these wonders. Here is a sampling—in which I omit at least as much text in annotations and commentaries as I produce for view—and in this strange world commentaries, and commentaries on commentaries, and so on, layered ad infinitum, are very much part of the tradition:

     Rabbi Shim’on opened with the commandments of Torah, saying, “The commandments of Torah given by the Blessed Holy One to Israel are all written in Torah in general terms.
     “In the beginning God created (Genesis 1:1). This is the first commandment of all, called awe of YHVH, which is called beginning, as is written: The beginning of wisdom is awe of YHVH (Psalms 111:10), Awe of YHVH is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7). For this entity is named beginning; it is the gate through which one enters faith. The entire world is based upon this commandment.
     “Awe branches in three directions, two of which are not fittingly rooted, one of which is essence of awe. There is the person who fears the blessed Holy One so that his children may live and not die, or who fears physical or material punishment. Because of this he fears Him constantly, but his awe is not focused on the blessed Holy One.
     “Then there is the person who fears the blessed Holy One because he is afraid of punishment of the other world and the punishment of Hell. Neither of these is the essential root of awe.
     “The essence of awe is that a person be in awe of his Lord because He is immense and sovereign—essence and root of all worlds—before whom everything is considered as nothing, as is said: All the inhabitants of the earth are considered as nothing (Daniel 4:32). One should direct his desire to the site called Awe.”

The “site called Awe,” Daniel C. Matte’s footnote tells us, is Shekinah, the focus of genuine devotion, the tenth Sephirah or emanation of the Kabbalah, a feminine word meaning the Divine Presence, alternatively rendered as the masculine Malkut, The Kingdom.

Reincarnation: Western Perspectives

Modern cases of reincarnation studied by westerners mostly involve children who remember a previous life in detail. They remember the names of previous family members. In many such cases, the child reports dying of violence or early in life in some traumatic fashion—while giving birth, for instance. The previous (remembered) family may live in the same or in a distant town. The child usually insists. It says that it does not belong here, in its current family. Some children carry birthmarks at those sites where they were injured in their supposed previous life.

Dr. Ian Stevenson, then at the University of Virginia documented such reports in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (University of Virginia Press, 1974) and in Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects (Praeger Publishers, 1997). He maintained a database of some 3,000 reported cases; of these 200 were “suggestive” of reincarnation in his opinion. Stevenson was an original, erudite, and courageous figure. He was trained in medicine, worked in biochemistry, and, with a partner, made a discovery about oxidation in kidneys. He later took another degree and qualified as a Freudian psychoanalyst; but dissatisfied with Freudian approaches, he eventually began investigating paranormal phenomena. In the process he became the leading scientific investigator of reincarnation. I ought to put “scientific” in quotes because he was treated as an outlaw by many would-be spokesmen for science, described (because he had to be) as objective, careful, and disciplined—but he was said to entertain an “unacceptable hypothesis.” Here is a classical case of the clash between the search for truth on the one hand and of an orthodoxy on the other.

Stevenson labeled only those cases as suggestive of reincarnation where no other explanation of the data seemed as plausible. Even so he studiously avoided making any claims. Hence he used the word “suggestive” rather than some stronger term like “evidentiary.”

All such cases rely on memories—of children. The memories are vivid, including, for instance, the location where some money was buried or what the names of the reincarnated person’s children were. The child recognizes previous locations, the layout of residences and neighborhoods it had never visited before, and people who were its claimed relatives in the previous life. The child greets these people by name, sometimes by nickname known only in narrow family circles. In all of these cases, the will not to believe causes doubters to reach for concepts like telepathy to argue for an alternative means whereby information may have reached the child.

The cases are much more persuasive than the “super-psi” explanation, outlined here, used to explain them away. Indeed the raw data become almost banal, and the birthmarks, where present, suggest that the minds appearing now in new bodies actually participated in their formation along lines that remind one of stigmata, but here caused by unpleasant memories.

Stevenson’s cases come from all over the world, but many more from cultures where reincarnation is accepted. In cultures where the doctrine is taboo, children are shushed when they first begin to talk about such things. They are certainly not believed. No doubt they sense their parents’ anxiety and disapproval. In any case, these memories tend to fade away as the children grow older, no matter which culture they inhabit.

Now for some older western views of reincarnation. The concept has been around from very early on and seems to have been widespread. It was and is held by Hindus and by followers of the Jewish Kabbalah today. The Kabbalah calls the process gil-gul. One of the greatest if also admittedly one of the more controversial of the Church Fathers, Origen (185-254), taught the preexistence of the soul. Origen had an, ah, original view of the scriptures too, declining to follow the “letter” of the scripture strictly where he judged it unfit to be the word of God. He wrote: “Every soul comes into this world strengthened by the victories and weakened by the defeats of its previous life.” One source is here, on p. 42.

Platonist ideas influenced Origen, but he seems to have held his belief in “preexistence” as a matter of logical necessity based on an argument I personally find silly. Origen thought that souls coexist with God and thus have no beginning. Origen argued that God could not be omnipotent without subjects. No one is master without servants. Souls therefore had to coexist with God. Origen’s father died as a martyr; Origen himself was tortured for his faith. He was a teacher of great renown and wrote many books—a shining light, in other words, much admired by numerous people who were later canonized. He was not.

Belief in some Christian version of reincarnation seems to have been held by various groups for at least 300 some odd years in the West—dated from around the time when Christianity formed. With the coming of the Emperor Constantine (reigned 306-337), the Church gained power and began consolidating its ideological rule. The process took the form of various councils, the first of which Constantine organized himself. Bishops gathered at various places and hammered out the shape of orthodoxy. Until then all kinds of sects coexisted uneasily, snarling at each other in their tracts. All this had to be organized. Competing groups now morphed into heresies. At the Second Council of Constantinople, held in 553, “preexistence” was finally rooted out. Souls had to be created within time and only went round once. The council published some 13 anathemas in the summer of that year. One dealt with the “fabulous pre-existence of souls” and condemned those who asserted the “monstrous restoration which follows from it.” If the belief had not been common, it wouldn’t have required quite so firm a sanction. This event, in the sixth century, was not really a philosophical but a political resolution of an article of faith. It is well to hold that in mind. The organization of churches, while deeply intertwined with ideas and their meanings, is an expression of social force aimed at regulating society, not at clarifying thought.