5.2. Reincarnation

It is still disputable what reincarnation is, and how we look at it from the point of view of our European and Christian culture. According to the known oriental and early Christian writings, reincarnation is needed to any soul, which gets born again and again, and learns something good in every life, all to the final education and achieved perfection, when the soul no longer needs rebirth. A soul that is fully educated does not need a physical body and goes straight to heaven.

To present the basis of our cruel Christian consideration of reincarnation, I took the case of Buddha, as I believe that it tells a lot. He is believed to have been reincarnated 36 times and that he no longer needed to be born in a physical form. I do not know whether this figure is true or not, but what is important is that we have in our mind a certain path from the first birth of a soul in a living physical body to its last birth. This scale of 36 rebirths of a soul in a different physical body was sufficient for me, and I believe that we can accept it as such, as it can provide a model for the understanding of the reincarnation process as defined by Buddha.

In India, the society is divided to four castes: the first caste contains, for instance, manual and other workers and soldiers; the second contains, for instance, merchants; the third contains leading people; and in the fourth caste there are sacred and highly educated people. These castes, mentioned here in a rough outline, are today no longer as visible as they used to be, and cannot be discerned well, however, there is still the rule that if you are born in a certain caste, you cannot transit to a higher caste during your lifetime.

According to Buddha’s classification, we could say that all those whose soul has reincarnated between 1 and 9 times are in the caste of simple workers and violent soldiers, those reincarnated between 10 to 18 times are in the caste of merchants and similar occupations, those reincarnated between 19 to 27 times are in the caste of leading persons or higher social strata, while those reincarnated between 28 to 36 times are in the caste of chosen and sacred people, like Brahmans, Buddhisatvas or gurus. This classification explains why certain individuals or groups and whole strata are more humane, and why others are not. Some have achieved the upper limit of reincarnation in their caste, others have stayed lower. Thus, it is also clear that only those who are now in the 9th, 18th or 27th reincarnation, can transit from one caste into the other and only through the rebirth.

This rebirth and multiple reincarnations are also possible during the time of a single physical life - in cases of momentary or clinical death: when we are revived from it, we raise from the dead with a different, new soul. This happens when a soul progresses spiritually quickly in its body and then itself causes momentary death and a new birth in the same body with a more progressive, spiritually higher soul. Logically, the body and the environment must be ready for this, and the revived body must enable progress to the new soul.

According to certain beliefs or teachings, the home of the soul is in the blood, i.e. blood is the physical holder of the soul. Therefore, in blood transfusion it is possible to exchange souls, so that we get the soul of the person who gave the blood. In this way, we might obtain the blood of a person who has reincarnated fewer times, which results in a spiritual drop: the character of a person changes to worse. In this case, transfusion worked negatively; this example explains why in some places the inhabitants of the Balkans only accept blood transfusion from close relatives.

The fact that we have genes from our father and mother and that we are under influence of the genetic code from down to the seventh generation explains why certain people wake up with different character traits after a traumatic event. For instance, after healing, somebody starts to speak a foreign language he did not know before. I believe that here no reincarnation is involved, but that the organism activated the DNA programmes of the ancestor who knew the language.

Nevertheless, in therapeutic work we find some causes for illness connected with our previous lives. Since our previous life is as complex as the current one, it is understandable that the causes of illness are different and that they are located exclusively at the spiritual level. Therapists must be ready not to be surprised by any of the causes registered as a cause from the past.