[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by marktb

I have been reading alot of Enoch Tan's stuff on mindreality.com and he states that Lucifer has placed in the minds of the collective consciousness the false notion that we have lived past lives

LOL, Lucifier must have been cooperating with God in the Old Testament then.

Reincarnation and Jewish Tradition

"The fact that reincarnation is part of Jewish tradition comes as a surprise to many people. 11 Nevertheless, it's mentioned in numerous places throughout the classical texts of Jewish mysticism, starting with the preeminent sourcebook of Kabbalah, the Zohar :12

As long as a person is unsuccessful in his purpose in this world, the Holy One, blessed be He, uproots him and replants him over and over again. (Zohar I 186b)

All souls are subject to reincarnation; and people do not know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He! They do not know that they are brought before the tribunal both before they enter into this world and after they leave it; they are ignorant of the many reincarnations and secret works which they have to undergo, and of the number of naked souls, and how many naked spirits roam about in the other world without being able to enter within the veil of the King's Palace. Men do not know how the souls revolve like a stone that is thrown from a sling. But the time is at hand when these mysteries will be disclosed. (Zohar II 99b)


The Zohar and related literature 13 are filled with references to reincarnation, 14 addressing such questions as which body is resurrected and what happens to those bodies that did not achieve final perfection, 15 how many chances a soul is given to achieve completion through reincarnation, 16 whether a husband and wife can reincarnate together,17 if a delay in burial can affect reincarnation,18 and if a soul can reincarnate into an animal. 19

The Bahir, attributed to the first century sage, Nechuniah ben Hakanah, used reincarnation to address the classic question of theodicy -- why bad things happen to good people and vice versa:


Why is there a righteous person to whom good things happen, while [another] righteous person has bad things happen to him? This is because the [latter] righteous person did bad in a previous [life], and is now experiencing the consequences? What is this like? A person planted a vineyard and hoped to grow grapes, but instead, sour grapes grew. He saw that his planting and harvest were not successful so he tore it out. He cleaned out the sour grape vines and planted again. When he saw that his planting was not successful, he tore it up and planted it again. (Bahir 195)20

Reincarnation is cited by authoritative classic biblical commentators, including Ramban21 (Nachmanides), Menachem Recanti 22 and Rabbenu Bachya.23 Among the many volumes of the holy Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, known as the "Ari,"24 most of which come down to us from the pen of his primary disciple, Rabbi Chaim Vital, are profound insights explaining issues related to reincarnation. Indeed, his Shaar HaGilgulim, "The Gates of Reincarnation," 25 is a book devoted exclusively to the subject, including details regarding the soul-roots of many biblical personalities and who they reincarnated into from the times of the Bible down to the Ari."

In fact, before you start believing that Christianity itself had always rejected the notion of reincarnation, you may want to read the passage below. It's not that clear-cut.

Reincarnation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The overwhelming majority of mainstream Christian denominations reject the notion of reincarnation and consider the theory to challenge basic tenets of their beliefs. Many churches do not directly address the issue, but indirectly, through teachings about death (see Particular judgment). A few consider the matter open to individual interpretation due to the few biblical references which survived the purging of texts considered to be heretical in the founding years of Christianity as a church. New Age Christians contend that reincarnation was taught by the early christian church, but due to bias and mistranslations, these teachings were lost or obscured.[20] Many of the philosophies associated with the theory of reincarnation focus on "working" or "learning" through various lifetimes to achieve some sort of higher understanding or state of "goodness" before salvation is granted or acquired. Basic to Traditional Christianity is the doctrine that humans can never achieve the perfection God requires and the only salvation is total and complete forgiveness accomplished through the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross wherein he took the sins of mankind. There seems to be evidence however that some of the earliest Christian sects such as the Sethians and followers of the Gnostic Church of Valentinus believed in reincarnation, and they were persecuted by the Romans for this.[21]

A number of Evangelical and (in the USA) Fundamentalist Christian groups have denounced any belief in reincarnation as heretical[citation needed], and explained any phenomena suggestive of it as deceptions of the devil. Although the Bible never mentions the word reincarnation, there are several passages through New Testament that Orthodox Christians interpret as openly rejecting reincarnation or the possibility of any return or contact with this world for the souls in Heaven or Hell (see Hebrews 9:27 and Luke 16:20-31)

The Bible contains passages in the New Testament that could be interpreted to allude to reincarnation. In Matthew 11:10-14and 17:10-13, Jesus says that John the Baptist is the prophet Elijah who had lived centuries before, and he does not appear to be speaking metaphorically.[22] However, in John 1:21, the Jews ask John the Baptist if he is Elijah and John replies clearly that he is not, implying that Jesus' reference was meant in a figurative sense (which is what most Christians accept). It should be noted that Elijah never actually "died," but was "raptured" in a chariot of fire. Furthermore, the prophetic texts stated that God would send Elijah back to Earth, as a harbinger of Jesus Christ. As cousins they were born respectively to barren Elizabeth [23] and Zacharias[24]; Jesus, firstborn of Mary and Joseph[25], was the first to rise from the dead visibly demonstrating his power over death [26].

In any case, it is obviously difficult to reconcile the idea of reincarnation with the fundamental Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

There are various contemporary attempts to entwine Christianity and reincarnation. Geddes Macgregor, wrote a book called Reincarnation in Christianity : A New Vision of Rebirth in Christian Thought, Rudolf Steiner wrote Christianity as Mystical Fact and Tommaso Palamidessi wrote Memory of Past Lives and Its Technique which contains several methods which are supposed to help in obtaining memories from previous lives. [27]

Several Christian denominations which support reincarnation include the Christian Community, the Liberal Catholic Church, Unity Church, The Christian Spiritualist Movement, the Rosicrucian Fellowship and Lectorium Rosicrucianum. The Medieval heretical sect known variously as the Cathars or Albigensians who flourished in the Languedoc believed in Reincarnation, seeing each soul as a fallen angel born again and again into the world of Matter created by Lucibel (Lucifer). Only through a Gnostic 'Rebirth' in the Holy Spirit through Christ could the soul escape this process of successive existences and return to God."