At the time of Christ, in the region in which the Baptist was baptizing and Jesus had his spiritual retreats, near the Dead Sea, there lived about 4000 hermits and Essene priests who believed in the pre-existence of souls and in reincarnation and transmigration. They were scholars of astrology, medicine, practicing theurgy, well known by the historian Flavius Josephus. The latter lived between the end of 37 and the beginning of 38 A.D.; born in Jerusalem, descendent of priests that for many generations had administered the Temple, he himself was spiritually formed according to the rabbinical-talmudic rules.

Since his youth, from 16 to 19, he wanted to experience the ascetic life of the three principal tendencies of Judaism of that time: Pharisees, Saducees and Essenes. He went to live a mystic life in the desert with a hermit named Bano, and remained there for three years, making frequent ablutions, eating and dressing austerely for ascetic purity.

 

When 19, he returned to Jerusalem (Life, 10-12) to take part in public life, after having definitely joined the party of the Pharisees. In 64, because of his fame in legal matters and in business management, as well as in theological argument, he was sent to Rome by the authorities of Jerusalem, to secure the freedom of some priests. Well, this important and qualified historian and exegete speaks with conviction about reincarnation, not only because he had learned it from the Essenes, but because it was a belief diffused throughout the Hebrew people, at least in certain classes.

 

After all even today, if we visit Palestine, we find synagogues with cabalistic rabbis who teach the doctrine of reincarnation, especially in the area of Safed. Flavius Josephus expresses these ideas in his volume, The Jewish War. More information is given by Philon of Alexandria in De vita contemplativa.

 

Reading Job in his chapter XIX, one has the impression that he too is talking about the transmigration of the souls. Plagued by his troubles, he supposes to be paying a scot for who knows what crimes perpetrated in previous existences.

 

“Who will tell me that my words are to be written .... printed in a book with an iron pen and graven, they remain on a leaden tablet, or on a rock with a chisel? For I know that my Redeemer lives, that on a new day I shall resurrect from the earth.

And again I shall be covered by my skin, and in my flesh I shall see my God. Here, I shall see Him, I myself, and not another, and in Him I shall stare with my own eyes; this is the hope that I hold within my heart”.

 

If the passages of Luke, II, 25-32, are taken in comparison, there is ground to suppose a reincarnation of Job in Simon, to whom it had been foretold that before his death he would see the Christ of God. From the Gospel we know that the elder Simon, after having seen and held in his arms the Jesus child, exclaimed: “Now I die happy, for my eyes have seen the Redeemer”.

 

Naturally, we limit ourselves to these few clues, but the modern casuistry of parapsychology and the ancient and contemporary evidence of India are so many, to give certainty to the truth expressed in the reincarnation . Without considering the fact that the present writing wants to introduce the technique of remembering past lives. But it is always interesting to remember that the first bishops of Christianity, like Pantenus and his successor Clement of Alexandria, maintained in secret, and in writings reserved for the few, this phenomenon so important of human evolution.

St. Gregory of Nissa, the younger brother of Basil of Caesarea, consecrated in 371 and sent to administer the diocese of Nissa in Cappadocia, maintained: “It is a necessity of nature for the immortal soul to be healed and purified, and when this healing does not take place in this life, it is operated upon in future and following lives”(Great Catechetic Argument, vol. III).

 

Also St. Jerome, translator of the Bible called the Vulgate, was in favor of the transmigration of the souls, before turning his back on Origen and his disciples, in fear of the Roman Church, in 398. The loner of Bethlehem (as St. Jerome was called) had always shared the opinion of Pantenus, Clement and Origen. The latter, who we will return to for important reasons, lived from 185 to 253 in Alexandria in Egypt. He died martyred in Tyre, after atrocious tortures. In some texts of Origen, which even today are studied, and especially among French ecclesiastics, we read passages like the following: “And then God made the present world and for punishment tied the soul to the body...God,...punishing each one according to his sin, made one a demon, another one a soul, and another one an angel. If it were not so, that is if the souls were not pre-existent, why would we find blind newborn babies who have not sinned and others instead generated with no ills? It is clear that souls have previous sins, in relation to which each one receives what is due. As a punishment they are sent down here by God to undergo a first judgement”

Tommaso Palamidessi

excerpt from "SCRIPTURAL AND EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE REINCARNATION"

from the 5th Booklet