CHAPTER SEVEN
A CASE STUDY: REINCARNATION
I
Several polls carried out in North America and Europe show that the professed belief in reincarnation is widespread. Roughly twenty percent of the interviewees both in America and several European countries state that they have wholly or partly adopted adopted a belief in reincarnation.1 Although the exact nature of the beliefs cov- ered by a term such as “reincarnation” remains uncertain as long as these polls are not followed up with interviews, such statistics still suggest a change in religious beliefs in the modern West. A mere century ago, reincarnation belief was marginal. The two main bas- tions of this creed were the spiritist subculture in France and the membership of the Theosophical Society. If one goes back another century, to the turn of the nineteenth century, belief in reincarna- tion was almost unknown in the West. It has thus taken a remark- ably short time to transform a truly exotic and esoteric doctrine into a widely accepted religious belief, adopted—if the statistics are at all representative—by millions of people in the West. Two questions are of particular interest for the purposes of the present case study. How have reincarnation doctrines adapted to the sweeping cultural changes in the West, particularly secularization and globalization? What persuasive mechanisms have contributed to mak- ing reincarnation belief credible to a modern audience? As this chap- ter will show, each phase in the production and reproduction of modern Western reincarnation doctrines has introduced innovations that are largely due to changes in the cultural context. Reincarnation comes in many varieties. This chapter, like the rest of the present study, is not concerned with the actual belief systems
1 For Britain, the figure in 1993 was 26 percent, see Heelas 1996: 108; In the Bay Area, a 1990 poll indicated 25 percent (ibid. p. 111). A Gallup poll carried out in the USA in 1996 gave the rate of reincarnation belief as 22 percent; see Saliba 1999. 456 of those who answer poll questions affirmatively, but with the move- ment texts of various spokespersons of the Esoteric Tradition. Fur- thermore, most of these texts link the concept of reincarnation with that of karma. The two are not logically connected; it is simply a fact of the history of religions that these concepts have become almost inseparable in the literature.2 Thus, although the primary focus here is reincarnation, the discursive mechanisms underlying the concept of karma will also occasionally be touched upon. Reincarnation beliefs of one kind or another are found all over the world. One survey of such beliefs in traditional cultures records concepts of rebirth among more than 250 ethnic groups.3 However, reincarnation is not a single, well defined doctrine, but a diffuse group of beliefs that hold the rebirth of some spiritual component within us, perhaps a “soul” (whatever this expression may mean), to be our destiny after death. Beyond this minimum core of common doctrine, there are vast differences of opinion. Do we always rein- carnate as humans, or can we return as other sentient beings? Do ancestral spirits reincarnate within their family groups? Is reincar- nation linked to any concept of moral retribution? What is the pre- cise nature of the reincarnating entity? The fact that reincarnation in the Esoteric Tradition is designated by the same label as rein- carnation doctrines of Oriental or other provenance should not obscure the fact that the various beliefs display considerable differences. Even within the Esoteric Tradition, there are divergences of opin- ion between e.g. Leadbeater and Steiner.
T R M M
Western Reincarnationism Before Blavatsky Although this is not the place to present an extensive history of rein- carnationist doctrines in the Christian West, some background is in order. The belief in reincarnation prevalent in certain Greek and Hellenistic schools, especially in Neoplatonism, was largely eclipsed during centuries of Christian hegemony. Reincarnation reentered the Western history of ideas with the revival of interest in the kabbala,
2 For a philosophical review of the status of the concept of karma, see Edwards 1996. 3 Bergunder 1994.