Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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T. G. Kalghatgi
countenance to some theory of tramsmigration of souls. It is necessary upon Neshaman to climb back again to the Oversoul and be united with it; and in order to effect this end, it must previously have reached the summit of purity and perfection. Therefore its sojourn within the confines of one body may be inadequate to enable it to reach this high and exacting condition. It must experience other bodies, and it must repeat the experience till such a time as it shall have elevated and refined itself. Zohar contains some such theory although for the fuller treatment one has to look to the Kabbalistic writers who built upon the Zohar.
To the minds of the Kabbalists, transmigration is a necessity on the grounds of their particular theology, and it is a vindication of Divine justice to mankind. It settles the harassing query which all ages have raised: Why has God permitted the wicked to flourish while the righteous man is allowed to reap nothing but sorrow and failure ? The only way for reconciling the fact of child-suffering with the belief in a good God, is by saying that pain is a retribution to the soul for sins committed in some of its previous states. The Jewish literature on this subject of transmigration is an exceedingly rich one. 3
The Greek Hade closely resembles the Hebrew Sheol. It is also the common abode of the departed without regard to moral distinctions. According to the old traditional religion of the Greeks, the common mea have to go to the gloomy realms of Hades and the few heroes and heroines, personally related to the gods such as Achilles, are sent bodily to the Island of the Blest in the Western sea, Soul is here considered still as the ghostly double of the living man. The idea of the Hades is not very conducive to the belief in after-life. After-life is not very attractive. Achilles says “Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death, Ogreat Odysseus. Rather would I live on the ground as a hireling of another, with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead that are departed." Yet the desire to live somehow after death persisted and the old belief of continuance of life after death and the primitive practices continued to be predominent.
With the Orphic religion comes the idea of the essential dignity of soul along with the concept of sin. Body is the prison-house of soul and true life of the soul will be realised only when it is finally delivered from body. It is not easy to escape the cycle of births and deaths to which soul is condemned by its impurity. Soul has to be purified before it attains the highest goal of deliverance. The Golden tablets found in the tombs in the southern part of Italy and in Crete give careful instructions of the
3. Abelson (J.) Jewish Mysticism (Bell & Sons, London, 1913), p. 163. 4. Odysseus. XI 488.