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TG Kalghatg!
coupledance 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 Zobar 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 dlowed to reap nothing but sorrow and failure ? The only way for reconciling the fact of child-sulfering 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:
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 men bave to go to the gloomy realms of Hades and the few heroes and heroi04s, 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 Rhostly double of the living man The idea of the Hades 18 not very condu crve to the belief in after life After-life is not very attractive Acbilles says "Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death, Ogreat Odysseus Rather would I live on the ground as a hireliag 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 Ilfo after death and the primitivo practices continued to be predominent
With the Orphic religion comes the idea of the essential diguity 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 birtha 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 10 Crete give careful instructions of the
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Abelson (J) Jewish Mysticisna (Bell & Sons, London, 1913) P 163 Odysseus XI 488
