Live so that you may desire to live again-that is your duty- for in any case you will live again!” (Frederic Nietzsche)
The other day, an over enthusiastic friend cajoled me with an angelic compliment. Let alone the immediate flattering comparison, I couldn’t help noticing the childish and naïve idea we still have about angels as personal good doers or protectors.
I am not an expert in angelology, but if I’d have to characterize what these existences are, I reckon the closest to my own personal idea of angels is Plesu’s definition as “an immaculate model of our supernatural evolution”, a perfect model of us in the what Arabs call “'alam al-mithal” (the world of similitudes). In the "best of all possible worlds" and in a ten dimensional universe anything is possible: angels, demons, premonitions, halos, celestial beings (as compounds of energy), thoughts that become things. But as 4th dimensional beings is difficult, if not impossible, for us to grasp these concepts.
Maybe God is dead. Maybe He wasn’t even born yet except on our striving for perfection minds. Maybe God’s way of loving us is Spartan: rough, exigent, demanding, pushing us to and beyond our human limits and asking us to overcome them, thus initiating our perfection. God’s love might not “coincide with the passionate and oscillatory route of human love”.
The Spartan mothers used to tell their boys who went to war “Èi tàn èi èpì tàs” meaning “return with this or upon this”, (the shield) as Spartans didn’t conceive defeat: death or victory were the only possible options. The shield was a weapon and tool used evidently for defense but, by extent, the symbol for responsibility to protect himself and his comrades. How can a parent tell such a thing to their son? Come back dead or victorious or don’t come back at all? Didn’t Spartans love their children? A song claims even Russians love their children, so why Spartans would make an exception?
As opposed to the type of parental love we have in mind when comes to our children, the modern society would not conceive and would certainly reject this type of rough, almost divine and mysterious love. Spartan mothers, pretty much like God’s and angelic love, loved their children beyond the immediate finite borders of blood ties. They knew their children didn’t belong to them and, as good parents, they wanted to make sure they offered a higher and more glorious destiny to their children, and not the possessive maternally and simplistic love a modern mother would have for her child, who is desperately trying to protect him at all times, to the point of alienation.
The same friend, who joyously labeled me as an angel, got my attention on what Khalil Gibran, a father of the Lebanese culture but with no children of his own, said about children, an idea that was neither innovative nor primary: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you”.
Gibran, like many of our enlightened predecessors reached to the same conclusion: that life is a cycle; that time is infinite even if universe might seem at times limited in its amount of matter; that we are re-born, and our children just happen to accompany us in this life cycle; that we are reciprocally guiding each other, parents and children alike. The parents-children relation is mutually educational and nurturing. God loves us the way we should love our children: He recognizes our strengths and weaknesses but He is not trying to change them, “allowing us the freedom and the amazing free-will to explore our own potential”. It is up to us and our children to choose the right from wrong while God and we- as parents- have to unreservedly and incessantly love them.
Some say “unconditional love not only that implies, but is unconditional freedom”. Our children, indeed, do not belong to us and we don’t belong to them. If Peter Lynds’ model of the cyclic time stands the proof of, -funny enough-, time itself, the universe repeats exactly an infinite number of times. Interestingly enough, while we have the chance to redeem ourselves in this lifetime trying to become better people, none of the mainstream current Abrahamic religions encourage the idea of reincarnation or rebirth. Not in this lifetime anyway. The Norse concept of Jormungandr (Ouroboros, the eternal snake that it’s devouring its own tail and it is reborn again) is a concept refuted by the interpretations of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
People are asleep and when they die they will wake up (Ali ibn Abi Talib)
However, the three of them have found small texts and roundabouts, which taken out of the context, can be bent to our liking in order to sustain what we want to believe in: the rebirth, the chance to straighten our wrongs again, in another life, just in case we didn’t make it in this lifetime. I must admit that the idea of rebirth sounds way friendlier and more humane than the eternal doom with no possibility of resurrection.
Books say that in Judaism “the idea of reincarnation, called gilgul, became popular in folk belief, and is found in much Yiddish literature among Ashkenazi Jews”.
Hardcore Christians think that “reincarnation is unbiblical and must be rejected as false”.
“The Christian texts stated that God would send Elijah back to Earth, as a harbinger of Jesus Christ”. Come to think of it, wasn’t Jesus’ resurrection a form of rebirth? Sure, if we break the concept down into specifics and try to define rebirth, as coming back in flesh and bone, in another body etc, this won’t fit our profile. However, for whoever wants to make appeal to ancient and sacred texts and back up their thesis there will be always pros and cons. "Scriptures from the King James version of the Bible hint at reincarnation and the concept was taught in the Roman Catholic Church until 553 A.D., when it was voted out at the Council of Constantinople". "Gen 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man". Voila!
Islam as well rejects the idea of rebirth and reincarnation, although not totally. Whereas the Sunnis clearly state that reincarnation is a no-no, the Sufis forward the idea of dawriyyah (cycles) claiming “this concept is mentioned in the Koran itself: “"How can you deny God, when you were dead and God gave you life? Then God will cause you to die, and then revive you, and then you will be returned to God." (Koran 2:28). Along with the Sufis, "the Shiite Muslims believe that Raj'a (return) can be understood as a limited reincarnation and most Ismaili Shiites Muslims completely accept the idea of reincarnation".
I must however clarify that not all Christians and Muslims believe in reincarnation, as some spiritual scholars on both sides have undoubtedly rejected this “pagan” idea, claiming that the holy texts have been twisted and none of the Islamic or Christian scriptures refer to eternal return, or flesh and bone rebirth. According to Abu 'Abdullah Al-Qurtubi, “Raj’a is understood in context of the physical absence and physical appearance (From the (earth) did We Create you, and into it Shall We return you, And from it shall We Bring you out once again. (Koran, 20:55)"
Similarly, some Christian groups have denounced any belief in “reincarnation as heretical and maintain that any phenomena suggestive of it as deceptions of the devil”.
Come to think of it, the thought that we can do wrong in this lifetime as we have another or multiple chances to straighten our wrongs is very devilish and tempting. Tempting enough to make us choose a path of crime in this life time with the hope we will do better in the next life.
In our insane rat race to excuse our malevolent deeds, we clung on this theory claiming that is OK if we screw up today, we can still redeem ourselves tomorrow, and a recent Fox News poll clearly shows that 25% of Americans believe in reincarnation. The study further says "when we look at findings that span European convictions from 1968 - 1990, we see a steady increase in the acceptance of reincarnation. In 1968 23% of people in France believed in reincarnation; in 1990 that figure had risen to 28%. In Britain it rose during the same period from 18% to 30%; in the Netherlands from 10% to 18%.”
There, we have the perfect excuse. Come what may, we will get our vengeance or good deeds doing this lifetime…or another.
I haven’t tried an exegesis (it couldn’t be possible on three pages) of the rebirth theory versus monotheistic religions. My personal, short and humble quest was to find answers within myself. Still, it is our God-given duty to question. Hildegard Von Bingen, a German mystical nun that lived in the 19th century, divinely urged us to ask as “if there is no question within man, there is no answer within God”. Ask and you shall be answered.
