3
Reincarnation and the Circle of Life
I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence.
SOCRATES
P ythagoras (507–582 BCE) was perhaps the most brilliant of the Greek philosophers, a student of many ancient streams of knowledge, including the Orphic and Eleusinian Mystery Schools. He also studied with the sages of Phoenicia, Judea, Chaldea, Egypt, Persia, and India. 1 His birth was prophesied by the Oracle at Delphi, who foretold that he would surpass all other men in beauty and wisdom and bring great good into the world. 2 Because of this, his father was instructed to have no sexual intimacy with his wife in the year before his birth, so many believed that Pythagoras was an immaculate conception or the son of a god. Thus Pythagoras, like Jesus, was known as a “Son of God.” 3
After graduating from the Eleusinian Mystery School, he traveled to Egypt, where he spent years in the Mystery Schools of Isis in Thebes. Pythagoras also studied under learned rabbis who were familiar with the secret traditions that Moses brought out of Egypt some eight hundred years earlier, and was initiated in both the Babylonian and Chaldean Mysteries. 4 Some say that while he was in Persia he trained with a master who was in the direct lineage of Zoroaster. Then he traveled to Syria and Phoenicia, where the Mysteries of Adonis were conferred on him. One of his most famous voyages was to the learned Brahmans of Elephanta and Ellora, in India, where he studied for some years. There he was called Yavancharya, “the Ionian Teacher,” by the Brahmans. 5 There are also reports of Pythagoras training with the Druids in Britain, where he studied with Abaris, an emissary from Hyperborea, the “land beyond the North Wind.” Abaris had been led to choose Pythagoras as a student by a magical golden arrow, which he later gave to his student. Abaris was an extraordinary master known as a “skywalker,” a term that means he had attained the ability to fly. 6
Figure 3.1. The master Pythagoras (illustration by Tricia McCannon )
Some say that Pythagoras’s powers were shamanic, and there is intriguing evidence that he may have acquired some of his abilities from the shamans that the Greeks had encountered when they opened up trade routes to the Black Sea region in the seventh century BCE, routes that were laid down only a century or so before Pythagoras was born. Iamblichus the Neoplatonist (250–325 CE) writes that Pythagoras had the power to predict earthquakes, stop hurricanes, calm seas, and even bilocate. 7 He was considered not only a man of God, but a godlike man by many of his students, who called him “the Master” or “that Man.”
Pythagoras was the first to use the term philosopher, derived from the words philo and sophia, “a lover of wisdom” (Sophia being the goddess of wisdom). Pythagoras believed that the true purpose of philosophy was to free the Soul from its perpetual identification with the body and the things of this world, and to awaken the consciousness of the Soul that lives within. He also believed that there is a supreme intelligence behind all things, and that the motion of God is circular, *3 the body of God is light, †1 and the nature of God is truth. 8 He believed that it is the nature of all living creatures, human, animal, and plant, to move toward this light. This is because we ourselves are made of light, and thus we are drawn to its power to help us remember the radiance of our Soul.
Pythagoras, like Orpheus, taught that the Soul is immortal and that it inhabits the body only while we are alive. It originates in the heavenly realms and returns there after death to evaluate what it has accomplished after each life is finished. This life-review process is also in accord with what modern near-death experiencers report—that shortly after passing to the Otherside they undergo a holographic life review of their former existence .
Pythagoras and the Celestial Harmonies of the Spheres
Pythagoras finally opened his own university around the age of fifty-three, on the Isle of Crotona, a Dorian colony in southern Italy. Deeply democratic in his philosophy, he accepted people of all races into his school, both men and women. If accepted, a student then entered a five-year period of silence designed to develop the qualities of listening, humility, and a contemplative mind. Such silence also taught the student to tune in to the subtle ethereal Music of the Spheres and to learn the basics of Pythagoras’s philosophy before presuming to contribute to it. 9
Pythagoras was the first teacher to expound upon the principles of celestial harmonics known as the Music of the Spheres. These are the underlying harmonics of the universe that are largely inaudible to our outer senses. In other mystical traditions this is called the audible life stream, the sound current, the bani, the vani, and the Word. This celestial music has been taught by the Essenes, the Sufis, the Egyptians, the Tibetans, the Hindus, and certain sects of Christianity. However, it is largely unknown to most people because it is not taught in the exoteric churches or temples.
The Bardo Thodol is one source in which we find references to this celestial sound current. The Tibetan term bar do thos grol translates as “liberation through hearing in the intermediate state,” clearly a reference to the Soul’s ability to tune in to this celestial current immediately following death and thereby transcend rebirth. 10 Such celestial music can sometimes be heard when one is very still, as in meditation, or when one is drifting off to sleep. As we will discover later in this book, many near-death experiencers report hearing these celestial melodies when entering the dimensions of Heaven.
These sounds are connected to string theory as proposed by modern physics, which says that within the atom itself are subatomic particles that are constantly vibrating. These various parts are named quarks, neutrinos, leptons, and so forth, and since there are so many of them, scientists now believe that they are actually vibrating strings that create a symphony of celestial sounds, all oscillating at different frequencies. This is the “background noise” of the universe that brings matter into being. Pythagoras’s sought to decode these universal patterns through music, mathematics, and sacred geometry, explaining that the laws that govern the manifestation of matter are a result of these frequencies.
As we can see, Pythagoras was ahead of his time. Much of this knowledge, which was taught secretly in the Mystery Schools of Egypt and Persia, has only now begun to resurface in our era. If taken to its natural conclusion it has the potential to help us decode the matrix upon which the universe is built. Pythagoras also taught the Golden Mean spiral on which all of creation is built, and his knowledge about music, mathematics, and sacred geometry is the basis of these disciplines today.
Euclidian geometry is also attributed to Pythagoras, for Euclid was one of his students. In addition, Pythagoras is credited with the discovery that concordant musical pitches can be expressed in simple numerical ratios. For example, a string half as long will sound an octave higher, while strings in the ratio of 2:3 sound at the interval of a fifth. This was a key discovery in the history of science, for it shows how complex and logical the universe is when it is understood mathematically. 11 Today Pythagoras’s teachings are the foundation of modern physics.
Figure 3.2. The Golden Mean Spiral
Pythagoras believed that numbers have a spiritual dimension. This spiritual numbering system also applies in the Kabbalah, the mystical path of Hebrew teachings. This higher knowledge of numbers was encoded in the Kabbalistic study of numerology, the Gematria, as well as in the construction of sacred mandalas in the East. Its importance was known to many initiates across the world, and in modern times these concepts were explored by psychologists like Carl Jung. The connection between numbers, sounds, and the formation of the universe is just returning to popular thought today. I believe that the power of numbers expresses certain fundamental principles of consciousness that are interwoven in the universe. Each of the nine primary numbers relates to overlighting beings whose waveform energies help to maintain and sustain the cosmos. As we shall see, this critical understanding of numbers applies to many things, from the seven chakras and seven dimensional planes, to the creation of the nine angelic hierarchies.
The Great Chain of Being
Pythagoras believed that the Soul travels into the physical world to experience many aspects of creation, including existence in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. This is part of the Great Chain of Being (discussed in detail in chapter 10) that culminates in our ascension to the angelic kingdoms. He believed that once a Soul achieves the rank of human being, it no longer needs to be reborn as an animal, although it is clear that there are many human beings in the world who are far crueler than any animals I can name.
This philosophy of an upwardly moving spiritual evolution is universally embraced by millions across the world. Herodotus writes that the Egyptians were the first to assert that when the body perishes, the Soul enters another form, passing through many different kinds of beings on its journey to enlightenment. In the early stages of our incarnational cycles we may choose to have a life as a marine animal or an aerial creature; then we progress to a terrestrial animal, until we eventually become fully human. However, even human evolution is just a step toward reclaiming our godlike nature. Empedocles (490–430 BCE), a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, wrote: “I was once already boy and girl, thicket and bird, and mute fish in the waves. All things doth Nature change, enwrapping souls in unfamiliar tunics of the flesh. The worthiest dwellings for the souls of men.” 12
The Story of Cerridwen and Gwion
The transmutation from one form to another is portrayed in the charming Welsh tale of Cerridwen and Gwion. Our tale begins with the Mother Goddess Cerridwen, who had an ugly son. Dismayed at what appeared to be his luckless future, she decides to make a magic elixir that will grant her son wisdom. She hires a young innocent, a lad named Gwion, to stir this brew, and he is told that he must stir it for a year and a day. Yet days before the brew is ready, three drops of elixir spill onto Gwion’s hands. Without thinking, Gwion licks his fingers, and the perfect wisdom of the magical elixir flows into his mind. Immediately, Gwion becomes conscious. When he does, he realizes that Cerridwen will know what has happened to the brew and she will be furious. So Gwion flees.
Just as Gwion had expected, when Cerridwen discovers that he has received the potency meant for her son, she becomes enraged. The tale then goes on to tell us how Cerridwen, in various disguises, chases Gwion throughout the many kingdoms of the world. First Gwion turns himself into a fish, but Cerridwen pursues him by becoming an otter. Then he transforms himself into a rabbit, but she becomes a greyhound. Next Gwion becomes a bird, but Cerridwen becomes a hawk, flying ever more swiftly than he can. Finally Gwion turns himself into a piece of corn, thinking that Cerridwen won’t notice him. But the goddess transforms herself into a hen and gobbles him up. Then, to her surprise, Cerridwen becomes pregnant with a child who is, of course, Gwion reborn. In this tale, the Mother Goddess then gives birth to the famous bard Taliesin, who becomes the Celtic teacher of Merlin the Magician. Taliesin, who is really the enlightened Gwion, becomes the most famous of all of the Druid bards, known even today for his wit and wisdom.
This intriguing tale is an encoded story about the Soul’s evolution through time. It is a parable of the long journey we each make through the realms of form, taking first one disguise and then another.
The evolutionary journey of the Soul may explain why many of us have natural affinities for certain animals—birds, cats, wolves, eagles, ravens, dragonflies, dolphins, whales, hummingbirds, or bees. Earlier in our reincarnation cycle we may have actually been these animals, and thus we naturally gravitate toward them, even now when we are in human form. This can also explain our affinities for certain trees or plants or gemstones, even in this lifetime—perhaps millions of years ago we experienced some aspect of their consciousness when we were passing in and out of these forms.
Empedocles explains: “The cycle of birth through plant and animal form is meant to culminate in the world of men. The most advanced souls are reborn as prophets, minstrels, physicians, and leaders, and from these arise as gods, highest in honor.” 13 While those of us raised in more restrictive theologies may find the idea that we were anything other than human in previous lifetimes to be a fanciful stretch of the imagination, modern embryologists have now discovered that every human child formed in the womb morphs through various animal archetypes before ever becoming human. 14 Is this merely a reflection of earlier stages of biological evolution, or could it also reflect the spiritual evolution of our Soul’s journey?
The Many Inside the One
Today we are taught that human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation. We are also told that animals only exist to serve our needs, and thus we often treat them deplorably. We have been assured by patriarchal institutions that animals have neither feelings nor Souls, but this is not true. Everything in the universe has consciousness. This is the first of the seven Hermetic Laws of wisdom written by Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom. Everything in the universe is part of the One Great Soul and thus it is alive. Paracelsus, the great Renaissance physician and philosopher writes, “There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.” 15 Who can doubt that plants have feelings when researchers have now done studies proving that they respond in positive ways to harmonious music and the people who lovingly take care of them, and react in strongly negative ways to people in their environment who have been violent? And what pet owner can ever doubt that animals have both feelings and thoughts? Anyone who has ever had a beloved cat or dog, bird or horse, knows that they form friendships, loyalties, and emotional bonds with those who care for them and with each other. In fact, it is the power of love itself that awakens every creature to a higher octave of vibration, quickening our spiritual evolution.
Madame Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, speaks of this in her epic The Secret Doctrine:
Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception. We men must remember that because we do not perceive any signs—which we can recognize—of consciousness, say, in stones, we have no right to say that no consciousness exists there. . . . Nature taken in its abstract sense, cannot be ‘unconscious,’ as it is the emanation from, and thus an aspect (on the manifested plane) of the Absolute consciousness. Where is that daring man who would presume to deny to vegetation and even to minerals a consciousness of their own . All he can say is, that this consciousness is beyond his comprehension. 16
The Greeks agreed with her. Here is a maxim from the Greek Mystery Schools: “Consciousness sleeps in the stones, dreams in the plants, awakens in the animals, and becomes self-conscious in Man. It attains Cosmic Consciousness in the Spiritual Kingdom, and Omniscience in the Kingdom of the Gods.” 17 Pythagoras believed that every species has a seal given to it by God, and that the physical form of each species is the impression of this seal on the wax of physical substance. Thus every individual body is stamped with the dignity of its divinely given pattern. He said, “There is one cosmos made up of everything, and one God immanent in everything, and one substance and one law, and one Logos common to all intelligent beings, and one truth.” 18 Pythagoras believed that ultimately the human being will reach a state where she can cast off her gross physical nature and function in a body of spiritualized ether. 19 This is the light body, known to ancient adepts as the Nuri Sarup, *4 the sparkling astral body that many near-death experiencers discover when they emerge on the Otherside. Not only do they discover that they are radiant with living light, they also find that the appearance of this body can be altered at will according to the wishes of the individual. This is why people who return from the Otherside often speak about meeting loved ones who now look young and beautiful. This light body is only one of our seven subtle-energy bodies, although it is the one that we will graduate to when we leave this Earth. Pythagoras believed that once we pass through this human stage of evolution, we will ascend to the realm of the immortals where we ultimately belong. This is the loka, or dimension, of the gods.
Remembering His Past Lives
Pythagoras claimed that he remembered many of his own past lives, just as Buddha claimed that he remembered some six hundred of his. 20 Thus one of his titles was Mnesarchides, meaning “one who remembers his own origins.” 21 In one past life he had been a Trojan warrior called Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, who perished by the hand of King Menelaus during the ten-year siege of Troy. In another lifetime he was Hermontimus, a prophet from the city of Ionia. In still another lifetime he was a humble fisherman. Then there was his life as Aethalides, the son of Mercury, the god of wisdom. *5 In that life Pythagoras received the gift of remembrance from the god of wisdom himself, giving him access to the memories of all of his past lives—a powerful gift indeed!
Pythagoras also remembered what he had experienced in the celestial realms between physical lifetimes. 22 This explains why the Oracle of Delphi had foretold the importance of his birth. The life and teachings of Pythagoras laid the groundwork for the wisdom teachings of Socrates and Plato, both of whom believed, as he did, in the eternal nature of the Soul. This great spiritual master understood not only the structure and function of the various subtle-energy bodies, but also the infrastructure behind the visible and invisible realms. He taught the connection between music, poetry, mathematics, sacred geometry, physics, nature, and the entire structure of the cosmos. To this day, some 2,500 years later, his knowledge has not been surpassed.
As a clairvoyant, I know that most of us have had scores of lives here on Earth, and this planet is only one of many possible worlds in the physical universe, let alone the other dimensional realms. While the ancient teachings believed that the greater life cycle of most human beings consists of about eight hundred physical lifetimes, during that time the human spirit, having passed through hundreds of different races and forms, has extracted from such environments that which it requires in the form of instruction and experience. Hall noted, “Having completed this cycle the Soul then either rests in a superior state until a more advanced chain of worlds is prepared for its future growth, or returns again to this inferior world to serve as an instructor to a less developed humanity.” 23 As a trained past-life regressionist in the field of hypnotherapy for over twenty years, I know the power of experiencing one’s own personal history firsthand. It can be life-changing. This is part of the reason why I continue to do readings and healings for people all over the world. The power of understanding our Soul’s larger journey can be of enormous value in helping us call back our higher awareness, for it explains aspects of who we are at the most fundamental level that would otherwise not be understood .
The Wisdom of Socrates
The wisdom of Socrates and Plato lies at the heart of the Greek Mysteries. Their philosophies were central to Hellenistic thought for almost five centuries and were the cornerstone of the Neoplatonic movement in the first four or five centuries following Jesus.
Like Pythagoras, Socrates (469–399 BCE) studied for many years in Egypt, and when he returned to Greece he established his own academy in Athens that used the Socratic method as the primary means of teaching. This method posed questions to his students about the nature of reality; it was designed to not only develop logical thought, but also to awaken memories hidden in the Souls of his students. Later, Socrates’s student Plato would employ this same technique in his writing style, using dialogues between a student and teacher to pose questions about the nature of reality. Understandably, Socrates, and then Plato, were greatly influenced by Pythagoras, and while we have no books today that are directly attributed to Socrates, there are some 250 manuscripts written by Plato. In several of these, Socrates teaches in the first person, giving us ample opportunity to discover what he taught through Plato’s writings. The books that include Socrates’ discourses include The Republic , The Timaeus, Phaedo, Lysis, and Charmides.
Figure 3.3. The great philosopher Socrates (illustration by Tricia McCannon)
Socrates believed that the universe is divinely created, and that all creations share the concept of an immortal Soul. 24 He believed that the Soul is innately endowed with all knowledge because in the heavenly realms the truth is never hidden. He held that when the Soul enters the body its memories become veiled by amnesia; however, through open discourse and reflection it is possible to recover this “forgotten” knowledge. Thus the Socratic method was used to stimulate memory through inductive inquiry. 25 According to Plato, Socrates taught that “the soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything . . . for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.” 26
Notice that Socrates refers to the Soul as feminine, a belief that existed for centuries before the takeover by the patriarchy. Socrates goes on to remind us that “if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal. Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.” 27
The Transmigration of the Soul
At the center of Platonic thought is the concept of reincarnation and the principle of karma, the spiritual law of cause and effect. Jesus taught this same principle in the statement “Whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). This means that what we do in this lifetime will have consequences in the Afterlife and also in our next lifetime. This universal law allows each Soul to learn from our mistakes by personally experiencing the very things that we have said and done to one another.
Knowledge of both karma and reincarnation as the mechanisms for Soul evolution is ancient. These two concepts were central to the Egyptians, Celts, Saxons, Sumerians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Druids, Norse, Finnish, Danish, Prussian, Teutonic, Laplander, and Lithuanian peoples. A hundred years after Jesus, the Roman philosopher Marcus Cicero (106–43 BCE) wrote: “The ancients, whether they were seers, or interpreters of the divine mind in the tradition of sacred initiations, seem to have known the truth when they affirmed that we were born into the body to pay the penalty for sins committed in a former life.” 28
Belief in reincarnation has been found among Scythians, Africans, and Pacific Islanders, as well as tribes in North, South, and Central America. 29 It lies at the heart of Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, and Moslem religions, and was part of the original teachings of Jesus (a subject discussed at length in my last two books). Unitarian minister Reverend W. R. Alger tells us that “no other doctrine has exerted so extensive, controlling, and permanent an influence upon mankind as that of the metempsychosis, the notion that when the soul leaves the body it is born anew in another body; its rank, character, circumstances and experience in each successive existence depending on its qualities, deeds, and attainments in its preceding lives.” 30
Statistics show that those who have embraced the belief in reincarnation are usually well-educated, traveled, and affluent professionals. 31 “The thread of firm belief in rebirth has woven its long web, unbroken, from the dawn of time to the pragmatic present. It has circled the earth again and again, touched nation after nation, leaving not one. Consider also that it has never been upheld by the bigoted nor by agencies of persecution, but invariably by the educated, the open-minded, the wise, the good and the mystical.” 32
American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals . . . and there they stand, looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise.” 33 The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy says, “As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other more real life, and then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real, the life of God.” 3 4
Benjamin Franklin remarks, “When I see nothing annihilated, not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot suspect the annihilation of souls. . . . Thus finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine; hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected.” 35 And finally, American novelist and poet Louisa May Alcott writes: “I think immortality is the passing of the soul through many lives or experiences, and such as are truly lived, used, and learned, help us go on to the next, each growing richer, happier and higher, carrying with it only the real memories of what has gone before.” 36
In the Hebrew faith, reincarnation was embraced by both the Pharisees and Essenes, two of the three sects of Judaism at the time of Jesus; however, the doctrine was edited out of the New Testament by Catholic correctores, scribes appointed to censor entire sections of the gospels for the Church’s own political and financial purposes. 37 Yet references to reincarnation can still be found when one looks closely. For example, when the Apostles ask Jesus about the identity of John the Baptist, they say, “Is he Elijah come again?” Jesus answers by saying, “I say to you that Elijah has also come, and they did to him whatever they wished, as it is written of him” (Mark 9:13). Here Jesus is telling us that John is Elijah returned. *6
Flavius Josephus (37–100 CE), a Hebrew historian who chronicled the history of the Jews fifty years after Jesus, writes: “Do ye not remember that all pure Spirits when they depart out of this life . . . obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolutions of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies?” 38 The Zohar, one of the holiest of Hebrew teachings and the foundational work of the Kabbalah, reminds us:
All souls are subject to the trials of transmigration; and men do not know the designs of the Most High with regard to them; they know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it. They do not know how many transmigrations and mysterious trials they must undergo.
Souls must reenter the absolute substance whence they have emerged. But to accomplish this end they must develop all the perfections, the germ of which is planted in them; and if they have not fulfilled this condition during one life, they must commence another, a third, and so forth, until they have acquired the condition which fits them for reunion with God. 39
As a clairvoyant who has read for people all over the world, I know that all of us have lived before. Each Soul has a unique energy signature that is different from every other being. When I do readings I am able to trace this energy signature up into the higher worlds and open up my client’s Akashic Records to discover the deeper history of her Soul. Each one of us has a spiritual past with many complex layers. This includes lifetimes spent in other dimensions and on other worlds, many times in bodies that are similar, if not identical, to our human one. We also have energetic alliances with animal groups, religions, philosophies, and tribal groups, along with occupational preferences that can be reflected in our current lifetime. In addition, some Souls have spiritual alliances with certain masters, angelic groups, or gods or goddesses based on their past-life history. These alliances are wellsprings to help us on our path to enlightenment, and when we are ready, these beings can assist us in our spiritual evolution. Having traced the records of many thousands of people to discover how their past-life history is linked to their present life, I know well how the seeds of karma can flower into the blessings, challenges, and circumstances of the present .
The Legacy of Plato and the Neoplatonic Movement
The golden age of Greek philosophy lasted for over nine hundred years, beginning around 600 BCE and continuing well into the fifth century CE through the Neoplatonic period. Before Socrates, this age of spiritual inquiry and discovery was brilliantly expressed through philosophers like Xenophanes (570–475 BCE), Heraclitus (535–475 BCE), Anaxagoras (510–428 BCE), and Hippocrates (460–370 BCE). There was also the philosophy of Pindar (522–483 BCE), the paradoxes of Zeno (490–430 BCE), and nine volumes of history written by Herodotus (485–425 BCE), a virtual travelogue of the customs and beliefs of many lands. There was also Parmenides (late sixth or early fifth century BCE), who asserted that Earth was round; Archytas (428–347 BCE), a contemporary of Plato who invented the screw and crane; and Democritus (460–370 BCE), who discovered the atom almost five hundred years before the birth of Christ. 40 This laid the groundwork for Plato’s Academy, which endured for nearly four hundred years in Greece, coming to an end in 83 BCE. Plato’s philosophy continued to thrive in the Roman era, melding Christian thought with the birth of Neoplatonism around 193 CE, and then lasting for another three hundred glorious years into the Christian era.
Neoplatonism was a movement that sought to reconcile all religions and philosophies under one great system of truth, to “restore to its purity the wisdom of the ancients.” 41 This, they believed, was the true objective of Jesus, the master teacher. Thus Neoplatonists were known as Philalethians, or “lovers of truth,” for their doctrine wove together both Christian and Platonic philosophies in a powerful synthesis of wisdom that incorporated science, logic, mysticism, and metaphysics. Neoplatonists taught alongside many Church Fathers as well as rabbis and Mystery School teachers. 42 Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), the famous British mathematician and philosopher, writes of these great men and women: “The greatest men, who have been philosophers, have felt the need both of science and mysticism. The attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life.” 43 Platonic thought inspired many great minds because it focused on the liberating power of truth. Plotinus (205–270 CE), one of the most renowned of the Neoplatonists, has this to say about the Soul’s journey while here on Earth:
The soul, still a dragged captive, will tell of all that man did and felt; but upon death there will appear, as time passes, memories of the lives lived before, some of the events of the most recent life being dismissed as trivial. As it grows away from the body, it will revive things forgotten in the corporeal state. And if it passes in and out of one body after another, it will tell over the events of the discarded life. It will treat as present that which it has just left, and it will remember much from the former existence. 44
Unfortunately, this enlightened age was brought to its knees by the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the third century after Christ. In the strong-arm shadow of its political and military might, the Church began an agenda of suppression of all philosophic and scientific discourse other than its own dogma, and over a thousand years of darkness was ushered in. Eventually, with the destruction of the Knights Templar and the Cathars in the 1200s, this race to destroy all the so-called heretics culminated in six painful centuries of witch hunts and the violent Inquisition, in which all spiritual inquiry other than the doctrine of the official Church became punishable by death.
Now let us turn to the exploration of those people in modern times who have had the rare experience of crossing over to the Otherside and returning. Let’s find out what they report from their own firsthand experiences.