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The Case for Reincarnation
. no dw 1986 unity
333 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 1986
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May 22, 2024
A FAMED POET AND UNITY MINISTER MAKES A COMPREHENSIVE ARGUMENT
James Dillet Freeman (1912- 2003) was a poet and a minister of the Unity Church.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1986 book, “This book… began twenty years ago as a thirty-minute talk about reincarnation… Then… the Association for Research and Enlightenment [Edgar Cayce] asked me to give some lectures at one of their symposiums… Then the Unity School for Religious Enlightenment asked me to make six lectures on the subject… I realized that if it were going to be used, it would have to be a book… I hope as you read this book, you will experience it… as lectures…. I hope that, as you read, you will become as fascinated by the subject as I did when I lectured about it… there was no doubt that it was bringing me a keener insight into the nature of this life and helping me to find its meaning.”
He explains, “By reincarnation I mean that you lived other lives before you began this one, lives that led you into your present existence. After you die, you will be reborn again, perhaps in this world, perhaps in others, perhaps in human form, perhaps in some much different mode of manifestation, but one that you will be drawn to by virtue of what you have become; and you will be reborn again and again until you have grown to be the perfect individual God meant you to grow to be when He made you.” (Pg. 5) Later, he adds, “I don’t believe in reincarnation in a dogmatic way. I look at reincarnation as not only completely compatible with the important teachings of Christianity, with I think it makes Christianity more Christian.” (Pg. 7) He continues, “Unity is an undogmatic approach to religion… It says it is practical Christianity. In regard to reincarnation, Unity offers it as a reasonable suggestion; you can accept it or reject it as you feel led.” (Pg. 8)
He argues, “Christianity is the religion of love. I’ve often wondered why so many traditional Christians want to make God so mean… Almost all religions believe in some form of heaven and hell, whether they also believe in reincarnation or not. But most of the others don’t make hell eternal… Christians make hell eternal. I don’t understand it! The Catholics do better. They have purgatory, unpleasant enough but not quite hell, and not for forever… I am afraid many people reject reincarnation because they don’t think it provides for enough punishment…. But how much we are suffering! We are judged daily…” (Pg. 18-19)
He recounts, “During the last few years there have appeared in books and magazines a number of reports of what the writers have called near-death experience… One thing about these near-death reports that I’ve liked—they report that there is nothing to fear… None of them reports anything that looks like the traditional heaven of hell.” (Pg. 43)
He argues, “There are a dozen or more places in the Bible where, if you believe in reincarnation, you might reasonably say, ‘I think the man who wrote this was making a reference to reincarnation.’ There are a few places in the Bible where you have to be completely opposed to reincarnation to believe that the writer meant anything but reincarnation.” (Pg. 52) He adds, “Amazingly, the best of these passages that suggest reincarnation consist of statements made by Jesus, or they describe incidents in which He took part.” (Pg. 54)
He continues, “At Jesus’ transfiguration… [He said] ‘Elijah does come… but I tell you that Elijah has already come’… Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.’ [Mt 17:9-13] Another time, Jesus said, ‘John the Baptist… is Elijah who is to come.’ [Mt 11:11-15] Of John the Baptist’s denial that he was Elijah [Jn 1:19-23], Freeman comments, “John’s comments are just what you would expect if you believe in reincarnation. If you do reincarnate, obviously most of us don’t remember who we were. John didn’t remember being anyone but John.” (Pg. 55-56) Later, he adds, “The most conclusive incident of all is … where Jesus heals the man born blind from birth… ‘his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” [Jn 9:2-3]… Obviously, the idea that the man might have sinned before he was born was not an idea strange or unacceptable to Jesus or to His disciples.” (Pg. 58) He concludes, “There are a dozen or so other passages in the Old and New Testaments that may allude to reincarnation, but they can be interpreted in different ways.” (Pg. 59)
He asserts, “Somehow most of us have the notion that … from its very beginning, Christianity rejected reincarnation. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the early days of Christianity, there were many who believed in it. There was nothing in the teachings of Jesus that excluded the belief in reincarnation. It is not hard to see, however, why the Church… from the third to the sixth century A.D., decided against reincarnation. For one thing… there was certainly no popular demand for reincarnation. Consider what life was like. The thought of having to come back and live it again could no have appealed to many.” (Pg. 75-76) He adds, “in A.D. 553, both [Origen] and reincarnation were condemned by a Council called in Constantinople.” (Pg. 80) He suggests, “Belief in reincarnation strips a great deal of power away from the Church. You can understand why it wouldn’t tolerate any such belief.” (Pg. 85)
He asserts, “Intelligent people have always believed in reincarnation. The greatest thinkers of ancient Greed—Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Plotinus---all believed in it. Pagan Rome produced two great philosophers. One … was… Epictetus; the other was … Marcus Aurelius. Neither of them wrote about reincarnation, but they both believed in it. We know they believed in reincarnation because they were both Stoics, and all Stoics believed in reincarnation.” (Pg. 95-98) Later, he argues, “Patton truly believed in reincarnation… he was sent to France… and a young French officer offered to show him around… and he said, ‘You don’t have to. I know this place.’ … Have you ever had an experience like this? It’s called ‘déjà vu’---already seen.” (Pg. 99)
He notes, “Personally I have never been able to accept the notion of withdrawal, detachment, separation that dominates Eastern thinking… The East believes we have to be reborn… But the purpose of all this being reborn is so that at last we can avoid being reborn, so that we can be released from the strain and pain of birth, death, and rebirth, released from the misery this world brings.” (Pg. 123-124)
He explains, “You can’t investigate reincarnation without coming on the word ‘karma.’ … It simply means deed, work, action… It is that which makes us what we are and makes our life what it is.” (Pg. 169) Later, he adds, “too much of the time karma becomes a judgment… Most people … think of it as something that is going to see we get punished for our sins. I don’t believe in a God or a karma that punishes me.” (Pg. 175) He also says, “if you ask, are we governed by the law of karma… or are we free. I can do as the Buddha and say I haven’t said that one or the other is true…” (Pg. 188)
He recounts, “A lot of people say about reincarnation, ‘We don’t believe in it, because we can’t remember our past lives.’ …. But the fact is, some… think they do remember… Thousands of persons have had such experiences. They say they remember a former life, and sometimes they describe this life in great detail…a well-known scientist at the University of Virginia named Dr. Ian Stevenson… has made his lifework the scientific investigation of stories of reincarnation… Stevenson and his staff are scientists. They make every effort to check the testimony of the person who claims to have lived former life… Stevenson himself says he has n conclusive proof of reincarnation, but he’s written… a book called ‘Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.’… it’s difficult to believe anybody could read his books and … not believe there are people who remember former lives.:” (Pg. 193-195)
He admits, “Personally I have never had any memories of some past life. I have n ever tried to have any as I cannot see how they would contribute to my present unfoldment or happiness… I am interested in reincarnation … because I want to believe in a meaningful world, and I see no way to explain the events of this life in a just and orderly way except to believe that this life is an episode in an immortal journey.” (Pg. 206-207)
He states, “[If] reincarnation is a fact, why don’t we remember our former life after we’re reborn? The question of memory… is the principal reason why those who don’t believe in reincarnation don’t believe in it… To me, it would seem most reasonable to assume that after death the memories of this life recede gradually, just as they do here… It would occur much more swiftly than here, because there would be little or nothing occurring in another life that would require us to recall events in this one.” (Pg. 210)
He observes, “We’re born unequal talents and abilities. This has seemed especially to be true in fields like music… his creative powers depend more on a sense of rhythm and a feeling for melody and harmony… I suppose you can explain such gifts in terms of heredity and genetics, but then you have to explain heredity and genetics… I am not saying that our being a musician or an engineer in this life means that we will be a musician or engineer in the next one. It may even mean that we will want to be anything but a musician or engineer.” (Pg. 217-218)
He clarifies, “when we refer to the belief that human beings may come back as animals, we use the word ‘transmigration.’ Reincarnation usually refers to the belief that we return in human form. Unity teaches that we are human beings and will always be human beings, never animals… all the schools in the Western world that teach reincarnation believe you come back in human form.” (Pg. 244)
He says, “Another reason people reject the idea of reincarnation… is that they hope to have those dear to them in this life back with them in the next, and they think reincarnation rules out this possibility… Believing in reincarnation doesn’t prevent me from believing we meet our loved ones. On the contrary. Because we may reincarnate, there’s a possibility we may met over and over as we work out our individualities. I think many of us have shared life before this one.” (Pg. 295) Later, he adds, “I believe we will be reunited with those we love because always we’ll be living at the level of consciousness we have attained. That’s the only kind or life that’s possible. Those we love will be drawn to us because they’re at our level of consciousness, too.” (Pg. 330)
This book will be of keen interest to Westerners (particularly those with liberal religious views, such as in Unity) studying reincarnation.
James Dillet Freeman (1912- 2003) was a poet and a minister of the Unity Church.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1986 book, “This book… began twenty years ago as a thirty-minute talk about reincarnation… Then… the Association for Research and Enlightenment [Edgar Cayce] asked me to give some lectures at one of their symposiums… Then the Unity School for Religious Enlightenment asked me to make six lectures on the subject… I realized that if it were going to be used, it would have to be a book… I hope as you read this book, you will experience it… as lectures…. I hope that, as you read, you will become as fascinated by the subject as I did when I lectured about it… there was no doubt that it was bringing me a keener insight into the nature of this life and helping me to find its meaning.”
He explains, “By reincarnation I mean that you lived other lives before you began this one, lives that led you into your present existence. After you die, you will be reborn again, perhaps in this world, perhaps in others, perhaps in human form, perhaps in some much different mode of manifestation, but one that you will be drawn to by virtue of what you have become; and you will be reborn again and again until you have grown to be the perfect individual God meant you to grow to be when He made you.” (Pg. 5) Later, he adds, “I don’t believe in reincarnation in a dogmatic way. I look at reincarnation as not only completely compatible with the important teachings of Christianity, with I think it makes Christianity more Christian.” (Pg. 7) He continues, “Unity is an undogmatic approach to religion… It says it is practical Christianity. In regard to reincarnation, Unity offers it as a reasonable suggestion; you can accept it or reject it as you feel led.” (Pg. 8)
He argues, “Christianity is the religion of love. I’ve often wondered why so many traditional Christians want to make God so mean… Almost all religions believe in some form of heaven and hell, whether they also believe in reincarnation or not. But most of the others don’t make hell eternal… Christians make hell eternal. I don’t understand it! The Catholics do better. They have purgatory, unpleasant enough but not quite hell, and not for forever… I am afraid many people reject reincarnation because they don’t think it provides for enough punishment…. But how much we are suffering! We are judged daily…” (Pg. 18-19)
He recounts, “During the last few years there have appeared in books and magazines a number of reports of what the writers have called near-death experience… One thing about these near-death reports that I’ve liked—they report that there is nothing to fear… None of them reports anything that looks like the traditional heaven of hell.” (Pg. 43)
He argues, “There are a dozen or more places in the Bible where, if you believe in reincarnation, you might reasonably say, ‘I think the man who wrote this was making a reference to reincarnation.’ There are a few places in the Bible where you have to be completely opposed to reincarnation to believe that the writer meant anything but reincarnation.” (Pg. 52) He adds, “Amazingly, the best of these passages that suggest reincarnation consist of statements made by Jesus, or they describe incidents in which He took part.” (Pg. 54)
He continues, “At Jesus’ transfiguration… [He said] ‘Elijah does come… but I tell you that Elijah has already come’… Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.’ [Mt 17:9-13] Another time, Jesus said, ‘John the Baptist… is Elijah who is to come.’ [Mt 11:11-15] Of John the Baptist’s denial that he was Elijah [Jn 1:19-23], Freeman comments, “John’s comments are just what you would expect if you believe in reincarnation. If you do reincarnate, obviously most of us don’t remember who we were. John didn’t remember being anyone but John.” (Pg. 55-56) Later, he adds, “The most conclusive incident of all is … where Jesus heals the man born blind from birth… ‘his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” [Jn 9:2-3]… Obviously, the idea that the man might have sinned before he was born was not an idea strange or unacceptable to Jesus or to His disciples.” (Pg. 58) He concludes, “There are a dozen or so other passages in the Old and New Testaments that may allude to reincarnation, but they can be interpreted in different ways.” (Pg. 59)
He asserts, “Somehow most of us have the notion that … from its very beginning, Christianity rejected reincarnation. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the early days of Christianity, there were many who believed in it. There was nothing in the teachings of Jesus that excluded the belief in reincarnation. It is not hard to see, however, why the Church… from the third to the sixth century A.D., decided against reincarnation. For one thing… there was certainly no popular demand for reincarnation. Consider what life was like. The thought of having to come back and live it again could no have appealed to many.” (Pg. 75-76) He adds, “in A.D. 553, both [Origen] and reincarnation were condemned by a Council called in Constantinople.” (Pg. 80) He suggests, “Belief in reincarnation strips a great deal of power away from the Church. You can understand why it wouldn’t tolerate any such belief.” (Pg. 85)
He asserts, “Intelligent people have always believed in reincarnation. The greatest thinkers of ancient Greed—Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates, Plotinus---all believed in it. Pagan Rome produced two great philosophers. One … was… Epictetus; the other was … Marcus Aurelius. Neither of them wrote about reincarnation, but they both believed in it. We know they believed in reincarnation because they were both Stoics, and all Stoics believed in reincarnation.” (Pg. 95-98) Later, he argues, “Patton truly believed in reincarnation… he was sent to France… and a young French officer offered to show him around… and he said, ‘You don’t have to. I know this place.’ … Have you ever had an experience like this? It’s called ‘déjà vu’---already seen.” (Pg. 99)
He notes, “Personally I have never been able to accept the notion of withdrawal, detachment, separation that dominates Eastern thinking… The East believes we have to be reborn… But the purpose of all this being reborn is so that at last we can avoid being reborn, so that we can be released from the strain and pain of birth, death, and rebirth, released from the misery this world brings.” (Pg. 123-124)
He explains, “You can’t investigate reincarnation without coming on the word ‘karma.’ … It simply means deed, work, action… It is that which makes us what we are and makes our life what it is.” (Pg. 169) Later, he adds, “too much of the time karma becomes a judgment… Most people … think of it as something that is going to see we get punished for our sins. I don’t believe in a God or a karma that punishes me.” (Pg. 175) He also says, “if you ask, are we governed by the law of karma… or are we free. I can do as the Buddha and say I haven’t said that one or the other is true…” (Pg. 188)
He recounts, “A lot of people say about reincarnation, ‘We don’t believe in it, because we can’t remember our past lives.’ …. But the fact is, some… think they do remember… Thousands of persons have had such experiences. They say they remember a former life, and sometimes they describe this life in great detail…a well-known scientist at the University of Virginia named Dr. Ian Stevenson… has made his lifework the scientific investigation of stories of reincarnation… Stevenson and his staff are scientists. They make every effort to check the testimony of the person who claims to have lived former life… Stevenson himself says he has n conclusive proof of reincarnation, but he’s written… a book called ‘Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.’… it’s difficult to believe anybody could read his books and … not believe there are people who remember former lives.:” (Pg. 193-195)
He admits, “Personally I have never had any memories of some past life. I have n ever tried to have any as I cannot see how they would contribute to my present unfoldment or happiness… I am interested in reincarnation … because I want to believe in a meaningful world, and I see no way to explain the events of this life in a just and orderly way except to believe that this life is an episode in an immortal journey.” (Pg. 206-207)
He states, “[If] reincarnation is a fact, why don’t we remember our former life after we’re reborn? The question of memory… is the principal reason why those who don’t believe in reincarnation don’t believe in it… To me, it would seem most reasonable to assume that after death the memories of this life recede gradually, just as they do here… It would occur much more swiftly than here, because there would be little or nothing occurring in another life that would require us to recall events in this one.” (Pg. 210)
He observes, “We’re born unequal talents and abilities. This has seemed especially to be true in fields like music… his creative powers depend more on a sense of rhythm and a feeling for melody and harmony… I suppose you can explain such gifts in terms of heredity and genetics, but then you have to explain heredity and genetics… I am not saying that our being a musician or an engineer in this life means that we will be a musician or engineer in the next one. It may even mean that we will want to be anything but a musician or engineer.” (Pg. 217-218)
He clarifies, “when we refer to the belief that human beings may come back as animals, we use the word ‘transmigration.’ Reincarnation usually refers to the belief that we return in human form. Unity teaches that we are human beings and will always be human beings, never animals… all the schools in the Western world that teach reincarnation believe you come back in human form.” (Pg. 244)
He says, “Another reason people reject the idea of reincarnation… is that they hope to have those dear to them in this life back with them in the next, and they think reincarnation rules out this possibility… Believing in reincarnation doesn’t prevent me from believing we meet our loved ones. On the contrary. Because we may reincarnate, there’s a possibility we may met over and over as we work out our individualities. I think many of us have shared life before this one.” (Pg. 295) Later, he adds, “I believe we will be reunited with those we love because always we’ll be living at the level of consciousness we have attained. That’s the only kind or life that’s possible. Those we love will be drawn to us because they’re at our level of consciousness, too.” (Pg. 330)
This book will be of keen interest to Westerners (particularly those with liberal religious views, such as in Unity) studying reincarnation.
November 27, 2015
The case that this book makes for reincarnation through its various chapters actually boils down to this. The author wants to believe it and a lot of other people do and have believed it through history. The main reason that the author gives for rejecting mainstream religious doctrine is that he just can't believe it or doesn't want to believe it. Then he offers an over simplistic description and distortion of logic and proceeds to ignore any kind of logic at all through the rest of the book. Then there are the misrepresentations of science. Put this all together and this book is utterly worthless.
December 3, 2011
Interesting about Elijah story in the Bible. Hhmmm...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews