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A Series of Lessons in Mystic Christianity1094
He also says: “Those who, departing this life in virtue of that death which
is common to all, are arranged in conformity with their actions and deserts—
according as they shall be deemed worthy—some in the place called the
‘infernus,’ others in the bosom of Abraham, and in different localities or
mansions. So also from these places, as if dying there, if the expression can
be used, they come down from the ‘upper world’ to this ‘hell.’ For that ‘hell’
to which the souls of the dead are conducted from this world is, I believe, on
account of this destruction, called ‘the lower hell.’ Everyone accordingly of
those who descend to the earth is, according to his deserts, or agreeably to
the position that he occupied there, ordained to be born in this world in a
different country, or among a different nation, or in a different mode of life,
or surrounded by infirmities of a different kind, or to be descended from
religious parents, or parents who are not religious; so that it may sometimes
happen that an Israelite descends among the Scythians, and a poor Egyptian
is brought down to Judea.” (Origen against Celsus)
Can you doubt, after reading the above quotation that Metempsychosis,
Re-incarnation or Re-birth and Karma was held and taught as a true
doctrine by the Fathers of the Early Christian Church? Can you not see that
imbedded in the very bosom of the Early Church were the twin-doctrine of
Re-incarnation and Karma. Then why persist in treating it as a thing imported
from India, Egypt or Persia to disturb the peaceful slumber of the Christian
Church? It is but the return home of a part of the original Inner Doctrine—
so long an outcast from the home of its childhood.
The Teaching was rendered an outlaw by certain influences in the Church
in the Sixth Century. The Second Council of Constantinople (a.d. 553)
condemned it as a heresy, and from that time official Christianity frowned
upon it, and drove it out by sword, stake and prison cell. The light was kept
burning for many years, however, by that sect so persecuted by the Church—
the Albigenses—who furnished hundreds of martyrs to the tyranny of the
Church authorities, by reason of their clinging faith to the Inner Teachings of
the Church concerning Reincarnation and Karma.