Sin death and beyond

SIN, DEATH AND BEYOND: M.M.NINAN
E
GREECE
Possesion spirits and souls of dead men on animals and plants were common in all cultures
around the world. But The notion that spirits or souls of dead persons may inhabit or
"possess" animals or plants is widespread among both ancient and modern peoples in many
pans of the world. But the belief that the life-force or soul of the individual passes from life to
life, inhabiting a different physical body in each existence, is a much rarer doctrine. Known as
metempsychosis or transmigration of souls, it is found in developed form in the ancient world
only in Greece.
In Greece it was a standard theology from as early as the 6th century B.C., and in Orphism
and Pythagoreanism. Plato in the early 4th century B.C. mentions it as "an ancient tradition."
The theory of transmigration as we have today developed in India only after the Greek invasion
of India under Alexander the Great. As far as we know the earliest reference to it appears in
Bhadararanyaka upanishad which is considered to be a commentary of Purusha Suktham
probably dating 1st- 7th century AD.
The major problem with the transmigration theory is the fact that the with the millions of people
on on earth none is able to remember the past lives and those who present such memories
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