DO YOU SHARE THEIR BELIEF?

 

 What belief, do you think, was shared by Walt Whitman, Albert Schweitzer, Socrates, Voltaire, Carl Jung and Pythagoras, not to mention Wordsworth, Tolstoy, Gandhi, George Harrison, General George S. Patton, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain?

 On the same subject, Benjamin Franklin said:

 “I look upon death to be as necessary to the constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.”

 And Jack London, author of CALL OF THE WILD, maintained: 

“I did not begin when I was born, nor when I was conceived. I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums. All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born.”

 Napoleon not only believed in reincarnation, but liked to tell his generals who he believed he had been in previous existences.

 Let the last word, for now,  go to Henry Ford, who said: 

“I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was 26. Genius is experience.  Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives.”

 So, do you believe as they do, that we live many lives – reincarnating again and again - rather than just one?

 Whether you do or you don’t, great if under Comments you’d like to share your views. Thank you!

 

 

 

SOMEWHERE A NEW MORNING DAWNS

 

Yesterday I came across these wonderful words from Patience Strong:

'Light is fading, darkness falls, but somewhere it is dawn. Here it is the eventide, but somewhere it is morn ... As upon the world's red rim the sun sinks out of sight - in some far and distant land, it rises, warm and bright.

When the touch of death has stopped the heart and closed the eyes - our loved ones seem to fall asleep, but somewhere they arise ... We who watch stand in the darkness, blind with grief and pain - But somewhere it is morning and they wake to life again.'

I hope that if you have 'lost' a loved one you can find some comfort in Patience's words, realizing that 'lost' is the wrong term. Far from being lost, they've simply gone - temporarily - beyond our limited sight.

AFTER A DEATH - THE PORTRAIT

I said yesterday that we’d look at the phrase ‘after a death’ in relation to my novel THE PORTRAIT.

After we die, do we reincarnate?  Many great minds have made a strong case for reincarnation.  Three of these were Pythagoras, Schopenhauer and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

Pythagoreanism is chiefly distinguished by its description of reality in terms of arithmetical relationships and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.  Interesting, isn’t it, that arithmetic and reincarnation were considered by such a man as Pythagoras to be so closely connected?

But for those of us who are not mathematicians or philosophers, where does reincarnation come in to our thinking?

For Joseph Glenny, in THE PORTRAIT, it is a case of his heart telling him something that his head rejects.  It is not possible – is it – that the wife he had loved and lost is not lost to him after all?

He becomes gradually convinced that she has returned in a different skin.  But the girl for whom his heart has thawed takes much more convincing ...

Can you imagine standing by your own gravestone and ultimately coming to terms with its significance both to your past and your present? 

That, in effect, is the question THE PORTRAIT asks after a death.