[Reinkarnation und Atavismus]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl[1]
A great deal has already been written about “reincarnation,” re-embodiment or “incarnation” of the elements which make up the human organism, and yet the most erroneous views still prevail in general; because in this matter, as in all teachings that deal with such things, there is a spiritual background, a religious mystery, which cannot be explained to everyone like a chemical experiment, but an understanding of it requires one’s own spiritual observation and intuition.
First of all, it must be noted that reincarnation is not synonymous with the so-called transmigration of souls, by which is usually understood the entering of the personality of a deceased human being into another human or animal body, which would be a kind of permanent possession. Nowhere in the writings of the wise is there talk of a reincarnation of a deceased person, but rather of the construction of a new personality, whose characteristics correspond to a certain extent to those of the previous one! It is not the spirit of man that is reborn, but a new organism comes into being through the action of the spirit, which constitutes a new human appearance or “personality” and consists of a new composition of the skandhas, or qualities, acquired in a previous existence. These skandhas are referred to in the Bible as “the flesh,” meaning: 1. form (rupa) [rūpa], 2. perception (vidana) [vedanā], 3. personal self-awareness (sanjnā [saṃjñā]), 4. energy (sanskāra [saṃskāra]), 5. consciousness (vidyāna [vijñāna]) . These five elements unite at man’s birth and form his new personality. The spirit of man which calls this new appearance into existence is eternal and immortal; it brings a new personality into being, just as man thinks a new thought based on a previous idea. But thought is not man and personality is not spirit. Nor is the spirit shut up in the body like the yolk in the egg; rather, personality is but an instrument, a partial manifestation of the nature of immortal man, who is “the Father in heaven,” the begetter of all his “sons,” i.e., of the successive incarnations of the skandhas and overshadows and animates them. We ourselves are the Father and also the Son (John X, 30 & 38); but we are not conscious of it as long as we are dominated by external sense impressions. We are essentially one with the Father; but as appearances distinct from him, and as long as we take our personality for our true selves, we lie caught in the web of delusion (maya) and do not know ourselves, our origin, our purpose and destiny. How should he who does not know himself know how far he has gotten? How could he spiritually comprehend the spiritual process of reincarnation as long as he has not achieved spiritual self-awareness?
The Bhagavad Gītā says: “Human bodies are called the mortal forms (phenomena) of the Eternal, Imperishable (the Spirit). The Eternal (Being) is never born and never dies. It does not arise and does not die. As a man who has discarded his old clothes in the evening puts on new clothes in the morning, so does the eternal reveal itself in new forms” (Chap. 2, verse 18). But form is not essence and appearance is not man. The personality with all its physical, psychological, moral and spiritual (intellectual) characteristics, insofar as these belong to the earthly transient human being, is only the shadow of the being, so to speak, and without the heavenly spirit, a phantom. The celestial man is the vine, and the personalities arising from it are the shoots. (John XV, 1). The shoot is not the vine, and the fruit is not the tree; but without the vine there would be no shoots, and without the tree there would be no fruit.
The believing Christian who knows the deeper meaning of the teachings of the Bible will also find in it a confirmation of the teaching of reincarnation. In Matthew XVII. 12 it says: “Elijah is already come and they did not recognize him.” This is to say that the same entity which formerly gave birth to an apparition called “Elias” later gave birth to a new embodiment of the same skandhas, but which was not recognized as a reincarnation of Elias. When the disciples asked Jesus: “Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John IX, 2), they must have believed in reincarnation, otherwise the question would be nonsense. If they had not believed that the same person, or rather his “I,” had existed before, they could not have considered the possibility that he had sinned before birth and thereby caused his blindness. It is written: “The iniquities of the fathers are visited on the children down to the third and fourth generation.” (II. Moses XX, 5.) But this means nothing else than that causes which are produced in one incarnation ( karma) can still extend in their effects into the third or fourth reincarnation. We know that physical illnesses can be transmitted from biological parents to their children and grandchildren. Why should the law of heredity be any different on the psychic plane, where everyone was his own father and will be his own son?
Moral causes which the “I” produces in one of its personal forms of existence exert their effects in subsequent lives. In each life, mortal man is the “son” that his immortal “I” created in the course of previous existences, and in each life this son is the “father” who produces the qualities he will have in his next existence as “son” and product of his own creation. The “I” always remains essentially the same, but the personal appearances under which it appears in successive incarnations are different from each other. The “I” is the actor, so to speak, who plays a different role in every performance in the theater of this world. He always remains the same person; but he can learn something with each appearance, acquire some ideal trait from the role he has played, something which will enable him to play a better part on his next appearance. He is “Hamlet” or “Romeo” only as long as he identifies with his role. When the comedy is over, he is himself again and goes home satisfied, or perhaps unsatisfied. We can also say that the immortal “I” is the master builder, the personality is the house which the master builds and that he lives in and uses as a workshop. When the master has left the house, it falls apart; but the master builds another one out of similar material, and he lays the foundation for the construction plan for the new house on the basis of the experiences he has gained in his previous house constructions.
As we see, the great difficulty in understanding the laws of reincarnation lies in the want of a correct knowledge of the composition of the elements (skandhas) of which man is made, and of a lack of distinction between his immortal and mortal parts. Man is a god or an animal, depending on the point of view from which we look at him. As God, he is exalted far above his mortal personality, which is only his shadow, as it were; as an animal he is identical with his person.
Gautama Buddha teaches: “To say that the same who lives now reaps the fruits of his labors in rebirth—this is one extreme. To claim that someone other than the one now alive will reap the fruits of his labors in rebirth—this is the other extreme. The truth lies in the middle.”[2] This also explains some of the paradoxes of the Bible. On the one hand it says that everyone has to pay his debt himself down to the last penny (Matthew V, 26), and on the other hand that “one sows and the other reaps” (John IV, 37); but “whoever reaps gets his reward and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that both the sower and the reaper rejoice at the same time” (John IV, 36). When the “Son” has become one with the “Father,” the duality is over and both are one. The immortal I is like the bee, the personality a flower, the virtues the honey it contains. From each flower the bee collects the honey and brings it to her house, but the flower withers.
No one is the same person as an adult or old age as they were as a small child, yet the same person. What he learned as a child or acquired in youth he can enjoy in old age; if he loses a limb in youth, it will be missing in old age. The law of karma is the law of necessity, according to which every cause has its definite effect, and since a man cannot attain the highest perfection in a single mortal life unless he has already attained the necessary maturity in previous lives, so is Reincarnation necessary for him in order to gather the experiences which he needs in order to come to the knowledge of his existence in immortality. If the Son has attained this heavenly state through union with the heavenly Father, the salvation of the reaping “Father” is also that of the sowing “Son.”
Reincarnation or lawful reunion of related skandhas into a new organism is therefore not transmigration of souls or possession by a ghost, but in a sense an inheritance. It is as if one light were kindled on another light; or as when a teacher communicates different, new thoughts to his pupil. There is no migration of one flame to another candle, nor does the teacher lose the thought he has communicated to the student. The spirit always remains the same; he neither dies nor is born; but from the composition of the skandhas, which represent the personal appearance, mortal man, there arise causes which give rise to the formation of a new personality, resembling the preceding one as to inclinations, talents, and the like.
Compare with this the doctrine of “atavism” accepted by scholars, that is, “of the inheritance of certain peculiarities of body and mind to offspring, particularly that kind of heredity in which certain peculiarities reappear in later generations, long after they have been known for a long time seemed to have been extinguished,” so we find an explanation of many otherwise incomprehensible facts through a knowledge of the laws of reincarnation. There, we find that reasonable people often have a quite unreasonable inborn fear of certain harmless things, which can hardly be explained otherwise than by impressions received in an earlier incarnation. There, we read that the Emperor Augustus, the victor of Actium, was seized with a panic when a thunderstorm broke, Erasmus was seized with a wild fear at the sight of fish. Bacon passed out at the approach of a lunar eclipse; Carlyle trembled at the thought of stepping into some store. There are a lot of people who are afraid of cats and, if cats are around without knowing it, feel their presence and are frightened by it. It is taught that a strong impression made on the mind of man at death exerts a great influence on his future existence. What could be more obvious than the conclusion that if, for example, a human being is attacked and killed by a tiger cat, in his next existence he may be born with an innate fear of cats and be afraid of even the cutest house kitten? If this explanation is correct, we find there a testimony to the persistence of the individual human spirit; for the fear of the individual springs from individual experience and not from an unconscious memory of an antediluvian experience of humanity as a whole. But academic science, which knows nothing of the deeper laws of nature, cannot find a sufficient explanation for such phenomena. It takes long detours to look for things which are very close to the occultist and searches for causes in places where they are not. I think it more reasonable to believe that the “predecessor” of the learned Erasmus was eaten by a shark or choked on a herring, and therefore had a fear of fish, than that he inherited that fear from his natural grandmother; especially when there’s nothing to prove that this grandmother was ever afraid of fish.
That we cannot personally remember events from our previous lives is evident from the above; for with each reincarnation a new person is created who cannot know anything intellectually of the impressions received by the brain of their predecessor, since they did not exist at that time; but at least mental impressions from the previous life can cling to the newly assembled skandhas. There are also exceptional cases where these “mental memories” of previous lives are present in all their details; like it, for example, was the case, with Gautama Buddha, who is said to have remembered all his previous existences, just as a master builder can remember all the houses which he successively built and occupied; for when the consciousness of God awakens in the personal human being and the Son has become one with the Father, then the human being no longer suffers from the delusion of being the “house,” but recognizes himself as the eternal builder of the “houses,” In general, such memories are only like vague premonitions from a higher world, comparable to the reflection of the moon illuminated by the sun, or like a mirage conjuring up images of objects we cannot see. There can also be exceptional cases based on certain occult causes; their discussion, however, belongs on another page.[3] Whether or not we remember our earlier forms of existence, however, this does not alter the fact that there is a higher ego in the earthly human being, a permanent individuality in the composite, ever-changing personality, which, by way of reincarnation, has successive earthly appearances created, images of themselves, in which the basic traits of their character are engraved. The physical parents provide the material for the “incarnation” of the form-animating spirit, but the spiritual man is not begotten of the parents, nor does it come from nothing; he comes to the world of the spiritual world and returns from the world to his homeland. Life is like a shadow play created by a “magic lantern” on a wall. The divine spirit is the light, the material is the wall, the image on the slider represents the individual heavenly man, and the shadow dancing on the wall is his personal apparition, or even just its caricature. Life is a short dream, followed by a short pause and another picture again.
“in” out, just undeterred!
In the end it stays the same
With their hundred thousand antics
The world is one big gate.”[4]
Culture advances and advances; after birth follows growth, then stagnation, and finally decay, both small and large. The animal in man always remains an animal; it cannot connect with the Eternal; but what is immortal in man returns to its heavenly origin with the fruits it has gathered. A ray of light coming from the spirit sun penetrates the darkness of the earth and produces a human plant; the plant withers, but the spirit which has become free rises again, laden with the plant’s fragrances, through the ether to the source of life, to the light.
All life in nature is a symbol of reincarnation. A plant grows from the acorn, the plant becomes a tree, the oak tree produces new acorns, and so the game repeats itself. The acorn is not the tree and the tree is not the acorn, but without one, the other would not be. The oak does not incarnate a second time, but it produces fruit, from which its likeness arises in a rejuvenated form, and life is the same in both. In man, his heavenly “father” is the “tree,” earthly man is the seed, and the biological parents provide the soil necessary for the plant to develop.
Every child brings certain inclinations and talents into the world, which are often very different from those of the parents. In the most virtuous of families one often finds a “black sheep,” and many a great statesman, general, or artist was born in a miserable cottage to ignorant parents. But even if there is a certain agreement between the talents of the father and those of the son, this is still no proof of inheritance from father to son, but it is just as conceivable that the son was born precisely in this family because he expected favorable conditions there for its further development. We also see that not every plant thrives on every type of soil, but that one needs this soil and another needs that soil. Where the reincarnation of the new skandhas take place, what kind of family the child is to be born into, whether rich or poor, whether king’s son or beggar, all depends on the pre-created causes, that is, of the law of karma, the nature of which we can investigate just as little as one cannot trace the origin of every single thread in a ship’s cable. A person’s karma is made up of many threads; just as innumerable impressions are decisive in the formation of a person’s character, the stronger of which have a lasting effect, the weaker of which they have less lasting effect.
Without the reincarnation of those elements by which the celestial man can experience and thereby learn, that is, without the regeneration of a new human organism after the old one has become useless; without this creation of a new personality as the instrument and abode of the spirit which overshadows it, man’s whole existence would have no purpose or meaning. Were the physical body of man wholly permeated by the Spirit of God, it would also be immortal and need no renewal; but as long as this organism has only a comparatively short lifespan, this cannot suffice to attain everything that the heavenly man needs for his perfection.
Not only in the writings of the Indian and Buddhist sages, but also in many places in the Bible, the doctrine of reincarnation is contained under symbols and allegories, and can be found therein if one is capable of a higher than material understanding of such passages. Still “at certain times,” not only with each advent of an Avatar, but also with each birth, “an angel of the Lord” (a spiritual ray of light) “descends into the pool of Bethesda” (the human soul) and “makes the water bubbling up” and whoever bathes in it will be healed. (John V, 4.) Still the Lord (the Heavenly Man) sends out his “workers” to reap what they have not worked. Others (previous incarnations) have worked, and those who follow “enter into their work.” (John IV, 38.)
Numerous other scriptures could be quoted, which, when conceived spiritually, make the doctrine of regeneration understandable; however, this includes, above all, the belief in the higher, immortal ideal inherent in man, which works and creates in us and is the only permanent and real thing in our mortal personality. (John VI, 29.)
The doctrine of reincarnation, together with its closely related doctrine of karma, is the only thing that offers us a reasonable solution to the enigma of the inequalities which exist in the world and where we see daily that the worst people are often overwhelmed with good fortune and luxuriate while the best are afflicted with misfortune. It enables us to look down on the vicissitudes of man from an elevated vantage point and to regard our own happiness or unhappiness with equanimity, knowing that everyone is the “smith” of his own fortune and that in the end everyone awaits what he deserves. Anything that can cause us pain or pleasure affects only our personality, which is our own creation; the immortal spirit within us is not subject to the sufferings and joys of the body. Anyone who recognizes himself as one with him is raised above life and death, he is the silent Spectator who is unaffected by the vicissitudes of life because he himself is eternal and unchangeable and when contemplating the tragic comedy of fate in this world recognizes that all these natural phenomena are effects of antecedent causes; they all follow their law.
Notes
[1] Reincarnation and Atavism (Retrogression) [Reinkarnation und Atavismus. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 3, no. 7-8 (July-August 1910), 224-242.] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl, ©2025}
[2] “Buddhist Gospels,” by Karl Seidenstücker.
[3] Such cases are possible when the personality of a deceased person again takes possession of a new organism without entering into the heavenly state of Devachan, which this is conceivable, for example, in the case of children who died prematurely, as well as in the case of suicides and the like. In such cases one can speak of a “transmigration of souls.” Even an adept can, under certain circumstances, leave his physical body and enter another, just as a hypnotist can, in a manner of speaking, cast out a person’s spirit and put himself in his place. (More about this can be found in Patañjali’s “Yoga Philosophy” and similar writings.)
[4] Goethe: Faust, Part II, p. 15.