Superior Index Go to the next: Chapter 18
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As Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?"
Jesus answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
"I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh, when no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."
When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay and said unto him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.0
Consider the understanding the disciples had to have had in order to ask the question "Who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" They asked it because they were familiar with Jesus' teachings on karma and reincarnation. They knew that this man could have been born blind from the sins of a past life. They also knew the law handed down from Moses in which God says he will visit the "iniquity" (i.e., sins, or karma) of the fathers1 "upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" and will show "mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments."2
In this context Jesus' answer was nothing short of revolutionary. It was simply beyond any science or natural law that his disciples knew. He astounded them all with the words "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."
The man hadn't sinned, his parents hadn't sinned. He had been born blind not by his karma but by a calling from God and by his soul's freewill response to that calling. God had sent him to endure his blindness until he should meet that prophet who would restore his sight. And not only his physical sight but his spiritual sight. God had sent him blind that when his eyes should be opened he might behold the Son of God, believe on him, worship him - and confound the Pharisees.
When his neighbors saw him, they asked him how his eyes had been opened and later the Pharisees asked the same question. Each time he gave glory to Jesus with his bold yet simple logic: "A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said unto me, 'Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.' And I went and washed and I received sight."3
The Pharisees, who had said Jesus was not of God because he healed on the Sabbath, rebuked him: "Give God the praise. We know that this man is a sinner." And the man answered, "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not. One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."4
And after we have heard the Pharisees revile him and accuse him of being Jesus' disciple, we hear the eloquence of a soul who had waited a lifetime and many lifetimes to testify of him:
"Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God heareth not sinners. But if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth his will, him he heareth. Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind? If this man were not of God, he could do nothing."5
With that they said, "How dare you, a sinner, teach us!" And they cast out of the temple the blind man, who now saw them face-to-face.6
There follows one of the most poignant scenes of the Gospels. Jesus, when he hears they have cast him out, goes looking for him, finds him and says with utmost tenderness, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" His answer is unspeakably childlike, so close to God: "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?" Jesus replies, "Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee." And the man says, "Lord, I believe." And he worships him.7
After the healing is accomplished to the chagrin of the Pharisees, and the soul of the man receives his long-awaited reward in his union with his Lord, another purpose of this great happening is made known. We can hear Jesus' tone change as he says within earshot of his detractors: "For judgment I am come into this world that they which see not might see and that they which see might be made blind."8
They say to him, "Are we blind also?" Jesus says to them, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin, but now ye say, `We see.' Therefore your sin remaineth."9
Is not the judgment for which Jesus has come into this world the judgment of their karma that remains untransmuted, for they have not repented of their deeds? And does not their past karma foretell the tale of their present and future railing against Jesus and his true disciples? No matter where we go with Jesus, we see (as we saw with Moses) the law of karma and reincarnation outplaying itself. God through his chosen instrument accelerates both the good and the bad karma of those whom the Christ or the prophet encounters, to the deliverance or the demise of souls.
Let those who deny the Lord and his words and his works take heed that they not deny the law of karma and the prophets who discoursed on it and delivered its judgments on the people. For our Lord came to fulfill all the law and the prophets.10 And without divine intercession, no man shall escape the prison house of his karma till he has paid "the uttermost farthing."11
This account of Jesus' restoring sight to the man born blind teaches me that discussions on karma and reincarnation were ongoing between Jesus and his disciples. Had Jesus desired us to know that the implication of karma and reincarnation in his disciples' question was not appropriate, then and there he would have delivered a sermon denying karma and reincarnation as an invalid premise, doctrinally and factually.
Why do I believe this? Simply because it was Jesus' habitual practice to set the record straight. This was his passion, as he told Pilate: "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the Truth!"12
When discoursing with his disciples or the Sadducees and Pharisees, almost without exception Jesus would take the opportunity of the subject at hand to expound on principles of the law either publicly or privately. The Master never let friend or foe get away with a "misspeak." On this occasion he did not invalidate his disciples' question but let it stand. And since the question "Who did sin, this man or his parents?" was "doctrinally loaded," it begged a fuller teaching if that teaching was not already clear to all present.
To me it is clear that Jesus didn't explicitly validate reincarnation when he healed the man born blind because the knowledge of the transmigration of the soul and the soul's attendant carrying of karma from lifetime to lifetime was a given in the circles in which he and his disciples moved.
It was as fundamental to Jesus' doctrine as 2 x 2 = 4 is to the multiplication table. It was not necessary for Jesus to rehearse the ABCs of what the disciples already knew. But it was essential that he demonstrate that there are exceptions to cosmic law and that these exceptions come about through the intercession of the Son of God, the God-man (avatar), and that God allows them so "that the works of God should be made manifest" and his Son should be glorified - that we who are blind to his glory might see him and believe in him and worship him.
One could almost ask whether the question itself had been scripted by Jesus so that he might give the more dramatic answer, which was the exception to the law of karma and reincarnation (which law they all knew): "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."
That was the moment when for all time and all texts our Lord could have denied the doctrines of both karma and reincarnation, but he did not. As a matter of fact, there is no record whatsoever - either in the Gospels, the writings of the apostles, the Book of Revelation or the Gnostic texts - of Jesus denying karma and reincarnation. But, as I have been documenting in this series, there is ample confirmation of the law of karma in both the Old and New Testaments - and of reincarnation as a corollary to it.
The reason the doctrine of karma begets the doctrine of reincarnation is that the karma of a lifetime cannot necessarily be balanced within that life. For instance, suppose a man shoots his wife and children and then shoots himself. He can't balance the karma because he's dead. And even if he didn't shoot himself, he couldn't make amends to his wife and children because they are dead.
In either case, he and they will be back to exercise their option under the law of grace to make things right. He will most likely have to give birth to all of them in a future life to restore the life he has taken. They will have to learn forgiveness and pass the test of not getting even by killing him - that is, if they want to get off the merry-go-round of rebirth. Thus, the resolution of karma hinges on the soul obtaining the grace of future lifetimes and then exercising free will to balance the karma of past and present lives.
The doctrine of reincarnation cannot be separated from the doctrine of karma. The fact that we make karma and must balance it and that we continue to do so (until we learn the laws of God and stop making karma) means that we need the mercy of God, which he provides every living soul - yes, the mercy and the opportunity for reincarnation.
I therefore rest my case on the record of Jesus' life and teachings to affirm that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ both believed in and taught the fundamental law of the soul's journey through earth's schoolroom: karma and reincarnation. As I will be discussing later and as I have set forth in my book The Lost Years of Jesus,13 this is confirmed by ancient Buddhist texts that record Jesus' travels and teachings during his seventeen "lost years."
Before we leave John 9, let us sample what biblical commentators have to say about the doctrinal implications of Jesus' healing of the man born blind. Then I will give my research on the prevailing beliefs about karma and reincarnation in Jesus' time.
As we might expect, some are at a loss to explain why the disciples would have even considered whether a man's blindness from birth could be due to his own sin. We find in Jewish tradition that some rabbis discuss the possibility that a child could sin in his mother's womb. But there is no trace of these discussions until the second or the third century - after Jesus' time.
New Testament scholar Wilbert F. Howard says in his exegesis on this passage that "it is hardly likely that belief in the pre-existence of souls had penetrated into Palestinian Judaism." He then admits, however, that because it is found in the writings of the contemporary Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, "it may have been known in the world for which this Gospel was written."14
Acknowledging that it is a puzzling question, Rudolf Bultmann, a leading twentieth-century theologian and New Testament scholar, writes:
The reference can hardly be to sins committed in a pre-existent state, even though the idea of the pre-existence of souls had found its way into syncretistic and Hellenistic Judaism. Nor is it likely that a belief in the transmigration of souls is assumed here. However, the question perhaps is intended to pose an impossible alternative in order to show up the absurdity of the dogma [that the sins of parents could cause their child's blindness].15
Need I comment on the absurdity of this commentary? I think you get the point. Scholars don't have an explanation for the interchange between Jesus and his disciples that is plausible, even to them! Yet they refuse to take John 9 at face value. The possibility of the preexistence of the soul or of the reincarnation of the soul being implicit in this scene is for them out of the question.
Whatever happened to the scientific method? They bring bag and baggage of their mind-set and refuse to set it aside even for a moment's objectivity. Are they afraid that the Truth will confound them in their own illogical logic? And not only confound them but set them free from the structure of false teachings that cannot and will not stand in the enlightenment of the age of Aquarius?
From my research on the prevailing world thought at the time of Jesus, I can see that the belief in reincarnation could have come through several avenues. Platonic thought had reached Alexandria about two hundred years earlier. Everyone educated in Alexandria in the first century would have been familiar with Plato's teachings on reincarnation. Philo could have derived his knowledge of preexistence and reincarnation from Plato or from the Jewish esoteric tradition.
In his work De Somniis, Philo writes, "The air is full of souls; those who are nearest to earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, return to other bodies, desiring to live in them."16 Eusebius tells us in his History of the Church that "Philo became widely known as one of the greatest scholars."17 And Christian legend recounts that he met Saint Peter in Rome.
As I touched on earlier, Josephus recorded that the Essenes taught the preexistence of the soul (second century B.C. or earlier). The Essenes, as we know, were a monastic community of devout Jews who settled on the west shore of the Dead Sea. Scholars debate the origins of the Essenes' beliefs. Some say that they were influenced by Pythagorean thought (sixth to fourth century B.C.). Others hold that the Essenes came under the influence of Buddhist monks sent by the Buddhist emperor Asoka (reigned c.273-c.232 B.C.) into the Middle East in the third century B.C.
Helena Blavatsky writes in Isis Unveiled that the Essenes "were Pythagoreans before they rather degenerated, then became perfected in their system by the Buddhist missionaries, whom [the Roman scholar] Pliny tells us established themselves on the shores of the Dead Sea, ages before his time." According to Blavatsky, the Essenes "were the converts of [these] Buddhist missionaries who had overrun Egypt, Greece, and even Judea at one time, since the reign of Asoka the zealous propagandist."18
Blavatsky says, "While it is evidently to the Essenes that belongs the honor of having had the Nazarene reformer, Jesus, as a pupil, still the latter is found disagreeing with his early teachers on several questions of formal observance. He cannot strictly be called an Essene. ... But what is self-evident is that he preached the philosophy of Buddha-Sakyamuni."19
It is also interesting to consider the comments of Ernest Renan in his book The Life of Jesus. Renan observes that John the Baptist
led the life of an Indian Yogi, clad only in skins or stuffs of camel's hair, and having for his food locusts and wild honey. A certain number of disciples had gathered around him, sharing his life and meditating on his stern doctrine. We might imagine ourselves transported to the banks of the Ganges, if peculiar traits did not show us in this recluse the last descendant of the great prophets of Israel. ... It may be considered that many of the external practices of John, of the Essenes, and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this period were derived from influences ... but recently received from the Far East.
We know that Jesus spent seventeen years in the East. The Gospels do not record Jesus' whereabouts between the age of twelve, when he was discoursing with the doctors in the temple, and the age of thirty, when he was baptized of John in the River Jordan. In The Lost Years of Jesus, I have published three independent translations of ancient Buddhist manuscripts that say that during these years Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet, where he was known as "Saint Issa."
Buddhist historians recorded that Jesus departed Jerusalem with merchants and set out toward the Sind "with the object of perfecting himself in the Divine Word and of studying the laws of the great Buddhas. ... The white priests of Brahma made him a joyous welcome. They taught him to read and understand the Vedas, to cure by aid of prayer, to teach, to explain the holy scriptures to the people, and to drive out evil spirits from the bodies of men."20
Nicholas Roerich, who came across the Buddhist manuscripts during his expedition to Asia and later published them, writes in the book Himalaya of Jesus' teaching on reincarnation, which I quote in Lost Years:
Said Jesus of skilled singers: "Whence is their talent and their power? For in one short life they could not possibly accumulate a quality of voice and the knowledge of harmony and of tone. Are these miracles? No, because all things take place as a result of natural laws. Many thousands of years ago these people already molded their harmonies and their qualities. And they come again to learn still more from varied manifestations."21
"Karma, Reincarnation and Christianity" is based on a lecture given by Elizabeth Clare Prophet on Friday, October 11, 1991, during the four-day Class of the Golden Cycle held at the New Orleans Airport Hilton.