Reincarnation and the Law of Karma

...its former activities. This belief sometimes took the form of a return into the former body—an idea that led to the preservation of the physical form through processes like mummification—but as a rule, this belief evolved into the more advanced concept of a rebirth in a new body.

Early travelers in Africa reported finding traces of what was, to them, a "strange belief" in the soul's future return to a new body on Earth. Early explorers of America found similar traditions and beliefs among the Native Americans original: "Red Indians", remnants of which exist even to this day. It is said that several primitive tribes in different parts of the world place the bodies of their dead children by the roadside so that their souls might have a good chance to find new bodies from the many traveling pregnant women who pass by.

Many of these primitive people hold the idea of a "complex soul" complex soul: the belief that the human spirit is made of several distinct parts rather than being a single entity composed of several parts. In this, they resemble the Egyptians, Hindus, Chinese, and indeed all mystical and occult philosophies. The Fiji original: "Figi" Islanders are said to believe in a "black soul" and a "white soul." The black soul remains with the buried body and decays with it, while the white soul leaves the body and wanders as a "ghost." Afterward, tiring of its wandering, the white soul returns to life in a new body. The native people of Greenland are said to believe in an astral body astral body: a spiritual "double" of the physical body which leaves the body during sleep but perishes as the body decays after death; they also believe in a second soul which leaves the body only at death and persists until it is reborn at a later time.

In fact, the student of this subject finds that nearly all primitive and semi-civilized races show traces of a belief in a complex soul and a version of the doctrine of reincarnation. The human mind seems to work along the same lines among different races—unless one holds to the theory that all people sprang from the same "root race" The "root race" theory suggests all humans share a single ancestral origin that possessed an ancient, fundamental wisdom. and that these various beliefs are survivors of some ancient, fundamental doctrine. The facts remain the same in either case.

In connection with this last point, we might mention the traditions concerning Ancient Atlantis—the lost continent. These traditions all maintain that its people believed strongly in reincarnation and the ideas of the complex soul. As the survivors of Atlantis are believed to have been the ancestors of the Egyptians on one hand and the Ancient Peruvians on the other—the two branches of survivors having maintained their original doctrines as modified by different environments—we might find here an explanation of...