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jnani and reincarnation Almost all occult or esoteric systems (whether of the East or the West) believe in reincarnation, though the forms may differ. Does reincarnation have a significance for the transcendent in general and for jnani in particular? It has already been suggested that the entire occult 'project' has no direct bearing on the transcendent, but within that context reincarnation is still worth investigating. Reincarnation is of particular significance to the transcendent traditions of the East, because the transcendent goal (moksha, liberation, nirvana) is often couched in terms of the end of the cycle of birth and death.
If we take reincarnation literally (and for most Westerners this is an unusual intellectual posture to adopt) then are we to take Enlightenment as the literal end of this process? The Buddhist literature of the Pali canon suggests that we do, despite the Buddha's introduction of the term 'Anatman', meaning literally 'no soul', and intended to deny the idea that the personality has any eternal qualities. Many individuals in contemporary society do come to remember their previous lives, perhaps through regression workshops such as those run by therapist Roger Woolger. The great value for jnani is that it profoundly challenges one's assumptions about one's personality : if I was someone else before, then what does it mean to be me now? If such an engagement can bring about a more fluid sense of self then it is helpful. On the other hand a preoccupation with past lives can make one even more obsessed with one's personal history, and the transcendent vision then recedes further into the distance. There seems to be no easy answers to the issues raised by reincarnation. On the other hand, when we recall that the priority in the Buddha's teachings, and for any jnani, is to live in the present we can see the question in a different light. In the eternal now of the present, uncluttered by memory or imagination, the cycles of birth and death are already vanquished.
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