Christian theology officially rejects the Eastern teaching of reincarnation. However, it is worth looking into the matter a bit more closely. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was definitively rejected by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553: “If anyone asserts that souls existed before bodies… and that they were sent into bodies as a punishment, let him be excommunicated.” With this wording, they deny that the soul is eternal, as well as the idea that successive rebirths can lead to the elimination of karma (punishment). If they deny the eternity of the soul, they thereby indirectly deny reincarnation itself.

The Second Council of Constantinople took place even before the schism between Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) Christianity. For this reason, its decisions were accepted and valid on both sides. At that time, the Pope of Rome was not yet the head of the Church; instead, there were five major religious centers. The council was convened by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, who used force (imprisonment, torture) to compel the Pope of Rome to accept the council’s decisions, which also contained many other controversial provisions.

However, the question remains: why did the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church not review the decisions of the Second Council of Constantinople following the Great Schism (officially in A.D. 1054)? Perhaps because for centuries they were preoccupied with excommunicating doctrines labeled as heretical. The settling Hungarian population was particularly affected by the turmoil surrounding the Great Schism, since in 950, Bulcsú and (Transylvanian) Gyula were still oriented toward Byzantine Christianity, and it was Géza who decided (AD 972) that we would instead join the Western (Roman Catholic) tradition. I would just like to note in passing that the Hungarians were not pagans (as historians tend to believe); they believed in a Creator God as both Father and Mother, and they practiced their religion not through temple rituals but by living in harmony with nature. From this perspective, they were closer to early Christianity than to medieval European Christian religious practice. My point in saying all this is to show that, people’s faith is determined not by their convictions but by historical circumstances even today.

As a result of the decisions of the Second Council of Constantinople, fundamental logical inconsistencies crept into Christian doctrine. Let us examine a few tenets of Christian theology: God creates every soul individually at the moment of conception. Every person lives once, must die once, and is then judged. Jesus’ one-time sacrifice on the cross redeemed humanity once and for all. After judgment, the body will be resurrected.

The contradictions:

1. If God is eternal and creates every soul individually from Himself, then the soul must also be eternal; at most, it had not yet been separated from God.
2. If every person lives only once, then their fate after the Judgment is determined on the base of that single lifetime. If they behaved well, they gain eternal life; if not, they face eternal damnation. This implies that although the soul was not originally eternal, it will become so after the Judgment, and if it did not behave well, its fate is eternal damnation. So, God irrevocably condemn parts of Himself to eternal damnation. It’s logical, isn’t it?
3. If Jesus redeemed everyone once and for all, how is it possible that some will still end up in eternal damnation? If He did not redeem everyone (only Christians), then aren’t the rest still part of God? And if that’s not true—that is, if everyone is saved—then what’s the point of judgment? In fact, why did one even need to be born (after Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross) if everyone has already been (or will be) redeemed anyway?
4. If the body is that which is going to be resurrected, then this means that birth was necessary for the taking on a body. In other words, the soul will have eternal life together with the body. They don’t specify what kind of body this is, but it would be quite interesting if we were to have eternal life in physical bodies somewhere in the spiritual world. This is a contradiction in itself. And if we were to have eternal life in physical bodies here on Earth, then I wouldn’t call that redemption. Not to mention that it contradicts Jesus’ teaching that after salvation we will become like angels, who, of course, do not have physical bodies. And what will happen to those who cannot identify with their physical bodies? Eternal damnation?
5. Consequential contradiction: If the soul was created only at the moment of birth, then what has to do with Adam's fall into sin those, who have born after Adam’s creation? The fall into sin is original sin, and denying it again results in excommunication (as declared at the Council of Trent).

When I was 13 years old, I asked in religion class, “If God created me at the moment of conception, what do I have to do with Adam’s sin?” Of course, I am not the only one who has had these thoughts. I was merely threatened with excommunication, but there are those who were burned at the stake for their views. We were all taught in school that Giordano Bruno was condemned to death by burning at the stake by the Inquisition because of his ideas about the heliocentric worldview. But that’s not true; he was accused of heresy because of his teachings on reincarnation (and other Gnostic doctrines). In his final responses to the charges brought against him, Bruno declared that the soul is “capable of existing in one body or another and of wandering from one body to another.” (W. Boulting, The Life, Thoughts, and Martyrdom of Giordano Bruno. London: Kegan Paul, 1914, pp. 163–64.)

The average person is unable to critically evaluate religious doctrines, as they have neither the time nor the sufficient depth of knowledge to do so. In contrast, many serious scholars, philosophers, and writers—both before and after the advent of Christianity—were convinced of the truth of the doctrine of reincarnation (to name but a few: Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Schopenhauer, Goethe, Emerson, Thoreau, Balzac, Tolstoy). Those of us who are now exploring these questions simply experience something different from what Christian theologians claim. We have lived many times, in different bodies and cultures. When we die, we enter a spiritual body. Many people consciously enter and leave their bodies during their lives or at the moment of death. There is a judgment, but there is no eternal damnation. Even Catholic priests advise us to pray for the salvation of the souls of the deceased. And it is indeed possible to escape the realm of suffering after death. Yet, according to them, we are still before the judgment

In my view, the Last Judgment is not a one-time event, but one of the 22 Tarot cards. That is, it is an exam that takes place continuously. I teach this in such a way that whoever passes through it has passed the "complex exam" and can move up to a higher class. Now that the Age of Pisces—of which Jesus was the world teacher—has come to an end, there is a collective judgment after death as well. It is taking place right before our eyes in the spiritual realm. Essentially, the souls are being classified, and depending on which class a certain soul is placed in, different rules will apply to them.

One could look for even more contradictions by citing biblical passages, which proves that the teaching of reincarnation has not been completely eradicated from the Bible. These passages can be twisted and turned, leading to endless debate. I have merely highlighted the most important logical contradictions. They say that religion is about faith, not thinking. Well, I disagree. There is such a creed that forms a system free of contradictions.

In this system, all religions find a place, and each reveals a different aspect of the same truth. Jesus proclaimed a religion of universal love, which has very little to do with the past and present theological disputes of the churches. In our yoga system, we return to this religion of universal love, freeing it from ecclesiastical dogmas. Yet in the 21st century, some people hold me accountable for not t follow the dogmas, — people who have no idea that these articles of faith were incorporated into human belief systems based on the historical power relations at any given time. How can things that seemingly contradict each other be true at the same time? We study this as well in our yoga school.

Margaret Rhasoda Varga
guru of UCCM
Budapest, Hungary