A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""""""98 REINCARNATION.Hebrews accepted it, and the Sufis amongalmost universally acknowledgedits truth.the MahomedansThere must be peculiar surroundings which generateand foster certain forms of belief among nations. It requiredages for the ancient races to arrive at any idea abouta part even of the body surviving after death it took; agesmore to come to any rational idea about this somethingwhich persists and lives apart from the body. It was onlywhen the idea was reached of an entity whose connectionwith the body was only for a time, and among those nationsonly who arrived at such a conclusion that the unavoidablequestion arose, Whither? whence ?The ancient Hebrews never disturbed their equanimity by questioning themselves about the soul. With thedeath ended all. Karl Heckel justly says, Thoughit istrue that in the Old Testament, preceding the exile, theHebrews distinguish a life principle,different from thebody, which is sometimes called * Nephesh, or Ruakh, orNeshama, yet all these words correspond rather to the1idea of breath than to that of spirit or soul. Also in thewritings of the Palestinean Jews, after the exile, there isnever made mention of an individual immortal soul, butalways only of a life-breath emanating from God, which,after the body is dissolved, is re-absorbed into the. Divine*Ruakh.The ancient Egyptians and the Chaldeans had peculiarbeliefs of their own about the soul, but their ideas aboutthis living part after death must not be confused with thoseof the ancient Hindu, the Persian, the Greek, or anyother Aryan race. There was from the earliest times abroad distinction between the Aryas and the (non-Sanskrit speaking) Mlechhas in the conception of thesoul. Externally it was typified by their disposal of the