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Socrates - Plato Phaedo - Reincarnation
Identifier
013694
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
This one of the few philosophical arguments to exist on the existence of reincarnation.
Socrates starts by explaining the principles embodied in the Strategy of the Great Work - the principle of contrast. The creation is based on contrast and opposites and the movement or opposition between the two, now read on............
A description of the experience
Plato – Phaedo
.........all things are generated in this way, opposites from opposites?”
“Certainly.”
“Now then, is there between all these pairs of opposites what may be called [71b] two kinds of generation, from one to the other and back again from the other to the first? Between a larger thing and a smaller thing there is increment and diminution and we call one increasing and the other decreasing, do we not?”
“Yes,” said he.
“And similarly analyzing and combining, and cooling and heating, and all opposites in the same way. Even if we do not in every case have the words to express it, yet in fact is it not always inevitable that there is a process of generation from each to the other?”
“Certainly,” said he. [71c] “Well then,” said Socrates, “is there anything that is the opposite of living, as being awake is the opposite of sleeping?”
“Certainly,” said Cebes.
“What?”
“Being dead,” said he.
“Then these two are generated from each other, and as they are two, so the processes between them are two; is it not so?”
“Of course.”
“Now,” said Socrates, “I will tell about one of the two pairs of which I just spoke to you and its intermediate processes; and do you tell me about the other. I say one term is sleeping and the other is being awake, and being awake is generated from sleeping, and sleeping from being awake, [71d] and the processes of generation are, in the latter case, falling asleep, and in the former, waking up. Do you agree, or not?”
“Certainly.”
“Now do you,” said he, “tell me in this way about life and death. Do you not say that living is the opposite of being dead?”
“I do.”
“And that they are generated one from the other?”
“Yes.”
“Now what is it which is generated from the living?”
“The dead,” said he.
“And what,” said Socrates, “from the dead?”
“I can say only one thing—the living.”
“From the dead, then, Cebes, the living, both things and persons, [71e] are generated?”
“Evidently,” said he.
“Then,” said Socrates, “our souls exist in the other world.”
“So it seems.”
“And of the two processes of generation between these two, the one is plain to be seen; for surely dying is plain to be seen, is it not?”
“Certainly,” said he.
“Well then,” said Socrates, “what shall we do next? Shall we deny the opposite process, and shall nature be one-sided in this instance? Or must we grant that there is some process of generation the opposite of dying?”
“Certainly we must,” said he.
“What is this process?''
“Coming to life again.”