or to people of importance,
but Saint John shows us that the Jews, though perhaps ignorant that it
was a law of universal application, recognised, at any rate, that it
might happen in the case of any man.

_Saint John_, Chapter 9.

v. 1. And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his
birth.

v. 2. And his disciples asked him, saying: Master, who did sin, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?

v. 3. Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents;
but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

Here we are dealing with a man _blind from birth_, and the Jews ask
Jesus if he was blind because he sinned; this clearly indicates that
they were referring to sins committed in the course of a former
existence[170]; the thought is, therefore, quite a natural,
straightforward one, referring to something well known to everyone and
needing no explanation.

As one well acquainted with this doctrine of Rebirth, without
combating it as an error or as something doubtful which his disciples
ought not to believe, Jesus simply replies:

"Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents; but that the works of
God should be made manifest in him."

And yet it appears as though this answer must have been distorted, as
so many others have been, otherwise it would mean that the only reason
for this man's blindness was the caprice of the Deity.

_Reincarnation in the Apocalypse._

The _Apocalypse_, an esoteric book _par excellence_, confirms the
doctrine of Reincarnation, and throws considerable light on it:

"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and
he shall go no more out...."[171]

In another verse it is stated that to him who overcometh "I will give
the morning star."[172] In the language of theosophy, this means: He
who has overcome the animal soul, shall, by mystic Communion, be
united to the divine soul, which, in the _Apocalypse_, is the symbol
of the Christ:

"I, Jesus, am the bright and morning star."[173]

Another verse clearly characterises the nature and the cost of
victory:

"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and I
will give him a _white stone_, and in the stone a new _name_ written,
which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."[174]

The hidden manna is the ambrosia of the Greeks, the _kyteon_ of the
mysteries of Eleusis, the _soma_ of the Hindus, the eucharist of the
Christians, the sacred drink off