SLOKA OF THE DAY:

Bhagavad Gita As It Is -
Chapter 6 Text 35
sri-bhagavan uvaca
asamsayam maha-baho
mano durnigraham calam
abhyasena tu kaunteya
vairagyena ca grhyate

sri-bhagavan uvaca--the Personality of Godhead said; asamsayam--undoubte dly; maha-baho--O mighty-armed one; manah--the mind; durnigraham- -difficult to curb; calam--flickering; abhyasena--by practice; tu--but; kaunteya--O son of Kunti; vairagyena-- by detachment; ca--also; grhyate--can be so controlled.

TRANSLATION

Lord Sri Krsna said: O mighty-armed son of Kunti, it is undoubtedly very difficult to curb the restless mind, but it is possible by suitable practice and by detachment.

JOURNAL:

A Christian friend of mine sends me quotes occasionally. Here is one from Emmet Fox, a New Thought Christian philosopher who lived from 1886 to 1951. His writings are still popular among members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Why is reincarnation necessary? Why do we come back for short excursions of perhaps seventy or eighty years instead of, let us say, living one very long lifetime of perhaps a thousand or even several thousand years?

The explanation lies in man's reluctance to adopt new ideas and adapt himself to changing conditions. In each new experience, however, he wants to do things in new ways; then as the years of his maturity go by, the strong race suggestions all around him gradually get their way. He begins to acquire vested interests (mentally) in the status quo. The only remedy, when crystallization sets in, is to remove him from the earth plane altogether; send him to the etheric planes for rest, reflection, assimilation, and general readjustment; and then bring him back once more as a baby, to experience a new youth and a new period of true spiritual production.

He goes on to give a few more reasons. I found his take on reincarnation interesting but it is not quite what Srila Prabhupada teaches us. Still, it is rare to find any Christian who believes in the doctrine. My understanding is that most of Christianity took reincarnation as a spiritual fact until a pope, around 400 AD, decided that people would try harder if they thought they had only one life to get it right.