Death and reincarnation – spirit and matter
The transmigration of souls was a core of Pythagorean teaching. What philosophy says about it and what research exists.
Beside number, the soul stood at the centre of Pythagoras’ teaching. The Pythagoreans taught that it is immortal and after death passes into new bodies (see Pythagoras). Philolaus describes the body as a prison or tomb of the soul, to which it was bound as a punishment (see The ancient sources).
Gadamer on Pythagoras
In The Beginning of Philosophy the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) considers the religious side of the Presocratics. What interests him most is that in this cult the soul stands at the centre of religious life. Gadamer notes that ancient biographies present almost all early thinkers, from Anaximander to Parmenides, as followers of Pythagoras. He reads it this way: Pythagoras united in himself the basic motifs of early philosophy, the riddle of numbers and the riddle of the soul and its fate. The passage is also found in Alfried Lehner, Die Esoterik des Pythagoras (The esotericism of Pythagoras).
Research on reincarnation
Can more be said about rebirth than an article of faith? Is there serious research on it? Worth reading is the work of the mathematician and physicist Joachim Felix Hornung. His websites present findings on reincarnation research, near-death experiences and research into the afterlife, as well as spiritual aspects of organ transplantation, and distance themselves from modern esotericism. They also explain what “esoteric” originally meant for Pythagoras: the knowledge of the inner circle, as opposed to what was taught to outsiders. Hornung also published a critical examination of the usual method of testing medicines by double-blind studies, and a story, Doaram, der Seher (Doaram the seer).
The subject remains here a pointer to the fact that for the Pythagoreans number and soul belonged together: whoever recognises the order of numbers also recognises something about the place of the soul in the world.