Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation homepage > Notebooks of Paul Brunton

---

If a sharp intellect shuts the door on all authorities except one, it has only its own foolishness to thank when it shuts truth out with its action. So keen, witty, and logical a mind as Saint Augustine's brusquely rejected the doctrine of the human entity's successive reincarnations on earth. Yet, in the same book, The City of God, he unhesitatingly accepts the computation that the age of the human race is less than six thousand years. He bases his reckoning on nothing more than the petty tribal histories contained in the Old Testament. He rejects, too, the grand conception of the pagan thinkers who preceded him, that the world has passed through countless cycles and consists of an infinite number of worlds.

-- Notebooks Category 9: From Birth to Rebirth > Chapter 2 : Rebirth and Reincarnation > # 181