Reincarnation
One widespread myth of the hereafter is formed by the ideas
and images centering on reincarnation.
In one country whose intellectual culture is highly complex and much
older than ours – I am, of course, referring to
Now
the mythology of death and birth is of reincarnation.
Reincarnation is the counterpart in the Orient of purgatory in the West.
That is to say, it is a chance to live again, to live out the experiences
that should have illuminated you. Purgatory, as I like to
say, is a postgraduate course; if you die unilluminated, unready to behold the
beatific vision which would smash everything that you are if you haven’t opened,
it’s there to purge you. And so, in the Orient, you come back
for another lifetime. TMTT 172
Finnegans Wake begins with the second half of the sentence with
which the book ends: “A way a long a last a loved a long the
…” “… riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings
us by a commodius vicus of recirvulation back to