Reincarnation is the belief that a part of our
consciousness will continue living after the death of the
physical body and will be re-born into a new body here on Earth.
The belief of reincarnation is widespread, in fact almost
universal in the East, but it has never been that popular in the
West. This is due to the scepticism of mainstream science and
the fact that it is not really mentioned in the Christian Bible.
However, times are slowly changing and more and more reputable
doctors and scientists are now investigating aspects of
reincarnation, including past life regression, near-death
experiences and after-death communication. These phenomena were
briefly described in Chapter 2 and the mechanisms behind them
are explained in the next chapter.
For many people the idea of life after death is
very comforting because it lessens their grief and removes their
fear of annihilation. For others it is a subject that is never
contemplated because "ignorance is
bliss". But whether we believe in it
or not, the fact remains that life after death is a certainty
because life cannot be extinguished – it only changes form.
Death is an unsuitable term for passing on to a higher form of
life because the self/monad cannot die – ever! The bodies of
incarnation are discarded when they are no longer required, but
the monad is immortal.
To the monad, each incarnation is like a day’s
work. Leaving the physical-etheric body behind can be compared
to taking off our overcoat, leaving the emotional body behind is
like taking off our clothing, and leaving the mental body behind
is like taking off our underwear. We return to our causal body
(soul) completely naked to sleep for a while before awakening
the next morning to get dressed again for another day’s work. We
begin each new incarnation by putting on our underwear (mental
body), our clothes (emotional body) and our overcoat
(physical-etheric body). After a long hard day at work we are
tired and our overcoat is worn out, so we take it off and head
back home to sleep.
Continuity of Consciousness
If we have all lived before, why can’t we
remember anything of our previous lives? There are two reasons
why the average person cannot consciously recall their past
lives:
-
After each incarnation, the subtle bodies of
our persona dissolve in sequence over the course of many
years so the pathways to their memories are lost to us. New
subtle bodies are formed for each new incarnation but they
have no connection with our previous lives, so essentially
we are a new persona in each lifetime.
-
Only the greater causal body (or soul) is
ours for our entire journey through the human kingdom. It is
the storehouse of our experiences in the human kingdom and
contains the memories of all our human incarnations.
However, the average person does not incarnate with his
greater causal body so cannot access those memories. The
lesser causal body contains causal matter (soul essence)
from the greater causal body, but the memories, knowledge
and abilities it contains are incoherent and our conscious
minds don’t know the mental pathways that are required to
recall them.
Only an enlightened person incarnates with their
greater causal body and therefore has continuity of
consciousness from life to life. Non-enlightened people fall
asleep at some point during their ascent back to their soul and
wake up at the same point as they descend into a new
incarnation. Figure 13a shows the point at which this occurs:
Figure 13a – Degrees of Consciousness in the Subtle
Worlds
Life Cycle
Figure 13b provides an overview of the entire
life cycle from incarnation to discarnation. The process
specifically applies to non-enlightened human monads, i.e. the
primitive, civilised, developed and humanistic stages of
development. With regard to enlightened human monads, the same
general process applies, except that the causal body does not
divide itself into two parts at the start of the incarnation.
Enlightened human monads incarnate with their entire causal
body, which gives them continuity of consciousness between
incarnations.
Before Incarnation
The average time between incarnations is 5 years
at the primitive stage, 300 years at the civilised stage, 1000
years at the developed stage, 1500 years at the humanistic stage
and 0-3000 years at the enlightened stage, but there are no set
rules. Most people reincarnate automatically when the
"thirst" for
physical experience awakens them from their dream-like state,
but more advanced individuals have more control over the timing
of their incarnations. For example, a humanistic person’s
"afterlife"
is typically 1000 to 2000 years, but they may choose to
reincarnate almost immediately.
The monad’s state of consciousness in the
different subtle worlds depends on which unit of the triad it is
centred. Full consciousness is only possible in the world that
corresponds to the permanent atom in which the monad is centred,
and the worlds below. For example, a typical civilised person
whose monad is centred in the emotional atom (2:7) has full
objective consciousness in the emotional world, dream-like
subjective consciousness in the mental world and is unconscious
in the causal world, as can be seen in Figure 13c.
Figure 13b – The Cycle of Reincarnation
Figure 13c – Years in the Subtle Worlds at the End of an
Incarnation
As stated in Chapter 10, if the planetary
conditions or level of civilisation are not optimal for the
monad’s development the time spent in the causal world can be
significantly longer than stated above. Life on Earth passes
through repeating cycles with different conditions to suit the
development of monads at different levels of development. If
conditions are suitable for the monad then the length causal
life will be close to the times stated above, but if conditions
are unsuitable the monad will "sleep"
in the greater causal body until conditions become conducive,
which may be thousands or millions of years. Remember that time
passes much faster in the higher worlds, so thousand Earth years
may pass in a single day.
Back to Top |
