Making Sense of Reincarnation
The title of this article is very ambitious and I am hardly likely to come up with a concise explanation of a subject that has vexed most of the great minds that have been challenged by it. Indeed, as I start to write this, I am already questioning whether I am ready to say anything of value. But I would like to air my thoughts and ask some questions – if only to endow those thoughts with some substance, as it were: to “get them out there”.
Firstly, I am not coming into this without a modicum of preparation and I am, therefore, aware that similar discussions are happening all the time. The ever-interesting Michael Prescott, for example, might have been channeling my own thoughts in his recent blog: “The over/under of the soul“. Indeed, I would urge you to read that article before this one because it is very relevant to what I will have to say here. Another worthwhile blog article is to be found at White Crow Books by Michael Tymn: “The Enigma of Reincarnation“.
Another source of information may be controversial but I have found it to make more sense to me than many of the current philosophers, religious teachers and guru’s. That source is channeled material from the likes of Jane Roberts (Seth) and Mary Ennis (Elias):
Seth:
All time is simultaneous…. Reincarnation is a conscious-mind interpretation in linear terms. On the one hand it is highly distorted. On the other hand it is a creative interpretation…. But there is no karma to be paid off as punishment unless you believe there are crimes for which you must pay. In larger terms there is no cause and effect either, though these are root assumptions in your reality.
Seth:
These multiple [reincarnational] existence, however, are simultaneous and open-ended. In your terms the conscious mind is growing toward a realization of the part it has to play in such multidimensional reality.
Elias:
Be remembering also that all of your focuses [physical lifetimes] are simultaneous. They are all beside each other. They are not ‘in front of’ or before each other. They exist presently within the now, for this is what exists within consciousness is the now. There is no past or future. It is merely a perception within your creation of your time framework, which appears to be moving in a linear motion; but this being also why you may experience ease in viewing other focuses of your essence, for they are occurring simultaneously. As you are, they are also.
Therefore, I express to you also, all of your focuses occur simultaneously. You merely hold the perception within this dimension that you move in the direction of linear time in sequence. You are born, you live, you die, you move into non-physical focus, you are born, you live, you die, you move into intermission, you are born, you live, you die. Very incorrect!
ALL of your focuses are occurring simultaneously. This be the reason that you may access all of them, for all time is simultaneous. It is not linear; it is sideways. You may step sideways – not forward, not backward, but sideways – and you may view the other you’s, which are not you, for they are also uniquely individual focuses of essence, but you are also, and each focus contains all of essence. Therefore, you ARE the other focus … but you are not!
In this, as the individual focus chooses to be disengaging, you do not ‘return,’ so to speak. But I shall express to you that the reason that you have developed this belief system of reincarnation is that as – within linear time – you as you choose to be disengaging from this physical manifestation, you move into a non-physical area of consciousness, and you may project an aspect of you which shall be manifest physically. This is a new creation. It is not you. It is its own new creation, and although within this physical dimension it appears to be appearing within linear time, it is not. All of this action is occurring presently.
Seth:
Each of you exists in other realities and other dimensions, and the self that you call yourself is but a small portion of your entire identity. Within the self that you know is the prime identity, the whole self. This whole self has lived many lives and adopted many personalities. Personality may be somewhat molded by the circumstances that are created for it by the whole self but the prime identity uses the resulting experience.
Personality and identity are not dependent upon physical form. Your prime identity is an energy essence personality which is composed of energy gestalts. As each individual consciousness grows, out of its experience it forms other “personalities” or fragments of itself. These fragments are entirely independent as to action and decision, while constantly in communication with the whole self of which they are a part. These “fragments” themselves grow, develop, and may form their own entities or “personality gestalts”.
You have constant contact with the other parts of your whole self, but your ego is so focused upon physical reality and survival within it that you do not hear the inner voices.
No individuality is ever lost. It is always in existence.
So, where does all that leave us? Well, the way I am coming to view it is that we have two kinds of understanding of the nature of reincarnation:
- The simplistic view that we are born, live a life on earth and then die which takes us back to the between-life domain. There we decide upon and prepare for another life in which we will, perhaps, address some of the karmic issues that remain from the life just lived. This cycle of birth/death/rebirth continues until we have progressed to a state of spiritual enlightenment which removes the necessity for further incarnations.
- The “Big Picture” view that acknowledges the fact that time is not linear but merely an illusion, only necessary during our sojourn in this physical environment. Therefore, what we think of as a linear progression of lives is, in fact, a simultaneous composite of lifetimes which together create a gestalt entity such as the “oversoul” spoken of by Michael Prescott in his blog article.
For many years I have paid lip-service to the second concept but have always thought of it as somehow abstract: something that works that way but isn’t really experienced that way. I think I always believed that we actually experienced the linear progression; that time as we know it here on earth would still appear to function that way between lives. Perhaps until the reincarnational cycle finally comes to an end.
These days, however, I think I have changed my mind on that aspect. I think that the #2 explanation is probably what we actually experience. That the identity we have for the lifetime on earth (the focus, as Elias puts it) is a new fragment of the gestalt (the soul entity) which remains intact as a personality within the gestalt. In plain terms, therefore, the you that you identify as yourself will continue after death and will not be abandoned in order to return to earth as another personality. That “new” personality will be a born of the oversoul which, in turn, will remain intact.
It is clearly very difficult for us, in this physical life, to imagine existing outside of time. We are told – even by physicists – that time is an illusion. But our very vocabulary is built upon the foundation of time itself. We have past, present and future tenses. Words like “did”, “am” and “shall” all locate the narrative in time. Science (the scientific method) itself would not be possible without cause and effect. A cause following an effect is seen as a nonsense. So how can we make objective sense of this idea that souls existing beyond the physical world do so without the constraints of time?
I suspect that the answer to that might be contained in the question; or more particularly in the word “objective”. I believe that the nature of reality is fundamentally subjective. We create stories. Dramas which are then played out upon the stages which we have also created. Our reality is no more solid or “real” than Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Our dreams may be the vital clue to what reality is really like. A novel or a movie can skip forwards or backwards in time or jump half a world away in an instant. We can experience much the same in our dreams. I think that we – collectively – have created a reality so stable and “solid” that we cannot entertain the thought that it might not be so. Yet this is not a revolutionary idea. Go back through Hindu or Buddhist texts or read Plato and you will find similar concepts.
So when were are told that the life we experienced as a medieval miller is happening alongside this life we think of as here-and-now … and also alongside another life in the year 2240, in what used to be France … we can’t really grasp it because we are steeped in a lifetime of temporal conditioning. I mean: how come some people can “remember” previous lives if they are happening now? Well, perhaps it really is just a matter of focus. If each of our reincarnational lives are happening now, perhaps we can tune into one or another of them if we know how (or if we are not yet conditioned – as in when we are very young). Perhaps some are closer than others – subjectively speaking. The lives may be related by this artificial earthly timeline and those closest on the timeline may well be the lives we have the most affinity with (and therefore the easiest to tune into).
