Reincarnation

Reincarnation, sometimes referred to by the ascended masters as reembodiment, is the rebirth of a soul in a new human body. The soul continues to return to the physical plane in a new body temple until the soul balances its karma, attains self-mastery, overcomes the cycles of time and space, and finally reunites with the I AM Presence through the ritual of the ascension.

Evidence for reincarnation

One of the strongest supports for the concept of reembodiment is the child prodigy—the child who at an unbelievably early age shows qualities of genius. The difference between an average child and one of genius lies not in the genes but in the spirit within the house of clay. As Jesus and Kuthumi have explained, the child prodigy has developed his talent through many rounds of incarnation on earth, as well as through training in the heaven world.

In preparation for such an embodiment, the soul works hand in hand with the Karmic Board and the prospective parents to ensure that she will grow up in the earthly setting most conducive to the expression of her talent.

In fact, we are all given the greatest opportunity possible to develop our spiritual potential. The Karmic Board and those Higher Powers who act on behalf of mankind under the guidance of God determine, within the bounds of karmic law, the parents and the nature of the body temple that is brought forth to house the progressing soul. In most cases the memory is mercifully blunted by divine decree so that the individual does not have the ties to a previous father, mother or family situation. Nor is the soul so strongly subject to old limiting habit patterns from which she desired escape—although certain characteristics may be recreated and brought forward lifetime after lifetime.

Universality of the belief in reincarnation

The belief in reincarnation is ancient and widespread. Before the advent of Christianity, reincarnation was part of the spiritual beliefs of many of the peoples of Europe, including the early Teutonic tribes, the Finns, Icelanders, Lapps, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, early Saxons, and the Celts of Ireland, Scotland, England, Brittany, Gaul, France and Wales.

In the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras taught that the soul had many incarnations, which were opportunities for the soul to purify and perfect itself. In the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., Plato taught that the soul is immortal and that its circumstances in its current life depend on its disposition formed in a previous life.

According to some scholars, statements made by the first-century Jewish historian Josephus indicate that the Pharisees and Essenes believed in reincarnation.

Some tribes of American Indians as well as numerous tribes in Central and South America have believed in reincarnation.

Reincarnation was also taught by students of the Kabbalah, a system of Jewish esoteric mysticism that arose in the thirteenth century. Reincarnation is still a part of the religious beliefs of the Jewish Hasidic movement, founded in the eighteenth century.

Today the belief in reincarnation also exists among over one hundred tribes in Africa as well as among Eskimo and Central Australian tribes and many peoples of the South Pacific, including Hawaiians, Tahitians, Melanesians and Okinawans.

The most elaborately developed concepts of reincarnation are found today in the religious traditions of India—especially Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. In these religions reincarnation is linked with the law of karma. According to the law of karma as it is taught in the East, your thoughts, words and deeds in past lives have determined the conditions of your present life, and your thoughts, words and deeds in this life will determine your destiny in future lives.

Hinduism and Buddhism teach that the law of karma is a universal law of cause and effect that affects everyone. As Newton’s Third Law of Motion states: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The law of karma operates automatically and without prejudice. According to the Eastern teachings, karma necessitates rebirth simply because you can’t reap all the effects of your karma in a single lifetime.

Reincarnation in the Bible

When Jesus gathered his disciples around him, they discussed the teachings of reembodiment freely and with familiarity. One such discussion was recorded, and it seems to have been missed in the careful project undertaken to delete great truths from the scriptures. Perhaps it was overlooked, or perhaps it was left in because it was felt that most people would not take the words literally.

Jesus and the disciples were speaking of the coming of the prophet Elijah. To the disciples the word coming meant the coming of the soul into manifestation, or being born. The scriptures say that a forerunner having the spirit and power of Elijah the Prophet should precede Jesus’ coming. The disciples were speculating as to whether or not Elijah had been born. Jesus answered them, “‘I say unto you, that Elias [Elijah] is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed....’ Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.”

Reincarnation in gnostic Christianity

Reincarnation was an important part of Gnostic theology. The Gnostics claimed that Jesus had taught it both explicitly (in his private teachings to his disciples) and implicitly (in his sayings and parables).

Reincarnation appears in the Book of Thomas the Contender. In it the Saviour tells his disciple Thomas that after death those who were once believers but have remained attached to things of “transitory beauty” will be consumed “in their concern about life” and “will be brought back to the visible realm.”

At the end of the Book of Thomas, Jesus says: “Watch and pray that you may not be born in the flesh, but that you may leave the bitter bondage of this life.” In other words, pray that you are not reborn on earth but that you return to higher realms.

The Secret Book of John places reincarnation at the heart of its discussion of the salvation of souls. Here is Secret John’s perspective on reincarnation: All people have drunk the water of forgetfulness and exist in a state of ignorance. Some are able to overcome ignorance through the Spirit of life that descends upon them. These souls “will be saved and will become perfect,” that is, escape the round of rebirth.

John asks the Saviour what will happen to those who do not attain salvation. They are hurled down “into forgetfulness” and thrown into “prison,” the code word for new bodies. The only way for these souls to escape, says the Saviour, is to emerge from forgetfulness and acquire knowledge. A soul in this situation can do so by finding a teacher or saviour who has the strength to lead her home. “This soul needs to follow another soul in whom the Spirit of Life dwells, because she is saved through the Spirit. Then she will never be thrust into flesh again.”

This passage from Secret John shows the importance of reincarnation in Gnostic theology.

The Gnostics used the concept of reincarnation to explain pain, suffering and the inequities of life. The Christian philosopher Basilides, who taught in the early second century and probably before, said that reincarnation explains why seemingly innocent people suffer martyrdom.

Another Gnostic text, Pistis Sophia, outlines an elaborate system of reward and punishment that includes reincarnation. The text explains differences in fate as the effects of pastlife actions. A “man who curses” is given a body that will be continually “troubled in heart.” A “man who slanders” receives a body that will be “oppressed.” A thief receives a “lame, crooked and blind body.” A “proud” and “scornful” man receives “a lame and ugly body” that “everyone continually despises.” Thus earth, as well as hell, becomes the place of punishment.

According to Pistis Sophia, some souls do experience hell as a shadowy place of torture where they go after death. But after passing through this hell, the souls return for further experiences on earth. Only a few extremely wicked souls are not allowed to reincarnate. These are cast into “outer darkness” until the time when they are destined to be “destroyed and dissolved.”

But Gnostic Christianity does not emphasize the idea of eternal punishment as much as orthodox Christianity does. Although the Gnostics believed some souls can be lost, the goal is always progress. The series of reincarnations is meant to be consummated by a final lifetime in which union with God is achieved.

Reincarnation denied by orthodox Christian dogma

In stark contrast to the merciful plan of God through reembodiment is the doctrine that man lives only one life. According to this erroneous belief, the individual has no hope in the next world unless he embraces a man-made creed that guarantees him immortality because another has paid for his sins. And if he does not wholeheartedly accept this creed, he cannot return and embrace it in another life once he has passed on.

The dogmatists of orthodox Christianity set forth the idea of hell as a place of eternal punishment, thereby destroying the concept of a tomorrow in which the sins of today could be atoned for. They removed the concept of the soul’s opportunity to learn through trial and error. Thus they were able to achieve an effective control over the masses. Rather than conveying the fullness of living Truth that Jesus exemplified, those who denied the concept of reembodiment suppressed the soul’s aspirations. They denied her the opportunity to follow Jesus all the way to perfectionment in God.

Ironically, the centuries that followed saw only a limited progress for the church and its members, other than the accumulation of material wealth. By the little knowledge possessed (which became a dangerous thing), both the church and its members were deprived of the tremendous power of Truth to be found in the original teachings of the Christ.

World opinion would be more inclined toward Christ rather than anti-Christ if these false teachings had not been introduced by a priesthood seeking control by fear. Their deliberate confusing of the Word of God destroyed the vitality of the faith and the divine plan of many souls.

If the law of karma had been explained—in the place of the erroneous doctrine of vicarious atonement—and if respect for God’s Law had been engendered in mankind, the golden rule would have been more willingly obeyed.

The science of rebirth

The processes of reembodiment are vital to the spiritual evolution of man, and when properly understood, they can be a key to his immortal freedom. When man wears out the coat he has worn for a time, God will replace it with another, and eventually with a seamless garment—a deathless, incorruptible body in which he shall forever dwell, subject only to the laws of eternal progression that lead man onward and upward to the realm of the perfect day.

It is neither strange nor difficult for the Heavenly Father to take a soul who has vacated her body temple and to place that soul into a new and fresh body form. This is done in order to provide a continuation of experience in the schoolroom of earth, even though the old body wears out.

Flowers are born and they mature, displaying their beauty for a brief span; then the petals fall to mingle with the dust. With the coming of spring they appear once again. Who can say that the soul of the flower does not survive and remain in the wings of the stages of life, awaiting the prompter’s cue when it shall make another entrance? And so it springs forth again to gladden the eyes and hearts of men.

Thus the karmic record of a lifestream is transferred to a new body temple. The beginning of life in that body temple with a new name and a different situation becomes a fresh opportunity for the child-man to once again expand his tiny limbs and reach for the stars of a cosmic virtue that in the past might have escaped his grasp.

The purpose of reembodiment

When correctly understood, the truth of reembodiment (stranger than the fiction of one life) provides the greatest hope for mankind. Reembodiment is neither an excuse nor a release from the full responsibility and karmic accountability for one’s errors. On the contrary, reembodiment provides for a continuation of experience on earth, which (although moving in broken sequences) is the means whereby the soul can evolve progressively toward victory, self-mastery and attainment.

It can be asked, What is the real purpose of reembodiment? Nature herself will provide the answer. When God created man in his own image, it was in the image of immortality. Man’s fall from that higher image into the bondage of the flesh resulted in a negative karmic record that, had he only had one embodiment, would have prevented his manifestation of eternal life.

The real purpose of reembodiment is to provide the opportunity—the cycles of years and events—wherein man can live and learn to do well. What a frightening thing it would be if the millions upon millions of souls who have come and gone upon this planet without having had the opportunity of hearing the teachings of the Master Jesus were without hope for a future opportunity to follow in his footsteps!

Transfer of the life record

Through a special process that takes place at the close of each embodiment, the life record is transferred to an electronic envelope that holds the aggregate substance of the individual’s world. This he is required to pick up and deal with in his next life. When he reembodies, the records that correspond to the emotions, the thoughts and the memory are placed within their respective vehicles. The soul continues to evolve from the place where she left off in her previous life.

The record and the substance of the personality are transferred to the physical structure of man through the genes, the chromosomes, the hormones, the blood, the fluids, the nerves, the bones and the brain. Man’s unredeemed substance is deposited not only in the atoms of the physical body but also in the atoms of the emotional, mental and etheric bodies and in the energy mass that is called the soul.

It is through the patterns that man has stamped on the four lower bodies and on the soul that he retains his personality from one embodiment to the next. Until he has found his spiritual identity through the highest yoga, he retains the patterns of his personal momentums. Often physiological similarities are noted from one embodiment to the next. For these traits are merely a reflection of the soul personality, which remains unchanged.

According to the law of attraction (like attracts like), parents often draw to themselves souls of similar personality traits. Thus the incoming lifestream may pick up through the genes and chromosomes of his parents those traits that are also native to his own evolution. In those cases where parents and their offspring seem to have nothing in common, one may conclude that karmic ties drew them together for the sole purpose of balancing wrongs that were mutually imposed.

Here we see the operation of the law of opposites, intuitively felt by Job when he said, “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” If we are honest enough to look beneath the surface of our own worlds, we often find that those characteristics we despise in others (especially in members of our own family) are the very weaknesses we were sent into embodiment to overcome in ourselves.

Until we get rid of our antipathies and our anathemas, we cannot overcome them. For the energy that is qualified with repulsion becomes the magnet that draws the object of our disdain to us. How true it is that what we see in others, we are likely to become.

The continuity of life

The Ascended Masters Jesus and Kuthumi give us the following instruction concerning reembodiment:

There is much to be gained from a correct knowledge of karma and reembodiment. Your life, blessed ones, is continuous. It does not end, nor does it come in sharp spurts and gaps. Your life is a majestic stream of cosmic energy composed of the consciousness of God and the energy of his heart. To you is entrusted a portion of the Divine Selfhood. Thus it was spoken long ago, “Your life is not your own.” We say to all mankind, life is given into your keeping that you may master your destiny and the fulfillment of divine purposes within the sphere of Selfhood.

It is sad to mortal thought, but not to divine thought, that the memory of the continuous stream of life is broken upon the altars of death. There are many reasons for this, and one by one these reasons will be made known to you as you study the laws of reembodiment and understand that there is nothing strange at all about this fact of man’s evolution. For in reality, blessed ones, the concept of reembodiment is no more difficult to understand than the consideration of life as one’s sole opportunity to find God and to fulfill his purposes.

It would be far more strange if God were to create mankind without equal opportunity for salvation—some ignorant, some wise, placing some in circumstances of wealth and culture and others in conditions of abject poverty without the benefit of formal education. Strange indeed if the Creator expected all to rise from the various states in which they found themselves and in the space of a few short years come to that mature comprehension and judgment which would cause them to accept Christ as their Saviour and to find soul-release in the fulfillment of their divine destiny....

All of life is cyclic. Even the cycles of the centuries, the decades and the years are broken into months and weeks and days. Each twenty-four-hour cycle is divided into the night and the day—periods of regeneration and rest and periods of creativity.

The Master Hilarion declared when embodied as Saint Paul, “I die daily.” Although he was referring to the mortification of the ego—the putting off of the human consciousness and the putting on of the divine consciousness—this statement may also be applied to all mankind as they close their eyes at night for a period of sleep, when there is a loss of contact with the realities of the day’s activities and a separation of the soul from the memory patterns of the personal self. This breaking of the thread of consciousness, which is reestablished with each coming dawn, gives man the opportunity to die daily and to begin life anew.

As an act of mercy, the memories of the past are blotted out of the conscious mind each time the soul reembodies. This is a deliberate action of the Lords of Karma taken to prevent contact with the sordid aspects of previous lives that would mar the opportunity for a new beginning in the new cycle. However, now and then as subconscious memories spiral to the surface of awareness, people do receive impressions of having done before the same act that they find themselves doing for the first time in their present embodiment. Because the memory of old experience patterns is broken at birth, the possibility for deliverance is always present, and the soul can be raised out of its own imperfections and transformed into a higher state of the Christ consciousness.

You must take into account that souls coming to earth for the first time often do not manifest great brilliance of achievement, even in the simple things of life. Some maintain for a number of embodiments states of consciousness that are not comparable to those of individuals who have returned to earth’s schools hundreds and even thousands of times to fulfill their divine plan. The stairway of evolution, therefore, represents lifestreams and life patterns of mature as well as young souls, all having equal opportunity to excel in the magnification of God-qualities, but not all equal in achievement.

Opportunity to build a nobler temple

Even as “one star differeth from another star in glory,” so the Causal Body of each son of God reflects the harvest of good works gleaned from each successive opportunity in the Father’s vineyard. Thus the talents multiplied by each laborer accrue to his benefit with interest, whereas those who bury [in the electronic belt] that portion of God’s energy entrusted to them find no accumulation of good karma to enhance their future lives, but only the burden of imbalance that must one day become the balance of light’s perfection.

As the opportunity for embodiment is awarded to the soul again and again, each succeeding experience in the world of Matter-form is intended to be used to build a “temple nobler than the last.” Those who avail themselves of the opportunities for self-mastery that are presented in each lifetime receive a greater portion of the Holy Spirit as grace for the needs of the hour. Thus there occurs a fashioning of the Christ-nature in those who give preeminence to their higher calling.

Those who in the period between death and rebirth become devotees of the Masters in the temples of beauty and music often return as geniuses of the arts, or so mankind have called them. Those who elect to study in the etheric temples of science and healing may glean enough of the flame of Truth to bring forth inventions and techniques for the health and well-being of mankind. Disciples who apply themselves in the Temple of God’s Will return to guide the destiny of nations through an inner knowledge of God-government and economics taught to them by statesmen of the Spirit serving on the Darjeeling Council.

The art of bringing healing and comfort to life and upholding the honor code of the Masters, as well as their educational standards, is taught by the Maha Chohan, Mary the Mother, and the brothers of the wisdom schools. Archangel Raphael, together with Mother Mary, conducts classes on child development and child care and the training of both parents and children “in the way they should go” that they might make a worthy contribution to their communities, at the same time making the most rapid spiritual strides in their individual lives.

The Lords of Flame school would-be priests of the sacred fire who are destined to return to earth to bring a revitalizing surge of resurrection’s flame to the various churches of the world. Thus not by chance but by divine direction there flows into the octave of mankind’s evolving consciousness the organization and sustenance of heaven.

Since the veil is drawn during sleep as well as at birth, individuals do not always retain in their outer consciousness an awareness of that which has been vouchsafed unto them at inner levels. Nevertheless, there is a lodestone, a magnet, an animus of spiritual power that draws each one to his appointed course even as stars and galaxies are guided by the unseen hand of cosmic destiny.

As mankind rise to the place where they consciously, willingly call for the transmutation of their past errors and deviations from the Law, little by little the doors of memory are opened and all of the knowledge and training of past lives, as well as the teachings of the Masters given on the inner planes, are recalled for the benefit of the individual as an assistance toward his attainment of self-mastery and the completion of his mission unto his ascension in the light.

It is useless for mankind to attempt to refute through scriptural means the great eternal cycles and the ongoing tides of life. Those who do will find that at the end of the road, at the end of each cycle, they are taken by angelic ministrants to a place of rest, regeneration and instruction, preparing them for a new adventure in the world of form. Their denials of the laws of life have no power to alter the divine intent. For it is the mercy of God that continually outbreathes the breath of life into the nostrils of men that he may stimulate the Christ Flame within the heart, until the fragrance of the Only Begotten of the Father—of the Holy One of Israel (of the God of all that is real)—does flow through them to fulfill the divine plan.

A Cosmic Perspective

In his Trilogy on the Threefold Flame of Life, Saint Germain explains:

It would be most beneficial if the human monad would refrain from prejudgment in matters of cosmic doctrine and even better if he could universally accept the reality of reembodiment. For it is in the acceptance of this fact of life that he will truly discern the wisdom of the ages and more easily understand his reason for being.

It is most difficult for people in any age, observing in the life span of a comparatively few short years a series of events relative to the personal self, to be able to judge the world in which they live and the society from which they have derived both bane and blessing, and then to be able to perceive matters pertaining to the spirit and properly assess them.

By correctly understanding and accepting his own reembodiment, the individual develops a cosmic sense of the continuity of self—past, present, and future—and is better equipped to see behind the surface effects of today’s circumstances the underlying personal causes that stretch back across the dust of centuries....

How great is the suffering that Christians have endured through the elimination of this one point of spiritual truth! By denying reembodiment they have denied their souls the keystone in the arch of being.

You see, there are certain fine points of Cosmic Law that in a relative sense are not as important as this one. Man can deny some specifics without suffering too much damage, but to deny the truth of the continuity of his own being—its span of previous existence and its future glorious destiny—is to cut himself off from the basic premise of life.

Transmigration of souls

Let us make clear that we do not endorse the doctrine of transmigration of souls as it pertains to the migration of the soul into the body of an animal. For men are not now animals, nor have they evolved from the consciousness of animal life.

As God inhabits every form of life, so the man who attains God Self-awareness may be aware of life in and as an amoeba, a fish swimming in the sea, a bird cresting the winds, or the flocks on the hills. It is not necessary that the soul be reduced to habitation in an animal form in order to appreciate that state of evolution.

Man can extend his God consciousness to any part of life, but man remains the expression of the whole. His soul does not need to incarnate in animal forms in order to gain experience. For from the beginning he was destined to be the fullness of the living God in manifestation.

“Our Father who dwelleth in heaven [the planes of Spirit], hallowed be thy name, I AM [the flame in the planes of Matter].” It is man who consecrates the flame of God ignited in his body temple by the Holy Spirit of the Father-Mother God. This flame is not enshrined in animal life. Therefore the soul of man, destined to expand the Lord’s consciousness through the flame, could not fulfill her reason for being in an animal form.

The belief that the soul of man incarnates in and evolves through animal forms is based on an incorrect assessment of human and animal life. The threefold flame is the identity of man. The forcefield of his four lower bodies, reestablished in each succeeding incarnation, is the platform provided for his soul’s mastery of that flame.

These bodies and the soul that inhabits them are molded in the image of the Christ Self, and only that which comes forth in that image is worthy to be the chalice of the flame in the physical octave. Animals are incomplete manifestations of the Christ. They are not worthy to house the flame, hence they are unworthy to provide a tabernacle for the soul.

Breaking the chain of reincarnation

How do we stop the chain of rebirth? The saints and sages of the Eastern religions have answered that question in many different ways.

The Jains believe that you can destroy karma through purification, penance and austerity. Hindu theologians teach that you achieve liberation from the round of rebirth through the realization that the individual soul is one with the Absolute or Ultimate Reality, called Brahman. Hindu texts advocate the practice of different “yogas” as ways to gain knowledge of union with Brahman. Hinduism teaches that surrender to God, the dissolution of bad karma, and the creation of good karma can help free the individual from the bondage of karma and rebirth.

Gautama Buddha taught that in order to be liberated from the cycle of rebirth (called samsara) you must extinguish craving, or desire. He said inordinate desire is what causes all suffering and negative karma and results in rebirth.

Transmutation of the life record

It should be clear to everyone who aspires to be free from the karmic wheel, from the round of reembodiment, that he must first transmute his life record together with the cause, effect, record and even the memory of every wrong act.

Man does not escape his personal karma through the transition called death, although he loses his form and he may temporarily lose his identity. For where man goes, there goes his life record. The life record must be purified before he can attain the highest yoga (union with God), and conversely, the practice of the highest yoga will teach him how to purify his life record.

Enter Saint Germain and Portia with their dispensation of the violet flame for the Aquarian age. The violet flame cuts across the electronic belt and may begin to penetrate, dissolve, transmute and balance that energy and send it back to your Causal Body transmuted even if you never meet the people you owe karma to, even if you’re born at the wrong time and the wrong century as many people think they are. They go back and relive previous centuries in fantasy, in plays and so forth.

The violet flame is the universal solvent in the sense that it solves a universal problem—and the universal problem is having all of these leftover loose ends of ancient and recent karma to tie up, and having the opportunity at the end of this age of Pisces and the beginning of the age of Aquarius to make our ascension.

See also

Reincarnation in Buddhism

For more information

Elizabeth Clare Prophet with Erin L. Prophet, Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity.

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Self-Transformation, Chapter 2, “Reembodiment.”

Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Patricia Spadaro, Karma and Reincarnation: Transcending Your Past, Transforming Your Future.

Sources

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Self-Transformation, Chapter 2, “Reembodiment,” pp. 243–59.

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Masters and the Spiritual Path, pp. 32–39.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet with Erin L. Prophet, Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity