Reincarnation - Introduction Page 1 of 19

10.0 Reincarnation - Introduction Page 1 of 19

10.0: Reincarnation - Introduction

Incarnation literally means ‘embodied in flesh’ which happens when a spiritual being is born as a sentient creature. Thus reincarnation is to do so for at least a second time.

Reincarnation is a means to an end. It is a mechanism instituted by our Creator to provide each soul with opportunities to develop. There are natural laws which operate to control reincarnation; they are inviolate.

Even though most major religions, at some point in their development, have embraced the concept of reincarnation in one form or another, there is still some debate within them as to whether souls experience such a ‘wheel of life’.

The first requirement to appreciate reincarnation is to believe in an Afterlife. A quite logical, but simplistic, argument has been presented as to why Morton Kelsey believes in life beyond our earthly one: 1

In fact one of the reasons why I believe in life after death is the way communication with the Other [God] develops ... There is no good reason to believe that the One [God] who begins this process, and offers us all the care we are able to take, will then end the process just as we are beginning to experience it.

The second necessity is for you to believe that life in the flesh is an excellent environment in which your spirituality develops and you learn lessons that only our physical environment can provide. Developing characteristics, such as tolerance, are difficult to achieve in the Spirit World where like souls live together. On earth that certainly is not the case, and to learn to be patient and non-judgmental in such a situation needs a high degree of detachment. Therefore we ought to accept the recommendation of Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows: 2

As long as there are further lessons to learn, the soul will be pressed into human form. Among these unlearned lessons are patience, tolerance, love and understanding...

If these two factors are accepted then you should have no trouble in recognising the necessity for reincarnation. You may struggle, but in the end you will follow the path of Dr. Alexander Cannon. He was a 20 th century British psychiatrist, occultist, hypnotist and author who wrote: 3

For years the theory of reincarnation was a nightmare to me and I did my best to disprove it and even argued with my trance subjects to the effect that they were talking nonsense. Yet as the years went by one subject after another told me the same story in spite of different and various beliefs. Now well over a thousand cases have been so investigated and I have to admit that there is such a thing as reincarnation.

He bowed to experience – we should learn from such people unless our own actual experience tells us otherwise. These arguments do not constitute any proof that

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:32:11 10.0 Reincarnation - Introduction Page 2 of 19 reincarnation happens but they do, somehow, add weight to acceptance. Dr Joel Whitton, a Canadian expert in clinical hypnosis especially in past life regressions and life-between-life regressions, recognised that absolute proof can never be realised. He suggested that all we can do is to be assured through our innermost perceptions: 4

Like the concepts of heaven and hell, reincarnation is a metaphysical proposition and will be constrained neither by earth-bound 'reality' nor judged by our earthly limitations. Proof must yield to perception.

Silver Birch recognised that we will only be able to accept it when we are ready: 5

You will only accept it when your consciousness is ready, when it becomes clear to you that it is the Law. That is why there are many in my world who say it does not happen.

To try to help your deliberations, perhaps an historical perspective may be useful. In one of her essays entitled ‘The Three Sons of Noah and the History of Mediterranean Civilisation’ the young French mystic Simone Weil discovered that: 6

…the association of the ideas of sacrifice and incarnation probably dates from very ancient times.

To add to the historical belief in reincarnation, I look to Joel Whitton again, who informed us that: 7

Long, long ago the scattered tribes of the world accepted reincarnation as a law of life.

...and another, whose research into reincarnation, past life regression, future-life progression and survival of the human soul after death, was Brian Weiss who recognised that: 8

The early Gnostics - Clement of Alexandra, Origen, Saint Jerome, and many others - believed that they had lived before and would again.

Looking to the East, Laurie Worger noted that even now: 9

The reality of reincarnation is learned by Buddhists under centuries old methods.

Peter Matthews, a great Spiritualist and healer, in his book on Spiritualism and reincarnation, explained that: 10

Expanding this, Sue Minns, in her book ‘Soulwork’, went a lot further and specifically identified nations, religions and religious organisations that have reincarnation as a fundamental element: 11

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The earliest record of reincarnation comes from ancient Egypt. Hindus, Buddhists, Chinese Taoists, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Aboriginies, American Indians, Theosophists, Sufis, Zoroastrians, Rosicrucians, Freemansons and many, many more have a history of belief in reincarnation, karma and the evolution of the soul. Past civilisations accepted re-birth naturally as they accepted the ebb and flow of the sea, the daily appearance of the sun and moon, and the cycles of the year.

She also recognised that great thinkers and great minds have: 12

...pondered on the mysteries of birth, life and re-birth since the beginning of recorded history, and probably before that. Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato through to D. H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell and Carl Jung freely accepted the philosophy of, 'I am here now, and have been here before'.

This statement has been reinforced by Raynor Johnson: 13

Reference has been made to the possibility that in the course of their evolution the soul of human beings may manifest on earth in physical bodies more than once. It is an ancient idea which has had the support of many thinkers throughout man's long history.

Specific reference has also been found in many ancient texts. For example, in the Gnostic Gospels, which are a collection of about 54 ancient texts based upon the teachings of several spiritual leaders, which were written from the 2nd to the 4th century AD, we are told that: 14

But those still identified with the body from desire transmigrated to the darkness of continuous rebirth.

...and in the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, Alan Young reveals that in the discussion on reincarnation it stated that: 15

We cannot look upon a single life and know that person's karma. We must understand the law that 'Results depend on Cause'. Men are not specks of dust floating about in the air of one short life and then lost in nothingness. We are undying parts of the eternal whole that come and go many times between earth and the spirit plane in order that we may grow. A cause may originate in one life and the results become apparent in another.

This is probably why the spirit communicating through the medium Irene Bays remarked that: 16

For nothing is new upon the Earth plane, it is but another cycle.

About 2500 years ago in China a poet Po Chu-I was inspired by the writings of the mystic Chuang Tsu to write three poems, one of which contained the following: 17

If I depart, I cast no look behind;

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If still alive, I still am free from care. Since life and death in cycles come and go, Of little moment are the days to spare.

Thus strong in faith I wait and long to be One with the pulsings of Eternity.

The BBC journalist Jeffrey Iverson in his book ‘More Lives than One?’ explained that, from a Western perspective, a belief in reincarnation: 18

...can be traced back for six centuries before the birth of Christ. This creed, which the Greeks called metempsychosis, has been accepted at some time by most of the world’s races and religions – the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, Hindus and Buddhists, Muslims and early Christians, the Red Indians of North America and the Celts of my native Wales. Outstanding individuals in every age have believed they lived before, from Plato to Napoleon and from Plutarch to Henry Ford.

In the Middle-East in the 12 th century, the Persian polymath, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet, Omar Khayyám, wrote about a thousand poems. A selection of these were translated by the English poet Edward FitzGerald and grouped under the title of ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám’. One of the stanzas contains: 19

For in and out, above, about, below, 'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show, Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun, Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

Another much more recent treatise, but nevertheless containing ancient wisdom, is ‘Unto Thee I Grant’ which recognised the fact that the body is animated by spirit: 20

Yet shall come a day when from the Heavens thy Soul returneth and shall gather up the dust and animate it.

However, many who are more modern Christians do not believe in reincarnation. Diana Cooper reminded us why this is the case: 21

If people only knew they must return to put right the wrongs of their life they might take heed of the spiritual laws. I [Diana] feel that when the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great with his mother Helen had all reference to reincarnation deleted from the New Testament in AD 325 they did a disservice to Christianity. In AD 553 in Constantinople the Emperor Justinian confirmed this action and declared reincarnation a heresy, fearing that an understanding of the sacred Law of Reincarnation was weakening the growing power of the Church.

These dates were corroborated by Sue Minns: 22

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immortality were heresies. Apparently the Emperor felt that the concept of reincarnation was threatening to the stability of the empire. Citizens who believed that they would have another chance to live might be less obedient and law-abiding than those who believed in a single Judgment Day for all...

Further expansion has been provided by Peter Matthews: 23

Indeed it is virtually the Christians alone who do not generally accept the idea. However Christianity evolved from Paganism, which did include the concept of reincarnation and many believe that original Christian thought did include the concept of reincarnation but it was through the early Church councils that the idea was rejected. This was done simply in order to maintain their hold on the peoples of the time. If reincarnation is accepted and you come back to another life dependent upon your action in that previous life, then a priest is not necessary for forgiveness, either through the Church or through Jesus. Forgiveness is no longer necessary and therefore reincarnation cannot be part of Christianity.

Most of the references to reincarnation in the Bible were removed although, as Swami Prabhupada noted, one of them remained in the New Testament: 24

Once, the disciples of Jesus asked him about the Old Testament prophecy that Elias would reappear on earth. In the Gospel of St Matthew we read "And Jesus answered them, Elias shall truly first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, that Elias is come already, and they knew him not ... then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist" [Matt. 17:9 13]

In fact, as White Eagle was shown to confirm in the book by Alan Young entitled ‘Cosmic Healing’, there is an undercurrent of reincarnation embedded within the New Testament: 25

It is shown again and again in the gospel that the truths of reincarnation and karma were known by Jesus; indeed without knowledge of reincarnation we cannot fully understand the meaning underlying his teachings.

Ignoring the vagaries of Christian authorities, who still refuse to formally recognise reincarnation, we ought to reiterate the question ‘What is the purpose?’ It is solely for our spiritual development, or as White Eagle suggested: 26

...and the purpose of reincarnation is discipline. To bear sorrow bravely, to meet success with a humble heart, to share happiness with others can discipline the life.

And, according to Ian Lawton, it is vital: 27

...it is a mistake to think of the reincarnation cycle on the physical plane as something to be 'escaped from', because it is an essential and invaluable experience both on an individual and a unified level. ...it is equally mistaken to talk about 'reuniting with the Source', because we are already, and have always been, fundamentally united with it.

Apparently, not everyone has to go through the process of reincarnation either on earth or other environments. In the preface to Helen Greaves’ book ‘Testimony of Light ‘Canon J.

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D. Pearce-Higgins had the idea that: 28

...reincarnation may not necessarily be a general rule for all.

There have been others who have agreed with this statement, although I believe that most souls benefit from the learning experiences gained through earthly lives. William Ralph Inge, more often referred to as Dean Inge because of his one time role as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, was uncertain as to the frequency of reincarnation: 29

We are immortal spirits undergoing a temporal probation - our one and only probation so far as we know, though we cannot be sure of this.

As far as I understand, there are not a fixed number of reincarnations for each spirit / person. The number of times an individual soul reincarnates is unknown; it depends upon its speed of development.

The English poet and writer, John Masefield who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967, believed this number may be quite large. In the first two verses of the poem ‘The Creed’ he sets out his belief: 30

I HOLD that when a person dies His soul returns again to earth; Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise Another mother gives him birth. With sturdier limbs and brighter brain The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust; This hand, this hand that holds the pen, Has many a hundred times been dust And turned, as dust, to dust again; These eyes of mine have blinked and shown In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

Others, such as Ryuho Okawa, believe that we pass through an endless number of incarnations: 31

...the souls would transmigrate between Earth and the spirit world in an endless cycle of reincarnation

I do not think so. I believe, like Martin Israel, that there is an initially indeterminate series of reincarnations that a soul has to experience: 32

...it seems likely that many souls so assume an earthly body on a number of occasions in their spiritual journey.

The ancient spirit Nona, communicating to Frederic Wood advised him that: 33

No hard-and-fast rules can be given, either of the number of times we return to Earth, or of the reasons which impel us to return. ... but we can reduce the number

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of our incarnations by freeing the spirit each time from all that is contrary to its upward growth.

To some extent this was confirmed by Francis Banks who, as a spirit, communicated her understanding through her still incarnate friend and medium Helen Greaves: 34

…that life must be in a series.

And that continuous series is only broken by the soul’s own level of spiritual development, because, at some point, all the lessons that could be learnt by living a life on Earth have been learned. Michael Newton, through his research using past life regression to investigate soul’s lives between incarnations, was able to conclude that each physical life we lead moves us inexorably towards our final goal for reincarnations: 35

...each life we live fits together with all our other lives in a continuum toward fulfilling our primary purpose.

If individuals have a purpose, is it reasonable to suppose that communities, nations and even humanity itself has a goal which is met by the process of reincarnation of its individual members. Ryuho Okawa believed that: 36

Just as an individual goes through a cycle of reincarnation, humankind as a whole may be thought of as being reborn from time to time.

I will park this thought; I cannot get my head around this one, it is bad enough having to consider single individual reincarnations let alone that of the whole of humanity.

Moving on, when a soul enters the Spirit World it migrates to a ‘place’ where other compatible souls reside. By compatible I mean souls of a similar attitude to existence – although not necessarily all having the same level of spiritual development. There seems to be a law operating within the Spirit World which can be stated as ‘like attracts like’. Notwithstanding this fact, when a spirit takes their transition, their acquired knowledge and prejudices go with them. This means that spirits who have recently passed, if they communicate with any one on earth, would not have the spiritual experience to be able to ratify or otherwise the existence of reincarnation. For this reason, the content of any communication with souls living in the Spirit World needs to be scrutinised carefully. An example of this comes from Arthur Findlay who reports that: 37

...my informants in the etheric [spiritual but close to earth] world, who say that they know of no one who has incarnated again on earth. They have with them those who lived on earth thousands of years ago, and those not with them have gone to higher planes.

Other spirits who have been in communication with the living, also decry the validity of reincarnation. Madam Blavatsky (founder of Theosophy), through the trance mediumship of Mrs Wickland 31 years after she died, was recorded as saying: 38

Reincarnation is not true. I did not want to believe that. They told me here in the spirit world that I could not reincarnate. I have tried and tried to come back to be somebody else, but I could

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not. We cannot reincarnate. We progress, we do not come back. Why should you come back to live another life when you have gained experience and an understanding while you were here, and, furthermore, since this is only a preliminary school on earth? Let us learn to find ourselves. While I am sorry to say many have not found themselves, let all of us here acquire knowledge so that when we go to the spirit side of life we shall go on to a higher life.

Because she has tried to return and failed, she assumed that no one else could reincarnate – that is thin reasoning. Other spirits have no desire to return. In the same year and through the same medium a spirit known as Ralph S. said: 39

I am sorry that I was so set in my mind on the theory of Theosophy that we must come back again and again in order to reach the higher plane. Since I have come to the spirit side of life I have not had any thought of coming back except to help my dear wife. We both studied to learn about life, but after I came here I tried to impress her that there was nothing more to learn about the religion we had both studied, because it is not the true religion.

This may be the case in specific instances, but it says nothing about the generality of reincarnation. The medium Beatrice Russell conveys the opposite perspective based on her personal experience of those in the spirit world with whom she has contact: 40

Life, death, and birth are great mysteries, but they are the fulfilling of the Law which activates throughout all nature: rebirth after life and death.

In support of the certainty of reincarnation is the communicator who used Neale Walsch as a channel for his teaching: 41

So, yes, of course, reincarnation is a fact. It’s real, it's purposeful, and it's perfect .

Adding to all of the positive responses to reincarnation, Swami Prabhupada indicated that numerous scientists and psychologists have believed in reincarnation as well. One of the greatest modern psychologists, Carl Jung, used the concept of an eternal self that undergoes many births as a tool in his attempts to understand the deepest mysteries of the self and consciousness: 42

I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me., Jung said. in 'Memories, Dreams, and Reflections', Pantheon 1963 p323

…and Swami Prabhupada also told us that: 43

...in Russia, the eminent Count Leo Tolstoy wrote [Moscow Magazine, 'The Voice of Universal Love', 1908 No 40, p634] "As we live through thousands of dreams in our present life, so is our present life only one of many thousands of such lives which we enter from the other, more real life .. And then return after death. Our life is but one of the dreams of that more real life, and so it is endlessly, until the very last one, the very real life - the life of God."

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Such august and reasonable people have come down in favour of the existence of reincarnation. This point was made by Leslie Weatherhead who knew that belief in reincarnation, is: 44

...held by so many and by such distinguished thinkers is not to be brushed lightly aside, especially when it throws light on some otherwise very dark problems, though I admit, of course, that some alternative hypothesis - such as access to an imagined cosmic pool of memory - may yet explain the phenomena.

Jeffrey Iverson also recognised that a whole host of distinguished people believed in reincarnation. He exemplified a few who had written of their belief in rebirth: 45

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Goethe, Maeterlinck, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allen Poe and many more have been quoted in ‘Reincarnation: an East-West anthology’...

Jeffrey also referred specifically to the American polymath Benjamin Franklin, who, he wrote: 46

...was among the first to comprehend the Law of Conservation of Matter. For him the idea that matter changed its form but could never be entirely ‘lost’ was a simple extension of his belief that on dying we were reborn. “I say that when I see nothing annihilated, and not even a drop of water wasted, I cannot expect annihilation of souls, or believe that He will suffer the daily waste of millions of minds ready made that now exist, and put Himself to the continual trouble of making new ones. Thus, finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.’

Like these eminent people, all we can do is to look at what we think is the evidence for reincarnation, not be led by popular opinion, keep an open mind, and decide for ourselves. This was the attitude of Arthur Conan Doyle who 100 years ago, wrote: 47

Thus, upon the question of reincarnation there is a distinct cleavage, and though I am myself of opinion that the general evidence is against this oriental doctrine, it is none the less an undeniable fact that it has been maintained by some messages which appear in other ways to be authentic, and, therefore, it is necessary to keep one's mind open on the subject.

For me, I’m of the same mind as Silver Birch who told us that in the Spirit World: 48

There are those who are just as emphatic in rejecting the idea of reincarnation as there are those equally emphatic in favouring it because of their experience. I am among the last category.

However, I’ll repeat again that I will never be able to provide proof of reincarnation. Many have tried and have failed, and Leslie Weatherhead stated that: 49

Naturally men ask for proof ... The answer must be that there is no proof.

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The only way to move forward is to recognise the huge body of evidence which has accumulated over the millennia. Dr Stevenson of Department of Parapsychology, University of Virginia, was quoted by Joel Whitton in ratifying this statement: 50

Neither any single case nor all of the investigated cases together offer anything like a proof of reincarnation. They provide instead a body of evidence suggestive of reincarnation that appears to be accumulating in amount and quality.

Many other writers have used Ian Stevenson’s research in their discussions about reincarnation. These include Martin Israel who said that: 51

...there are well attested instances of very small children having arresting memories of a recent past life, memories that have been investigated and confirmed by competent psychical research workers (the name of Professor Ian Stevenson of the American Society for Psychical Research is particularly relevant in this respect, and his book 'Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation' is a model of painstaking, objective analysis).

...and the psychic barber Gordon Smith, having recognised that reincarnation has been examined very carefully in recent years, said of Doctor Ian Stevenson, that to date: 52

...he has investigated several thousand cases of children who have spontaneously recalled previous lives. Dr. Stevenson's methodology is sound and he has developed many techniques which enable him to check if the child could have learned the so- called memories through ordinary means and to check out the details of the past life.

In ‘God and the Evolving Universe’ co-authored by James Redfield, Michael Murphy, and Silvia Timbers, having viewed Dr Ian Stevenson’s results conclude that: 53

Since 1965 the Stevenson group has assembled a body of case studies that strongly suggests that reincarnation is a fact.

Such research is vital if only to reinforce other, less scientific, arguments. If we had any choice in the matter, why should we be born if only to live one life? This point was made in ‘Unto Thee I Grant’: 54

Were the Soul to perish with the clay, man would not wish to live, neither would a merciful God have created him; know hence thou shalt live again and again.

The Indian statesman Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan felt that the rise of self with a definite nature is simply fortuitous. Some facts are not explicable on any other hypothesis than that of pre-existence. He wrote: 55

McTaggart refers to certain facts which "Two people who have seen but little of each other are often drawn together by a force equal to that which is generated in other cases by years of mutual trust and mutual assistance. " The capriciousness of sex desire is not the whole explanation of love at first sight. Again, characteristics which we have to acquire through toil and effort others seem to possess as natural gifts.

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I believe that a better line of reasoning, which Peter Matthews called ‘natural justice’, provides one of the strongest arguments for reincarnation: 56

If there was just one life then surely it is very unfair for some are born rich, others poor, some are healthy, others are weak, for some life is sweet for others sour. In other words one life would simply not be fair. It cannot just be what you make it, for you cannot help where or when you are born. With one life you have the luck of the draw and yet you may be judged on that one life. That does not really make sense but if you have several lives then these things fall into place, you have earned your life.

This theme of justice was used as an argument for reincarnation by the prominent British socialist, theosophist, and women's rights activist, Annie Besant. According to Roy Dixon- Smith she believed that: 57

If life is to be made intelligible, and if injustice and cruelty are not to mock the helplessness of man, reincarnation is necessary.

Another thing to consider was again offered by Peter Matthews; it is the cyclical propensity of the natural order: 58

Everything in nature appears to be cyclical, indeed it can be likened to a helical spiral which means everything journeys round, advancing as it does. True, if the spiral is vertical nothing comes down but if it is horizontal everything comes up them down. It will also go forwards. Imagine the top section of a horizontal spiral as being in the spirit world and the bottom section in the physical. In this way life passes from one to the other and back again. If that spiral is inclined slightly then the time in each physical world decreases slightly whilst that in the spirit increases until at last the physical world is left for good. This is in accord with nature and is a good illustration of progression.

Another point, and with a less scientific explanation, was outlined by a medium called Rosemary to the psychic researcher Frederic Wood. She was of the opinion that: 59

It is illogical to suppose that a single existence on Earth is sufficient to prepare for eternal spiritual existence... A belief in Reincarnation develops our sense of responsibility. Those who possess it will naturally put forth more effort than those who think this life is all. We live in matter in order to overcome matter. We cannot pass out finally into a spiritual existence until we have learned this lesson.

This is another way of saying what Andrew Harvey believed, that: 60

...most beings are most unlikely to be able to accomplish all of the journey in one lifetime...

...and this view was supported by Brian Weiss who reckoned: 61

There are two elements at work here. First, we cannot learn everything in one lifetime. That doesn't matter because there are numerous lifetimes to come. Second,

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each time we come back, it is to be healed.

He also had an interesting additional point to make. On the basis that in order to learn to be good, we have to experience being bad; to be kind we have to experience selfishness. In other words both sides of a coin need to have been part of a life experience for each of us. So you may now appreciate Brian’s comment that: 62

I have discovered that the surest way to be reincarnated into a particular group of people, defined by religion, race, nationality, or culture, is to hate those people in a previous life, to be prejudiced or violent against that group.

Putting God into focus, Radhakrishnan believed that this deity must be really odd if reincarnation was not a fact: 63

If we do not admit pre-existence, we must say that the soul is created at the birth of the body. Such a view makes all education and experience superfluous. If the soul is said to be created with a definite nature, it is difficult to understand why such varied natures should be imposed on the souls. Our fates seem to be due to caprice and cruelty. God, if not nature, places us in different circumstances and then judges us as if we were responsible for our lots. It must be a strangely whimsical deity who enjoys our adventures. He endows Jesus and Judas with different "complexes" and then complains that while Jesus succeeds in striving for heaven, Judas fails. Judgment seems to be utterly wrong when caprice is king.

So if God is not fickle, then reincarnation exists.

Some of these are powerful arguments, albeit not evidence or proof, for reincarnation. Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows also agrees that we must bow to the weight of evidence: 64

In the face of this insurmountable evidence of continued advancement and progression, man must eventually accept the theory of the soul's successive re-entry into the world of matter, or reincarnation.

If these few references that I have given is not sufficient evidence for you then you can investigate it yourself. As Dr Brian Weiss says: 65

There are libraries filled with this research and literature [on reincarnation] , and few people know about it. Much of this research was conducted, verified, and replicated by reputable clinicians and scientists. Could they all be mistaken or deceived?

No! My belief follows that of the spirit communicator who used Irene Bays as a channel and who simply stated, from his own experience, that: 66

...reincarnation is a fact, although it is disputed.

At this stage, you will probably have an inkling that reincarnation may be a reality. However, there are many questions which surround it, some of which have been raised above.

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Do we always reincarnate as the same type of creature (cat, human, etc) or can we degrade or move to a higher level? According to Idries Shah, the great Sufi poet Jalal-ud-Din Rumi believed that we progressed from crude beginnings, spiritually in the dark, and then cycled through many lives: 67

Originally, you were clay. From being mineral, you became vegetable, From vegetable, you became animal, and from animal, man. During these periods man did not know where he was going, but he was being taken on a long journey nonetheless. And you have to go through a hundred different worlds yet.

Plato thought that we could move either way: 68

The soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man

I don’t hold with this ancient view, but I strongly believe, like Michael Newton, that progress is always upwards: 69

...every animal has its own particular classification of intelligent energy and human souls don't move up and down the ladder from one form to another.

...he went on to stress this point: 70

The souls of all living things have different ... properties ... Animal souls are not ego-driven. .. This does mean that a cat won't transmigrate into a higher form of life and a human being will not become a lower form ... in a future life.

Radhakrishnan thought that we ought not to be too dismissive of the ‘eastern’ perspective, it just depends upon how we interpret the use of the word ‘animal’: 71

While we need not dogmatically deny the possibility of reversion to animal births, we are now concerned with the normal changes which are within a type. It is possible that rebirth in animal form is a figure of speech for rebirth with animal qualities.

This may be the case; it doesn’t really matter and it certainly does not imply that reincarnations are always in the same environment. We could, as Beatrice Russell writes from one of her Spirit World communicators, incarnate in other worlds where we could develop our soul characteristics to good effect. Thus as discarnate spirits we: 72

...progress in our life on this Sphere, can reincarnate not only on the earth if we so desire - for reincarnation is a voluntary choice - but we can reincarnate in other worlds; and as we go on from Sphere to Sphere in the World of Light, we can if we wish, visit other universes.

If reincarnation exists so that we can spiritually develop, then we must, by definition, exist in all possible situations and forms. In fact from one incarnation to another: 73

Change of sex and race is commonplace .

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Does this provide us with a message about why same sex relationships exist? If after many lifetimes as a man, a soul is incarnated as a woman, is there an inherent drive to associate more with women than men? I don’t know but it is a thought, which was amplified by Laurie Worger: 74

It may be noted that sometimes after such an incarnation, the soul does not quite throw off the characteristics, mental or physical of the opposite sex. So we encounter "feminine men and masculine women", many of whom therefore are undergoing very difficult incarnations with confused sex impulses and emotions. As we understand this more clearly we should extend our sympathy to them rather than condemnation.

Quite a sweeping statement was made on this subject by the medium Sylvia Browne who wrote that: 75

We are created with spirits that have both male and female aspects. We live lifetimes as both genders, as a matter of fact. I have never met anyone who's always been male or always been female every time around.

In the long term, perhaps this is true, and we all need to experience each gender and the joy and pain which each provide.

The time that we spend in the spirit world between each reincarnation allows us to recover (from particularly difficult earth lives), to fully appreciate the previous life experiences and to make sure that we have gained the most out of living the life. This ‘between lives’ time will vary considerably, and, according to the book ‘Life Between Life’: 76

Among Dr Whitton's subjects, ten months is the shortest interval observed between lives while the longest extends for more than eight hundred years.

Apparently, this period of sojourn in the Spirit World between incarnations is not easy to investigate. One renowned researcher, Helen Wambach, stated that: 77

The knotty problem of how much 'time' there is between incarnations was difficult to research. I had explored this area with my individual subjects and found that the time between lifetimes ranged from four months to two hundred years, with the average subject returning to re-experience life after an interval of fifty-two years.

Helen also had an interesting view, based on evidence from her subject’s past life regressions, as to the speed of reincarnation for those whose life ended tragically, particularly in war situations: 78

Most of these violent deaths were in World Wars I and II and I couldn't help speculating about the possibility that people who died violently in wars return to new incarnations much more quickly than subjects who die naturally.

White Eagle, quite rightly, revealed that: 79

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We cannot lay down a hard and fast rule. We cannot say that man incarnates every two, three or five hundred years. That would be wrong. If we tell you that man passes out of one body into another immediately we shall be wrong again. If we say that thousands of years elapse between each incarnation we shall still not be giving the whole truth. All depends upon the individual. But it is possible for a soul to reincarnate quickly for a special purpose.

Sylvia Browne had a different idea and was much more specific about how long it is between incarnations: 80

But for the majority of us, if we do choose to come back for another incarnation - and it is a choice, depending on our need for more experiences here as our souls progress - we typically take an average of a 100-year "break" on The Other Side between lives.

Some souls, however, return to earth in order to help either specific souls or humanity in general. White Eagle observed that: 81

Many of you have returned to earth because you want to help humanity, not necessarily by going to church and doing good works, but because you very presence in life can be a joy and comfort to those about you; to the family into which you were born, to the family of which you may later become a parent, and to many friends as well.

I can conclude, therefore, that it all depends on the aspirations and requirements of the individual soul for development and spiritual progress. This begs the question as to what is the ‘soul’. In the chapter on ‘facets of the soul’, I introduced the concept of an over-soul of which often only a part incarnates at any one time. It is this part that we usually call a soul. Based on this fact, Peter Matthews rightly described reincarnation as being: 82

...a very complicated subject and may not even necessarily even mean the return of the same individual soul in the view of some, but rather that each of us has several parts, all of which need to incarnate on Earth. It is these parts of the whole which lead one life thereby adding to the experience of the whole.

This was confirmed by the spirit of Maurice Barbanell which communicating in July 1986, baldly stated that: 83

...the whole spirit does not return.

In addition to this, it is possible for more than one part of the over-soul to incarnate at similar times. In Alan Young’s ‘Cosmic Healing’ he recounts that: 84

Mentor not only treats reincarnation as a fact of Life but says that we are living many lifetimes simultaneously ... and that “it is impossible to accurately assess a singular lifetime without seeing it in relation to the whole or composite of many simultaneously existing lifetimes." Each of us in fact is many characters at the same time. It seems to get more and more complicated. Is there a connection between each incarnation other than the fact that the soul is undergoing a new experience; is there a thread which

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:32:11 10.0 Reincarnation - Introduction Page 16 of 19 passes through each lifetime? The only person whose book I have read to hint at this was Pamela Young, who explained: 85

Many humans have returned for many lifetimes, and each time they have increased their frequency a little. On every return each one has reconnected to the path they have trod before. Every reincarnated soul has left a footprint, a blueprint to walk again on their unique path of light vibration.

What happens to a soul once the cycle of reincarnations is finished? Certainly it is not the end of spiritual development which carries on in other, probably more spiritual, realms. Ian Lawton had the view that: 86

Indeed, one of the mistaken facets of older reincarnatory models seems to be the suggestion that once we have completed the reincarnation cycle we are free to return to the Source, because all the modern evidence suggests that this only marks the beginning of a far longer process.

As the body of evidence continues to build for reincarnation, then more people will accept it as a fact of life. The implications of this are tremendous as Jostein Saether recognised: 87

Over the coming decades the concept of reincarnation and karma will, in my opinion, be capable of leading to one of the greatest transformations in social life if people can find and apply it as a genuine impulse in the concrete situations of their lives. Knowledge of karma would then enable us to develop new moral impulses in the way we relate to one another, impulses which would to a large extent challenge established tradition.

For my part, I totally believe in the concept of reincarnation, which is the mechanism by which my soul can learn and spiritually develop. Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows in ‘Pathway of the Immortal’ considered this to be the only necessity for reincarnation: 88

As long as there are further lessons to learn, the soul will be pressed into human form. Among these unlearned lessons are patience, tolerance, love and understanding...

So take the simple proposition provided by Peter Matthews: 89

Reincarnation also explains away the unfairness of life. After all everyone is born under different circumstances, some good and some bad. This would be grossly unfair if life was a lottery.

...and then accept Laurie Worger’s way forward: 90

It is wise therefore to consider reincarnation as part of God's wonderful plan for our own personal soul evolution .

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1 Morton T Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence, SPCK, 1985. Part One: A Basic Perspective - 2: Intimacy, Art and Meditation, (Pg 21) 2 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter III: The Cosmic Law of Karma, (Pg 48) 3 Alexander Cannon, The Power Within, Rider & Co, 1960 4 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. (Pg 94) 5 A W Austen, Teachings of Silver Birch, Psychic Press, 1993. Reincarnation, (Pg 174) 6 Simone Weil, Waiting on God, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952. Essays: The Three Sons of Noah and the History of Mediterranean Civilisation: Addendum, (Pg 167 / 168) 7 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. (Pg 87) 8 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Three, (Pg 36) 9 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 4: Three Aspects of Christ, (Pg 51) 10 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 2 - Reincarnation Trial, (Pg 9) 11 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 8: Past Lives and Karma, (Pg 101) 12 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 8: Past Lives and Karma, (Pg 102) 13 Raynor Carey Johnson, Nurslings of Immortality, Pelegrin Trust, 1993. Chapter 9 -Creation: The Adventure of Being Man: Plurality of Lives, (Pg 203) 14 Alan Jacobs, The Gnostic Gospels, Watkins Publishing, 2006. Poimandres (Pg 134) 15 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 4 The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ – Reincarnation, (Pg 59) 16 Irene Bays, Entwining Lives, Stonecliffe Publishing, 1994. Part Two: Chapter III - Thoughts of Love (Brotherhood of Man), (Pg 181) 17 Chuang Tsu, Musings of a Chinese Mystic, John Murray, 1927. Introduction, (Pg 32 / 33) 18 Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives than One?, Pan Books, 1977. Chapter 14: Between my hat and my boots – the ancient belief in reincarnation, (Pg 143) 19 The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, The Folio Society, 1997. Stanza 46 20 Unto Thee I Grant, Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, 1966. Book One: The obligations that relate to Man, Considered as an individual. Chapter III – Application, (Pg 7) 21 Diana Cooper, A Little Light on the Spiritual Laws, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. Chapter Nineteen: The Law of Reincarnation, (Pg 103 / 104) 22 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 8: Past Lives and Karma, (Pg 102) 23 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 2 - Reincarnation Trial, (Pg 9) 24 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 3 / 4) 25 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 9 White Eagle – Reincarnation, (Pg 123) 26 White Eagle, Spiritual Unfoldment 1, White Eagle Lodge Publishing Trust, 1994. VII: The Mind in the Heart, and the Awoken Memory of Reincarnation, (Pg 102) 27 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 59) 28 Helen Greaves, Testimony of Light, Neville Spearman, 1995. Preface (by Canon J.D.Pearce-Higgins), (Pg 10) 29 Dean Inge, Goodness and Truth, Mowbray, 1958. Sermon 20: The Stages of Life, (Pg 166) 30 John Edward Masefield, A Creed, first two verses 31 Ryuho Okawa, The Laws of the Sun, Element, 1996. Chapter One: The Light of Cosmic Consciousness - The Inception of the Terrestrial Spirit Group, (Pg 19) 32 Martin Israel, Summons to Life, Mowbray, 1982. Chapter 17: Building the spiritual body, (Pg 145) 33 A. J. Howard Hulme and Frederic H. Wood, Ancient Egypt Speaks, Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XI - The Truth of Life, (Pg 172) 34 Helen Greaves, Testimony of Light, Neville Spearman, 1995.The Scripts, (Pg 47) 35 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 6: The Council of Elders, (Pg 240)

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36 Ryuho Okawa, The Laws of the Sun, Element, 1996. Chapter Five: The Golden Age - And so to the Golden Age, (Pg 114) 37 Arthur Findlay, The Rock of Truth, SNU, 1999. Part II: Chapter X: The Philosophy of Spiritualism. . Part III, (Pg 176 / 177) 38 Carl August Wickland, Thirty Years Among the Dead - Part II, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XV: Theosophy - Experience, November 1, 1922, (Pg 421) 39 Carl August Wickland, Thirty Years Among the Dead - Part II, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XV: Theosophy - Experience, November 8, 1922, (Pg 410) 40 Beatrice Russell, Fragments of Truth from the Unseen, 1951. Death, (Pg 45) 41 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God - Book 3 An uncommon dialogue, Hodder & Stoughton, 1999. Chapter 7, (Pg 136) 42 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 9 / 10) 43 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 8) 44 Leslie D Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966. Chapter XIV: Reincarnation and Renewed Chances, (Pg 220) 45 Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives than One?, Pan Books, 1977. Chapter 14: Between my hat and my boots – the ancient belief in reincarnation, (Pg 145) 46 Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives than One?, Pan Books, 1977. Chapter 14: Between my hat and my boots – the ancient belief in reincarnation, (Pg 146) 47 Arthur Conan Doyle, The Vital Message, Hodder & Stoughton, 1919. Chapter IV: The Coming World, (Pg 124) 48 Anne Dooley, Guidance from Silver Birch, Spiritualist Press, 1966. Chapter Eleven: Your Questions Answered, (Pg 106) 49 Leslie D Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966. Chapter XIV: Reincarnation and Renewed Chances, (Pg 214) 50 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. (Pg 99) 51 Martin Israel, Summons to Life, Mowbray, 1982. Chapter 18: Immortality and resurrection, (Pg 149) 52 Gordon Smith, The Unbelievable Truth, Hay House, 2004. Chapter Nine: Reincarnation - Living with the Past, (Pg 177) 53 James Redfield, Michael Murphy, Silvia Timbers, God and the Evolving Universe, Bantam Press, 2002. Part Three - Participating; 14: The Afterlife and Angelic Realms - The Case for Reincarnation, (Pg 192 / 193) 54 Unto Thee I Grant, Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, 1966. Book Eight: Man Considered in the General. Chapter IV- Of the Period and Uses of Human Life, (Pg 48) 55 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter VII : Human Personality and its Destiny - 9. Rebirth, (Pg 229) 56 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 2 - Reincarnation Trial, (Pg 11) 57 Roy Dixon-Smith, New Light on Survival, Rider & Co, 1952. Part Two: Chapter XIII: Psychology and Reincarnation, (Pg 234) 58 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 1 - An Overview, (Pg 6) 59 A. J. Howard Hulme and Frederic H. Wood, Ancient Egypt Speaks, Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XI - The Truth of Life, (Pg 175) 60 Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path, Rider & Co, 2000. One: The Map - Why We Are Here, (Pg 39) 61 Brian Leslie Weiss, Same Soul, Many Bodies, Piatkus, 2006. Chapter 1 – Immortality, (Pg 15) 62 Brian Leslie Weiss, Same Soul, Many Bodies, Piatkus, 2006. Chapter 3 - Victoria, Evelyn, and Michelle: Health, (Pg 43) 63 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter VII : Human Personality and its Destiny - 9. Rebirth, (Pg 230) 64 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter II: Evolution of the Human World, (Pg 21) 65 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Three, (Pg 40) 66 Irene Bays, Entwining Lives, Stonecliffe Publishing, 1994. Part One: Chapter XII – Meditation, (Pg 124) 67 Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi, Penguin Books, 1975. Part Two: Classical Authors. 8: Jalaludin Rumi, (Pg 111) 68 Plato; Selected Passages, Humphrey Milford, OUP, 1945. Chapter II - The Spiritual Life: Love, (Pg 57)

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69 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 7: Community Dynamics, (Pg 297) 70 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 7: Community Dynamics, (Pg 299) 71 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter VII : Human Personality and its Destiny - 9. Rebirth, (Pg 232) 72 Beatrice Russell, Fragments of Truth from the Unseen, 1951. Reincarnation, (Pg 4) 73 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 1 - Imitations of Immortality, (Pg 26) 74 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 2: Reincarnation for the Ordinary Man, (Pg 32) 75 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 3 Your Personal Life: A Spiritual Psychic's view of relationships and families, (Pg 75) 76 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 79) 77 Helen Wambach, Reliving Past Lives, Arrow Books, 1980. 8. Adding It Up, (Pg 121 / 122) 78 Helen Wambach, Reliving Past Lives, Arrow Books, 1980. 11. Lives from 1500 to the Twentieth Century, (Pg 189) 79 White Eagle, Spiritual Unfoldment 1, White Eagle Lodge Publishing Trust, 1994. VII: The Mind in the Heart, and the Awoken Memory of Reincarnation – Why cannot we remember? (Pg 107 / 108) 80 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 1 Help from the Other Side: Our Angels and Spirit Guides, (Pg 36) 81 White Eagle, Spiritual Unfoldment 1, White Eagle Lodge Publishing Trust, 1994. VII: The Mind in the Heart, and the Awoken Memory of Reincarnation – Why cannot we remember? (Pg 111) 82 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 1 - An Overview, (Pg 8) 83 Marie Cherrie, The Barbanell Report, Pilgrim Books, 1987. Part II: Twenty-Six - 14th July 1986, (Pg 167) 84 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 8 Agartha – Reincarnation, (Pg 114) 85 Pamela Young, Hope Street, Coronet, 2011. Part Four: The Work, (Pg 242) 86 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 82) 87 Jostein Saether, Living With Invisible People - A karmic autobiography, Clairview, 2001. Introduction, (Pg 7) 88 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter III: The Cosmic Law of Karma, (Pg 48) 89 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 1 - An Overview, (Pg 6) 90 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 2: Reincarnation for the Ordinary Man, (Pg 25)

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10.1: Reincarnation - Objectives

There are two types of objective associated with rebirth on earth; firstly, the reason for reincarnation itself, and secondly the specific objectives for the coming life which a soul has when it reincarnates. Although these are inextricably linked and inter-related, I will try to confine this section to reincarnation itself and leave delving into a soul’s objectives to another section of the book.

So …why on earth should we reincarnate? Isn’t once enough? Have I got to go through all this again and again and again …?

To counter this, I would pose the question; “Do you think that you have experienced (not just knowledge of) all the possible emotions and situations that a soul could and needs to experience on earth? Diana Cooper suggests not: 1

The aim of everyone who incarnates on Earth is ascension or enlightenment, which is the total mastery of all the lessons offered here. This may take many lifetimes for, if we hurt or harm another we earn karma, which is a debt and must be repaid.

As an aside, this quotation has an additional benefit for me. It helped to clarify what is meant by ‘karma’. There are two reasons why I incarnated. The primary goal was to develop my soul’s characteristics and alongside this was to use the opportunity to ‘balance my spiritual books’; to ‘right the wrongs I have done’. I will write more on Karma in another section.

Returning to reincarnation … as Father Andrew remarked, aren’t we just: 2

…small souls with great possibilities.

We do seem to have an inflated view of ourselves. Whilst we are the centre of all our perceptions, we must broaden our horizons and start to perceive our total environment (physical and spiritual) with greater understanding. This expansion takes lifetimes and at the end of it as Zarathustra identified: 3

And Truthfulness in Thought, Word and Deed Will place the Soul of faithful man In the endless light of Eternal Life.

Hot on the lips of many people on earth is the question rehearsed by Red Cloud, Estelle Roberts’ guide: 4

"Why am I here?"

...and his brief answer was:

You are here because you have chosen to be here. Some come to learn; others come to be of service.

The objectives which I, personally, have been given, are to develop my spirituality and to

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:32:49 10.1 Reincarnation Objectives Page 2 of 12 satisfy my karmic accumulations. There are some souls, however, who incarnate in order to help others. These others may be individuals, groups of people or humanity as a whole. Neale Walsch expressed this as: 5

Many of you will decide to come back here; to return to this world of density and relativity for another chance to experience the decisions and choices you make about your Self at this level. Others of you - a select few - will return with a different mission. You will return to density and matter for the soul purpose of bringing others out of density and matter.

…and White Eagle put it as: 6

Certainly, it may be necessary for a soul to come back in a certain incarnation with other qualities of character more prominent than the ones already developed, because he or she may have service to give...

The Rev. Charles L. Tweedale brought his familiarity of the Bible to bear on his investigation of spiritual phenomena, and was able to report that: 7

This deliberate bringing about from the spirit world by spiritual beings of the birth of an agent for definite work in this lower material world is also seen clearly and unmistakably in the case of the birth of Isaac (Gen. xviii), Samson (Judges xiii.), and Samuel (1 Sam. i.).

This altruism, others before self, is the make of all the great spiritual figures; Buddha, Jesus the Nazarene, Abraham, Mohammad come high on the list of well known exceptional prophets, but do not forget those ‘lesser’ mortals who have devoted their lives and often sacrificed them for the benefit of humanity. They teach not with words but with actions, as William Roache noted: 8

Great teachers who have reached that point [of sanctity] actually often choose to come back because they love humanity and want to help.

Aldous Huxley suggested that these selfless individuals are given to humanity directly by God but I think that there are many more of these teachers who come to give service, than we realise: 9

Moreover, there will always be helpers. For periodically there are "descents" of the Godhead into physical form...

He also uses the Bhagavad Gita to confirm this when it suggests that: 10

…the Avatar becomes incarnate in order to assist human beings to achieve this union [with God] .

Perhaps those early martyrs who bravely sacrificed their lives had predetermined their role in life, as Roy Dixon-Smith suggested: 11

The sufferings of martyrs have nothing whatever to do with retribution for former sins, but are voluntary personal sacrifices undergone for the ultimate benefit of

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humanity by great souls in the furtherance of their missions.

Grace Cooke indicated that some of the more effective mediums have reincarnated in human form to provide a channelling service to humanity: 12

A wise man once said to me 'Certain people come into this world with the special mission of becoming a medium, a channel between the two worlds… '

This is the case with John Edward who has the same view of his own life and his ability to communicate with spirits: 13

I believe that, like everyone else, I made a decision before coming into this life, this body. In my case, that decision was to do this [mediumship] work and help whoever I can.

The plans that you make for your next incarnation must take into account the plans of many of the people who you will meet during your forthcoming life. In other words, some aspects of your blueprint will be for the benefit of other people. Similarly, other people’s plans may reflect a need to help you. This point was made to Betty Eadie during her Near Death Experience where she was surprised at: 14

...how many plans and decisions were made for the benefit of others. We were all willing to make sacrifices for others.

Guides too are altruistic, but in a different way. White Owl, the spirit guide of the Welsh born medium Stephen O'Brien, told Stephen about his choice to be his guide: 15

I was told that there was much work to do back in the dark earth-world. I was approached by those who know to return and guide a spirit on earth who would be a medium between two worlds. That spirit is you [Stephen] , the soul. I was told where you would be born, who your parents would be and given all the necessary information about 100 years - as you would gauge time - before these events took place. I prepared for my mission, which I undertook gladly to help mankind towards a greater understanding of the Truth.

Others, particularly those within the same group soul, may be born to help one or more specific souls. Peter Matthews discussed the situation where a child died at birth and suggested that: 16

...it was the soul's own wish to experience birth and perhaps as part of the group soul it was also the parents wish that such a thing would occur.

...a similar thought was also expressed by Roy Dixon-Smith: 17

It must, therefore, be concluded that the reincarnation of every individual soul of an affiliated group is an arbitrary or destined matter, and only seems to be voluntary through the natural desire to do so that arises in each mind. The same general idea can, of course, be applied to highly evolved souls whose personal earthly lessons have been learnt but who incarnate at appropriate times for missionary purposes.

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Perhaps we all have a role to play in the service of others. Certainly each of us has a lesser or greater impact on our life’s fellow travellers. Perhaps you can recall when another person has really helped you in your life. Have they come to support just you and to nudge you onto the right spiritual pathway?

However, most of us are not prophets and we reincarnate upon this earth plane to learn; learn by experience not be reading or acquisition of knowledge. Earth is an experiential place where we can learn by doing. Again Neale Walsch expressed it as: 18

What the soul is after - the highest feeling of love you can imagine. This is the soul's desire. This is its purpose. The soul is after the feeling. Not the knowledge, but the feeling. It already has the knowledge, but knowledge is conceptual. Feeling is experiential. .. The highest feeling is the experience of unity with the All That Is. This is the great return to Truth for which the soul yearns. This is the feeling of perfect love...... love is not the absence of emotion (hatred, anger, lust, jealousy, covetousness), but the summation of all feeling... Thus for the soul to experience perfect love, it must experience every human feeling. How can I have compassion on that which I don't understand? How can I forgive another that which I have never experienced in myself? The purpose of the human soul is to experience all of it - so that it can be all of it.

It is not surprising then that, as the medium Silvia Browne mentioned, some illnesses are part of our schedule and decided upon even before we were born: 19

Illness is such a natural part of the life experience that we include it in our charts before we come here.

We must think that it is all worthwhile otherwise we would not get involved in earth lives. We are provided with a real opportunity every time we incarnate; an opportunity for our soul to spiritually progress. The British medium Robert Brown understood that: 20

Part of our very reason for being is that we are being given a fantastic opportunity, called life, to improve, enhance, and educate the real us.

This was also the theme of a spirit communication given through the automatic writing of John Scott: 21

Once more I will repeat what is a most weighty truth for your world - your opportunities to purge your characters of their weaknesses are far greater which you are on earth than in your next state.

Make the best of each life and do your best to progress in each of them. Each life has been designed with our interests at the fore and we accepted it. Dannion Brinkley realised that: 22

...we have voluntarily taken it upon ourselves to complete specific tasks devised to facilitate the most tremendous personal growth possible in the shortest amount of time.

...and each role, each life we live, is of this ilk. The American medium John Edward came

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All of us inhabit a series of lives, playing different roles in our souls' journeys on the road to higher wisdom.

...and each role is there to develop one or more characteristics of our soul. Because of this we all ought to accept the lot that we have been given. Most don’t, they bewail the environment, their lack of opportunities, and all the problems they encounter in life. This negative attitude is counterproductive. We ought to be positive and recognise that we can and ought to learn from every event and every incident and not make judgments as to whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – for they are all good to learn from. Again from John Scott’s spirit guide: 24

We must yield ourselves to the arrangements made [before we were born] , all for a good purpose and our advantage, and as we do so, at least many of us, with the greatest willingness and pleasure. It becomes part of our joy in this life to conform to what we perceive to be the aim of the Great Power. That is life for us, and if you knew your best interests, life for you on earth.

So take life by the horns and follow Dannion Brinkley’s advice: 25

We have come to this Earth for the express purpose of learning to master the proper execution of our pre-existing spiritual wisdom.

In this way we can take life as a building block for our soul’s improvement, thereby recognising that, as Martin Israel suggested: 26

The ultimate purpose of our life on earth is to lay the foundations of a spiritual body of such excellence...

It follows, therefore, that to avoid reincarnation in the first place, we need to develop well and rapidly, as St Germain recommended: 27

There is only one way we can avoid the necessity for reincarnation, and that is through a conscious effort to comprehend the Law of Life. This is accomplished by earnest seeking, and making permanent, a conscious contract with the God within, and holding firmly to It in the face of every condition in the outer life.

So, how many times must each soul reincarnate before it has experienced all that Earth can provide. There is not a definitive answer other than to say as Greg Braden did, that: 28

...ancient traditions suggest that the 'experience' loop of life continues for as long as it takes us to find our greatest healing. Then we are released from the cycle - or as Hindu beliefs affirm, our karma is complete.

…and this is confirmed by Aldous Huxley: 29

And, of course, there is also the possibility (indeed, for most individuals, the necessity) of returning to some form of embodied life, in which the advance towards

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complete beatification, or deliverance through enlightenment, can be continued.

The regression analyst Brian Weiss, based on all the data that he had gathered, was able to suggest that: 30

It is rare that a person will master more than one lesson in one lifetime, though residual attention is often paid to others.

If this is the case then by understanding the specific traits we need to master, we ought to be able to arrive at the average number of incarnations that each person has to endure. All our past thoughts, words and deeds can be assimilated in order to identify our future developmental needs which Michael Newton, in ‘Journey of Souls’ described as: 31

Our karma of past deeds towards humanity and our mistakes and achievements have all been evaluated with an eye toward the best course of future endeavours .

In her book ‘The Other Side and Back’ Silvia Browne through this process or another has identified 44 life themes 32 which are broad classifications of the types of life that we can lead. Apparently, each of us before we incarnate, choose one as primary and one as secondary. Personally, I have no view as to whether this is correct or not. What I do know is that, from my own experience, I believe that I have lived many lives on earth although I have no idea what specifically I have learnt in each one. I have no recollection of having lived anywhere else but on earth. Perhaps Earth is only one arena where we can learn. Maybe there are other planets around far off suns where different valuable experiences can be gained. Will cosmologists find such within the universe in the near future? All that we can currently say is that earth provides an environment for learning which, as far as we currently know, cannot be provided elsewhere. However, once our cycle of incarnations has provided us with all they can, there is still a lot of learning to do, but this can be achieved in the Spirit World. Arthur Findley, one of the fathers of Spiritualism, seemed to confirm this continuing learning process: 33

Today, with our greater knowledge, we can understand better the reason for the instinct that life on this earth is only one stage in our career.

…and more explicitly from Ian Lawton’s book: 34

There are other physical realities with different vibrations and energy levels which provide an environment where souls can incarnate to experience a different reality and emotions, but earth is unique because of the veil of amnesia that causes the emotions to be so intense, and this is highly valued at a soul level.

All these lives which we have lived and, usually, we can’t consciously remember any … we do not know how long we have ‘lived’. John Blofield, a British writer on Asian thought and religion, explained: 35

What we call 'life' is a single link in an infinitely long chain of 'lives' and 'deaths'. Perhaps, if our unconscious could be raised to conscious level, we should be able to perceive the entire chain stretching back far enough to exceed the most generous estimates of the length of time human beings have populated this earth.

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Unfortunately, we cannot look back over our past lives. I suspect that this one of the features of the Natural Laws which governs reincarnation. This also applies to the awareness of our objectives for our current life. The spirit teacher and mentor Silver Birch informed us that once our soul incarnates into matter: 36

...the denseness prevents the awareness [of its objectives] , which is embedded deep down, from reaching your consciousness.

However, there is a glimmer of light. Even though we, in our conscious minds, do not know the intentions of our life, our soul does. Through techniques, such a meditation, we can bring our subconscious closer to mind and perhaps glean a general thrust for our life. This, according to Silver Birch, is a possibility: 37

When I say that the soul knows, I do not mean that it knows every detail, but it knows that path that is to be trod.

And what of lives which we are to live elsewhere in the future: 38

...and when the earth experience has been lived through by you, countless experiences await you in other conditions, in other worlds .

And it is not necessarily physical places where we can learn. As we develop we progress ‘upwards’ through the spiritual planes where, in each one, we ‘wear a different body’. Joel Whitton states this as: 39

There are many higher planes and to get back to God, to reach the plane where His spirit resides, you have to drop your garment each time until your spirit is truly free. The learning process never stops

We live in order to change. If we do not, based on our earthly experiences, then we will continue the cycle of reincarnation. Brian Weiss agreed that: 40

If you don't change, you're just going to be repeating this destructive cycle ... but if you do change, you can break the cycle.

...and the spirit of Diana, Princess of Wales stressed the same point when talking to Hazel Courteney: 41

If we don't learn from experience, and fulfil our purpose in this lifetime, we keep going round in circles until we do.

Swami Paramananda indicates that only when our souls have realised every experience that we actually stop the ‘wheel of life’: 42

As soon as a man acquires knowledge of the Supreme, he is liberated; but if he fails to attain such knowledge before his Soul is separated from the body, then he must take other bodies and return again and again to this realm of birth and death, until through varied experience he realises the nature of the Supreme and his relation to Him.

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This is the classic Eastern view of reincarnation. Mine is a variation on this, which is more about learning the lessons of life in the difficult environment of earth and then progressing through other environments continuing to learn as we go. It seems an eternal project. Each time we incarnate we, in conjunction with higher beings, decide on the next life objectives and the overall aims of our earth living. So we ‘use’ the provided technique or facility of reincarnation to reach our personal and collective objectives; once reached we do not need to incarnate on earth again. I presume that this was in the mind of Carl Jung when, in his autobiography, he explained that he could imagine: 43

...that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me ... A creative determinant must decide what souls will plunge again into birth ... It is possible that any further spell of three-dimensional life would have no more meaning once the soul had reached a certain stage of understanding; it would then no longer have to return, fuller understanding having put to rout the desire for re-embodiment.

The idea of predetermination of individual objectives prior to incarnation was recorded about 2500 years ago in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. In this extract (Chapter 1 verse 5), which was referenced in Cyprian’s ‘De Lapsis and De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate’, God is reportedly talking to the Prophet: 44

Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Once our soul has gained all the learning possible from its lives on earth, no more will it incarnate in such dense matter; it will have to learn any additional lessons in a more spiritual environment. There is another possibility for reincarnation; to help another soul on its journey. This may be the situation where children die very young; their parents, for their spiritual development, may need to experience the associated grief. In other words, as expressed by Betty Jean Eadie based on what she learned during her Near Death Experience: 45

Some people choose to die in ways that will help someone else.

Out of interest, in Peter Matthews book ‘Spiritualism and Reincarnation’ I read that Helen Wambach, an expert in hypnotic regression, asked her subjects the reason why they returned to earth. Analysing the answers she concluded that: 46

...just over a quarter (27%) did want to return so that they could develop spiritually themselves and to help others whilst a smaller number (26%) returned to have a certain experience or possibly in a corrective state, thus they needed to live a particular sort of life. Strangely perhaps, 18% wanted to return simply to be more social whilst a similar number actually wanted to work out previous Karma and put things right. The remainder came back for varying reasons.

Whatever the reason for our return, the actual journey that each of us make is unique even though the ultimate objective will be the same. Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest, understood this and wrote: 47

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...the soul can only rejoin God after having traversed a specific path through matter - which path can be seen as the distance which separates, but it can also be seen as the road which links.

It is a long road ... which often seems to head off past our current horizon. Nevertheless, we must always be mindful of our objectives and the ultimate one which is union with God. Silver Birch linked our aim of increasing spirituality to reflecting more of the goodness within us, or as he said: 48

Your purpose in incarnating is to express more of its innate divinity. The expression is a process that is never finished, for development, like the Great Spirit, is infinite.

Time and time again we reincarnate – to learn. It is a long and often arduous pathway which every soul must follow; there are no exceptions. The spirit guide known as Gildas was recounted by Alan Young as knowing that: 49

The path of physical incarnation and reincarnation is long and slow, some make it longer and slower than necessary; each path is different but leads eventually to the one goal. Any very difficult or trying life situation or relationship can usually be found to be karmic in origin. In all human experience, the karmic factor is inevitably present. The way in which one lives is all part of the karmic path, and all experience is either undertaken because of past life happenings, or is part of the path which will lead to future learning and knowledge.

One of the difficulties is that very few, if any, of us know where we are on the spiritual developmental scale. Is this my last life on earth or do I yet have many more to live? This seems to be hidden from us as the Trappist monk and social activist Thomas Merton explained: 50

Ultimately the only way that I can be myself is to become identified with Him in Whom is hidden the reason and fulfilment of my existence.

...and it is hidden, I expect, for a very good reason. This is part of the Law of Reincarnation – the set of rules which govern the cycle of birth and death. It forms one component of the Natural Laws of the Universe all of which support soul development from the birth of a soul through to final integration with the Godhead. Saint Germain, as relayed by Alan Young also discussed these Laws: 51

The Law of re-embodiment is the activity in human growth that gives the individual an opportunity to re-establish a balance in conditions that he has consciously caused to be thrown out of balance. It is but one activity of the Law of compensation - cause and effect, or what might be called an automatic balancing process, governing all forces everywhere in the Universe.

In many respects the results of the research undertaken by the Canadian psychiatrist Joel Whitton confirm this hypothesis: 52

Rebirth has always been seen as the mechanics, the framework, of immortality: the means by which perfect enlightenment can eventually be attained.

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I think that this is a little naïve. Earthly rebirth will take the soul so far along the road to an enlightened state, but this is only the beginning of another journey and not the end. When a soul completes its last incarnation on earth, most enter the Spirit World at a relatively low level of spirituality. A description of the last transition and the understanding that we have thereafter was described by Roy Dixon-Smith: 53

Fear and despair dissolve like conventional ghosts at dawn and our earth-time pains and worries diminish to their true perspective when we catch a glimpse of the great plan and purpose of life that carries us smoothly onward and upward through material and spiritual worlds of ever-increasing vibration along the graduated scale of eternal progress.

As he says, there are many other levels to reach in which the soul gets more and more refined. The spirit who channelled his teaching through the automatic writing of Neale Walsch, confirmed that: 54

The soul's greatest desire is to experience higher and higher aspects of itself. And so it seeks to move upward, not downward, on the evolutionary scale, until it experiences what has been called nirvana - total Oneness with the All.

...and that takes us to eternity and complete union with God or as the poetic pen of Kahlil Gibran expressed it: 55

And then I shall come to you [God] , a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.

This analogy of each soul being a drop in God’s ocean is one which has been used many times by mystics to express their view of our ultimate objective. It is a good metaphor because it demonstrates that we are reabsorbed back into our Creator in better shape than when we were created, and yet exactly as the atoms in a drop of water, we are still uniquely identifiable; retuned to God and yet ourselves.

So where have you and I reached on this long journey? I’ll let one of the stars of the soap opera Coronation Street, William Roache, who, in his autobiography, explained: 56

Once we have learned all the lessons that can possibly be learnt from material existence, then we don't need to incarnate any more. To reach that point, though, you've got to be what we would call absolutely saintly, totally spiritual and selfless and totally loving and compassionate, so most of us have a long way to go!

In fact, we have to recognise that even our souls are a long way away from being perfect and that they are fallible. Michael Newton realised that this may come as a shock to some people but it seems to summarise many of the comments made by his clients who: 57

...indicate most of us are still far from perfect beings in the spirit world. The essential purpose of reincarnation is self improvement.

Thereby lays the justification for reincarnation. Highlighting this in the book ‘Spirit Teachings’ we find: 58

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The soul that gains most is the soul that keeps ever before it the work that has been allotted to it, which has laboured zealously for its own improvement and the benefit of its fellows, which has loved and served God, and has followed the guidance of its guardians.

Eventually we’ll get there...

1 Diana Cooper, A Little Light on the Spiritual Laws, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. An Overview of the Spiritual Scheme, (Pg xiii) 2 Father Andrew SDC, In the Silence, A.R.Mowbray, 1951. Union with the Will of God: III. Contrite Love, (Pg 67) 3 The Zend Avesta of Zarathustra, International Biogenic Society, 1973. Extracts: ETERNAL LIFE, (Pg 15) 4 Estelle Roberts, Red Cloud Speaks, Tudor Press, 1992. Chapter Eighteen: Reincarnation and the Second Death, (Pg 89) 5 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God - Book 1 An uncommon dialogue, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. Chapter 12, (Pg 184) 6 White Eagle on the Intuition and Initiation, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 2004. Part One: What the Intuition is, and is not - V: The Nature of the Intuition, (Pg 40) 7 Charles L. Tweedale, Man's Survival after Death, Grant Richards, 1920. Chapter V: Of The Christ Of God And Of His Mission To The World, And The Purpose Of His Crucifixion And Resurrection, (Pg 42 / 43) 8 William Roache, Soul on the Street, Hay House, 2007. Part III: On The Street. 12: Love and Loss, Pg (196) 9 Aldous Leonard Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Perennial, Harper Collins, 2004. Chapter VIII: Religion and Temperament, (Pg 154) 10 Aldous Leonard Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Perennial, Harper Collins, 2004. Chapter XII: Time and Eternity, (Pg191) 11 Roy Dixon-Smith, New Light on Survival, Rider & Co, 1952. Part Two: Chapter XIII: Psychology and Reincarnation, (Pg 240) 12 Grace Cooke, The New Mediumship, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1994. II. Towards The New Mediumship, (Pg 26) 13 John Edward, One Last Time, Piatkus, 2001. Part 2: Encounter with the Other Side - 10 Living in this World, (Pg 89) 14 Betty J Eadie, Embraced by the Light, Thorsons, 1995. Selecting a Body, (Pg 96) 15 Stephen O'Brien, Visions of Another World, The Aquarian Press, 1989. 7 The Coming of White Owl, (Pg 81) 16 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 4 - Compensation and Retribution, (Pg 28) 17 Roy Dixon-Smith, New Light on Survival, Rider & Co, 1952. Part Two: Chapter XIII: Psychology and Reincarnation, (Pg 233) 18 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God - Book 1 An uncommon dialogue, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. Chapter 3, (Pg 83) 19 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 8: Ten Things We Fear and Why We Shouldn't Fear Them, (Pg 251) 20 Robert Brown, We Are Eternal, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004. Part Three: Appendix 21 John Scott, I Lent a Hand to a Ghost, Psychic Press, 1950. Hereafter, (Pg 160) 22 Dannion Brinkley, Secrets of the Light, Piatkus, 2012. Part 3: The Seven Lessons from Heaven - 15 Lesson One, (Pg 130)

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23 John Edward, One Last Time, Piatkus, 2001. Part 2: Encounter with the Other Side - 10 Living in this World, (Pg 89) 24 John Scott, I Lent a Hand to a Ghost, Psychic Press, 1950. Personal: (Pg 44) 25 Dannion Brinkley, Secrets of the Light, Piatkus, 2012. Part 1: There and Back Again - 1 My Lively Dance with Death, (Pg 11) 26 Martin Israel, Summons to Life, Mowbray, 1982. Chapter 17: Building the spiritual body, (Pg 137) 27 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 6 Saint Germain – Reincarnation, (Pg 91) 28 Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix, Hay House, 2009. Part II: Chapter Eight: Rewriting the Reality Code: 20 keys to conscious creation, (Pg 203) 29 Aldous Leonard Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Perennial, Harper Collins, 2004. Chapter XIV: Immortality and Survival, (Pg 213) 30 Brian Leslie Weiss, Same Soul, Many Bodies, Piatkus, 2006. Chapter 2 - George: Anger Management, (Pg 33) 31 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Twelve: Life Selection, (Pg 202) 32 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 5 Life after Life: How to Discover Your Own Past Lives, (Pg 135 - 150) 33 Arthur Findlay, The Rock of Truth, SNU, 1999. Part I: Chapter II: The Old Religions, (Pg 10) 34 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 89) 35 John Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, Rider & Co, 1959. Chapter 1 - The Beginning of the End, (Pg 28) 36 Anne Dooley, Guidance from Silver Birch, Spiritualist Press, 1966. Chapter Three: Serving Your Apprenticeship, (Pg 25) 37 Anne Dooley, Guidance from Silver Birch, Spiritualist Press, 1966. Chapter Seven: The Joy of Service, (Pg 67) 38 Gems of Thought, The Greater World Christian, 1989. Four Points to Remember, (Pg 38) 39 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 75) 40 Brian Leslie Weiss, Same Soul, Many Bodies, Piatkus, 2006. Chapter 3 - Victoria, Evelyn, and Michelle: Health, (Pg 46) 41 Hazel Courteney, Divine Intervention, Cico Books, 2002. Chapter 18: The Higher Realms, (Pg 232) 42 Swami Paramananda, The Upanishads, Grange Books, 2004. Katha - Upanishad - Part Six: IV, (Pg 73) 43 Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Fontana, 1995, (Pg 381, 385, 386) 44 CYPRIAN De Lapsis and De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate, Oxford University Press, 1971. The Lapsed – 19, (Pg 31) 45 Betty J Eadie, Embraced by the Light, Thorsons, 1995. Healing – and Dying, (Pg 68) 46 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 4 - Compensation and Retribution, (Pg 31) 47 Teilhard de Chardin, Le Milieu Divin, Fontana, 1966. Some General Remarks on Christian Asceticism, (Pg 108) 48 Anne Dooley, Guidance from Silver Birch, Spiritualist Press, 1966. Chapter Ten: What is the Spirit? (Pg 94) 49 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 7 Gildas – Reincarnation, (Pg 103) 50 Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, Hollis and Carter, 1949. Chapter 2 - Things in their Identity, (Pg 29) 51 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 6 Saint Germain – Reincarnation, (Pg 90) 52 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. (Pg 88) 53 Roy Dixon-Smith, New Light on Survival, Rider & Co, 1952. Part One: Chapter VI: Interlude in India, (Pg 124) 54 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God - Book 3 An uncommon dialogue, Hodder & Stoughton, 1999. Chapter 7, (Pg 135) 55 Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, Arrow Books, 2005. (Pg 3) 56 William Roache, Soul on the Street, Hay House, 2007. Part III: On The Street. 12: Love and Loss, (Pg 196) 57 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Three: Homecoming, (Pg 41 / 42) 58 William Stainton Moses, Spirit Teachings, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Section III, (Pg 25)

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10.2: Reincarnation – Earth Experiences

What a path that we have chosen for ourselves! We elected to develop our spirituality and to use our life on Earth as part of that process. The overall sense of this was expressed by William Inge who, in 1911, became Dean Inge of St Pauls Cathedral. In his book ‘Goodness and Truth’ he wrote: 1

Our world may be called a world of soul-making. That is what our world exists for - for the making and training of souls. We are here strangers and pilgrims, far from our heavenly home, sent by God to do something and become something for Him, and to find our way back to the spiritual world to which we belong.

This in essence describes our life’s objectives. We have been granted an opportunity to develop our spirituality through an earthly incarnation with specific goals. Grace Cooke, an English medium whose guide was White Eagle, wrote that each soul: 2

...comes to physical birth bringing with it a set of lessons to learn (its karma) together with particular attributes acquired in a previous physical existence, which again are to be used to help it to progress.

Another wise and thought provoking spirit, Silver Birch, through the mediumship of Maurice Barbanell, encapsulated the same theme: 3

The plan of life is very simple. You come from spirit, incarnating into matter to obtain the experiences you need to enable you to come to our world equipped for the tasks and the joys that await you. The equipment is obtained in your world. That is where you learn the lessons that prepare you for the life after school.

All the experiences from past lives are never lost on the soul, and therefore the soul arrives at a new incarnation in better shape than at the start of any other of its re-births. Realising this, Rick Warren, an American evangelical Christian pastor and author, was minded to write that: 4

We are products of our past...

Fine! So we reincarnate. What a thing to do especially as when we are on earth we can’t remember anything about what we have agreed as spirit before reincarnation. Michael Newton, using his experience from his research using past life regression, suggests why this is the case: 5

Our spiritual masters wish to produce karmic opportunity without the constraints of our knowing those pitfalls we experienced in former lives. They become more lenient in a selective way with amnesia as we engage in self-discovery. This is our best route to wisdom .

Joel Whitton identified that frequently the question is asked: 'If reincarnation exists, why can't we all remember our past lives?' As an answer, he used a quotation from Mohandas K Gandhi, the great Indian philosopher and apostle of non-violence, who attributed benevolence to the cosmic process when he replied: 6

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'It is nature's kindness that we do not remember past births. Life would be a burden if we carried such a tremendous load of memories.’

Another point of view was offered by Roy Dixon-Smith: 7

During our incarnations, and between them also, new experiences are to be gained and new problems solved without the prejudice of former follies or the help of former exemplary lessons. Birth on the earth is a forgetting of past detail and a new leaf in the ego's book of life.

Certainly we would be unduly influenced in this life if we knew the detail of all our past life experiences. Why we forget may be due to where our past life information is retained. We naturally assume that is it available from within us, somewhere. What if there is a Universal Energy Field which holds all our history and we can, given the right conditions, tap into it. This hypothesis would equate with the information given to us by a spirit communicator who channelled information through Phyllis V. Schlemmer. He explained that: 8

A reason that you do not remember your preceding times [previous lives] is because of the atmosphere of the planet.

In other words, the ‘field’ could not be accessed. Maybe this theory is not too well developed or researched at the moment, so it may be right to currently park the issue. The fact remains, however, that what is important is the learning that took place in past lives, not the detail of the experiences themselves, and if we remembered we would probably misinterpret the situations. Thus, as Jostein Gaarder notes, according to Freud it is recognised that forgetfulness, at incarnation, is one of the laws of the cosmos: 9

…we store the memory of all our experiences deep inside us.

When we are incarnated in a new life, we appear as a clean sheet even though our soul, through past lives, is continuing the developmental process. It appears too that this planet of ours is an ideal place for souls to develop. In order to appreciate every nuance of life, a soul has to experience both sides of every coin; love and hate, peace and conflict and each pole of every other emotion. Ian Lawton, who specialised in ancient history and spiritual philosophy, said: 10

Reincarnation on earth is just one of many experiments, but it involves a range of emotions that it is just not possible to experience on the spirit plane. So it is a brave experience.

Brave indeed! This exclamation was echoed by the psychiatrist and specialist in past life and life-between-life regressions Dr Joel Whitton: 11

To venture into the unknown [to be reincarnated] is often to savour experiences that confound contemporary wisdom.

Although, of course, at the time the incarnation was planned our journey was certainly new but not necessarily totally unknown. Nevertheless, once incarnated, every day is a trip into

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:33:22 10.2 Reincarnation – Earth Experiences Page 3 of 18 the unknown and the qualities of the soul, whilst hidden, will seep through from our depths. This total earthbound experience is one where we are destined, eventually, to progress. But it is not just one life that is necessary. Abbé Henri de Tourville remarked as much when he wrote to a friend: 12

The life of man is by no means limited to its short passage through this world. Death is only an illusion which hides from us the continuing development of life.

From the soul’s perspective, patience is necessary for this long and cyclical journey. The Hindu tradition, according to the 20 th century Indian philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, holds that the goal of spiritual perfection is the crown of a long patient effort, and: 13

Man grows by countless lives into his divine self-existence. Every life, every act, is a step which we may take either backward or forward. By one's thought, will and action one determines what one is yet to be.

The medium Silvia Browne is also cognisant of the fact that: 14

...we leave our Home on The Other Side many times to come to earth, for the purpose of experiencing and overcoming negativity and learning from it in an ongoing process of spiritual perfection .

...and a fellow American, John Edward, also believes that our current physical life: 15

...is only a brief stop on the soul's journey to higher levels of Godliness.

Confirmation of all this came from Nona, a 3000 year old spirit communicating with Frederic Wood. Their discussion of ancient Egyptian religion revealed that: 16

The older faith was given to simple men who were in direct communication with God. They knew that when man incarnated for the first time, that was the first stage of the long journey in the evolution of the soul. To be born into the flesh was the beginning of consciousness, of individuality; to grow by the exercise of freewill until it became strong enough to catch a pale reflection of the Spirit of God. That is what your scriptures mean by 'God breathing into man.’ It is the spark of the divine life entering flesh; the birth of the spirit into consciousness.

Hopefully, each of our lives will be more or less successful. If we do not achieve our particular goal in this life, then we will return to try again. Some lives, therefore may seem to be wasted although this may only be because we are not looking at it from the right perspective. Because of this the progress that our soul makes may be varied across lives – much the same as the growth rings on a tree reflect the environment which pertains in each year. The actor William Roache also believed that a souls’ development is not: 17

...a gradual progression. I think we go along in fits and starts. Some incarnations we waste. We load ourselves up with too much to do and then don't make much progress. We never quite go backwards, because a soul that's reached a certain level of consciousness and worth won't lose that, but we can take on too much in an incarnation and get sidetracked.

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Fortunately, prior to reincarnation and during an earthly life, in our innermost being we know, as observed by Michael Newton, that: 18

…all roles [of life on Earth] are temporary.

But it doesn’t seem like that. Without spiritual awareness our only focus is on the physical environment and sensual world in which we live. That is why, we all know how sad we can be when one of our close friends or relatives dies and passes into spirit. The reverse is also true. At the point of reincarnation there is great sadness that the soul who is reincarnating will not be seen for a while, as was told to Frederic Wood: 19

It is a sad thing to be incarnated, unless you can keep your spirit free. It is a joyful thing to be released from the flesh. These men knew that too.

The actor William Roache also understood this emotional link: 20

There's often great sorrow as somebody departs to incarnate, but an incarnation is nevertheless a great opportunity.

Yes! An opportunity to develop our soul’s spirituality which is what Andrew Harvey viewed our lives as: 21

We have in fact taken birth again to seize immense opportunity that birth into human consciousness provides for growth, progress, and evolution...

Andrew rephrased this from an alternative perspective: 22

To take on a body is not in any way a catastrophe for the soul; it is a supreme opportunity.

...and supporting this view, Laurie Worger wrote: 23

Alas, humans are so filled with fear because they do not know their true divinity, or the enormity of the love by which they are surrounded, they fail to recognise that our few earthly years are of priceless opportunity.

So view your life, your whole life, as a great opportunity to develop through experience in a tough school – which is what earth lives are considered to be, as Irene Bays was given from spirit: 24

The Earth plane is of much value to you who are here at this time, for it is a school room. ... A school room which can be of great value, of great progression, but a school room where the dunces are left behind. I use the word dunces, for there are many upon the Earth plane who have the ability to see and to work, to serve, to progress. But they are clothed in desires for material gain alone.

The association of earth and school was also used by the American born author Robert Elias Najemy when he wrote: 25

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Life is the school. We spirits incarnate into the school of life. A lifetime is like a year at school.

Confirmation of this comes from the world of past life regression research. Michael Newton discovered that: 26

...souls that come to worlds such as Earth need to be strong and resilient because of the pain they have to endure along with the joy.

In fact, joy and happiness, provided you can follow your spiritual pathway, can be regular experiences. I have found this to be the case which has also been corroborated by White Eagle: 27

If we could only convey something of that intense joy of accomplishment gained through physical experience you would then fully understand and rejoice at the opportunities given to the soul to return to earth for fresh adventure.

Truly it is an adventure and not an easy one as Michael Newton realised: 28

...Earth is considered by souls to be a very difficult school.

Ratification of this was expressed by another regression analyst, Joel Whitton: 29

...the life between life is our natural home from which we venture forth on arduous journeys of physical embodiment.

The greatest and most rewarding learning is always in the ‘University of Life’. Being born into the physical world, naturally makes us part of this learning environment. Laurie Worger put this in the universal context: 30

The earth should represent, for us, but a particle of the universe; a school of learning, and environment for our soul evolution.

Harry Emerson, in a communication with the Spirit World, was told that: 31

Many people during their life on earth say "Why are we born into the world? It seems as if life was just one long struggle for existence." The reason, so far as my present knowledge takes me, is that earth life is a schooling, and everyone benefits from that experience.

This is a winning situation; every soul will eventually gain from their tough lives on earth. In fact, it has been said that effective spiritual progress cannot be gained other than by living on earth at least once. William Stainton Moses explained: 32

Ye are spirits placed for a while in a garb of flesh to get training for an advanced spirit-life, where the seeds sown in the past bear their fruit, and the spirit reaps the crop which it has prepared.

So, our experiences yield soul growth from life to life. In the book ‘Ancient Egypt Speaks’ the communicating spirit, Nona, describes this development process slightly differently: 33

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It is possible for a soul to be clouded, or hidden under layers of what I will call superstructures. But once progress has begun, it must force its way up to the light. If a great impediment be put in its way, and it overcomes it, the soul will be stronger for the struggle.

Frederic Wood explains Nona's reference to 'superstructures':

There are sometimes weaknesses of character, left over from the last incarnation of the spirit. Nona adds what I think is a new fact by suggesting that they may even have been left over from an incarnation prior to the last.

It has been found, that not only do we learn from our ‘bad’ experiences, but that we progress through understanding, accepting, and rationalising conflict. Using this concept, William Stainton Moses wrote: 34

Life is a journey, a conflict, a development. The journey is up-hill, and the way is thorn-beset and difficult. The conflict is unending till victory crowns the final effort. The development is spiritual from a lower to a higher plane, from the child of earth to the measure of the stature of the Christ. You cannot change the unalterable.

Moving forwards and upwards in the school of life makes me think that linking development to schooling is very limiting. In our physical world, education establishments primarily teach facts – it is life itself which puts these facts to use and helps us through our physical lifespan. Therefore advancing spiritually needs two dimensions – learning as much about spirit as possible, and using this to live our life in the light of what we discover. The first point was stressed by a spirit known as John J. A. who said: 35

Life is a school and we must learn all we can about the spirit side of life while we are on earth, for the only light we have when we pass to the other side is the knowledge pertaining to life's problems which we have gathered here.

...and as to some of the other things that we have to learn, Leslie Weatherhead wrote that during this hard schooling of the earth-life: 36

...we all have to learn to be masters of the body, to serve other people, to turn our pain and sorrow and frustration into spiritual asset, to conquer bitterness and apathy, to accept forgiveness, not wallowing in guilt and self-despising, and to move onward and upward having learned from our sins and mistakes.

As the soul progresses through these various lives, it appears that the more progress it makes, the more difficult the lives become. Joel Whitton observed this: 37

The price of advancement is always challenge and difficulty - the very reason why incarnations become progressively more arduous as the soul evolves.

Joel also made the point that we should bear in mind an overlaying factor; that of cause and effect: 38

Moreover, no matter how disparate the various lives in each person's

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reincarnational history might be, they always unfold according to cause and effect. In other words, the actions and attitudes in one life would determine the setting and challenges in a life or lives to come.

Swami Prabhupada supported this when he wrote: 39

Therefore, the type of body that we have now is the expression of our consciousness at the time of our last death.

Whilst I don’t fully agree with this very Eastern statement, I will accept that what we do in this life will impact upon our subsequent lives in one way or another. In some situation, one life, possibly being a preparation for the next as William Stainton Moses suggested: 40

Life, the totality of your being, is progressive throughout; and its early stages are but preparatory to its later development.

...and, as one course of bricks supports the one above, Carl Jung believed that our past builds our future in the same way: 41

His beginnings are not by any means mere pasts; they live with him as the constant substratum of his existence, and his consciousness is as much moulded by them as by the physical world around him.

Earth is probably one of those cosmological environments where the soul can progress more effectively. Martin Israel, born into a Jewish family in Johannesburg, South Africa, and who became an English pathologist, Anglican priest, spiritual director, wrote: 42

… our time on earth is so important; convinced that I am that mortal existence is but a parenthesis in eternity, I also am sure that this time on earth is vitally important in executing work and experiencing relationships that cannot be provided in any other realm of existence.

This vital importance of earthly living was not lost on Carl Jung: 43

The maximum awareness which has been attained anywhere forms, so it seems to me, the upper limit of knowledge to which the dead can attain. That is probably why earthly life is of such great significance, and why it is that what a human being "brings over" at the time of his death is so important. Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised.

From this we can see why Jack Angelo was able to write: 44

We come to this planet because our higher self wishes to have an experience which only the Earth plane can provide. This is what makes the planet which has given us our physical bodies so unique and so special. We enter the world at the moment of birth and the cycle of our life here becomes part of Earth's being. The experience is a necessary part of our evolution - we cannot move on without it.

…and once the earth has provided all it can, perhaps, as Ian Lawton says, a soul may

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...it [reincarnation as a human being] commences with the non-physical soul joining with the body of a baby in the womb, then eventually returning to the light when the physical body dies. This cycle carries on until the soul has gained all the experience of the physical plane that it needs, and has nothing left to learn there - although ...it will then continue growing in the light realms or in other dimensions.

This notion of continuous development was echoed by Helen Greaves: 46

... all Life is lived as a serial, that we go from one experience of living to another experience of living at a different rate, i.e. on a higher level of awareness.

In fact there is a deep desire of the soul to progress towards the ultimate Light; back to its Source as communicated by a spirit to Neale Donald Walsch: 47

...your soul yearns for the highest experience of itself it can imagine. It came here [to the Earth] for that purpose - to realise itself (that is, make itself real) in its experience.

The Earth provides the best place to support this progress, as Cyprian Smith said: 48

There are lessons for us to learn, experiences for us to undergo, which can come to us only through the body.

…and a couple more in the same vein, firstly from Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows: 49

Reincarnation means not only the possession of a new body, but also the continued growth and development of the consciousness, or soul.

…and, secondly, from Diana Cooper: 50

Earth is a learning establishment in which our lessons are presented to us in the form of experiences .

We move from the Spirit World to school (earth) time and time again in order to lift our spiritual understanding. The guides who use the English medium Tony Stockwell as their channel would, so Tony believes, state that: 51

Our world is your true home, and time spent on earth is for you to learn what you need to learn in order to develop and for your spirit to grow.

There is so much to learn, not by reading or studying but through experience. We cannot just sit back, let things happen and play the victim; we have to be spiritually positive. We need to recognise the lessons we are learning, particularly the fact that we need to see every emotion in every form, as Ian Lawton noted: 52

It is apparent that in the first instance we all have to work on what we now refer to as 'emotional lessons', and to see both sides of every emotional coin. So we all need to experience not only all of the less attractive emotions such as loss, guilt, failure,

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shame, remorse, selfishness, sorrow, humiliation, jealousy, anger, hatred and revenge, but also the counterbalancing emotions such as patience, altruism, openness, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance and, ultimately and most powerfully, love - in all its guises.

In complementary fashion Ian added: 53

There are quite a few things that we all have to learn, such as to take responsibility, to be loved, to have power, to be a victim. .. We need to experience the emotion from those different angles.

This total experience idea was broached by Silver Birch who, channelling from the spirit world through Maurice Barbanell, said: 54

The children of earth must go through every experience either in your world or mine. There is a lesson to be learned in everything. You do not reach out and create a vehicle in which to enter that inner perfection until you have emerged triumphant from every experience.

Ryuho Okawa maintains that it is wisdom which we seek through reincarnation. If his use of the term ‘wisdom’ is the synergy of knowledge and experience, then I would agree with him when he wrote: 55

We are born time after time on this world in order to accumulate wisdom, the wisdom that comes with spiritual exercise .

And we can only achieve this through experiencing all situations and all emotions. It cannot be gained through reading. So, as Elizabeth Burrows states: 56

Man is on earth because he has not yet learned the lessons of this plane of existence…

… and she added: 57

As long as there are further lessons to learn, the soul will be pressed into human form. Among these unlearned lessons are patience, tolerance, love and understanding...

What this means is that each soul that incarnates is smattered with impurities. These must, over many life times, be teased out. This we call spiritual development and Michael Newton captured these thoughts neatly: 58

Souls don't represent all that is pure and good about a body or they wouldn't be incarnating for personal development. Souls come to Earth to work on their own shortcomings.

…which was an echo of the words of Meister Eckhart: 59

There is a master [Aristotle in 'On the Soul', I] who says that the soul is given to the body in order to be purified

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In any one life, we may not achieve a particular aspect of purification as was intended. This means that we must spend another life on earth with the same or similar objective. We will try, try, and try again until we have achieved what we ought. As Ian Lawton said: 60

…it's common for souls to go through the same situations - actually not situations but learnings, over many lifetimes.

Perhaps most of us go through lifetimes without achieving our objectives for that specific life. Where this is the case then perhaps the next life might tackle a different problem, but the one we missed must eventually be approached again until we learn. Roy Dixon-Smith understood this requirement: 61

Each incarnation naturally has a cumulative effect on the individuality until the earth is left for ever. A failure during one earthly lifetime can be remedied during another; and such failure is therefore not disastrous but merely postpones our final release from this earthly school.

You must also bear in mind those souls who seem trapped through their desire to remain close to the earth. This was noted in ‘The Only Planet of Choice’: 62

...many of these souls that live here [on Earth], when they die, are trapped in the atmosphere of the planet, and then they are reborn over and over on the same world, and they seem to be going nowhere.

...and Phyllis V. Schlemmer was also informed that: 63

In times past souls upon your planet Earth refused to leave it, and through your conflicts continued to recycle, as you recycle your trees. Your recycled trees have usefulness, but the soul-recycling of humankind does not create usefulness, but creates a bottlenecking of forwardness.

I presume this may still happen, but I know little about it. Moving on, Gordon Smith, in his book ‘The Unbelievable Truth’, discussed reincarnation and offered this view that: 64

The thing about reincarnation is that it is a system of refining life actions and learning from mistakes. It encourages those who believe in it to take responsibility for all their actions so as to create good karma and allow their consciousness to expand and grow. Otherwise, you will only repeat the same lessons until you have learned them.

This appears to cut across the idea that Dannion Brinkley expressed: 65

Each soul and every mission is unique. Let me assure you that every one of us will wind up exactly where we are supposed to be at the end of our lives, no matter what.

However, even though this may be the case, it does not follow that we will have learned all the predetermined lessons in this life. However, what a great relief it is that we have been

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...that which you gain from each difficult life, you gain for all eternity.

…and in different words of his: 67

So nothing of the past is ever really lost.

This is probably because every experience, small or large, is always hard won. It is not easy to live a life as planned. There are always distractions from within one’s own self and from the material world within which we live. Silver Birch got it right when he said: 68

The spiritual race cannot be easily won. Spiritual supremacy is a long and arduous process. The prizes once gained are eternal - they are never lost. The prizes of the spirit will never be stained, they will never rust, they will never be corrupted. They will be yours for all time. These are the eternal possessions which you, each one of you, must acquire for yourselves .

…and from the teachings of the spirit White Eagle came: 69

Within the heart centre lies the growing pearl, with the deposits of past incarnations. That pearl contains memories of past lives - past failures, past triumphs, even past characteristics which have become part of the soul. For the soul is like a hallowed building and its memories are eternal.

From the pen of a passionate 16 th Century mystic Teresa of Avila who considered all that happens to us comes the Divine: 70

For even though they (sublime Divine favours) are inexplicable, they are well inscribed in the very interior part of the soul and are never forgotten.

In rather wistful mood, White Eagle’s channel Grace Cooke, based on her experience as a medium, was able to say: 71

Many people now living on earth must have had countless lives, the memory of which remains in the soul.

Later in the same chapter on her book ‘The Jewel in the Lotus’ she referred to mediation as a mechanism which we could use to gain access to at least a glimmer of what we have previously been through and learnt: 72

Many of these glimpses into past lives received in meditation refer to a very distant past and are memories of spiritual training and teaching indelibly impressed not upon the brain but upon the soul.

If our development therefore is about developing our soul’s characteristics, then all else that we encounter on earth and in our day-to-day lives must, by definition, be irrelevant. That does not mean that we can ignore all that is not spiritual, but it does show where we

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The only things which are truly relevant to us, which touch our lives at the centre, are things which are internal, part of our very being, and are therefore always with us, incapable of being lost through any kind of eternal accident.

It is, however, very difficult, if not impossible, for us to know the importance or relevance of our thoughts and actions. We cannot see the whole of our impact on ourselves or others until we review our life, with help, when we return to the spirit world. So, don’t be too judgemental. What you do know is, as White Eagle, said: 74

All that you do today, which has left so deep and lasting an effect upon your soul, will be living in you tomorrow, in your next life.

So, maybe, each thread of our life is important; everything that we think, say and do has an impact. Michael Newton used the same type of metaphor when he remarked: 75

Each life is a piece of fabric which makes up the whole tapestry of our existence.

Not only does each of our lives contribute to the experiences of our soul, but what we bring to each life is determined by those lives we have led before as John Blofeld understood: 76

And I perceived much more clearly than before that the connecting link between one life and another is less than an unchanging 'soul' than a parcel of propensities - good and bad - carried over from incarnation to incarnation.

This was supported by Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows: 77

...each soul incarnates according to its evolution, its current desires and aspirations accumulated during its pilgrimage through the mortal.

…and from Henry Thomas Hamblin we gain the assurance that: 78

... all our past steps, poor and full of limitation as they were, each was valuable and necessary in its order - initiations into wider reaches of Life.

It goes without saying that we must experience all aspects of each gender. A soul is asexual but in each life assumes the form of one gender or another: 79

Since the soul is neither male nor female but an aspect of God, capable of both creating and sustaining, it will experience both male and female form.

I suppose that if I have been a male human for many consecutive past lives and in this life I incarnate as a female then many of my traits will be male...

What difficulties we encounter in our life, whether they are of gender or any aspect of our being at least some of them will have been predestined in order to support our soul’s development. Remember that earth is a school as taught to Colum Hayward through the spirituality of White Eagle: 80

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Physical Life does not represent a finished picture but a school in which each one of us is on a course of soul development.

…and as Brian Weiss said, because each experience we gain is retained for ever, then a better measure of the totality of our existence ought not to be based upon the number of lives we have lived but on the experiences gained: 81

...lifetimes [are] measured in lessons learned and tasks fulfilled, not in years...

And because of this we ought to take to heart the advice of Father Andrew: 82

Accept this life as your school...

It is possible that some characteristics which we develop, in part, in one life, may continue to be developed in subsequent ones. Grace Cooke, the spiritual medium who was the channel for White Eagle, believed that her mediumship has developed over more than one life: 83

…the instruction given to me during that early incarnation has remained within my soul and has slowly developed throughout subsequent incarnations.

So, I presume, more mundane traits can also be continuously honed as we progress through our lives. This hints that we may be able to appreciate some of our past learning whilst within a particular life on earth. This recollection may come through many avenues. Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, suggested that memory may be one path when he delivered impressive evidence of the wonders of the human mind as retold by Jostein Gaarder: 84

His work with patients convinced him that we retain everything we have seen and experienced somewhere deep in our consciousness, and all these impressions can be brought to light again. When we experience a memory lapse, and a bit later ‘have it on the tip of our tongue’ and then later still ‘suddenly remember it,’ we are talking about something which has lain in the unconscious and suddenly slips through the half-open door to consciousness.

An alternative route for recollection may be intuition, if this comes from within our own soul. Raynor Carey Johnson offered: 85

The soul is the same, the quality of its 'mind' and 'heart' are immortal elements, and the wisdom gathered through its past continues to be available in the new personality as intuition.

So people are very intuitive and readily accept inspired thought. Most of us need to create the right environment in order to achieve this state; contemplation and meditation are good mechanisms for this as they create the right conditions. This was touched upon by a medium known as Rosemary who was used to link the spirit Nona with the researcher Frederic Wood. At one stage during a séance, Rosemary stood up and walked about the room, still obviously under some intense psychic emotion saying: 86

If we have in us the germs of things we have been, we shall - given the right

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conditions - be able to call them up again ... If you are in tune, and can assemble your various parts, you can make a complete whole.

This recollection blossoms when we ‘shuffle off this mortal coil’ and return to the Spirit World, so William Roache pointed out: 87

We are all spiritual beings held temporarily in a material body and when we return to the spiritual realms we are free to be our true selves, our spiritual selves, with all the attributes, all the experiences, wisdom and worth that we have developed through various incarnations.

Our life on Earth is but a learning experience albeit a very important one. In Ian Lawton’s ‘The Wisdom of the Soul’ we find this stressed time and time again: 88

...the underlying karmic dynamic for all souls - without exception - is one of learning, experience and growth.

Or, as Martin Israel came to understand: 89

The soul grows through successive experiences.

It may be interesting to note, that each of us has an aura, a Human Energy Field, which is an energy reflection of who we are; our innermost soul. This means that if we are able to see this aura clearly, then we would be able to see what the soul is like and, by implication, what experiences we have encountered. Barbara Ann Brennan, an American author, spiritual healer, and teacher working in the field of energy healing, said the following about the aura and experiences: 90

As a baby fixes his attention on an object in the physical plane, the aura tenses and brightens, especially around the head. Then, as his attention fades, the aura fades in colour; however, it retains some of the experience in the form of colour in the aura. Each experience adds a little colour to the aura and enhances its individuality. Thus, the work of aura building is also going on and continues in this way throughout life so that all of one's life experiences can be found there.

All the above discussion has been based upon the experiential nature of life on Earth. There are seemingly other reasons why we reincarnate. One of those is to repay our debts or, put another way, to meet our karmic requirements. Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows suggested that: 91

After man has conquered the world he lives in and has repaid his debts of other times, he must then conquer his past to repay his debts of other times, other places. For him to deny those lives and those events which make him what he is today, is to deny the laws of evolution.

Remember that karma does not imply punishment. Karma or the Law of Cause and Effect is a natural statement of fact. No-one can escape it. We all have to come to terms with what we do. Our whole existence, in this world and others, is covered by personal responsibility. We must shoulder our own burdens. Silver Birch says that: 92

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Reincarnation does not always mean that you are to be punished. It often means that there are gaps which have to be filled. Sometimes they are chastening ones, sometimes they are lessons which have not been learned.

The whole point of reincarnation is to learn. As part of that process we must try to balance the physical with the spiritual. We can gather this if we read between the lines of the Christian writings of Teilhard de Chardin: 93

Try to grasp this: the things which are given to you on earth are given you purely as an exercise, a 'blank sheet' on which you make your own mind and heart. You are on a testing-ground where God can judge whether you are capable of being translated to heaven and into his presence. You are on trial. So that it matters very little what becomes of the fruits of the earth, or what they are worth. The whole question is whether you have used them in order to learn how to obey and how to love.

Not everyone is able to strike the right balance. Most of us are too materialistic to even look for the spiritual, as Arthur Findlay wrote: 94

We shall come then to realise that our time on earth is for the purpose of developing creative thought, and consequently the development of mind and character will be the object before every intelligent individual. "Two men looked out through prison bars - One saw mud, the other stars."

Nevertheless we should remember the advice of Sue Minns: 95

We are not bodies, minds and emotions that have a vague sense of soul somewhere in the background. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Let us hope that between now and when we pass to spirit that we can see the beauty in the sky and the stars.

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1 Dean Inge, Goodness and Truth, Mowbray, 1958. Sermon 13: The Problem of Evil Spirits, (Pg 112) 2 Grace Cooke, The New Mediumship, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1994. II. Towards The New Mediumship, (Pg 33) 3 Anne Dooley, Guidance from Silver Birch, Spiritualist Press, 1966. Chapter Three: Serving Your Apprenticeship, (Pg 29) 4 Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life, Zondervan, 2002. What Drives Your Life, (Pg 28) 5 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 10: Our Spiritual Path, (Pg 396) 6 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. , (Pg 100) 7 Roy Dixon-Smith, New Light on Survival, Rider & Co, 1952. Part Two: Chapter XIII: Psychology and Reincarnation, (Pg 233) 8 Phyllis V. Schlemmer, The Only Planet of Choice, Gateway Books, 1996. VI: Terrestrial Affairs - 20: Soul Matters, (Pg 282) 9 Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, Phoenix, 1995. Freud, (Pg 332) 10 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 54 / 55) 11 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 2 - Our Natural Home, (P 38) 12 Abbé Henri de Tourville, Letters of Direction, Mowbray, 1939. XX – Death, (Pg 108) 13 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter III : Religious Experience and its Affirmations - 10. Rebirth, (Pg 96) 14 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. A Note to My Readers, (Pg 9) 15 John Edward, One Last Time, Piatkus, 2001. Part 3: Deeper - 16 Sneaking Peeks, (Pg 152) 16 A. J. Howard Hulme and Frederic H. Wood, Ancient Egypt Speaks, Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XI - The Truth of Life, (Pg 165) 17 William Roache, Soul on the Street, Hay House, 2007. Part III: On The Street. 14: The Spiritual Path, (Pg 214) 18 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 2: Death, Grief and Comfort, (Pg 12) 19 A. J. Howard Hulme and Frederic H. Wood, Ancient Egypt Speaks, Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XI - The Truth of Life, (Pg 165) 20 William Roache, Soul on the Street, Hay House, 2007. Part III: On The Street. 12: Love and Loss, (Pg 195) 21 Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path, Rider & Co, 2000. One: The Map - Why We Are Here, (Pg 45) 22 Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path, Rider & Co, 2000. Three: Embodiment and Integration - The Sacred Body, (Pg 178) 23 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 11: Some Aspects of Prayer and Meditation, (Pg 113) 24 Irene Bays, Entwining Lives, Stonecliffe Publishing, 1994. Part Two: Chapter XV - Energies (The Tenfold Law), (Pg 246) 25 Robert Elias Najemy, Universal Philosophy, Holistic Harmony Publishers, 1990. Chapter XI - Fate and Free Will, Life is a School (Pg 163) 26 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 5: Soul Group Systems, (Pg 131) 27 White Eagle, Spiritual Unfoldment 1, White Eagle Lodge Publishing Trust, 1994. VII: The Mind in the Heart, and the Awoken Memory of Reincarnation – Why cannot we remember? (Pg 111) 28 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 9: The Ring of Destiny, (Pg 371) 29 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 2 - Our Natural Home, (Pg 33) 30 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 14: Aspects of Maya, (Pg 135) 31 Harry Emerson, Listen My Son, The Psychic Book Club, 1945. Chapter Six: Teaching from Beyond, (Pg 35) 32 William Stainton Moses, Spirit Teachings, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Section X, (Pg 77) 33 A. J. Howard Hulme and Frederic H. Wood, Ancient Egypt Speaks, Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XI - The Truth of Life, (Pg 170) 34 William Stainton Moses, Spirit Teachings, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Section XXXI, (Pg 277) 35 Carl August Wickland, Thirty Years Among the Dead - Part II, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter XII: Selfishness - Experience, October 22, 1916, (Pg 283)

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36 Leslie D Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966. Chapter XV: Heaven and Goal, (Pg 236) 37 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 70) 38 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 3 - Stumbling upon the Bardo, (Pg 40) 39 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 17) 40 William Stainton Moses, Spirit Teachings, The Psychic Book Club, Undated. Section XXIV, (Pg 198) 41 Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Fontana, 1995. XII Late Thoughts I, (Pg 374) 42 Martin Israel, The Pearl of Great Price, SPCK, 1988. 6 - The Way of Awareness, (Pg 53) 43 Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Fontana, 1995. XI On Life After Death, (Pg 343) 44 Jack Angelo, Spiritual Healing - energy medicine for today, Element, 1991. 6: Healing and the Cycle of Life, (Pg 103) 45 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 53) 46 Helen Greaves, Testimony of Light, Neville Spearman, 1995. The Scripts, (Pg 121) 47 Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God - Book 3 An uncommon dialogue, Hodder & Stoughton, 1999. Chapter 2, (Pg 48) 48 Cyprian Smith, The Way of Paradox [spiritual life as taught by Meister Eckhart], Darton Longman and Todd, 1996. 6 - The Incarnate Word, (Pg 72) 49 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter II: Evolution of the Human World, (Pg 21 / 22) 50 Diana Cooper, A Little Light on the Spiritual Laws, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. Chapter Nineteen: The Law of Reincarnation, (Pg 101) 51 Tony Stockwell, Spirited, Hodder Mobius, 2005. Chapter 5 Is There Really Life After Death? (Pg 82) 52 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. Introduction, (Pg 8) 53 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 79) 54 A W Austen, Teachings of Silver Birch, Psychic Press, 1993. Children of Evolution, (Pg 119) 55 Ryuho Okawa, The Laws of the Sun, Element, 1996. Chapter One: The Light of Cosmic Consciousness - Finite and Infinite, (Pg 7) 56 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter III: The Cosmic Law of Karma, (Pg 45) 57 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter III: The Cosmic Law of Karma, (Pg 48) 58 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 3: Earthly Spirits, (Pg 77) 59 Oliver Davies, Meister Eckhart - Selected Writings, Penguin Books, 1994. Selected German Sermons: Sermon 14, (Pg 167) 60 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 78) 61 Roy Dixon-Smith, New Light on Survival, Rider & Co, 1952. Part Two: Chapter XIII: Psychology and Reincarnation, (Pg 235) 62 Phyllis V. Schlemmer, The Only Planet of Choice, Gateway Books, 1996. II: Planet Earth - 7: Life on Earth, (Pg 92) 63 Phyllis V. Schlemmer, The Only Planet of Choice, Gateway Books, 1996. V: The Other Side of the Coin - 16: War and Peace in the 1990s, (Pg 210) 64 Gordon Smith, The Unbelievable Truth, Hay House, 2004. Chapter Nine: Reincarnation - The Meaning of Life and Life and Life, (Pg187) 65 Dannion Brinkley, Secrets of the Light, Piatkus, 2012. Part 3: The Seven Lessons from Heaven - 21 Lesson Seven, (Pg 171) 66 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 6: The Council of Elders, (Pg 216) 67 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 9: The Ring of Destiny, (Pg 370) 68 Stella Storm, Philosophy of Silver Birch, The Spiritual Truth Press, 1998. Chapter Twelve: Outside the Circle, (Pg 112) 69 White Eagle on the Intuition and Initiation, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 2004. Part One: What the Intuition is, and is not - VI: The Purpose of the Intuition, (Pg 60)

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70 Teresa of Avila, Selections from The Interior Castle, Harper Collins, 2004. The Sixth Dwelling Places - Chapter 4, (Pg 97) 71 Grace Cooke, The Jewel in the Lotus, White Eagle Lodge Publishing Trust, 1973. X - Insight into Past Lives, (Pg 94) 72 Grace Cooke, The Jewel in the Lotus, White Eagle Lodge Publishing Trust, 1973. X - Insight into Past Lives, (Pg 105) 73 Cyprian Smith, The Way of Paradox [spiritual life as taught by Meister Eckhart], Darton Longman and Todd, 1996. 6 - The Incarnate Word, (Pg 81) 74 White Eagle on the Intuition and Initiation, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 2004. Part One: What the Intuition is, and is not - VI: The Purpose of the Intuition, (Pg 56) 75 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 7: Community Dynamics, (Pg 285) 76 John Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, Rider & Co, 1959. Chapter 1 - The Beginning of the End, (Pg 18) 77 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter II: Evolution of the Human World, (Pg 33) 78 Henry Thomas Hamblin, The Life of the Spirit, The Science of Thought Press, 1934. Forward, (Pg v) 79 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter II: Evolution of the Human World, (Pg 35) 80 Colum Hayward, Eyes of the Spirit, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1987. Chapter Two: The experience of working with a spiritual teacher, (Pg 49) 81 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Six, (Pg 87) 82 Father Andrew SDC, In the Silence, A.R.Mowbray, 1951. The Eighty-Fourth Psalm: IV. The Way to God, (Pg 126) 83 Grace Cooke, The New Mediumship, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1994. I. Early Days, (Pg 19) 84 Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, Phoenix, 1995. Freud, (Pg 339) 85 Raynor Carey Johnson, Nurslings of Immortality, Pelegrin Trust, 1993. Chapter 9 -Creation: The Adventure of Being Man: Plurality of Lives, (Pg 203) 86 A. J. Howard Hulme and Frederic H. Wood, Ancient Egypt Speaks, Psychic Book Club, Undated. Chapter VIII - The Vola-Memories of Egypt, (Pg 127) 87 William Roache, Soul on the Street, Hay House, 2007. Part III: On The Street. 12: Love and Loss, (Pg 192) 88 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 51) 89 Martin Israel, Summons to Life, Mowbray, 1982. Chapter 17: Building the spiritual body, (Pg 146) 90 Barbara Ann Brennan, Hands of Light, Bantam Press, 1988. Part III: Psychodynamics and the Human Energy Field. Chapter 8: Human Growth and Development in the Aura, (Pg 64) 91 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Introduction, (Pg vi) 92 A W Austen, Teachings of Silver Birch, Psychic Press, 1993. Reincarnation, (Pg 176) 93 Teilhard de Chardin, Le Milieu Divin, Fontana, 1966. Part One: The Divinisation of our Activities, (Pg 54) 94 Arthur Findlay, The Rock of Truth, SNU, 1999. Part II: Chapter X: The Philosophy of Spiritualism. . Part III, (Pg 177) 95 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Introduction, (Pg vii)

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10.3: Reincarnation – Your Choice

Can you believe it? You, that is your soul, chose to be living your current life; it was not imposed, you were not forced into it; you were born to earthly parents because you wanted to experience a particular environment in order to spiritually improve. The spirit who used Irene Bays as his channel for teaching simply stated that: 1

It has been said on many occasions from many platforms that the task before one is chosen before returning to the Earth plane, and this is so.

Not every soul does so. There are a few who do not have an expressed need, so far, to use the physical arena of the earth to develop their spiritual potential. Another spirit, Abu who during his life 3000 years ago, was an Egyptian priest, supported this view: 2

For a reincarnation is potentially possible to any spirit since, when the vehicle is to be produced upon your earth-plane, that vehicle will be informed by spirit whether it be spirit not previously incarnate or spirit which has already incarnated is not material. If thereupon, this soul, this spirit, shall decide that, for his own betterment, his own advancement, or for the advancement of others, a reincarnation is desirable, then such will be permitted...

Therefore it is not an automatic process; it has to be justified. However, a major contributing factor in this scenario is whether the soul itself perceives a real need to incarnate. This was confirmed again by Abu: 3

The personal desire is the deciding factor in that if you do not wish to reincarnate you are not compelled to do so...

It is solely up to you as the Rosicrucian Lonnie C. Edwards recognised: 4

Beloved, through the Law of Rebirth, you purposefully chose to live within this world of limitless challenges, diverse vibrations, and complex relationships, all of which have effects upon the body, mind, and emotions. For this reincarnation period, you have chosen this as your path of reintegration.

Therefore we can agree with Ian Lawton who stated that: 5

You do choose to reincarnate

Whilst the choice is simple, incarnate or not, there are so many other conditions to consider. Firstly, I suppose, is deciding why, and thereafter, when this should take place. It all has to be well thought out; there is so much interaction with other souls to consider. All this was touched upon by Iren Bays’ spirit guide who said: 6

Remember, you chose to return to the Earth plane. Nobody is forced to return to the Earth plane, and all choose the task and all choose the time, for all desire to progress.

I think that each of the books that I have read which touched upon reincarnation, indicated

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:33:51 10.3 Reincarnation – Your Choice Page 2 of 11 that the life is the soul’s choice. This may be a consequence of much debate and advice from higher beings, but in the final analysis the choice is yours. I suppose the first step in helping to support that choice is to determine what our needs really are. Not particularly what the soul wants, but what is best, at that juncture, for its spiritual development. This was echoed by my colleague Peter Matthews who wrote: 7

...by choosing the next life soul is able to select the circumstances which best reflect his needs.

...and these needs are spiritual. Silver Birch also indicated that the soul really does know what it needs: 8

The soul knows before it incarnates what it has to do. You do not start your physical existence as a spirit without any awareness of itself. The spirit chooses the vehicle of its incarnation because it knows that that combination of circumstances will provide the best opportunities for the necessary unfoldment it has to undergo.

Alan Young gave us further insight into this when he reported from dictated notes given by a spirit known as Seth through trance mediumship of Jane Roberts: 9

Seth frequently mentions reincarnation. He makes it very clear that we live many earthly lives, in each of which we experience conditions that we have chosen beforehand, circumstances and challenges tailored to fit our own needs and develop our own abilities.

This pre-selection of our situation before we are born was conveyed to Betty Eadie during her Near Death Experience where she saw that: 10

...in the pre-mortal world we knew about and even chose our missions in life. I understand that our stations in life are based upon the objectives of those missions. Through divine knowledge we knew what many of our tests and experiences would be, and we prepared accordingly.

So it is all about what we need to achieve, as the medium Robert Brown realised from his many experiences of spirit communication: 11

I have found that we do not undertake this [incarnation] or any journey in our lives lightly. It is my belief, based on accounts from those who have passed to the spirit realms, that before coming here we in fact write ourselves something akin to a 'personal soul shopping list'. Based on what we know our soul needs to experience, we can rely on our main spirit guide and other illumined souls who do their best to help us plan this list.

The choice is ours. You and I decided to incarnate on this earth; it is our pathway towards spiritual development. Michael Newton, through his research using hypnosis regression techniques, established from his subjects that when we are living in the Spirit World: 12

...we are not forced to reincarnate....

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Robert Brown concurred with this statement and in his own book ‘We are Eternal’ explained that: 13

Reincarnation, I believe, is not something that is automatic and compulsory but perhaps optional and left up to individual souls.

...and it is all about identifying a need and creating an environment to meet it. If there is not a distinct requirement, then perhaps there is no need to reincarnate. This thought was articulated by Roy Dixon-Smith:

I do not suggest that multiple incarnation is by automatic cycle, as some schools of occultism seem to infer, rather it is governed entirely by individual requirements.

For some souls, need to reincarnate is not so much for spiritual growth, but because there is a desire to live again on earth. Perhaps the soul has a very good and pleasant life and they wish to recreate it. This concept of earth being an attraction for some souls was spelt out by the spirit communicating through Phyllis V. Schlemmer: 14

...the planet Earth is the only planet within the Universe that has the variety of animals and plants. It is the most beautiful of all planets, because of the different varieties. This in a sense, attracts souls, and they have desires to remain upon it.

I don’t think that this is the general case, which, I believe, is using the physical environment to promote spiritual progress – this is an innate aspect of the soul.

The responsibility is ours, and it is a heavy one. Life on earth is not an easy option and this fact is well known before we decide to reincarnate. Zodiac, a teacher at the Temple during Jesus' time on earth and who communicated during the 1920's and 1930's through trance medium Miss Winifred Moyes, stated that: 15

...the environment in which you find yourselves now 'is the spirit's choice'. Mark my words: In the state before the physical the spirit had laid out before it the journey on the earth plane and those who had a measure of consciousness, those who loved God, chose the hard road.

The life of a soul in human form is a difficult one, mainly because all the learning can only be extracted from ‘bad’ events – we never learn through ‘good’ ones. When a soul does incarnate, it is like leaving a warm and cosy house for the harsh winds and cold winter of the Arctic. But, as Michael Newton accepted, it happens to every soul that makes the journey into the physical world: 16

There comes that time when the soul must once again leave the sanctuary of the spirit world for another trip to Earth. This decision is not an easy one. Souls must prepare to leave a world of total wisdom, where they exist in a blissful state of freedom, for the physical and mental demands of a human body.

At some point, during our time between the last incarnation and the present one, our souls decided that the next step was to reincarnate. This resulted in a lot of discussion with our guide(s) and many other advanced souls as to what our objectives would be. Eventually

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:33:51 10.3 Reincarnation – Your Choice Page 4 of 11 you arrived at a mutually agreed plan. This ‘agreement’ is our choice, or as Michael Newton referred to it: 17

We live by our choices made between lives just as we do during our incarnations; it is like being under a contract.

In the ‘Writings From The Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart’, there is an extract from the works of Theoleptus of Philadelpia, a theological polemicist and writer on Christian asceticism, which identified two agreements which the soul makes with God: 18

This is already your second covenant with God. The first (was made) when you entered this life on earth, and the second - when you conceived the desire to end this life (worthily).

Between these two agreements, many plans needed to be laid, and part of it was to decide on the family into which each of us was to be born and all the other necessary factors which constitute an incarnation. Sue Minns, who has many years' experience of past life, linked the notion of a contract with that of choosing a family: 19

So, in order to come into this human form and to experience what it has contracted to experience, the soul chooses the body and parents that will offer the opportunities it requires. Sometimes like choosing a car, or even a camel, that has the qualities and characteristics required for particular experiences this time around.

Diana Cooper confirmed this pre-incarnation parental selection: 20

Before you incarnated you chose your family, your life challenges and your mission.

This same furrow was ploughed by Peter Matthews: 21

Many take the view that our life on earth is chosen, even to the extent of deciding in spirit who our parents are to be and the set of circumstances into which we are born and expect to live.

In a more philosophical turn of phrase, the Indian statesman Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan explained that: 22

It is simpler to hold that the self seeking for rebirth obtains embodiment in the frame offering the necessary conditions. The physical body derived from the parents according to the laws of heredity is appropriated by the conscious self.

The impact of the environment on an incarnated soul is significant and important, and one major plank of this is the family environment in which the recently born human is exposed. This will colour their lives. Because of this a soul will take much advice. Barbara Ann Brennan, a renowned teacher working in the field of energy healing, expanded on the relationship between the soul and its environment: 23

According to Eva Pierrakos, the amount of Counselling a soul has from her guides

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in determining her future life circumstances depends on her maturity. Parents are chosen who will provide the needed environmental and physical experience. These choices determine the mixture of energies that will eventually form the physical vehicle in which the soul will incarnate for its task. These energies are very precise and equip the soul with exactly what it needs for its task. The soul takes on both a personal task of personal learning (like leadership) and a "world task," which entails a gift to the world. The design is so unique that by fulfilling the personal task one becomes prepared to fulfil the world task. The personal task frees the soul by releasing energies which are then used for the world task.

The implication is that the objectives set for / by the soul may be many and complex in their interrelationships – and it all starts with the family choice. That is why, as Michael Newton grasped: 24

...considerable weight is given to family selection by the soul. The idea that each of us voluntarily agreed to be the children of a given set of parents before we came into this life is a difficult concept for some people to accept. Although the average person has experienced love from his or her parents, many of us have unresolved, hurtful memories of those near to us who should have offered protection and did not. We grow up thinking of ourselves as victims of biological parents and family members whom we inherited without any choice in the matter. This assumption is wrong. When clients tell me how much they suffered from the actions of family members, my first question to their conscious mind is, "If you had not been exposed to this person as a child, what would you now lack in understanding?" It may take a while, but the answer is in our minds. There are spiritual reasons for our being raised as children around certain kinds of people, just as other people are designated to be near us as adults.

And from the experience of a psychic medium, Silvia Browne, we find that: 25

We choose who and what we'll be each time before we come here, and we even write our own blueprint to chart exactly what we want to accomplish of this trip away from Home.

This active involvement in what sort of life is necessary for a particular soul at a specific time, was part of the discussion which Joel Whitton had with his subjects during past life regression. These subjects, who described their lives between incarnations realised that: 26

...they themselves, while discarnate, had actively chosen the setting and involvements of their earthly existence. Parents, careers, relationships and major events contributing to the joys and sorrows were seen to have been selected in advance.

There must be an innate stimulus deep within us, within our soul, which drives each of us to develop spiritually. Dannion Brinkley captured this thought when he wrote: 27

We were chosen to come here to more fully reflect and express the divine principles of love, compassion, kindness, and good cheer already innate in our nature.

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Perhaps it is an inherent part of us, our spark of God, which brings this desire and need to the fore – Michael Newton believed it was so: 28

The desire to grow and develop in life after life comes from within ourselves.

This certainly seems to happen before we incarnate, but there is evidence that it stays with us during our incarnation on earth. At least that is what Arthur Findley believed: 29

Every human being has a path of continuous progression in front of him, and it is for him to take it or leave it .

What our life has entailed so far and what will happen in the future is dependent upon us. Not only in the day-to-day decisions we make in living our life, but many of the experiences we gain were designed to happen by the soul themselves. So when ‘bad’ things happen to us, remember that it is likely that we chose that event in the first place, long before we were born. This puts all happenings in a totally different context. We should not judge whether an event is good or bad, but accept that it is happening and make the best of it. So, everything that happens to us, as noted by Joel Whitton, is a consequence of our own choice: 30

We are thoroughly responsible for who we are and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are the ones who do the choosing.

Can you think of yourself as your own life designer? This phrase was used by Colum Hayward when he echoed White Eagles ideas: 31

Coming into incarnation is to enter into a life whose individual designer is the spirit of the individual itself.

From the same source, White Eagle, came the thought that we similarly chose the bad things that happen to us: 32

We would remind you that suffering and sorrow, along with separation from loved ones, may be your own choice .

...and as Silvia Browne noted: 33

Health issues and illnesses are included...

This situation was further amplified and discussed by Peter Matthews: 34

At first sight it may seem ridiculous to think that a soul would choose a life other than a happy one but then we are putting our own values to the fore. It does not mean that the soul would enjoy or even want to enjoy his life but needs to experience it. When one has eternity a life of seventy or eighty years is like the blink of an eye. If most people we asked to spend five minutes in a place that would not normally hold any appeal, such as a prison camp, many would go for that experience as long as it was for only five minutes. Looking at things this way it becomes easier to accept what would otherwise be a miserable life.

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It gets a lot more difficult to justify this idea of choice when trying to convince those who spend all or part of their life disabled or severely handicapped. However, this still appears to be a choice of the soon-to-be-born soul. Betty Eadie observed, whilst experiencing the Spirit World during her NDE, dynamic spirit who was just entering his mother’s womb and who had: 35

...chosen to enter this world mentally handicapped. He was very excited about this opportunity and was aware of the growth he and his parents would achieve. The three of them had bonded with each other and planned for this arrangement long before.

In stark summary, Red Cloud, the spirit guide of Estelle Roberts, said: 36

If your body is misshapen when you return to the matter world, then do not blame God. Do not blame your father or your mother. That would be placing the burden of your own responsibility upon somebody else's shoulders.

However, a broader description came from Michael Newton who explained: 37

Many handicapped people think if it were not for a genetic mistake, or being the victim of an accidental injury which damaged their body, their lives would be more fulfilled. As heartless as this may sound, my cases show few real accidents involving body damage which don't fall under the free will of souls. As souls, we choose our bodies for a reason. Living in a damaged body does not necessarily have to involve a karmic debt we are paying off because of past life responsibility for an injury to someone else. ... when a soul is inside a damaged body, this choice can involve a learning path to another type of lesson. It is difficult to tell a newly-injured person trying to cope with physical disablement that he or she has an opportunity to advance at a faster rate than those of us with healthy bodies and minds. This knowledge must come through self-discovery. The case histories of my clients convince me that the effort necessary to overcome a body impediment does accelerate advancement. Those of us whom society deems less-than-perfect suffer discrimination which makes the burden even heavier. Overcoming the obstacles of physical ailments and hurt makes us stronger for the ordeal.

I want to tell you of a young lady, the granddaughter of very good friends of ours, who was born with cerebral palsy. Her entire body is paralysed except that she has very limited use of one hand although her metal capacities are intact and remarkable. Even though everything has to be done for her, either by carers or her dog partner Odile – she spends her days strapped in a wheelchair – she lives by herself in a small bungalow. She has a degree and uses her writing skills in supportive work for charities – she is a lovely lady with an extraordinary sense of humour and a compassion for others that we all should emulate. I haven’t discussed her beliefs with her, but, knowing what she does and her attitude to life, I am certain that she has spiritually progressed much more than most in the 30 years she has so far lived. Faye does not live the life of a victim, but she is positive, always greets you with a smile, and is an inspiration to all who meet her.

Faye has a bodily impairment, but there are also those with what are perceived as mental

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:33:51 10.3 Reincarnation – Your Choice Page 8 of 11 difficulties such as those with Asperger Syndrome 38 or autism. People with these lifelong conditions hear, feel, and react to the world differently. Of people with this condition, the regression analyst Helen Wambach suggested that: 39

Is it possible that childhood autism is a refusal to join a new body?

This could well be a positive avenue for research into autism and related conditions – we will wait and see.

I am able-bodied and able-minded and consider myself to be one of the millions of people who do not have a serious disabling condition. This does not mean that I do not have compassion for those who are not so fortunate. It appears that our souls learn such empathy through direct experience as the spirit Seth, communicating through his channel Jane Roberts, informed us: 40

If we have no sympathy for those who are ill, then in our next life we may be born with a serious disease, which we have chosen, and find ourselves meeting those attitudes that once were ours, and thus develop compassion.

Is this how we develop every emotional aspect of our soul – through choosing to live within particular constraints? You will find out when you next take the transition to the Spirit World.

Some souls elect to choose a life where their death will be premature, as Michael Newton explained: 41

I have found that souls essentially volunteer in advance for bodies who will have sudden fatal illnesses, are to be killed by someone, or come to an abrupt end of life with many others from a catastrophic event. Souls who become involved in these tragedies are not caught in the wrong place at the wrong time with a capricious God looking the other way. Every soul has a motive for the events in which it chooses to participate. One client told me his last life was planned in advance to end at seven years of age as an American Indian boy. He said, "I was looking for a short-burst lesson in humility and this life as a mistreated starving half-breed was enough."

In all difficult earthly situations, we ought, therefore, to look for the positive and ask the question ‘who will benefit and in what way’. Michael Newton, again, broached the problem of babies who die soon after birth. He wrote: 42

What is even more common in my experience, are the souls of young children who die soon after birth and then return to the same parents as the soul of their next baby. These plans are all made in advance by the souls participating in tragic family events. They involve a maze of karmic issues. Not long ago, I had a case where my client had died from a birth defect early in his last life. I asked, "What was the purpose of your life ending when you were only a few days old?" He replied, "The lesson was for my parents, not me, and that's why I elected to come back for them..."

So, don’t grumble at your lot in life. It was your choice, as Stewart Easton remarked: 43

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Whenever we bemoan our destiny on Earth and complain of our ill-fortune, we are railing against our own choice, not the choice of some arbitrary god or gods who have done us a bad turn. In consequence, the one vice which no one with knowledge of karma should permit is envy, either envy of anyone else's life situation, or of his talents, fortune or friends. For we have what we have chosen and earned …

It is an interesting thought that we have made thousands of choices in each of our lifetimes and the next choice that we make will be, in some way, based upon the cumulative effect of all our past choices. Thus our past determines our future. The scholar and spiritual write Andrew Harvey recognised that: 44

What we have lived, experienced, and realised in our past lives affects in different, sometimes profound, ways the direction of this one.

Our past is always present. We are the sum total of all our experiences and therefore it is not surprising that Michael Newton wrote: 45

People have the idea that free will and destiny are opposing forces. They do not realise that destiny represents the sum of our deeds over thousands of years in a multitude of incarnations. In all these lives we had freedom of choice. Our current life represents all the past experiences both pleasant and unpleasant, and so we are the product of all our former choices. Add to this the fact that we may have deliberately placed ourselves in situations to test how we will react to events in our current life, which are not perceived by the conscious mind. This too involves personal choices.

So, we evolve by following our chosen development pathways until we have exhausted the earth as a training ground. Then as Swami Prabhupada proposes we leave the ‘Wheel of Life’ 46

When a soul wants to enjoy the material world, forgetting his real home in the spiritual world, he takes this life of hard struggle for existence. This unnatural life of repeated birth, death, disease, and old age can be stopped when his consciousness is dovetailed with the supreme consciousness of God.

…and then, perhaps, we incarnate in some other environment … it’s our choice.

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1 Irene Bays, Entwining Lives, Stonecliffe Publishing, 1994. Part One: Chapter IV - Healing (Healing of the Mind), (Pg 62) 2 W. F. Rickard, Abu Talks, Regency Press, 1992. Chapter 28 - Reflections on the "Golden Age", (Pg 117) 3 W. F. Rickard,, Abu Talks, Regency Press, 1992. Chapter 24 - More on reincarnation, (Pg 98) 4 Lonnie C. Edwards M.D., Spiritual Laws That Govern Humanity and the Universe, Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, 2015 - Kindle version. Chapter 8: An Inner Pathway to Reintegration and Mastership 5 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 54) 6 Irene Bays, Entwining Lives, Stonecliffe Publishing, 1994. Part One: Chapter XI - The Search for Spirituality (Spiritual Progression), (Pg 115) 7 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 4 - Compensation and Retribution, (Pg 28) 8 Anne Dooley, Guidance from Silver Birch, Spiritualist Press, 1966. Chapter Three: Serving Your Apprenticeship, (Pg 25) 9 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 5 Seth – Reincarnation, (Pg 72) 10 Betty J Eadie, Embraced by the Light, Thorsons, 1995. Embraced by the Light, (Pg 48 / 49) 11 Robert Brown, We Are Eternal, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004. Part Two: Chapter 6 - So What Have the Spirits Told Me? (Pg 121) 12 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 1: The Spirit World, (Pg 7) 13 Robert Brown, We Are Eternal, Hodder & Stoughton, 2004. Part Two: Chapter 6 - So What Have the Spirits Told Me? (Pg 121) 14 Phyllis V. Schlemmer, The Only Planet of Choice, Gateway Books, 1996. I: The Universe and its Beings - 3: God and Creation, (Pg 31) 15 Gems of Thought, The Greater World Christian , 1989. Your Right Environment, (Pg 58) 16 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Twelve: Life Selection, (Pg 201) 17 Michael Newton, Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. Part Five: Life Between Lives - Soul Energy, (Pg 136) 18 Writings From The Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, Faber & Faber, 1992. Part Two: Theoleptus, Metropolitan of Philadelphia - A Word .. – 5, (Pg 384) 19 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 3: The Aura, (Pg 34) 20 Diana Cooper, A Little Light on the Spiritual Laws, Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. Chapter Eighteen: The Law of Karma, (Pg 97) 21 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 5 - The Process of Reincarnation, (Pg 35) 22 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter VII : Human Personality and its Destiny - 9. Rebirth, (Pg 235) 23 Barbara Ann Brennan, Hands of Light, Bantam Press, 1988. Part III: Psychodynamics and the Human Energy Field. Chapter 8: Human Growth and Development in the Aura, (Pg 62) 24 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Thirteen: Choosing a New Body, (Pg 246) 25 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. A Note to My Readers, (Pg 9) 26 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 52) 27 Dannion Brinkley, Secrets of the Light, Piatkus, 2012. Part 3: The Seven Lessons from Heaven - 17 Lesson Three, (Pg 148) 28 Michael Newton, Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. Part Five: Life Between Lives - Examining Character Types in Groups, (Pg 141) 29 Arthur Findlay, The Rock of Truth, SNU, 1999. Part II: Chapter VII: Spiritualism and what it Stands For: Continued Progress, (Pg 142) 30 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 84) 31 Colum Hayward, Eyes of the Spirit, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1987. Chapter Five - The creative power of thought, (Pg 91) 32 White Eagle on the Intuition and Initiation, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 2004. Part Two: Developing the Intuition - VIII: Stages of Development, (Pg 84) 33 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 4 To Your Health: Psychic Prescriptions for the Mind and Body, (Pg 117)

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34 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 4 - Compensation and Retribution, (Pg 28) 35 Betty J Eadie, Embraced by the Light, Thorsons, 1995. Selecting a Body, (Pg 95) 36 Estelle Roberts, Red Cloud Speaks, Tudor Press, 1992. Chapter Eighteen: Reincarnation and the Second Death, (Pg 89) 37 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Thirteen: Choosing a New Body, (Pg 222) 38 See http://www.autism.org.uk/asperger 39 Helen Wambach, Reliving Past Lives, Arrow Books, 1980. 1. The Start, (Pg 5) 40 Alan Young, Cosmic Healing, DeVorss & Co, 1988. 5 Seth – Reincarnation, (Pg 73) 41 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Twelve: Life Selection, (Pg 219) 42 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Twelve: Life Selection, (Pg 219) 43 Stewart C Easton, Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy, Anthroposophic Press: Hudson, NY, 1989) 44 Andrew Harvey, The Direct Path, Rider & Co, 2000. One: The Map - Why We Are Here, (Pg 45) 45 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 9: The Ring of Destiny, (Pg 371) 46 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 3. Soul Research, (Pg 44)

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10.4: Reincarnation - Preparation for

Soon after passing into spirit and if the last life was very arduous, after the soul is back up to strength, the development process starts again; that is, continuing development in spirit. Progress never ceases. There are occasions when the soul needs time to itself and to enjoy just being in the Spirit World. But that internal urge, that desire to climb the spiritual mountain starts to get a hold on the soul and it is then that it seeks ways to develop. Of course, in some souls, this spur to progress is less than in others. Joel Whitton mentioned as much: 1

Those who are keen to proceed vigorously with their spiritual development tend to be most consciously active between incarnations.

Many have difficulty with the concept of reincarnation whilst others, such as the philosopher Radhakrishnan have a problem with identifying the mechanism: 2

How does the self find a new home after death? The mechanism of rebirth is difficult to know, if not impossible to conceive.

Whilst the experiences that all souls gain through life on earth are cumulative and no experience is ever lost, it is unlikely that a soul will remember in detail all the other lives which have been lived. Brian Weiss suggested that: 3

You will not remember [even after death] your other lives ... Only the one you have just come from. Only those souls on the higher level - the sages - are allowed to call upon history and past events ... to help us, to teach us what we must do.

This was somewhat contradicted by the medium Silvia Browne who believed that at times when we live in the Spirit World: 4

...we have access to conscious memories of all our past lives...

I think that we probably do have some level of access to all our past lives, but that what we can appreciate is limited. This veiling of past history and experiences was understood by Betty J Eadie as a consequence of her recollection of her Near Death Experience. She described that at one point in her temporary visit to the Spirit World that: 5

Things were coming back to me from long before my life on earth, things that had been purposely blocked from me by a ‘veil’ of forgetfulness at my birth.

It is realised that the most effective way of progressing is to experience; reading, learning and studying is not enough. Therefore, all souls eventually will tread the earthly path and it is the learning, the role playing in the spirit world that gives each soul the confidence to incarnate. Again, in Joel Whitton’s words: 6

Acquisition of knowledge in the interlife prepares the soul for its next incarnation and the opportunity to put into practice what has been learned.

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Our soul group is extremely useful in this respect. Not only do members of the group interact in spirit, it is usual for members of a soul group to incarnate during the same life time. Therefore they can give support to each other whilst following their earthly lives. Ian Lawton captured the essence of this collective approach: 7

...the primary aim of all souls is to learn, experience and grow. So our time with our soul group is often characterised by discussions about our lives we have shared, how we reacted to each other, what we handled well and what we could have handled better.

…and, in a similar vein, from Michael Newton: 8

As ethereal beings, our growth actually began in the mental realm of the spirit world with other souls before any of us incarnated. So while our internal being is uniquely individual, a vital part of spiritual life between incarnations is devoted to empathetic relationships with other souls. Thus, our development as souls becomes a collective one.

We are all unique and therefore the plans for our future progress are similarly unique. That is why in determining what is to be our future development path we need to examine carefully what has happened in the past, as Dannion Brinkley recognised: 9

In the world before this one, our spiritual progress is carefully measured and its advancement meticulously calculated.

On the basis that there is no prescriptive way of developing, each soul is free to choose, with guidance, how and when they prepare themselves for life on earth, as Michael Newton said: 10

Not only are there differences in how souls get ready for their next incarnation, but the same souls prepare in different ways from one life to the next.

Although life in the spirit world is not measured in the same way as on earth, it could be many 10s or 100s of years that souls spend in this preparation. However, at some point the soul, or a group of souls within a soul group, does make the decision to incarnate. At this stage no details have been developed. From here on in, the clarification of a soul’s next earthly life is not done alone. Help is provided from two main sources; firstly, the soul’s spirit guide and, probably more so, by a group of advanced spirits – often referred to as Elders.

It is possible, at this stage, that the soul does not have a regular guide either because the soul is new to earth life or a change of guide is called for. Therefore at this stage, as Laurie Worger points out: 11

...a spiritual being invisible to physical eyes is appointed as the Guide whose duty during the earthly life of the pupil is to endeavour to mentally and spiritually influence the corporate being to follow the right pathway.

Most souls, however, have a guide commensurate with their development and who usually stays with the souls across incarnations. In his books ‘Journey of Souls’, ‘Destiny of Souls’

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:34:24 10.4 Reincarnation - Preparation for Page 3 of 7 and ‘Life Between Lives’ Michael Newton describes the preparation process in detail. One of the first tasks in putting meat on the bone of our next life, is to select the family, and therefore the body, which will be our soul’s clay prison for the duration of the next life. Michael Newton suggested that prior to some lives, the soul: 12

...will be offered only one or two body choices ... souls seem to know which body would be their best choice for learning and they usually choose it .

Michael amplified this and, from his discussions with those in the Spirit World, has come to recognise the place where the choice is made as the ‘Ring of Destiny’, where: 13

...we first behold our next body. .. The Ring displays futuristic scenes of events and people the soul will encounter in the life to come...They [those souls having chosen to incarnate] want to actually experience snippets of future events in certain bodies before making any final decisions. .. Many people tell me they are shown certain years in great detail while other parts of their future life are completely left out.

In a later book ‘Journey of Souls’ Michael added to this description: 14

While some spiritual locales are difficult for my subjects to describe, most love to talk about the place of life selection, and they use remarkably similar descriptions. I am told it resembles a movie theater which allows souls to see themselves in the future, playing different roles in various settings. Before leaving, souls will have selected one scenario for themselves.

This preview is an important first step along the road. It demonstrates, again from Michael Newton, that: 15

You were not given your body by a chance of nature. It was selected for you by spiritual advisors and after previewing their offerings of other body hosts, you agreed to accept the body you now have.

Sue Minns, a psychotherapist with many years' experience of past life work, said of this process: 16

Progress is a co-operative venture; we are all cogs in the eternal wheel. This idea that everyone has something to teach and something to learn from contact with others was expressed by William Roache: 17

I believe we all plan our lives before we incarnate. Each soul decides where it is going to - where it will live and the family it will be born into ... We are all eternal beings and we are here to learn lessons. The family we are born into will be part of that. Each person in the family has something to teach us. We all learn from each other. We may have made certain agreements with each other before incarnating, deciding to play certain roles in each other's lives.

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These other souls are usually from the same soul group, and have probably road tested their objectives and life patterns many time prior to incarnation. Michael Newton did make the comment about these associated souls, that: 18

...members of the same soul group usually go before different councils.

Why this is, I do not know, but it may be concerned with one soul not knowing the detail of another souls intended life pattern or its potential decision. Nevertheless, each soul, prior to birth on earth, does have some idea of what environment they will live within and have to endure in their next ‘four score years and ten’.

During this time with the group of Elders the specific objectives as well as the environment are settled. If, in order to achieve a particular objective a particular gift needs to be provided or developed, the Elders make sure that this is gifted. Brian Weiss reported that it is: 19

…determined what you will take back with you into the next life. We will all have ... a dominant trait. It might be greed, or it might be lust, but whatever is determined, you need to fulfil your debts to those people. Then you must overcome this in that lifetime. You must learn to overcome greed. If you do not, when you return you will have to carry that trait, as well as another one, into your next life. The burdens will become greater. Within each life that you go through and you did not fulfil these debts, the next one will be harder.

This idea of overcoming negative traits was also broached by Laurie Worger. He wrote that where we have exhibited such characteristics in a previous life or where a person: 20

...who has succumbed to the negative force of greed etc. must be given the opportunity to overcome it, so a suitable environment is selected for him by those with greater knowledge. The soul is sent into incarnation in conditions which will provide every opportunity to overcome this weakness. At some time each of us has to overcome envy, malice, and all the other negative forces, until finally we manifest only the positive, creative, Universal Love in our mind, body and spirit.

With this in mind, we determine the family, we settle the environment, and we establish those traits which could dominate our desires for our next life. All this is in order that we create the right overall situation in which our soul can develop. Dr Christine Page, a homeopathic expert on energy medicine, in her book ‘Spiritual Alchemy’, accepted that our soul: 21

...chooses a personality or ego whose lifestyle will lead to experiences that will offer opportunities to expand self-knowledge covering as many facets of the soul as possible.

Whatever happens we are reassured by Dannion Brinkley that: 22

We do not enter the Earth plane without a deliberate course of action.

Expressing this in deistic terms, the Rosicrucian Lonnie C. Edwards wrote: 23

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The soul personality, guided by God’s will and wisdom, desires and decides exactly what experiences it needs in order to accomplish its divine mission...

In effect, we are creating an outline plan for our next life, in which we try to predict consequence. According to Brian Weiss, just as the soul does a review at the end of a life, so it seems to make a life preview before we are born: 24

It plans the life. I'm going to work on compassion or empathy or nonviolence, for example. It sees how the life is set up, whom we are going to meet, who will help us along the spiritual path, and how we are going to help them. (It's complicated because there is an interaction with other souls, and they have their plans, too.) The people we meet and the experiences that are set up help us to learn - this is destiny.

In a communication from her deceased friend Frances Banks, Helen Greaves was provided with the insight that: 25

The Blueprint of one's efforts, one's successes and failures on all planes; physical, material, emotional, mental and spiritual does indicate that a definite line of advance is voluntarily accepted by the soul before incarnation.

The same phrase of ‘blue-print’ was used by the British medium Tony Stockwell: 26

...I believe that when we are incarnated, we are born with a kind of blueprint already in place which determines the kind of circumstances we will meet during our next life on earth. I also believe that because that blueprint is in place, spirits are able to advise us on certain aspects of our life at times of conflict and confusion.

Silvia Browne also used this concept when she suggested that our future plans may have some milestones, the detail is not necessarily prescribed: 27

There is plenty of room for lateral movement in our blueprints, so please don't picture your charted life as a narrow path with very few choices along the way. Instead it is a road as wide and as full of possibilities as you, with God's help, can dream it to be.

Continuing with the idea of a draft outline for our future life, the spirit of Diana, Princess of Wales speaking to Hazel Courteney said: 28

You all come with a blueprint for a specific purpose, but how many roads you travel and the choices you make along the way before reaching your destination, goal or purpose, are your own.

Thus, before life starts, what is offered to a soul seems to be a complete package; the environment, the personal gifts, the personality, and the goals to be reached. And, in all of this there is no imposition; no compulsion. The soul must accept and agree to all that it is about to encounter. A daunting prospect!

I mentioned the soul’s guardian angel earlier. Normally the soul and the guardian angel work together for many incarnations. I suppose that it is reasonable to assume that a soul’s

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:34:24 10.4 Reincarnation - Preparation for Page 6 of 7 guardian angel will change from time-to-time. Both have to develop and they are certainly on different development pathways; the guardian angel being much more advanced and, in fact, has been trained specifically for that role. Every soul that incarnates comes under the care of a guardian angel, as White Eagle said: 29

It is actually when the soul takes the decision to reincarnate that it comes under the care of the guardian angel.

The slant in this remark is interesting. I would like to interpret it as emphasising that no soul is left alone when on earth. Everyone has a guardian angel. We only have to call on them and they will be there.

In all of this, there is a sting in the tail. Joel Whitton said: 30

Equally important, knowledge of any plan the soul may have made for the forthcoming life is necessarily subjugated. Just as it is pointless for a student to be furnished with answers before sitting down to write an examination, so the test of life requires that certain information is temporarily withheld from the conscious mind.

In ‘The Only Planet of Choice’ we are advised that deep within our soul we were aware of our life’s plans: 31

Just as the Creator is all-knowing, each soul is all-knowing, and there are different paths that each soul may take. At the time of coming to the planet Earth, they made their map, they limited themselves in their choice, but they did bring with them a map [presumably in their subconscious] , so they would have a choice whether or not to follow that map.

So there is an amnesia block which seems to operate as a Natural Law of the Cosmos, although it may be possible to be aware of some aspects of it. After incarnating and returning to Spirit, we can see the environment into which we were born, we are the personality, we know what we are good at and what we would like to be good at, but the real crunch question is “Why were we born?” “What are our objectives?” … but that’s another debate…

All this preparation is important in order for us to have a meaningful existence, in eternal terms, for the life we are leading. There is purpose and, as Michael Mewton summarised: 32

...there is a grand design to life and afterlife.

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1 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 59) 2 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter VII : Human Personality and its Destiny - 9. Rebirth, (Pg 234) 3 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Twelve [from a spirit communicator], (Pg 172) 4 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 4 To Your Health: Psychic Prescriptions for the Mind and Body, (Pg 117) 5 Betty J Eadie, Embraced by the Light, Thorsons, 1995. Embraced by the Light, (Pg 44) 6 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 75) 7 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. Introduction, (Pg 8) 8 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 7: Community Dynamics, (Pg 259) 9 Dannion Brinkley, Secrets of the Light, Piatkus, 2012. Part 3: The Seven Lessons from Heaven - 20 Lesson Six, (Pg 167) 10 Michael Newton, Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. Part Six: Closing the Session - Preparing for Embarkation, (Pg 197) 11 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 3: Our God-directed Lives, (Pg 34 / 35) 12 Michael Newton, Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. Part Five: Life Between Lives - Life and Body Selection, (Pg 176) 13 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 9: The Ring of Destiny, (Pg 355 - 356) 14 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Chapter Twelve: Life Selection, (Pg 207) 15 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 10: Our Spiritual Path, (Pg 399) 16 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 7: The Inner Child & Soul, (Pg 94) 17 William Roache, Soul on the Street, Hay House, 2007. Part I: Death and Infinity. 1: Rutland House, (Pg 9) 18 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 6: The Council of Elders, (Pg 214) 19 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Twelve [from a spirit communicator], (Pg 172) 20 Laurie Worger, My Treasures For You, The Percival Book Company, 1965. Chapter 3: Our God-directed Lives, (Pg 38) 21 Christine R. Page, Spiritual Alchemy, C W Daniel Co, 2004. Chapter One - The Purpose of our lives on a Soul Level, (Pg 33) 22 Dannion Brinkley, Secrets of the Light, Piatkus, 2012. Part 3: The Seven Lessons from Heaven - 20 Lesson Six, (Pg 167) 23 Lonnie C. Edwards M.D., Spiritual Laws That Govern Humanity and the Universe, Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, 2015 - Kindle version. Chapter 1: Commitment to the Soul 24 Brian Leslie Weiss, Same Soul, Many Bodies, Piatkus, 2006. Chapter 10 - John: Free Will and Destiny, (Pg 151) 25 Helen Greaves, Testimony of Light, Neville Spearman, 1995. The Scripts, (Pg 83) 26 Tony Stockwell, Spirited, Hodder Mobius, 2005. Chapter 5 Is There Really Life After Death? (Pg 81) 27 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 2 Everyday Magic and Miracles: Discovering and Creating Joy in Your Life, (Pg 55) 28 Hazel Courteney, Divine Intervention, Cico Books, 2002. Chapter 3: The Death, (Pg 43) 29 White Eagle, Walking with the Angels - A Path of Service, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1998. Part Two - 16. Guarded and Guided by Angels, (Pg 116) 30 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 4 - Life Between Life, (Pg 80) 31 Phyllis V. Schlemmer, The Only Planet of Choice, Gateway Books, 1996. II: Planet Earth - 7: Life on Earth, (Pg 99) 32 Michael Newton, Journey of Souls, Llewellyn Publications, 2009. Introduction, (Pg 3)

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10.5: Reincarnation Advice

Whilst we are residing in the spirit world, at some point we feel the extra pull of spiritual development and consider the possibility of reincarnation. Every soul feels this; it is a natural process. When the time is right, things come together to implement it. As William Law, a Northamptonshire lad born in 1686, wrote in the early 18 th Century: 1

Every man is to consider himself as a particular object of God's providence; under the same care and protection of God as if the world had been made for him alone. It is not by chance that any man is born at such a time, of such parents, and in such a place and condition. It is as certain that every soul comes into the body at such a time, and in such circumstances, by the express designment of God, according to some purposes of His will, and for some particular ends; this is as certain as that it is by the express designment of God that some beings are Angels, and others are men.

Ian Lawton agreed that every life is to some extent planned: 2

...every life has to be planned - less experienced souls may not be doing the planning themselves, but their lives are always planned.

Not only planned but, as stated by St John of the Cross, every soul’s incarnation is unique and tailored to their specific requirements: 3

God leads each soul along different roads and there shall hardly be found a single spirit who can walk even half the way which is suitable for another.

It is also the soul itself which has a significant part in deciding their personal developmental pathway. The spiritual author Sue Minns understood that: 4

Before coming down to be part of the 'wagon train' again, the soul reflects on what experiences are required during this incarnation. It asks: what sort of parents do I need to help me with that experience (remember no judgment about good or bad!)? In what sort of conditions do I need to find myself in, in order to learn? There will be guidance and loving support from Light Beings and others in the soul group, and 'contracts' will be drawn up between souls for joint experience.

Whilst each of us may have the desire to live on earth and have a chance of developing more rapidly, we still need agreement from those ‘higher souls’ as to whether it ought to take place or not – are we ready for it? Abu, an ancient spirit, whose last incarnation was over 3000 years ago, has communicated through W. F. Rickard to tell us that: 5

...our loving God, who has made the necessary dispositions that such a thing [incarnation] may take place, but it is within the discretion of the Great Ones whose attention is primarily directed towards your earth-plane, whether a reincarnation shall be permitted or not; it is not solely and purely at the discretion of the individual spirit person.

So how does this ‘agreement’ get cemented? Many of the ‘older’ writings about the spirit

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:35:01 10.5 Reincarnation Advice Page 2 of 6 world tend not to investigate the detail of reincarnation. One group of people who have been able to do so are those who have documented their experiences with past life regression. It is from their writings that I am able to give you a taste of what your soul experienced when deciding all the factors which need to be in place before incarnation can occur.

In order to try to explain what happens, I will tell you a little tale about the game of life which starts in the spirit world. This game is played by each of us as individuals and yet we are also a member of a team; something like football. There are individuals who have their moments and shine through application of their personal gifts and abilities, and yet success is dependent on the whole team capitalising on their collective skills. Keeping with the analogy of football, it is vital that before we start to incarnate, that we have sufficient training. This training can be time-consuming, repetitive, and may take a long time to attain to a particular level of skill. Each player needs to understand, before starting the game, what objectives – really personal milestones - are to be achieved and what is the purpose of their role in the game. Each objective is to develop those qualities which can be taken with the individual after the game has finished, and which can be accumulated across many games.

In order to meet these specific objectives, each player will be relying on his fellow players for support in achieving them. Therefore the pre-incarnation training for each soul needs to be tailored to their own particular gifts, abilities and limitations, and that these are known to each of the team members. Practice, practice and more practice. That is one of the secrets to success. Before a person reincarnates, each of the souls will role-play different scenarios in order to know how best to use and develop their skills and to understand how to harness the support from their team-mates for mutual benefit.

At this point, I will introduce another aspect of life. Each person has a spirit guide who gives their all for the benefit of their allocated soul; they are completely dedicated and have been well trained as a guide before they can undertake that role. They understand the rules of life. Every moment of every day our guide is available for us, and they help in the development of these skills. With this sort of support how can anyone fail?

Often, the personal development in the spirit world has been achieved with other members of a soul group who, through their training, have built up a real and lasting bond with each other. This desire to incarnate at a similar time, demonstrates the togetherness of the team as a whole and the aspirations of each member to do the best they can for the whole and each part.

It is at this point that the group of souls desirous of incarnation, together with their spirit guides are collectively brought together before a group of much wiser souls who are usually referred to as ‘The Elders’. There are some spiritual authors, such as those referred to by Barbara Ann Brennan, who seem to consider that it is only the spirit guides who provide the advice: 6

The incarnation process before conception has been discussed by Madame Blavatsky, and more recently by Alice Bailey, Phoebe Bendit and Eva Pierrakos. According to Pierrakos, the incarnating soul meets with her spirit guides to plan the coming lifetime. In this meeting the soul and the guides consider the tasks she needs to accomplish in soul growth, what karma needs to be met and dealt with,

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and the negative belief systems she needs to clear through experience. This life work is usually referred to as a person's task.

I am more inclined to follow the view held that a number of spirits, particularly those from higher realms, have a significant hand in designing future lives. This does not detract from the value of the contribution by their guide whose important role in all this was underlined by Silvia Browne: 7

The most intimate of these advisers, who, with God's help, conceives and reviews our blueprint with us, and is at our side every step of the way, is our spirit guide.

Nevertheless, it is our guide(s) and ‘Elders’ who come together and this group of very experienced souls form a controlling and advising group. Controlling, that is, in terms of the role which a soul could play in its next life and the level of difficulty or otherwise to which the player is allocated: 8

When the Elders are reviewing progress of the souls who come before them, their keen evaluations encompass the soul's entire existence.

It is the Elder’s task to help to decide what degree of difficulty of life is appropriate to the individual – not too hard, says Ian Lawton, and not too easy – so that the best result may be gained: 9

We may [prior to incarnation] even be given a preview of several different lives, and be asked to choose which one we think will be of most use to our learning and growth. And, as usual, our spirit guides and elders are on hand to provide assistance and advice.

No matter what these experienced players may advice, it is the soul’s choice which to select. No one is compelled to take a role for which they are not fitted or that they do not want to undertake.

These advisory Elders are not the top of the hierarchy. It has been reported, by Michael Newton, that: 10

During the time we are meeting with the Council of Elders there is the overwhelming feeling of an even higher force which is simply called "the Presence". …[this] is a deified entity, or entities, with capabilities immensely superior to those on the Council. Everyone agrees that the Presence is there to assist the work of the Council.

Michael also recognised that you can also imagine that often specialists need to be brought into the picture so that the Elders have all the information with which to best advise the soul: 11

Apparently, specialists come into our panels [the Elders] at certain times to lend their expertise if we continue to fall into the same ruts [during each Earthly life]

The Elders are not judgemental; they are totally impartial advisors: 12

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The council is not a tribunal of judges nor a courtroom where souls appear to be tried and sentenced for wrongdoing, although I must admit that once in a while someone will tell me they feel going in front of the council is like being sent to the principal's office in school. Members of the council want to talk to us about our mistakes and what we can do to correct negative behaviour in the next life. This is a place where considerations for the right body in our next life begin.

The scene is set then for the player to select what part to play. In fact, having discussed all the possibilities, they may feel that they are not ready to take part and return to the ‘training camp’. More often, however, a choice is made as to the role they are to live, their objectives to achieve and their specific purpose during the lifetime. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, from a Jewish mystical perspective noted that: 13

All souls [in the Kabbalist system] must undergo transmigration; and men do not understand the ways of the Holy One. They know not that they are brought before the tribunal both before they enter this world and after they leave it, they know not the many transmigrations and hidden trials which they must have to undergo.

Selecting the role … how is all this achieved? Imagine yourself in a room, a large room where one wall is quartered and each quarter is covered in one huge television-like screen. Each one of these four screens is showing, what looks like, a different soap opera; the scenes seem realistic with figures enacting aspects of everyday life. This room has been given many names but I will refer to it as the ‘Projection Room’. You, as a potential incarnate , are seated in front of these screens alongside your spirit guide and the Elders. What you are being shown in each of the ‘plays’ on the screens, is a prediction / projection of what may happen in each life were you to select that role. You don’t get this in football! However, all the activities in life and your developed skills must come together for the predictions to come true. Not all of the game is predicted; just a small fraction; just enough for the potential human to get a feel of what may , not what will , happen in each scenario – it does, however, give you a taster.

As with most games, where the players differ greatly in their experience, some players may be given a handicap based on their performance in their previous lives. This handicap is often the reverse of what one expects – the better you did last time the lower the handicap. This means that the better the performance in this life, potentially your handicap will be reduced in the next. This stimulates improvement permitting the player to become better a lot quicker.

There is one other factor … choice. Not just choice of which role to play but choices whilst living the next life; using your freewill At every point you can choose what you do. These moves or sets of actions may not have been predicted and as a consequence the player may not hit his or her desired objectives.

Once your future life is selected there is a preparation period. This may be long or short depending upon your choice. You can give yourself plenty of time to get used to being near incarnation or you can jump right in very close to birth. Again the choice is yours: 14

While we prepare to incarnate, a teacher reinforces the important aspects of our new life contract.

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Then you choose … the screens flicker … the room fades … and you are projected into the foetus.

The strange thing about life is the emergence into it. At the beginning of most activities, the ‘before the start’ and ‘after the start’ are easily recognisable. However, in life, the movement from before entering the foetus to the start of life as an independent life force takes place through an apparent ‘amnesia warp’; a ‘forget everything that you previous have known’ period. Before the incarnation you seem to understand everything; after the start you seem to know nothing. It is like wanting to go from Stoke-on-Trent to Canterbury where before you start you have a route map, but as soon as you begin the journey the map disappears and you have to progress without one.

The implication is that you start life not knowing the rules! As far as I am aware, this is the only ‘game’ where this happens.

I have mentioned the existence of a spirit guide. They are there not only in the training period before incarnation, but are also there during the living of it. However, it is unlikely that, once born, you will initially be aware of their presence – another feature of the ‘amnesia warp’.

In other sections, I have described the duality of soul and spirit; the soul being the essence and spirit the necessary transport mechanism. This combination exists together for all time. However, there is a third element which is necessary for incarnation; the body. The three (soul, spirit, and the body) live as an integrated whole. In fact they are so close to each other so as to be virtually indistinguishable as two entities – they are perceived as one but are definitely two and with different attributes … but, during life, very few recognise this!!!!

At the end of the day, as White Eagle said: 15

Trust in the rightness of the divine plan and divine law brings a sense of freedom.

Above is really a docudrama. That is a combination of fact and poetic licence. For a better understanding of what happens to souls living in the spirit world especially prior to incarnation, then do read the books by Michael Newton, Joel Whitton, Ian Lawton, Brian Weiss, Helen Wambach and others who are relaying the words of clients who have undergone past life regression and who report about the life between their lives.

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1 William Law, A serious call to a Devout & Holy Life, J M Dent, 1906. Chapter XXII 2 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. 2: Soul Development, (Pg 75) 3 Complete Works of St John of the Cross, Volume III, Living Flame of Love (Second Redaction, Stanza III, 59, (Pg 193) 4 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 7: The Inner Child & Soul, (Pg 94) 5 W. F. Rickard,, Abu Talks, Regency Press, 1992. Chapter 24 - More on reincarnation, (Pg 97) 6 Barbara Ann Brennan, Hands of Light, Bantam Press, 1988. Part III: Psychodynamics and the Human Energy Field. Chapter 8: Human Growth and Development in the Aura, (Pg 61) 7 Sylvia Browne, The Other Side and Back, Piatkus, 2000. 1 Help from the Other Side: Our Angels and Spirit Guides, (Pg 19) 8 Michael Newton, Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. Part Five: Life Between Lives - Therapeutic Opportunities During Council Visitations, (Pg 156) 9 Ian Lawton, The Wisdom of the Soul, RSP (Rational Spirituality Press), 2007. Introduction, (Pg 9) 10 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 6: The Council of Elders, (Pg 243) 11 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 6: The Council of Elders, (Pg 215) 12 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 1: The Spirit World, (Pg 8) 13 Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Jewish & Christian Mysticism - An Introduction, Continuum, 1994. Part I The Jewish Tradition - 2 Medieval Jewish Mysticism: The Mystic Way, (Pg 44) 14 Michael Newton, Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Llewellyn Publications, 2005. 2: Death, Grief and Comfort, (Pg 24) 15 White Eagle, Walking with the Angels - A Path of Service, White Eagle Lodge Publishing, 1998. Part One - 9. The Angelic Qualities of Humility and Simplicity, (Pg 68)

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10.6: Reincarnation and Religion

As I have explained in the introduction to reincarnation, virtually all religions from paganism through to the major religions of today accept reincarnation as a factor in the developmental process of humanity. The geneticist, Steve Jones, linked Plato’s concept of a soul to the thinking of Mendel, an Augustinian friar and scientist, both of which led to Steve stating that: 1

All religions have, at their heart, renewal: the resurrection, in one form or another, of a body defiled by death. Plato realised that it can best be achieved by detaching the flesh from its essence, the soul. This can persist although the body decays. The same idea came to Mendel. His work disengaged the genetic message – a survivor until all life comes to an end – from the ephemeral existence of its carriers.

Sue Minns has given us a brief thumbnail history of the history of reincarnation: 2

The earliest record of reincarnation comes from ancient Egypt. Hindus, Buddhists, Chinese Taoists, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Aborigines, American Indians, Theosophists, Sufis, Zoroastrians, Rosicrucians, Freemasons and many, many more have a history of belief in reincarnation, karma and the evolution of the soul. Past civilisations accepted re-birth naturally as they accepted the ebb and flow of the sea, the daily appearance of the sun and moon, and the cycles of the year.

And with a greater philosophical bent, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the Indian philosopher and statesman who was the second President of India, gave us a bird’s eye view of reincarnation: 3

The doctrine of rebirth has had a long and influential history. It is a cardinal belief of the Orphic 4 religion that the wheel of birth revolves inexorably. Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles regard rebirth as almost axiomatic. For them preexistence and survival stand or fall together. It persists down to the later classical thinkers, Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists. If we turn to the Hebrews, there are traces of it in Philo and it was definitely adopted in the Kabbala. The Sufi writers accept it. About the beginning of the Christian era it was current in Palestine. Herod, for instance, thinks that Jesus may be John the Baptist risen from the dead.[ Matthew xiv.2] Jesus' disciples tell him of the rumours that he is John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah, When he treats a man who was born blind, his followers ask whether the blindness was in consequence of his sins in a previous life.[John ix.2] Julius Caesar finds the belief in rebirth among the ancestors of the British, for in his History of the Gallic Wars he writes that the Druids "inculcate this as one of their leading tenets that souls do not become extinct but pass after death from one body to another and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree incited to valour, the fear of death being disregarded." Within the Christian Church it was held during the first centuries by isolated Gnostic sects and the Manichaeans in the fourth and fifth centuries. Origen believed in it. In the Middle Ages the tradition was continued by the numerous sects collectively known as Cathari. At the Renaissance Bruno upheld it, and Van Helmont in the seventeenth century adopted it. Swedenborg states it in a modified form. Goethe played with it, while Lessing and Herder believed in it seriously. Hume and Schopenhauer mentioned it with

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respect and among contemporary philosophers there are at least half a dozen who believe in it, though they are not prepared to avow it in view of inadequate evidence and proof.

So it is not surprising that, through Joel Whitton’s research, it was revealed that: 5

Reincarnational teaching wistfully pervades the most venerable religious scriptures.

As Radhakrishnan indicated, in its early days, Christianity too accepted this concept. This was quite a comfort to the Welsh journalist Jeffrey Iverson who was pleased to discover that: 6

...although the notion of rebirth is alien to our Western society today, it was accepted by sections of the Church until as late as the sixth century. Many early Christians could countenance the prospect quite equably.

...and Peter Matthews described this overall situation as: 7

The red Indians, whom some consider to be the most spiritual of people, believe in reincarnation as do Buddhists and Hindus. The ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Chaeldonians, in fact, most civilisations considered reincarnation as a fact. Indeed it is virtually the Christians alone who does not generally accept the idea. However Christianity evolved from Paganism, which did include the concept of reincarnation and many believe that original Christian thought did include the concept of reincarnation but it was through the early Church councils that the idea was rejected. This was done simply in order to maintain their hold on the peoples of the time. If reincarnation is accepted and you come back to another life dependent upon your action in that previous life, then a priest is not necessary for forgiveness, either through the Church or through Jesus. Forgiveness is no longer necessary and therefore reincarnation cannot be part of Christianity.

A little more detail was given of the erasure of reincarnation from the Christian tradition by Sue Minns: 8

That the 'soul exchanges one man for another man, so that the life of humanity is continued always by means of the same soul' was written by St Gregory of Nazaianus in the 4th century. However, by AD553, the Second Christian Council of Constantinople, presided over by Emperor Justinian, declared that all beliefs in immortality were heresies. Apparently the Emperor felt that the concept of reincarnation was threatening to the stability of the empire. Citizens who believed that they would have another chance to live might be less obedient and law-abiding than those who believed in a single Judgment Day for all...

This significant point in Christian history was also noted by Jeffery Iverson: 9

For over five hundred years after Christ, reincarnation was a belief freely held by many Christians. It was taught by powerful sects such as the Gnostics and the Manichaeans, and was declared a heresy, in very doubtful circumstances, only by

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the Fifth Ecumenical Council of AD 553, seemingly without the approval of the Pope!

Once politics gets involved then anything can and normally does happen. This is what happened to Christianity, so Joel Whitton recognised: 10

Not until the fourth century, when Christianity evolved from harried bands of secret worshippers to an institution ripe for political manipulation, did opposition develop to reincarnation in Christian theology.

This whole Christian debacle was summarised by Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows when she wrote: 11

Reincarnation has been accepted as the pathway of soul evolution in all cultures except those governed by Christianity.

There were consequences not just to dogma and creed. In their fervour, those who decreed that reincarnation was not to be tolerated destroyed not only Biblical references to it but many of the religious documents which supported it. Of this Swami Prabhupada wrote: 12

During that era, numerous Church writings were destroyed, and many scholars now believe that references to reincarnation were purged from the scriptures.

Apparently, this removal of texts, so Brian Weiss informed us, was carried out at the time when many of the dogmatic tenets were crystallised under the authority of Constantine the Great: 13

In A.D. 325 the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, along with his mother, Helena, had deleted references to reincarnation contained in the New Testament. The Second Council of Constantinople, meeting in A.D. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy.

Were all references to reincarnation removed from the New Testament? I don’t think so. Meister Eckhart, a 14 th Century German theologian, philosopher and mystic, in one of his sermons, quoted from John 3:13 when he said: 14

Christ says: "No one comes into heaven except him who has come from heaven."

A more recent Christian Leslie Weatherhead, an English Christian theologian also recognised part of St John’s gospel as relating to reincarnation: 15

The idea of rebirth is an essential part of the Gospel and was certainly part of the message of Jesus [John 3:3]...

These are not the only references, because in Matthew 17:9,13 there is an implied reincarnation of Elias. This section was referenced by Swami Prabhupada: 16

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you, that Elias is come already, and they knew him not … then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist"

As far as I can make out from the Christian literature that I have read, there is a ground swell of Christians who accept the fact of reincarnation even though the Authorities still refuse to consider it. This is not the case with Judaism, although as Brian Weiss revealed: 17

Reincarnation and the in-between planes are basic tenets of Kabbalistic literature, yet most modern-day Jews are unaware of this.

In the verses of the great Sufi mystic Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, he describes the process of evolution through reincarnation - from mineral and plant to animal and man and then to angelhood and beyond. In his Masnawi he writes:

I died as mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as man, To soar with angels blest; But even from angelhood I must pass on ...

The Qur’an itself seems quite clear in Sutra 2:28 is written: 18

How disbelieve ye in Allah when ye were dead and He gave life to you! Then he will give you death, then life again, and then unto Him ye will return.

This point was stressed by Jeffrey Iverson in ‘More Lives than One?’ when he wrote: 19

In the sixth century, the Prophet Mohammed learned of reincarnation as taught by the ancient Greeks from the monks of a Nestorian monastery at Busra. The Muslim holy book, the Koran, written on Mohammed’s time, says explicitly: ‘God generates beings and sends them back over and over again until they return to Him.’

The Eastern belief in reincarnation is well documented and well known. Those who follow religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism tend to believe in the ‘Wheel of Life’. Within any one cycle man can degrade himself and make little advance during his life time. Whilst I do believe that a person, in terms of spiritual development, may waste a particular incarnation, I do not agree with Swami Prabhupada when he writes: 20

Further, the path of reincarnation does not always lead uphill; the human being is not guaranteed a human birth in his next life .

Assuming, of course, that he meant that in a subsequent life a soul could be incarnated as, say, a gnat. I could image that, if there are other worlds which supports life of a similar kind to humanity, then certainty a soul in one life could inhabit a human and in the next a being from another planet. This may well be considered progressive.

Why should Christianity, in particular, shun the idea of reincarnation? This question was

DAJ 04/11/2019 07:35:35 10.6 Reincarnation and Religion Page 5 of 6 also posed by Leslie Weatherhead: 21

One wonders why men have so readily accepted the idea of life after death and so largely, in the West, discarded the idea of a life before birth.

The process of reincarnation is only for our benefit. It allows us to correct previous misdeeds and progress spiritually closer to our eternal Objective.

Why don’t religions help us to understand reincarnation and to appreciate it for what it is? It is only through understanding the detail and the implications that we can treat reincarnation, as all the other Natural Laws, with the respect that they deserve. This plea was made by a representative of ‘The Council of Nine’ who, communicating through the medium Phyllis V. Schlemmer said: 22

What is truly negative - listen carefully - what has created the upset [a universal imbalance], besides the desires and the greed, is the complete denial and misinterpretation of the existence of ultimate reality. Your over-population is because of the trapping of spirits, because of reincarnation. So the Earth people, the souls and spirits that surround your Earth, need to release themselves of greed and desire, because that is the trap. Your religious leaders do not understand this and do not teach the people.

We have a long way to go in understanding reincarnation

However, I believe in reincarnation … as far as I am aware, my previous life ended about 1750 AD!!!!

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1 Steve Jones, In The Blood: God, Genes and Destiny, Harper Collins, 1996. Chapter VI: Death Or Resurrection, (Pg 243) 2 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 8: Past Lives and Karma, (Pg 101) 3 Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life, Unwin, 1980. Chapter VII : Human Personality and its Destiny - 9. Rebirth, (Pg 227 / 228) 4 An orphic religion is the name given to the set of beliefs originating in ancient Greece. 5 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. (Pg 88) 6 Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives than One?, Pan Books, 1977. Chapter 1: He saw the execution of Charles I, (Pg 23) 7 Peter Matthews, Spiritualism and Reincarnation, Con-Psy Publications, 1997. Chapter 2 - Reincarnation Trial, (Pg 9) 8 Sue Minns, Soulwork - Foundations for Spiritual Growth, College of Psychic Studies, 2003. Chapter 8: Past Lives and Karma, (Pg 102) 9 Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives than One?, Pan Books, 1977. Chapter 14: Between my hat and my boots – the ancient belief in reincarnation, (Pg 149) 10 Joel Whitton, Life Between Life, Grafton Books, 1986. Chapter 5 - The Shuttle of Rebirth: Our Journey So Far .. (Pg 91) 11 Elizabeth MacDonald Burrows, Pathway of the Immortal, International Publications Inc, 1980. Chapter II: Evolution of the Human World, (Pg 28) 12 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 5) 13 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Three, (Pg 35 / 36) 14 Stephen J Connor, Everything as Divine, Paulist Press, 1996. Part I: Excerpts from Selected Sermons - Sermon 5b, (Pg 13) 15 Leslie D Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966. Chapter V: Christ and His Achievement, (Pg 73) 16 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 3 / 4) 17 Brian Leslie Weiss, Many Lives, Many Masters, Judy Piatkus, 2002. Chapter Eleven, (Pg 162) 18 Qur'an (The Glorious Qur'an), Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc, 2000. Chapter / Sûrah 2 - 28 19 Jeffrey Iverson, More Lives than One?, Pan Books, 1977. Chapter 14: Between my hat and my boots – the ancient belief in reincarnation, (Pg 150) 20 Swami Prabhupada, Coming Back, The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. 1. Reincarnation: Socrates to Salinger, (Pg 17) 21 Leslie D Weatherhead, The Christian Agnostic, Hodder & Stoughton, 1966. Chapter XIV: Reincarnation and Renewed Chances, (Pg 214) 22 Phyllis V. Schlemmer, The Only Planet of Choice, Gateway Books, 1996. I: The Universe and its Beings - 2: The Council of Nine, (Pg 13)

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