Reincarnation is the belief that a part of our consciousness will continue living after the death of the physical body and will be re-born into a new body here on Earth. The belief of reincarnation is widespread, in fact almost universal in the East, but it has never been that popular in the West. This is due to the scepticism of mainstream science and the fact that it is not really mentioned in the Christian Bible. However, times are slowly changing and more and more reputable doctors and scientists are now investigating aspects of reincarnation, including past life regression, near-death experiences and after-death communication. These phenomena were briefly described in Chapter 2 and the mechanisms behind them are explained in the next chapter.
For many people the idea of life after death is very comforting because it lessens their grief and removes their fear of annihilation. For others it is a subject that is never contemplated because “ignorance is bliss”. But whether we believe in it or not, the fact remains that life after death is a certainty because life cannot be extinguished – it only changes form. Death is an unsuitable term for passing on to a higher form of life because the self/monad cannot die – ever! The bodies of incarnation are discarded when they are no longer required, but the monad is immortal.
To the monad, each incarnation is like a day’s work. Leaving the physical-etheric body behind can be compared to taking off our overcoat, leaving the emotional body behind is like taking off our clothing, and leaving the mental body behind is like taking off our underwear. We return to our causal body (soul) completely naked to sleep for a while before awakening the next morning to get dressed again for another day’s work. We begin each new incarnation by putting on our underwear (mental body), our clothes (emotional body) and our overcoat (physical-etheric body). After a long hard day at work we are tired and our overcoat is worn out, so we take it off and head back home to sleep.
Continuity of Consciousness
If we have all lived before, why can’t we remember anything of our previous lives? There are two reasons why the average person cannot consciously recall their past lives:
- After each incarnation, the subtle bodies of our persona dissolve in sequence over the course of many years so the pathways to their memories are lost to us. New subtle bodies are formed for each new incarnation but they have no connection with our previous lives, so essentially we are a new persona in each lifetime.
- Only the greater causal body (or soul) is ours for our entire journey through the human kingdom. It is the storehouse of our experiences in the human kingdom and contains the memories of all our human incarnations. However, the average person does not incarnate with his greater causal body so cannot access those memories. The lesser causal body contains causal matter (soul essence) from the greater causal body, but the memories, knowledge and abilities it contains are incoherent and our conscious minds don’t know the mental pathways that are required to recall them.
Only an enlightened person incarnates with their greater causal body and therefore has continuity of consciousness from life to life. Non-enlightened people fall asleep at some point during their ascent back to their soul and wake up at the same point as they descend into a new incarnation.