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The Incarnational Sojourn
"Ain't it funny how they're all Cleopatra when you gaze into their past? When you ask about their birth signs, you realize there was no need to have asked"
~ The Who, In a Hand or a Face
Ah, reincarnation. Typically a mere punchline in our 'enlightened' western culture, it is an important and fundamental element of many Asian cultures, although it is hardly limited to Asian religions. It was nearly expunged from the Bible (beyond a few references to Jesus and/or John the Baptist being reincarnations of Elijah) because church elders bent on control felt that telling people they had more than one shot at getting it right made it harder to terrify them into submission and obedience (Hell does a much better job of that), but clearly people of the Mediterranean regions from which our western culture derives were as open to the idea as were those of the Indian subcontinent at one point.
It is certainly a head scratcher. If there are eight billion people on the planet today and there were only two billion a hundred and fifty or so years ago, then the mathematics of reincarnation becomes a bit...problematic, does it not? Reincarnation is curious and paradoxical, somewhat like what Richard Feyman had to say about quantum physics - if you think you understand it, you don't.
What is reincarnation, exactly? Is it even worth considering? Is it a useful concept to aid us in our growth as individuals?
Yes, no, maybe.... get out your crystal ball, because we are diving in! Reincarnation is a paradox. Even the question, 'do you believe in reincarnation'? is somewhat absurd. Let's say you DON'T believe in reincarnation, but it is real. That means that you in THIS life have a belief about your very own self that fails to include all the other 'selves' you have been until now. It's like the caboose saying it doesn't believe in the train that pulls it.
Or, let's say that you DO believe in reincarnation and it ISN'T real. Then you are creating a false sense of identity populated with former 'selves' which the one self that DOES exist tries to place on itself like articles of clothing. You're still YOU no matter how many 'yous' you have been in the past. It's this life, not those, where your attention needs to be. Imagine a guy on a date trying to impress a lady by saying, 'I may not make much now, but in a former life I was a multimillionaire!' and see how far that goes!
That's why reincarnation so easily becomes a punchline in our secular, 'logical' society. It sort of seems like one big absurdity begging to be parodied.
If it IS real, it is doubtful all those former versions of yourself are shaking their fists at you for not belieiving in it, and cursing you for not including them in what you call yourself. They had their own concerns that they took to the grave with them.
If it ISN'T real, then believing in it is just storytelling. If it's anything more than a hobby to you, then perhaps you'd be better off using your time and energy seeing to the goals, mission, responsibilities, etc. of THIS life. Even if you were an accountant in a former life, he or she is not going to help you prepare your taxes. But still, the question remains; is it something that really happens? We can't dismiss the concept of reincarnation (or rebirth) altogether, largely for two reasons. The first is the more compelling. There ARE cases of people, typically children, who have given accounts of former lives, ranging from the description of places (which turn out to exist) to clear memories of themselves as former people, with jobs and families. Some even include familiarity with other languages the child has never been exposed to.
Are there a lot of these? No, not in general population terms. Do some of them fall apart under critical examination? Of course. Do ALL of them? No. If even two or three cases involve a person being able to give an informed account of pre-birth experiences, including some familiarity with a former mother tongue - with no possibility of having come into this knowledge in any other way - then the book on the subject is clearly open.
The other is hardly a slam dunk, but I find it interesting. It has to do with prodigies. There are cases of children, even very young ones, displaying extraordinary talents, such as in the arts. As with the reason given above, there are most certainly examples of this which invite curiosity. Children who, for example, pick up a paintbrush for the first time at six and produce truly extraordinary artwork. Where did the talent come from? By any measure, prodigies are an interesting subject of inquiry into the ways of the human mind, whether or not one wishes to admit the possibility of former lives. Personally, I feel that some of these cases give every indication of a child carrying over talents acquired through former lives’ experiences. This is an opinion, nothing more. Either way, reincarnation, and the evidence as such for its existence, is not something that interests me greatly.
What DOES interest me is the question of how these past ‘yous' - if indeed they do exist - figure into a cosmos based on the principle of All being One? If, as I maintain and often declare, everything including the personality and all our thoughts and experiences, are nothing more than mere temporary expressions of Self/Source and have no 'reality' other than as such, then how might we come to look at the incarnational sojourn?
If all are One, what is the point of reincarnation/rebirth? You are EVERYTHING; you are every human who has ever lived. Heck, you are every Neanderthal who ever once lived. You are every speckle of color on every butterfly's wing. ALL of it emanates from a single Source, and that Source is what YOU are. Therefore, why even bother with multiple lifetimes as one individualized consciousness?
Think of it this way. Let's suppose that you come across a painting that strikes you. It's by an artist you have never heard of, but for the sake of clarification, let's make this artist famous. So you see a brilliant painting by Gustav Klimt, and you've never seen his work before. You are spellbound! You want to see more works by this wonderful artist. Lucky you, because it just so happens that there is a retrospective of Klimt's work at your city's museum. You go and are enchanted.
The first painting gave you some information about the artist, Gustav Klimt. His unique vision was shared with you, but only very partially. The retrospective changed that. After viewing it, you now have a more complete vision of his genius. The one painting you first saw could not possibly have conveyed as much of the artistic genius of Gustav Klimt as the retrospective exhibition did. All those works together do a much better job of revealing him to you.
Reincarnation can be likened to this. You are like one painting, and your (re)incarnating lineage is like the total oeuvre of an artist. Your many lives taken together are like a retrospective exhibition of a soul's journey.
Now, obviously, that retrospective of Klimt's work, as comprehensive and revealing as it was, still left out most of the entire picture of Klimt. His thoughts, his relationships, his meals and sexual encounters, religious beliefs, vacations, etc. Very little of the totality of the man can be understood or engaged with simply by looking at what he did with paint, brushes and canvases.
Thus, as a painting represents one small aspect of an artist, and a retrospective exhibition of his/her works represents a much larger aspect of him/her while still only representing one small aspect of the total person, similarly does the incarnational sojourn come into clarity. Klimt represents Source/Self, the retrospective exhibition represents one particular expression of Source/Self played out across lifetimes, and one painting by Klimt (the one you fell in love with) represents You! We could take it even further, of course. You could be one single brushstroke on that one painting in that one oeuvre of that one artist who was oh so much more than just his/her artistic output.
The Source expresses, as is Its nature. 'You' may have lived as an Egyptian slave working on the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and as a can can dancer in fin de siecle France, and so on, and those former lives will have influenced the person you are today. But all that is still a mere particle of your TRUE self, which is Everything and All Eternally.
~ The Who, In a Hand or a Face
Ah, reincarnation. Typically a mere punchline in our 'enlightened' western culture, it is an important and fundamental element of many Asian cultures, although it is hardly limited to Asian religions. It was nearly expunged from the Bible (beyond a few references to Jesus and/or John the Baptist being reincarnations of Elijah) because church elders bent on control felt that telling people they had more than one shot at getting it right made it harder to terrify them into submission and obedience (Hell does a much better job of that), but clearly people of the Mediterranean regions from which our western culture derives were as open to the idea as were those of the Indian subcontinent at one point.
It is certainly a head scratcher. If there are eight billion people on the planet today and there were only two billion a hundred and fifty or so years ago, then the mathematics of reincarnation becomes a bit...problematic, does it not? Reincarnation is curious and paradoxical, somewhat like what Richard Feyman had to say about quantum physics - if you think you understand it, you don't.
What is reincarnation, exactly? Is it even worth considering? Is it a useful concept to aid us in our growth as individuals?
Yes, no, maybe.... get out your crystal ball, because we are diving in! Reincarnation is a paradox. Even the question, 'do you believe in reincarnation'? is somewhat absurd. Let's say you DON'T believe in reincarnation, but it is real. That means that you in THIS life have a belief about your very own self that fails to include all the other 'selves' you have been until now. It's like the caboose saying it doesn't believe in the train that pulls it.
Or, let's say that you DO believe in reincarnation and it ISN'T real. Then you are creating a false sense of identity populated with former 'selves' which the one self that DOES exist tries to place on itself like articles of clothing. You're still YOU no matter how many 'yous' you have been in the past. It's this life, not those, where your attention needs to be. Imagine a guy on a date trying to impress a lady by saying, 'I may not make much now, but in a former life I was a multimillionaire!' and see how far that goes!
That's why reincarnation so easily becomes a punchline in our secular, 'logical' society. It sort of seems like one big absurdity begging to be parodied.
If it IS real, it is doubtful all those former versions of yourself are shaking their fists at you for not belieiving in it, and cursing you for not including them in what you call yourself. They had their own concerns that they took to the grave with them.
If it ISN'T real, then believing in it is just storytelling. If it's anything more than a hobby to you, then perhaps you'd be better off using your time and energy seeing to the goals, mission, responsibilities, etc. of THIS life. Even if you were an accountant in a former life, he or she is not going to help you prepare your taxes. But still, the question remains; is it something that really happens? We can't dismiss the concept of reincarnation (or rebirth) altogether, largely for two reasons. The first is the more compelling. There ARE cases of people, typically children, who have given accounts of former lives, ranging from the description of places (which turn out to exist) to clear memories of themselves as former people, with jobs and families. Some even include familiarity with other languages the child has never been exposed to.
Are there a lot of these? No, not in general population terms. Do some of them fall apart under critical examination? Of course. Do ALL of them? No. If even two or three cases involve a person being able to give an informed account of pre-birth experiences, including some familiarity with a former mother tongue - with no possibility of having come into this knowledge in any other way - then the book on the subject is clearly open.
The other is hardly a slam dunk, but I find it interesting. It has to do with prodigies. There are cases of children, even very young ones, displaying extraordinary talents, such as in the arts. As with the reason given above, there are most certainly examples of this which invite curiosity. Children who, for example, pick up a paintbrush for the first time at six and produce truly extraordinary artwork. Where did the talent come from? By any measure, prodigies are an interesting subject of inquiry into the ways of the human mind, whether or not one wishes to admit the possibility of former lives. Personally, I feel that some of these cases give every indication of a child carrying over talents acquired through former lives’ experiences. This is an opinion, nothing more. Either way, reincarnation, and the evidence as such for its existence, is not something that interests me greatly.
What DOES interest me is the question of how these past ‘yous' - if indeed they do exist - figure into a cosmos based on the principle of All being One? If, as I maintain and often declare, everything including the personality and all our thoughts and experiences, are nothing more than mere temporary expressions of Self/Source and have no 'reality' other than as such, then how might we come to look at the incarnational sojourn?
If all are One, what is the point of reincarnation/rebirth? You are EVERYTHING; you are every human who has ever lived. Heck, you are every Neanderthal who ever once lived. You are every speckle of color on every butterfly's wing. ALL of it emanates from a single Source, and that Source is what YOU are. Therefore, why even bother with multiple lifetimes as one individualized consciousness?
Think of it this way. Let's suppose that you come across a painting that strikes you. It's by an artist you have never heard of, but for the sake of clarification, let's make this artist famous. So you see a brilliant painting by Gustav Klimt, and you've never seen his work before. You are spellbound! You want to see more works by this wonderful artist. Lucky you, because it just so happens that there is a retrospective of Klimt's work at your city's museum. You go and are enchanted.
The first painting gave you some information about the artist, Gustav Klimt. His unique vision was shared with you, but only very partially. The retrospective changed that. After viewing it, you now have a more complete vision of his genius. The one painting you first saw could not possibly have conveyed as much of the artistic genius of Gustav Klimt as the retrospective exhibition did. All those works together do a much better job of revealing him to you.
Reincarnation can be likened to this. You are like one painting, and your (re)incarnating lineage is like the total oeuvre of an artist. Your many lives taken together are like a retrospective exhibition of a soul's journey.
Now, obviously, that retrospective of Klimt's work, as comprehensive and revealing as it was, still left out most of the entire picture of Klimt. His thoughts, his relationships, his meals and sexual encounters, religious beliefs, vacations, etc. Very little of the totality of the man can be understood or engaged with simply by looking at what he did with paint, brushes and canvases.
Thus, as a painting represents one small aspect of an artist, and a retrospective exhibition of his/her works represents a much larger aspect of him/her while still only representing one small aspect of the total person, similarly does the incarnational sojourn come into clarity. Klimt represents Source/Self, the retrospective exhibition represents one particular expression of Source/Self played out across lifetimes, and one painting by Klimt (the one you fell in love with) represents You! We could take it even further, of course. You could be one single brushstroke on that one painting in that one oeuvre of that one artist who was oh so much more than just his/her artistic output.
The Source expresses, as is Its nature. 'You' may have lived as an Egyptian slave working on the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and as a can can dancer in fin de siecle France, and so on, and those former lives will have influenced the person you are today. But all that is still a mere particle of your TRUE self, which is Everything and All Eternally.
