Wordgems - Life & Death: Reincarnation

I have reviewed the works of many writers/researchers on the subject of reincarnation.

There are different points of view -- two primary views -- with some saying that reincarnation is virtually the only way for one to progress spiritually, while others asserting that one can progress to higher levels of development while living on the OtherSide.

But it's a bit more troubling than this. There are researchers who have worked with mediums, or have gained information from ordinary people via hypnosis, for decades and have transcribed thousand of testimonies. Some of these researchers tap into a group of individuals who uniformly claim that there is no reincarnation; while other credible researchers find that it is a reality.

I have been troubled by the fact that some researchers, of credible and high standing, who have gathered information from the OtherSide, in some cases, for decades, speak to entities who seem to know nothing of reincarnation and flatly deny its use; but other researchers, speaking from the results of a large corpus of information, essentially live in the thick of the reincarnation process with soul-entities spending much time preparing for their next venture to the earth plane.

These two views seem to reveal two separate worlds in the afterlife -- it would be like travelling to the east coast and finding that they've never heard of the Fourth of July and fireworks celebrations, but in the west discovering that people spend much of the year preparing for this summer event.

I discussed this issue of apparent contradiction with Victor Zammit, former attorney and leading writer on evidence for the afterlife. (www.victorzammit.com )

Victor, just a postscript to the initial discussion below.

I just finished reviewing Arthur Findlay's "The Way of Life." This is another one of those reputable sources which denies the reality of multiple earth lives. Findlay quotes sources which claim to derive information from those "who lived thousands of years ago on earth."

Since both Findlay and Silver Birch have made appearances at your Silver Cord meetings, it might be worthwhile to ask them if they still abide by past-stated views.

One thing that I find odd about this is that a particular information source tends to be fully in one camp or the other. One might more readily suspect a variety of opinions coming through, especially in those cases when a researcher has been gathering data over many years.

It could be said that a particular medium -- e.g. Sloan who worked with Findlay -- might be tapping into a certain strata of enlightenment, thereby skewing the results toward a particular bias. But if that is the case, what are we to do with testimonies purportedly coming from those who "lived thousands of years ago" and presumably know something about this subject? If these ancient entities themselves have avoided reincarnation for that period of time, and claim to know no other method of progression, how can we dismiss this testimony. Of course, we could say that Findlay is accessing mischievous elements, but if we do that, Findlay's work, and that of many others, must be thrown out as unreliable.

Sometimes I wonder if both of these major views are correct . What if choice is the key factor in play here? Maybe there is more than one royal road to perfection. Maybe, as some say, the universe's meaning is that which we give to it, and maybe some of us take the long way home.

Maybe our essential dignity as human beings, which demands our right to choose and to assume responsibility for our own lives and destiny, truly does trump all -- even if reincarnation is the most efficient method of growth.

[Maybe reincarnation is used by some souls, maybe most, especially in the beginning of a soul's journey toward maturity, but later one might come into a heightened awareness allowing one to entertain options for progression via continued reincarnation or by other methods.

[And maybe those who opt for one mode of growth as opposed to another tend to associate together, which might explain why some researchers find unanimity of opinion among certain soul groups.]

Best regards,

Wayne Becker

From: Wayne Becker
Subject: RE: a question about reincarnation
To: "Victor Zammit" <victorzammit@optushome.com.au>
Date: Friday, August 15, 2008, 7:31 AM

Thank you!

--- On Fri, 8/15/08, Victor Zammit <victorzammit@optushome.com.au> wrote:

From: Victor Zammit <victorzammit@optushome.com.au>
Subject: RE: a question about reincarnation
To: beckercapital@yahoo.com
Date: Friday, August 15, 2008, 2:10 AM

Dear Wayne,

The critical thing with anything to do with the afterlife is �authority�. Who has the authority to tell us about what really happens in the afterlife?
I tend to accept Silver Birch�s perception: he has passed the test of time � over fifty years of transmissions from the afterlife. And he says he gets the critical information from the higher sources. He�s reliable � and over the decades those who closely studied him, found him to be highly credible.
Now as to reincarnation: a similar question was asked to Silver Birch. His answer is that spirits transmit information from the level of realm they are in from the afterlife. So that if a spirit relates information from the lower end of the realm of the light, the information may not be as good as a spirit relating information from the upper end of the realm of the light.
Accordingly, Silver Birch � and other highly credible sources � do state there is reincarnation. There has to be because we are continuously evolving. When we live on earth we create good and bad karma � but every transgression creates a karmic debt which as to be paid sooner or later. It is unlikely for anyone to learn all the lessons in one lifetime without having to come back. But once all karmic debts created on physical earth have been paid, there is no need to return.
Now, as to Francine, not wanting to return to earth, Silver Birch would argue that if negative karmic debts were created on physical earth, they�d have to be paid back on physical earth � unless they were transgressions which could be paid in the afterlife. But one thing for sure, on earth, we learn spiritual lessons very rapidly compared to learning them in the afterlife.
That clear?
Victor

From: Wayne Becker
Sent: Friday, 15 August 2008
To: 2008@victorzammit.com
Subject: a question about reincarnation

Dear Victor and Wendy:

Thank you for this week's report.

I think that the subject of reincarnation is one most troubling to me. There are those who deny that this process exists: e.g. Dr. Wickland's book; the testimonies via Emily French; but many others affirm reincarnation: Michael Newton's 7000 case studies; the work of Brian Weiss, and many others.

Personally, I wish reincarnation were not a reality as I have no desire to return to this world. But the evidence, it seems to me at this point, leans in favor of the reality of this process.

After all of your years of study in these matters, what is your best sense regarding this issue? Is it real or is it not?

Or, if it is real, is it a matter of choice? Some, in this camp, say that the decision to return can only be delayed but not avoided; others even say that there are timid spirits on the other side who would never even consider coming to this world of suffering, and that anyone who does is deemed to be a hero!

I am remembering just now something from one of Sylvia Browne's books in which she relates the testimony of her guide, Francine, who asserts that she has decided, because of a very harsh life in the 1500s, that she will never return to this earth; that she will progress on the other side, albeit at a slower rate - this, if true, sounds like a wonderful option to me given the fact that, they say, time has no meaning over there and what's the hurry anyway!

My pursuit of a spiritual path began 15 years ago with books by and about Edgar Cayce, the famous American healer who, during trance, often tapped into the "Akashic Record" to examine a person's past lives and the relationship of his or her current afflictions to those lives. After reading Dr. Ian Stevenson's Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and psychiatrist Brian Weiss' Many Lives, Many Masters, I pretty much accepted reincarnation as fact.

Then I read the works of the great mystic and seer Emanuel Swedenborg and was puzzled that he only alluded to reincarnation and was very vague on the subject. I moved on to A Course in Miracles and read, "In the ultimate sense, reincarnation is impossible. There is no past or future, and the idea of rebirth into a body has no meaning either once or many times."

Intriguing books by Rosemary Brown (Unfinished Symphonies), Suzy Smith (The Book of James) and Betty Eadie (Embraced By The Light) rejected reincarnation, at least in the way most people think of it. "Reincarnation, as usually understood, does not really happen," the spirit of the great composer Franz Liszt purportedly communicated through Brown. "The truth is subtly different from the teachings of a reincarnationist on earth."

Thus, there seemed to be strong evidence for reincarnation but, at the same time, seemingly credible mystics and spirits communicating through mediums were saying, or so I interpreted them, that it's not so. I didn't know what to believe.

Then I found the books of Silver Birch, the spirit entity who spoke through the entranced Maurice Barbanell of England for nearly 50 years. "There is reincarnation, but not in the sense in which it is generally expounded," Silver Birch said, going on to explain that the individual personality on earth is a small part of the individuality to which he or she belongs. He likened it to a diamond with its many facets, pointing out that the personality on earth is but one facet of the diamond.

"... there are what you call �group souls,' a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work," Silver Birch further explained.

Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the pioneers of psychical research, purportedly communicated through several credible mediums following his death in 1901 and discussed group souls. One of those mediums was Geraldine Cummins of Ireland, a trance automatist. Much of what Myers had to say through the hand of Cummins is set forth in The Road to Immortality, first published in 1932. "While I was on earth, I belonged to a group-soul, but its branches and the spirit - which might be compared to the roots - were in the invisible," Myers wrote. "Now, if you would understand psychic evolution, this group-soul must be studied and understood. For instance, it explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can be removed only by the doctrine of reincarnation. You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true. It is our life and yet not our life."

Myers went on to explain that a soul belonging to the group of which he was part lived a previous life and built for him a framework for his own earthly life. The spirit - the bond of the group soul - manifests, he said, many times on earth. "We are all of us distinct," he continued, "though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being." He further explained that a group soul might contain twenty souls, a hundred souls, or a thousand souls.

"When your Buddhist speaks of the cycle of birth, of man's continual return to earth, he utters but a half-truth," Myers went on. "And often a half-truth is more inaccurate than an entire misstatement. I shall not live again on earth, but a new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter into the pattern of karma I have woven for him on earth."

Myers likened the soul to a spectator caught within the spell of some drama outside of its actual life, perceiving all the consequences of acts, moods, and thoughts of a kindred soul. He further pointed out that there are an infinite variety of conditions in the invisible world and that he made no claim to being infallible. He called it a "general rule" based on what he had learned and experienced on the Other Side.

In 1918, even before the communications by Myers, Liszt, and Silver Birch, a spirit entity identifying himself as Johannes of Glastonbury, a monk who had lived from 1497 to 1533, communicated by means of automatic writing a number of messages to Frederick Bligh Bond, the director of excavations at Glastonbury Abbey, concerning the layout of the abbey grounds in his day. Johannes alluded to a group soul when it was suggested by another spirit entity that Johannes might be "earthbound" and his recollection colored somewhat by "clinging to vanished dreams." In fractured English, Johannes responded: "Why cling I to that which is not? It is I, and it is not I, butt parte of me which dwelleth in the past is bound to that which my carnal soul loved and called home these many years. Yet, I, Johannes, amm of many partes, and ye better parte doeth other things - Laus, Laus Deo - only that part which remembreth clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet."

Silver Birch also likened the soul to an iceberg in which one small portion is manifesting and the greater portion not manifesting. He apparently was referring to what others have called the "Higher Self," the "Greater Self," or the "Oversoul."

Trying to explain reincarnation to humans, Silver Birch added, is like trying to explain the color of the sky to someone who has been blind from birth. "You have no standard of comparison," he said. However, he stressed that the individuality of the "facets" within the Group Soul is maintained.

In his 1939 book, Reincarnation for Everyman, writer Shaw Desmond states that there are two approaches to reincarnation - the "terrestrial" and the "celestial." The former view has the individual returning again and again as the same man, while the latter view has man "solely as spirit and his temporary inhabitancy of the physical body as but a tiny projection of the Greater Self, which is the real man."

I came to realize that aforementioned mystics and spirit communicators may have been rejecting reincarnation in the terrestrial sense but not in the celestial. "Think of an atom," Liszt told Brown. "It is made up of protons and neutrons which all go to make up the nucleus surrounded by electrons. That is what a soul is like. These separate parts are held together in the nucleus, but the parts can be isolated. And it is the isolated parts of the nucleus of the soul so to speak which can manifest as various personalities in your world. These are what the reincarnationalist calls different incarnations - but they all belong to one soul which can choose which particular part of the soul it wishes to manifest."

When Bond asked another of the Glastonbury spirits, a more fluent speaking one, about reincarnation, the spirit replied: "You understand not reincarnation, nor can we explain. What in you reincarnates, do you think? How can you find words? Blind gropers after immutable facts, which are not of your sphere of experience."

...the soul can have many facets. Some of these facets can reincarnate in your world and bring added lustre to the diamond of the soul.

When birth is to be achieved and a physical body prepared for its existence, spirit becomes individualized and incarnates into your world. There is nothing new in that spirit. It is taking individual form. It is becoming a person. When he or she is developed and leaves your world, it is a facet of a larger diamond to which it adds its contributions.

�Are we then forced to come into this world if we do not wish to do so? I always thought it is our choice.�

This is not always the case. There is a choice in our world as there is a choice in yours. When the soul knows it has work to do, it will incarnate into your world. There are some who have no desire to do so, but they come because they have work to do, or they have a karmic condition to fulfil.

Reincarnation is a very complex subject. People who say it's true and people who say it's not true can have identical beliefs. I'm not sure our time on earth provide us with the experiences that are needed to correctly understand it.

"There are also what I call facets of the one diamond. This is the over-soul, the greater individuality, and the facets are aspects of it which incarnate into your world for experiences that will add lustre to the diamond when they return to it.
...
Also there are people who, although separate persons, are aspects of the one individuality. For instance, my medium, his wife and myself are parts of one individual. So you can have facets of the one guide. You can call these extensions if you like, but it comes to the same thing. Only an infinitesimal part of the whole individuality can be manifested in physical form on earth."

I have seen this notion of spirits retaining individuality but forming higher level entity in other writings too and I don't really understand it. However, there is reason to say that reincarnation is true and also reason to say that it is not true. It might be that the individuals don't reincarnate but the "over-soul" does send some part of itself to incarnate again. It begs the question, "what am I?"

After death, is there a time when the individual merges back into the oversoul and is that like regaining lost memories? I don't know. I wonder if consciousnesses can merge to form a new entity while the individuals that make it up retain their individuality. I don't know if that is true. One explanation of God is that at the highest level of the spirit world advanced beings form a collective consciousness while retaining their individualities.

When you ask if reincarnation is true you also need to understand that there are different doctrines of reincarnation. Theosophists believe that the spirit goes into a sort of nether region until they reincarnate rather than returning to a spirit world and studying their and preparing for subsequent life. Having that wrong belief about reincarnation in life leads spirits to remain earthbound and obsess children in their attempts to reincarnate. (See Thirty Years Among The Dead by Carl Wickland http://www.spiritwritings.com/ThirtyYearsAmongTheDead.html)

When people who come from this philosophical background ask spirits if reincarnation is true, the spirits may very well tell them that reincarnation is not true because of the above ideas expressed by Silver Birch and because the wrong view of reincarnation has dangerous consequences.

Q.Is it true that persons can reincarnate into different races, thereby losing trace of their loved ones? This would appear to be a great calamity?

A.It does not present a proper picture of what is involved in reincarnation. It is not a calamity, because all human earthly relationships do not necessarily endure. When the Nazarene was in your world and they told him about about his mother being present, he asked: "Who is my mother? Who is my father?" The larger soul never incarnates in its entirety in matter. That portion of which you are aware in an earthly body is only a splinter and not the whole. Other splinters may incarnate at different periods and in different nationalities. The splinters may have earthly and even astral relationships, but these need not be a spiritual relationship.

What will always endure is the love, not the blood tie. If there are love and the blood tie, then the bond, because it is a willing bond, will continue in the worlds beyond yours.

Editor's note: I am confused about talk of a "group soul" and our participation in that. One of the above writers saw a possible connection between this idea and the notion that, on the higher levels of existence, the God-principle seems to be composed of large numbers of highly-developed beings. Is the "group soul" a type of that distant cosmic union?

It occurred to me that, possibly, the "nucleus" of the group soul could be another union, that of two persons, two soulmates, comprising "one individual," as the teaching seems to denote. Is the soulmate union a kind of basis upon which further union is built? The "group soul" almost seems to be referred to as a single individual. Is the soulmate union an even more basic element of this "individual"?

We have no point of reference for such conceptions. I am reminded of the humorous little book Flatland, a speculation about the 4th dimension, an attempt to explain a 3-dimensional world to 2-dimensional entities. Continuing with this idea, somewhere in my notes, it's been stated that a 1-dimensional line is a collection of points; a 2-dimensional plane is a collection of lines; a 3-dimensional cube is a collection of planes -- so what would be next in this sequence of progression? a collection of cubes of the 4th dimension?

I can't visualize that! But maybe I'm like the character in Flatland who keeps crying "upward, not northward!" -- that is, one from the 2nd dimension unable to fathom the next dimensional step. I have a theory that the "group soul," something that Silver Birch keeps saying is hard to explain, is a kind of 4th-dimensional concept that has no meaning to 3rd-dimensional unfortunates such as ourselves - but which is, nevertheless, the next logical step in the evolutionary progression.

Another allusion to Flatland that might help: there's a scene in which a 2nd-dimensional creature becomes alarmed at the sight of a 3rd-dimensional visitor and attributes what appears to be fantastic abilities of the visitor to demonism. I'm reminded of this funny incident in the book as I gauge my own reaction to becoming part of a "group soul" -- not exactly what this 3rd-dimensional being had in mind as a good time in the AfterLife! ha, ha! But before we, too, become "alarmed" at what may appear to us as a threat to our sense of individuality we should remember that the line is still a line when it becomes part of the plane; and the plane is still a plane when it becomes part of the cube.

And I trust that we shall still be ourselves, even as members of a "group soul," if that is our destiny.

Our present system of existence, which so highly values personhood, responsibility, and freedom to choose, all of which comprise the essential dignity of humanity, will not -- Borg-like -- suddenly find itself stripped of individuality to become part of some mindless collective.

On the Voice of Conscience

On Reincarnation

On Personality vs. Individuality