Death and Living Part III – Incarnation

We have discussed in the first two parts of this series, what I perceive as the misconceptions about death and the possible sources of these traditions and misconceptions. Then we covered what the Ageless Wisdom teaches on the process of the death of the physical body and the staged withdrawal of the indwelling consciousness or Soul. I would like now to address the reverse process that occurs when after a period of repose the Soul seeks again to venture into the physical world to gain more experience and also to put into practice what it has learned about functioning in that world.

The soul on its own plane does not record experiences per se. It has no gender or nationality. It has no personality and is not simply a disembodied person. It really only registers growth and is increased in its capacity to create on the physical plane through experience. Memories are available through access to the storehouse known as the Akashic Records, but as it incarnates it does not bring with it any recollections of those experiences accept in fairly rare cases where children recount events of past “lives” they have lived. This formed the basis for much of the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson. He found that in these cases physical attributes seemed to carry over as well. There are likely many more cases of this that are written off by parents as fantasy or suppressed by them for the same reason until the child is convinced that these things are dreams that never happened. It is actually fortunate in a way that we do not remember our distant past. Memories of past wrongs could impede progress just as memories of past accomplishments could lead to an inflated sense of self, another impediment.

My father used an analogy of a computer and its programmer as a utility to express the function of the Personality (the computer) and the Programmer (the Soul). Imagine a programmer who has had as his task the tracking of inventory in a company in the past (life) and now is tasked with the tracking of payroll records. His new computer has no need for the inventory records in its memory and although his expertise increased through the experience he gained and his capacity to understand computers was enhanced through that process, even the programmer has no direct use for the information that was imperative in his last assignment.

So the Soul enters a new episode with the fruits of the past in capacity of expression without the un-necessary and cumbersome information about every detail. Residing in the causal body, a sheath of very fine and rarified matter on the upper mental planes it extends from itself a thread of light known as the anthakarana. Strung upon this thread are the Physical, Astral, and Mental “permanent atoms” containing all of the capacities it has gained in the experiences of the past and that it will use in constructing the new mental, emotional, and physical bodies of the coming incarnation. Don’t get hung up on the word atom as it is represented by science. That picture in your head is a cartoon anyway. The word is simply a representation of an indivisible unit of some substance. Having split atoms in the laboratory for decades, science itself admits this is a misnomer. We are talking about the smallest possible remnant of each of the three aspects of personality that is carried with the Soul in order to create a new form. I know it is hard to wrap your head around a concept like this but your physical body was created from a single cell and all the instructions to create a multi-billion celled infant in the course of nine months was held in a strand of DNA. Think of this as “Psychic DNA”.

This foray into the “three worlds” of evolution is done with purpose and in order to accomplish certain ends or growth, so it chooses a situation that will foster the possibility of that growth. Souls are said to incarnate in groups with so called “karmic ties”. A child born into a family today may have been that family’s matriarch in generations past, or someone with particularly close ties to one of the family members. If you have heard the complaint that some child has not chosen his or her parents, the Ageless Wisdom teachings contradict that notion directly. You are where you are out of your own choice and creation. This is true within a single incarnation and the much longer all encompassing life of the Soul as well.

In the perfect economy of nature nothing is lost and the new bodies will reflect the capacities and level of refinement acquired through previous incarnations. So, if I am eating and living in a way that is really purifying my body, I will theoretically carry over that purity into the creation of the next one. For this reason, it is never too late to do anything to make amends for past wrongs, even on one’s death bed. It is never too late to begin purifying the physical body, strengthening the mind or subduing the emotions. “I’m too old to change” doesn’t hold water here.

The Soul broods over an essentially useless body through the age of infancy and appropriates the physical body between the ages of four and seven. This corresponds to western psychology’s assertion of the formative years. These are the years in which outside influences of environment set the stage for all further development. The second crisis in the development of the individual happens between 14 and 17 years when the emotional body is appropriated. Anyone who has had a teenager in their home can attest to this as an emotional turmoil of the highest degree. The lower self always rebels against the imposition of control by the Soul and discipline is needed to further development. In these early stages there really is no choice. The mental body is appropriated between the ages of 25 and 28. This does not mean that the personality is fully integrated. Far from it. What is happening up to this point is really a re-capitulation of the previous spiritual development.

The soul now has a vehicle which is fully capable of responding to its impressions, if it is interested. Now is when the personality’s choices really come into the picture. You have to grow up. You don’t have to behave as a grownup. I know men in their 50’s who act like (and think like) they are still 12. If it is going to happen, the Personality really opens the door to this impression, either voluntarily or as the result of some crisis. The person has to begin to identify with the inner thinker rather than the outer expression. Sometimes this is a result of dissatisfaction and sometimes it comes as a result of the loss of all that with which it had previously identified itself. Life crises are often the focal point of revelation.

Eckhard Tolle points to being about to lose everything and in deep despair when he describes going down a tunnel in his consciousness releasing everything and emerging into bliss. He spent the better part of the next five months homeless and on park benches in what he describes as pure presence; a state of open, non judgmental consciousness or enlightenment. All that had been the source of “self”, the mental constructs and associations was gone, leaving just the witness or Soul.

I don’t believe that it is necessary to lose everything to gain enlightenment. We just have to lose our unhealthy and unproductive attachments to the material world. Revelation is said to come as a series of recognitions leading to a change in identification. You are a soul. Recognition of this and then the subsequent functioning as a Soul in the world but not of the world is the task at hand. Your level of accomplishment at this task will represent the foundation upon which the next one will be constructed.

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Death and Living Part 2

The soul’s contact with the body (bodies) is maintained through a twofold channel or thread. It is a literal bridge of light from the Soul to its mechanism. The first, called in Sanskrit the Sutratma is the life thread and is anchored in the heart center, one of the 7 major centers or Chakras found in the etheric or energetic counterpart of the physical body. The second is the anthakarana or consciousness thread which is anchored at the top of the head at the Crown center. It is sometimes referred to as the “Rainbow Bridge”. We know that we can be alive but unconscious, and this is a result of the temporary withdrawal of that contact. Meditation is the process by which the anthakarana is developed and strengthened and the conscious contact with the soul is increased, allowing it more influence in the “life” of the practitioner.

The withdrawal of the soul’s support is sometimes accompanied at the moment of death by the appearance of a blue spark coming out of the top of the head. This is one of the points of exit usually used when we are dealing with an advanced human being, because that is where the consciousness is centered, rather than in the solar plexus of the less developed individual. I shared a flight with a Registered Nurse, who by the way shared very little else in the way of beliefs or philosophy other than a fairly open mind. When I told her I did not believe in an anthropomorphic and interfering God she said “oh, I’m sorry”. I couldn’t help but feel the same for her. She told me she had seen this occurrence 7 times in her career.

At that moment of withdrawal the body is no longer subject to the cohesive and coordinating energy of the soul and begins to decompose. The etheric or energetic structure remains for a period of time and the life force of the cells themselves is still present. This is why an organ can be removed and used in another body. The cells are still alive and when placed under the influence of the other person’s soul, can begin functioning again along with the normal repair and rebuilding that replaces all of those cells over time. Keeping with the statement from Part I, over the course of 7-10 years this will no longer be foreign material but each and every cell will have been re-created under the influence of the dweller of the “new” body in which this organ now resides.

Cremation is a recommended practice in esoteric circles because it hastens the decomposition of the Physical and Etheric bodies, freeing the consciousness or soul more quickly to continue its journey.

The Soul now resides in the Astral or emotional body, but this too must be dropped when the time is right. Depending on the strength of the astral body and its attachments to the physical world, this can take a prolonged period of time. People have long reported having been “visited” by loved ones just after passing. This can be caused by strong astral or emotional ties between the two people.

In some cases of addiction or other irresistible drives toward material satisfaction the Soul may become “earthbound” and wander the astral plane searching for satisfaction it can never have without a physical body. This is a cause of possession, which is only recognized as such in the most dramatic cases but can occur without the person possessed realizing it, even after the fact. In an impaired state either due to intoxication or severe emotional distress the host is overcome by an entity seeking expression and loses control. The next day he may not know what came over him, but he knows that he was “not himself” the night before.

When the Astral vehicle is dropped the soul remains in the mental vehicle, a more refined and subtler body of the Manasic plane. Under certain conditions the astral shell may go on even though uninhabited. In some cases when a psychic is contacting a person who passed long ago, they are merely contacting a resilient thought form or astral shell and have not really contacted the being who had at one time occupied that shell.

Once the mental body is likewise abandoned the Soul now occupies the Causal Body on the upper levels of the Manasic Plane, which in Biblical texts is referred to as the Temple of Solomon. A temple “made without hands” or mortar or brick. It is here that it will process the experiences of physical form life and prepare for the next cycle on the Wheel of Life in a state known as “Devachan”.

When the soul has processed it’s “life”, and is ready to take in a new round of experiences, it begins a new cycle, endowed with the heightened capabilities and capacities it has gained through all of its experiences. The Soul, on its own level is the product of its experiences just like the man. It just has more of them. It brings these capabilities to its next incarnation without the memories of the specific experiences, just as we bring our entire childhood with very few specific memories to each situation we encounter as adults. You can see behavior in people sometimes and just know that it is the product of something that happened when that person was a child. He does not even remember the event, but its effects are obvious.

This is the basis of psychological evaluation. We even refer to the psychologist as an analyst. Unfortunately, Psychology which is the knowledge of the soul or psyche has devolved into a science of behavioral modification. Modifying the personality rather than understanding the soul. It’s like the new math; getting the answer without understanding the process. This can just bury problems deeper rather than solving them.

The soul re-enters the physical realm with specific goals and chooses the environment that will most likely allow for the needed growth and development as well as the payment of what is called karmic debt. St Gregory, in the third century AD said “It is absolutely necessary that the soul be healed and purified. If this does not take place during its life on earth it must be accomplished in future lives.” The problem is that it enters the world in a body that is, for all practical intents, useless. This new body or, in its totality, “personality” is then basically programmed by other personalities, our parents and teachers. We have to overcome this programming through self discovery as adults so that we can realize our purpose.

If you are reading this article it is an indication of your desire to discover your true self because it is a challenge to the programming that most of us have undergone to question those things that are presented as absolute, like the nature of life and death or the existence of heaven and hell. I hope what I have had to say here has been helpful in your quest. Next month we will address the process by which the soul creates and takes hold of its mechanism.