A Qabalistic View Of Reincarnation

I wonder how many of you greeted the Undines this morning or whether you made a sour face at them and said, Oh God, rain. There's quite a difference in attitude. You know, we as Qabalists should at least try, naturally we will not always succeed being human beings, but we should at least try to see the magic and the beauty and the things that we overlook because they seem to cause a little inconvenience at times now I have always insisted that when the wind blows we should decide that god is making love to us through the elemental kingdom of the the sylphs, because the sylphs are the rulers of the air kingdom, you might say. They are the living spirits of air. And when it rains, we should certainly feel that God is washing our face and our hair. We're the kind who like to feel the rain in our hair. Most of us cover it up very tightly, of course, and we hold things like, well, gee, I'll probably catch a cold. We have have umbrellas and rain caps and such, instead of having that feeling of the embrace of God through the living spirits of God. And of course, sooner or later, we will all know that what I'm talking about in terms of filth at the moment and salamanders is not poetic imagery.

It's true someday you'll experience it directly and you'll know that the elements of life are magical living expressions of God and you'll walk out to greet your brothers the rain and the wind and the fire and the earth at any rate I see that the filth and the which are always involved you know with the undines didn't frighten you because here you are imagine being frightened by that which keeps us alive the waters of life and we need it so much here that this seems to have nothing to do with a cabalistic view of reincarnation and yet it does at least we can make it have something to do with it by pointing out that all consciousness is a continuously continuously evolving unfoldment from level to level and that the evolution of what we call the elemental or angelic kingdom goes parallel with the human kingdom and indeed each helps the other to unfold on the subconscious level there's nothing but living life so that we couldn't have fashioned ourselves a body in which and through which to live were it not for the cooperation we get from what we call the elemental kingdom because our bodies are made up out of the elements earth fire air and water we call it but the essence of the element the spiritual substance behind it is the real consciousness and this is what we build so the elemental kingdom evolves through us and we evolve through it and the more we learn to love the essence of life in the different expressions the more beautifully will we use an incarnation which is in it sometimes in a sense an imprisonment of consciousness actually Actually, that's what you could call it, within a framework for certain types of growth.

But let's consider together the Qabalistic view of reincarnation.

Of course, I'm sure most of you are aware of the fact that even though our Western Bible, the Holy Scriptures, contain very few references to reincarnation that this is not because there's been an absence of such mention remember that during that special conference several centuries after Christ when the church fathers got together to decide what is to be considered Holy Scripture and what is not they very carefully took out all the books written by the various prophets and schools of thought which alluded in any way to reincarnation and you will find a great deal of mention of reincarnation if you make your researches in the Apocrypha that's what we call the books which the Christian and fathers threw away.

And that's one of the very sad and tragic things which occurred, incidentally, to the development of the Christian religion and to the whole evolutionary factor of our Western world, because to throw away the concept of reincarnation ties up the consciousness in some of the most tragic manners, because how are we going to look out at a world where some people are very obviously moronic and some are very obviously brilliant, where some are without question cruel and tyrannical and others are undoubtedly kind and compassionate. How are you going to look out at a world where some suffer tremendous sorrows and others live a life of ease? How are you to look out upon such a world if you think that we live just one life and figure that considering we that there must be some type of creator the divine creator how could you look out at such a life and say that the divine creator is just and therefore good no thinking person really could now could they to see the inequalities the very obvious inequalities which exist little babies if there was only one incarnation in one life how are you going to account for the poor innocent baby who's born to being an imbecile or an idiot or without a chance in the environment in the various ways. You would have to think of God as being very demoniacal if there were only one life, if you think about it at all. And so the concepts of self-reliability, the concepts of self-responsibility and of justice suffered very greatly in the whole subconsciousness of Western man as a result of throwing out the very definite teachings regarding reincarnation.

I was very happy that our beloved apprentice builder, Bill Dawn, picked the reading he did from the Bible for this morning, which showed that certainly Jesus was saying that John the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elias and another place in the Bible. You see, they overlooked some of it. They were very careful, the old so-called Christian fathers, to try to eliminate all mention of reincarnation from the holy books, but they couldn't eliminate all of them quite, and a few were left over. That was one of them and another place where Jesus asked who say people that I am and what he was asking very unquestionably is who do people say I am the reincarnation of if you'll excuse me ending the sentence with a preposition which is one of my many weaknesses now the truth of the matter is that in the mystical teachings and the hidden wisdom of Israel down through the ages through the Essene various Essene communities certainly reincarnation was taught all those who went in for the deeper religious training of the mystical part of religion were very well versed in it furthermore the people of that time were well versed in it in any case that is the concepts and ideas uh relating to reincarnation and we just did want to explain to you in case you have failed to read about it in any other book why it is that the Christian religion Fails to have this concept of reincarnation. It isn't that it wasn't there in the original scriptures It's just remember this They just decided What books are to be are to be considered true and holy and this decision was based entirely on what they decided?

Was to be the dogma of the Christian religion, which was utterly different from what Jesus intended as as certainly all of us should realize by now.

True Christianity is not what it developed into when you consider the Inquisition and other things that occurred, but then it's human nature, unevolved, which does these things. And we want to try to understand reincarnation from the really mystical aspect and from the hidden points of view rather than from what is usually thought of as the obvious. We listen to so many adorable, wonderful aspirants when they discuss reincarnation, for example, saying, well, I must have been very horrible or I must have been cruel and so on in order to have had this kind of terrible experience and that kind of awful experience. And in the same manner, they'll look at their brothers and sister, we mean this in the spiritual sense, their fellow man, and if they see sorrow, if they see misery, if they see despair, they will think they are being so spiritual when they say, well, he only brought it on himself. Did Jesus say that? Is this the mark of spirituality?

So you see when people lack compassion when they lack insight and perception they will use any teaching to prove their point and to express their lack of harmony with the rest of life they will be indicating merely the absence of their own feeling of unity the absence of their own ability for what is called in modern psychology empathy even such a sublime aspect of the spiritual teachings is reincarnation in a sense you see you want to always remember that whenever we open our mouths the only thing we give away is ourselves the only thing we think that we are being so wise or that we are spouting philosophy or that we are showing ourselves as being all the various things that we think we are because we're playing this role but our very attitude the things we have to say both about ourselves and our fellow man give away only one thing to the observant human being and that is what is the state of consciousness of that person just like we just showed you a a person who can fold his arms and look upon the suffering of another and say, well, he only brought it on himself.

You know what he's really showing, and yet he thinks he's showing a perception of spiritual verities. Not at all. And nothing could be a more incorrect interpretation of reincarnation in any case. Of course, you must realize one can never discuss reincarnation without discussing along with it its twin, which in the Eastern thought is called karma.

And in the Western thought, we choose to call it the motion of life because karma has taken on certain connotations in the mind. We have come to think of karma as our comeuppances, so to speak, so that our subconsciousness has become imbued with an idea of painfulness, whenever we think of things like karma.

And so if things go wrong, we sigh and we say, oh dear, I guess it's my karma.

But if something beautiful happens, I don't think I've heard people say, oh, joy of joy, this is my karma.

Now why?

What is this focus on expecting that what occurs to us, which is unhappy, is the result of our past, but what is good is not the result of our past if we want to give the past the causative factor. Of course, that's an incorrect cause, by the way, kabbalistically speaking, and it's a very difficult concept for us to get to understand, but we bring it in from time to time in various different ways, and we'll try to show it in another special manner this morning. The teachings regarding reincarnation as we view it, and we feel that we have a pretty accurate view, just like most people who feel that the way they see it is the right way. I'm afraid that we share this human weakness with them.

Now, the Qabalistic thinking about reincarnation, to just try to bring it down into some of the highlighted points, which, remember, doesn't give the full story, is pretty much like this. When God made Adam out of the dust of the ground, if you'll remember, this is poetic speech, what he did with the dust of the ground, if you interpret it Kabbalistically, really is the substance of God's own livingness. And this is an immaterial thing. It has nothing to do with physical matter at that point at all though we start experiencing it as a physical thing because of developing a consciousness that is able to make demarcations of thought and the moment you have a thought you have an outline and the moment you have an outline you can say you've developed a form when you think of the the picture in which you pour water.

You've made a form in your mind, and it's in this sense, and you've made it with the substance of mind. Always keep that in mind.

And of course, our scientists at this point, bless their hearts, they keep coming to the fore in the last 50 years or so, and keep bringing more and more proof of the Qabalistic teachings teachings so that I have developed quite a soft spot towards the particular branches of science that have done this, especially the astronomy and physics, which has highlighted the Qabalistic ideas, although they give it different names, very scientific names. But when you consider that our modern science tells us that everything is made up out of atoms, and of course if you take an atom and try to analyze it. You really can't, not as a physical thing, though it's said to have a nucleus of force with electrons that whirl around it, similar to a solar system, a center with planets around it. This, incidentally, is said to fill all space, and you can call that the dust of the ground because that is exactly what the Qabalah meant.

Now, the physical universe, the atoms that are spread or the various particles because you have the separate parts of the particles that make up an atom. These permeate all space and everything is made up out of what we see and experience as the particles brought together into certain forms or shapes. But they're really nothing more nor less than electrical charges. I mean, let's call it electrical charges.

They're energy centers.

And the energy centers, those who are intuitive, those who experience the supernormal aspect of it, these energy centers come from pure consciousness.

And we experience this pure consciousness in terms of what we call the physical universe. And when we experience a form, it's because pure consciousness, let's call it the consciousness of God, is holding a thought. That doesn't mean that the universe is unreal if there's nothing except consciousness and consciousness divine consciousness holding forms in its consciousness then whatever has form is automatically an indication that God has created something in his mind whether it's you or me or the table or the rock whether we are the instruments it's still God acting through us so god shaping adam out of the dust of the ground is really shape making a form like himself in his own image and likeness remember which means with the powers of consciousness out of the substance of life and the substance of life is an immortal and eternal thing you must bear this in mind and the consciousness of god is not dependent on the substance it uses its own substance to experience various forms so you and I we could say how did we start these rounds which we call in reincarnation actually in a sense you could say we started it as a dustmote we started it as a center of of the consciousness of God, being compressed by God, in God, of God, and for God, in order to develop more and more expanded centers of its own self-awareness and self-power.

Now, in the consciousness of the divine, remember how it says in the Bible, a day is as a thousand years therefore in the consciousness of the divine what to us works out in the slow moment by moment hour by hour day by day and incarnation by incarnation process in the all at one eternal now simultaneous consciousness of the divine mind is a completed thing so if you want to start to understand the idea of reincarnation as seen by qabalah what you want to realize is this that you and everything that exists from before time have been an aspect of the divine consciousness consciousness, that you, that which you say, call I, is a God conscious, even though at the moment it's absorbed in the act of being John or Mary or Joan, you know. It is the power of its own I, which is the divine power and the only power that there is, that has been going through a line of self experience from working through by holding the consciousness and a compression first to be able to experience the self as a living form in a single cell and then in a double cell and then bringing it together in an organization until you have more and more complex forms because isn't that how your body grew right in your mother's womb every single one and how How did you learn to finally get yourself born as a human infant?

You went through incarnations before you even seemed to have a human form at all. In other words, your human form was the form of something like a worm, say, how many trillion years ago in time and space, but it was human. The embryo, we're just pointing this out to you, the embryo when it's when the egg is first fertilized the ovum is first fertilized by the sperm of the father is nothing but a single cell then it divides into a double cell and yet they they stay together in an organization then it divides some more you look like nothing your body right in this incarnation when you were growing it in your mother's womb looked like nothing but a worm at one point at another at another point it looked like a fish you even had the gills you even had the gills you know that at another point you looked like a monkey and you had a tail but uh haven't you at all times from the beginning of the time that sperm entered that ovum haven't you been a human embryo you see people get themselves all confused they think when they hear about the idea of reincarnation of having gone through what are called lower forms that that means we weren't always human you were always human while you were growing that body even when you looked like a fish and a worm and a single-celled creature because your consciousness had the pattern of what it is to be when it finishes itself growing, no matter what stage you looked upon.

Therefore, the Qabalistic view of reincarnation definitely involves your recognition that you, as a center of divine consciousness, have been experiencing all the forms of livingness from the single protozoa, the most primitive so-called form, and as you learned how to work your consciousness to hold that kind of uh vibrant form in your mind so that it collected the energy of life and the substance of god into an experienceable form that seems physical then you went on with your consciousness you had that form so you died there is no such thing as dying you were through with that form so you let it go back to its constituents that it served its purpose then you took your consciousness and you started working on the next more complex thing just like going to school and first you learn how to do letter a and then you learn how to do letter b and c so you went through more and more complex forms and the history of the embryo right in the mother's womb tells you the exact story that you recapitulate because you're still going through those forms in a condensed time period the more your awareness of consciousness expands the more your consciousness grows into what it is meant to be as a divine conscious son and daughter of god the more the time level or element condenses for you so that when we look out with our instruments and look at the evolution of form and we say it took a billion years for that single protozoa to start developing the complexities from, you know, from the various marine forms in the ocean, and then the forms on land, finally, then the reptiles, then the, you know, we call each other reptiles, that's a part of us is, why get worried about it? Maybe we can stop being insulted when we discover what we really are, and feel the miracle of it, don't you think?

At any rate, when you consider that it took that apparent length of time before your consciousness could be able to recapitulate and build in just a short nine months, I think we've done magnificently well in our reincarnations, don't you? This is what we've done. And we don't have to say once I was a this or a that. We have always been human.

Otherwise we wouldn't be human. And as a matter of fact, the form you have now is not the final form you're going to have anyway.

Because you are a son and daughter of God. And what is the shape of God?

Well, I can't tell you.

No one can tell you. All you can know is this, that it's going to be something ever more complex and glorious. And it's going to be done through continuous reincarnation.

I mean and reincarnations then are what? They are the outer apparent motion of the unfolding of a son and daughter of God. And when we die, of course as a human consciousness, you've already had innumerable incarnations without question especially those of you who are on the path you wouldn't be on the path if you hadn't already had many incarnations as a human form or what we think is a human form at this time but the fact that you have had these innumerable incarnations as a human form the fact that you are therefore now on the past is a definite indication that something very extraordinary is about to occur for the next stage pretty much like there are certain points of demarcation you know there's a lot of work being done and you hardly see what's happening in the when you watch the structure in an embryo and all of a sudden it divides in half now everything has been worked on it but all of a sudden there's something more that's happened this is what's in store for us at this point this is what we're working for on the path of return in other words we're preparing ourselves for that something sudden so that we can our consciousness can become consciously aware of what it truly is and what reincarnations have meant now you can see that just from the little we have said so far this is a very different concept from what you've been accustomed to reading in perhaps the theosophical literature and in the various literatures of the east very different indeed because when you study most of the literature that relates to reincarnation the thing that hits you more than anything is that all the bad things that have happened to you have happened because of you having been so naughty in your past incarnation nation. Now this is not exactly untrue, but it isn't true either. This is the point. Just as you've heard us say over and over again, a child learning how to write does a very poor job of it, and a baby learning how to walk is most clumsy, and anyone learning how to play a musical instrument gives out the most dissonant sounds it's horrible horrible indeed and we do very horrible things because we are still children but it's very different to have a concept of being immature and having to learn our balance in life and to say that all human beings are evil and they belong in places that are not from the upper regions at all but very much below and very warm I've never understood why they make hell warm it seems to me that if they made hell icy cold it would be more in accordance with suffering so you see we each have our own idea of heaven or hell I happen to like the warm weather however this does not take away from the fact that of course we do have such a thing as relative evil in other words when a baby is going to go marching into the kitchen and want to grab hold of the dish of hot soup a baby's hand has to be slapped In other words, we do need to have what you might call a certain amount of punishment in order to learn how to handle ourselves in relation to each other.

So there are things that we do that we can say in the relative sense are certainly evil. But it's a very different thing to be able to say this evil is a result of immaturity and the very results or effects of the wrong action will bring the growth. It's different to say that than to say that people are evil and deserve to suffer very different because anyone and this includes all of us who has empty spots in their in their evolution is inevitably going to do things or fail to do something which is going to bring very uncomfortable uncomfortable situations. Therefore what we must do when we recognize these empty spots in each other is feel compassion because of the knowledge that suffering is inevitable in order to learn rather than, ah, he brought it on himself, she brought it on herself. What kind of love is this?

What we learn through reincarnations finally is that there's no pain that anybody has that we don't suffer also and believe me those of us who have that super sensory awareness of the unity of life we know it and we know it with a profound knowing beyond any kind of description if I accidentally step on my cat's paw believe me my cat might scream out but my cat can't begin to feel the agony that shoots through me psychically because I inadvertently gave pain.

Nor do I have to have done it myself. If anything is hurt before me, it will shoot through me. Well, all of us, sooner or later, come to realize that it doesn't pay to want people to get their kimopances because we're not seeing the picture in the right way. We're not recognizing the fact that every one of us are one aspect of an entire being going from incarnation to incarnation because we are unfolding our self-conscious powers because we're in the process, we are embryos in the womb of God in actuality.

And everything that is occurring is occurring in God.

And to hurt each other is to hurt God because there is nothing else that does suffer. You are an aspect of the one God and you've never been anything else and every one of your incarnations has been the growth pattern that is that is aimed at bringing you to the full birth that is what's usually meant by the second birth the conscious realization of who and what you are that's when you start on the next round of your livingness now then let's try to understand the reincarnations in another way. We haven't got too much time left. Because in actuality, reincarnations, when they occur, once we have developed a truly human consciousness, have a very special type of pattern that's attached to them. Very special indeed.

You see, the higher self, which is really consciously at one with the will of God. Remember this about yourself always. This Higher Self is in full knowledge of all the incarnations that you have been through and all the incarnations that are patterned for the future in order to become the total child of God ready to be born of the Spirit. This is known by your higher soul whether your self-consciousness knows it or not now why doesn't your self-consciousness consciousness know it well it's pretty much like this the tip of my finger can't know the purpose of my hand and picking up this water and you're an incarnation is really a little tip of your total self that is surrounded itself with certain compressing forces in order to go through uh what uh johnston calls an being an imprisoned splendor and I like that in other words there's a temporary blanking out of the consciousness a temporary blanking out of the memory of who and what you are in order to concentrate on developing another facet in the nature.

Like when you're concentrated in a story or a book, as you've heard me say many a time, you're unaware of the noises that are going on around you. If you're lost in a story, when you go to a movie, you're unaware of the fact of what other people are doing, because you're focused, you're concentrated, you're absorbing the knowledge of that story and the experience of the story. In the same way, every incarnation is that a part, and mind you, we say just a part of your being, dips itself into this concentrated experience so that it is lost, and it is lost, to the knowledge of its total self, of what it really is. And it goes through the tears of loneliness, the agonies and the hungers of desire, the sorrows and the frustrations, the bitternesses, the despairs, and it clutches and clutches in the wrong place and in the wrong way because it doesn't know that that isn't how you get it.

That's why it said, he who loses his life shall find it. Now we have to come to a place in our evolution where that self-consciousness that little bit of the part of the total part of us that's dipped in this concentration becomes so sharp so clear that just like the glass that can start a fire on a piece of paper knowledge of the total self can come pouring through this partial concentrated self and that's what the incarnations are for to drive you and to drive you finally to recognize that only that way are you going to find your fulfillment and your joy and your release not by continuing to clutch on that partial concentrated thing which isn't the real you because it is only an image and a very partial image of you your true shape is the shape of everything you've ever been and everything you're going to be and it's you that is your true eye whatever you think you are it's like the eastern story saying that god fell asleep and dreamed he was a pig and he wept when his wife pig was died and his little piglets were slaughtered and he moaned and he couldn't be he couldn't be comforted nothing would comfort him he was lost in such sorrow so finally they had to slaughter him to make him wake up and discover he wasn't a pig at all he was a god well we are pretty much like that and when we work in qabalah to help us to wake up to what we truly are what we want to remember always is this that dying is merely withdrawing the concentration of our higher self from a field of experience and coming and returning that portion of the concentration to our total self to be amalgamated into our full character and knowledge and power so that dying is not dying at all it is returning to a greater livingness and we have to learn how to stop being afraid of that we have to know that we will always meet those we have loved deeply those who we have the closest affinities for because never think that it's proximity that causes love love causes proximity wherever you are whatever incarnation it will be whether it is here or hereafter those souls who've been closest with you in god and in growth your love will be reaching out from this unconscious total source of you and you will be pulling towards each other like magnets from opposite ends of the world and you will always meet together and be together and love together and live together as friends as sisters of brothers as parents children lovers husbands all those things and more so think of yourselves in those terms stop Stop thinking of yourself as being some little, tiny, separated, lonely ego wondering what I was in my last incarnation or three incarnations ago and what horrible things I did.

Stop thinking of yourself that way. It isn't the correct thought. We're giving you the more esoteric teaching on the subject, which few people have the capacity to understand. But those who gather here together with us, we say they have the capacity to understand it. Meditate on who and what you are when you walk the street and sleep your sleep and eat your food. Keep reminding yourself that you are a glory beyond description. You are a child, a daughter, a son of God. You are not what you seem to be. That you are not being punished for evil in any way shape or form no matter what your sorrows are that these are the way the unfolding flower is opening up to the sun of itself realization and start thinking of other people in the same manner and thus will you start preparing yourself at least partially more and more for experiencing the total self of you and its unity with god and therefore you will know what evolution is all about by direct experience instead of having to hear me very inadequately and I'm afraid very poorly try to give you some perception into this special teaching you are immortal you are immortal