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I would like to start this afternoon with one of Dr. de Purucker’s quotes from “Wind of the Spirit”, on page 245-254:  “We are here on this earth because we have sown seeds of destiny, of life here, and we come back to reap them, to undo the wrongs we did in the past, to reap the rewards that we sowed in the past, and that is why we will come back to re-imbodiment in the future. We are now making ourselves to be what we shall in the future become. We are now preparing our destiny for our next life on earth.” 

What do we see as the basic tenet in that quote? To me it seems that we are drawn back by the force of our own creation, and this force expresses the quality of our aspirations, motivation, knowledge and wisdom. For wisdom is the result of discovering from experience what is upgrading for ourselves to follow and what is destructive and downgrading. Once we have become aware of this truth, the awareness becomes intuitive, and prompts us to accept what is wholesome and to reject what is evil or destructive, that is, contrary to the Divine plan of spiritual growth. 

Many people in the Western world find this teaching of reincarnation so foreign and abhorrent, especially if life has been hard or unhappy for them, or when they look with compassion on the apparently unjust sufferings of others. This very question was raised by one of Jesus’ disciples, when he asked Jesus: “Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 11,2). Obviously, unless he had lived before he could not have sinned before he was born into his present incarnation. Jesus also referred to John the Baptist as the reincarnation of Elias which was for to come. (Mark 9,13). Reincarnation was an accepted belief in the Jewish teachings that the reimbodiment is part of the divine plan.

It was also taught in the Mystery-Schools of Greece, Rome, China,

Everything reimbodies itself, from Universes to the tiniest Atoms. Each is ensouled or activated by a spiritual consciousness-centre, which is evolving in its own degree, and the purpose of life is to raise the mortal to the immortality. The outward form is but the vehicle through which the deathless, spiritual potency at the core of Man’s being may grow and unfold into perfection. It is not the personality which endures and reincarnates, for this is changing constantly, but the awareness-centre which is divine, and which the personality imperfectly imitates. This awareness-centre it is which yearns to express itself in intellectual, emotional and physical ways, all the potential within of which it is so aware. Who of us has not grieved because we have had to let a dream go unrealised, or sorrowed because the results of some endeavour did not reach the potential he or she intuitively knew was possible? Yet very few of us have either the opportunity or capacity to achieve divine perfection in one life. But we have created this longing to be, and of necessity must continue to reincarnate, in order to achieve our self-conscious godhead. We can all recall seeing the joy on the face of a little child who has persisted with an unfamiliar task and, wonder of wonders, triumphs over the difficulties to achieve his goal. The inspiration of self-conquest and achievement spurred him to improve and persist, and then to pass on to something more demanding of his latent talents. 

And so it is with us. Far from being a heartless punishment, or a merciless treadmill of endless lives, the chance to reincarnate gives us a chance to experience, learn, expand, and to realize and live with that greatest of all truths, that we are part of a great universal plan, behind which stands the Divine Father, and we are all beings in this Universe truly brothers, made of the same Cosmic stuff and subject to the same Universal laws. The cycles we are aware of in our lives and in nature, the rise of seasons, the daylight and night, the rising and falling of the tides, are but short spans of activity and subsidence into relative quiet, which typify the Universal pattern of expenditure and revitalisation of life. Each of us, when reincarnating, is drawn back by our earth experiences of the past which have been imprinted on the Ego as it withdraws from the last incarnation. As each layer of consciousness is shed, the life-force we have given the cosmic material we have used is left behind on that plane to be collected again by the Ego as it makes its way back again to our Earth life. What we leave behind is drawn to, and used by, others who are on Earth and whose levels of evolvement are similar to our own, because this electro-magnetic quality which draws us to the parents and environment most suited to provide the opportunities and vehicle which will best serve our reason for reincarnating.

For we have had and will continue to have, ongoing relationships with the family members and friends with whom we have been closely associated in past incarnations. Like attracts like, and so does antipathy, by the degree we put our emotional or psychic energy into our thought processes. We have the continual choice of selection in our goals and ambitions and associations, but at the same time we cannot run away from our obligations or the responsibility consequences of what we ourselves have created atmospherically and left behind. It is because our vision becomes clouded by imperfect goals and values that we need to withdraw to the Divine to rest and reclothe our Egos with the Divine will or purpose. We can come back refreshed and inspired by renewed joy and resolutions to pay our debts and create in a wholesomely expanding way.  

 The Ego is Manas, or the thinking principle, the self-conscious intellectual element in us. When it combines with the emotional, it creates the human personality which makes each of us distinctive. The life-atoms thus imprinted create our character and because we draw them back to us when we reincarnate, we are not, despite the life-atoms having their own degree of self-direction, very different from the personality that left the earth at disembodiment or death. We do indeed pick up the threads of the life we have left behind, and move on from that point. 

The Scientists among us will say: ”But what of heredity, doesn’t that control what we are, and environment create the changes?” What else are heredity and environmental impacts but two aspects of Karma and Reincarnation? What else but the psycho-magnetic forces we have created between one another, draws us back to our earth families and circumstances, as stated earlier. Depending on our values, so the conditions to which we are drawn. As we become less materialistic and selfishly emotional, so we reach out to the wonderful vistas of what is beyond our own limited awareness. The more spiritual we become by which we become more conscious of the power of love and compassion to sustain our noblest principle, so we draw closer to the God-spark within and union with the Divine Father from which we have sprung, until finally we have the choice of moving into higher realms for ever, or of holding back from our just rewards, in order to guide and encourage our less advanced brothers. Such are the Buddhas of Compassion.             

There is also a brief comment I have taken, on Narada, the agent of karmic destiny, a guiding spiritual power, a protector and an inventor of Mankind, who uses men of destiny as agents for the purpose of allowing the Law of Karma to function without the complete destruction of Mankind. Destiny is held firmly in the hands of the Gods, and Narada is their agent. Through his guidance, crystallisations which check spiritual growth is broken and circumstances which could destroy or injure Mankind are stopped. He brings about or restores spiritual and intellectual stability, despite the suffering experienced which the freeing and restoration of true spiritual values necessitates, the results are regenerating and lifting to the souls involved in the experience. Thus Narada is for Mankind both a destructive and regenerative guide, the true saviour of men’s souls. This should check us from sitting in the judgement seat, no matter how the other person’s behaviour appears to us because with our limited understanding we cannot assess another’s destiny role in the universal plan of spiritual endeavour and progress.