The Cycle of Birth, Death and Rebirth

I hold that when a person dies
His soul returns to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh disguise,
Another mother gives birth,
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain
The old soul takes the road again.
John Masefield (A Creed)

Reincarnation

The doctrine of rebirth, or as it is commonly known, of reincarnation, is one of the major keys to understanding the spiritual basis of existence. The concept of reincarnation is based on two important conclusions.

1. The human soul exists before birth and will continue to exist after death. Consciousness is a continuum and its development extends over an enormous period of time.
2. The spiritual self is always seeking for a more perfect expression through successive personalities. Each life is another step on the pil­grimage back to the source - back to God.

To clear away any misconceptions let us state that the idea that the human consciousness can return to earth to inhabit the body of another animal other than human is not compatible with the theosophy concept of reincarnation. This would be a retro­grade step and against natural law. We have seen that we humans are in reality spiritual beings who in each successive life require a physical body and nervous system at least as sensitive as the previous ones to make the most of the experiences of the new life.

Shakespeare apparently shared this view when he wrote, in Twelfth Night: 'What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. What thinkest thou of this opinion? I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve of his opinion.’

However modern research has shown that he is wrong in attributing such a belief to Pythagoras.

Not a Fresh Creation

The soul therefore does not enter this life as a fresh creation. It is the result of a long series of previous existences in which it acquires its pre­sent peculiarities.

The infant child is not a blank sheet of paper for, even if the ink appears invisible, history from a remote past is written there.

The new-born child does not bring with it conscious knowledge of its past but a memory of the heaven world just left lingers and gives the qual­ity of innocence we so often see in very young children.

These ideas and the way this innocence is lost as the child grows older, are expressed with uncanny insight in the poem below.

Trailing Clouds of Glory

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.

Wordsworth - in Ode to Intimations of Immortality

Reincarnation can offer an explanation, too, for those infant prodigies such as Mozart who, at the age of four wrote a sonata and at the age of seven a whole opera. Plato who believed whole-heartedly in reincarnation asserted that 'knowledge easily acquired is that which the enduring self had in an earlier life, so that it flows back easily!'

Balancing Inequalities

We have seen that the law of cause and effect balances the result of our actions and if we add the continuity of consciousness provided by the concept of reincarnation, we get some understanding of why there are obvious inequalities and injustices in life.

During the period between lives (usually a few hundred years) the soul extracts and assimilates the essence of its experiences in the life just past for use in incarnations to come.

Understanding this process we realize that the equalities we now possess of body, mind and soul, are the result of our use of opportunities in previous lives and the use we make of our present opportunities will determine our future character and capacity.