Number 23.– Reincarnation
On the vault of the Sistine Chapel, it is shining one of the most beautiful artistic images of the world: the creation of man, painted by Michelangelo; it is a symbol of the human ideal of the Renaissance. This wonderful Adam is in the center of the evolution of life. Between the beginning and the end of History, in a remote future, such as the Teachings and traditional philosophy describe it, occurred and will occur many deaths and many births, on a pilgrimage between pleasures and sorrows, until the creature may meet again his Creator. Some religions adhere to the principle of reincarnation; other religions deny it, or say nothing. An inexcusable evidence is that the individual being dies, and disappears from the sight of his fellow men. The body of flesh rots; but the rest, affections, memory, ideas and soul, where did go, and what do they do? Some persons do not believe in life after death; others certainly believe according to different dogmas. In the opinion of many persons, the individual being returns periodically and continues his journey toward perfection. This Reflection will deal with explaining the reincarnation such as the Teachings describe it, since the ordinary man has no opinion regarding this, or knows very little. To think of death is terrifying to many persons, particularly when they grow old, by ignorance, or because they lived improperly; they do not believe in reincarnation, and are afraid of going to the hell. Some people can be prepared for a good death if they understand this matter, and this educational task should begin since fifty years of age on.
The Teaching says, “The Spirit becomes manifest in the world by means of the Life”. When a particle of the Spirit assumes its individuality, a human monad is born. The life that we know behind its present forms developed in the Solar Planetary System. Planetary systems of the stars have other forms of life that we do not know. Our Humanity evolves only in the Solar System.
In “Anthropogenesis” (Book XXVI, Chapter 16), you can read, “The evolution of life is very slow; it began in our Solar System1,955 million years ago, and individual beings began to form their astral bodies 301 million years ago. The human evolution only goes back to18 million years ago. The first Root Race lasted 7 million years; the Second Root Race, 6 million years; the Third Root Race, 3 million years; the Fourth Root Race, 2,5 million years; and the Fifth and Present (Aryan) Root Race, 118,769 years. Each Root Race has seven sub-races; the fifth Aryan American Sub-race has just ended; it lasted 24,000 years. In 2001, the Aryan American Sub-race, or Aquarius, began. Maitreya, the Solar Divine Incarnation governs its development”.
Ancient texts describe the original Adam at the first stage of the Hyperborean Race –at present, Greenland– as an “enormous and beautiful Serpent Fish, in spite of its gelatinous and transparent body, since the light reflected through this body would produce a multiplicity and variety of colors”, living in the waters of the ocean (Book XXVI: “Anthropogenesis”, Chapter 4). It was the beginning of Humanity.
The Chapter 14, “The Planetary System”, describes the aspect of the final man, after very long time, and after death of the physical Earth, which will become auric, “The body will be transparent, with no internal organs, except the heart and circulatory system, and the face will have only one eye in the center of the forehead. This body will move vibrating on the space”. In the seventh Round, this man will have a very high spiritual state, with no physical body.
Between the extremes of the human evolution, life and death follow one another with no rest; what is death on a side, becomes life on another, and vice versa. Now we are in a physical watchful state, and we need to understand what happens after the last breath, in order to go on living and learning.
The Teaching 15, “Reincarnation”, Book VII, “The Becoming”, reads, “The individual being has to evolve through numerous incarnations and eventually to reach liberation. If it is true that the man does not remember his past lives, but he keeps the experience of ways previously traveled through”. (We recommend the study of this Teaching and of the following one to understand entirely this matter. In fact, the whole book is indispensable, because these matters are entwined and explain one another.)
The modern man –overwhelmed by the whirl of changing events of every day, with an unhealthy and stressing rhythm, and without guides inviting him to stop his race– does not think of death or future life. He lives stunned by consumerism and TV alienation. He knows nothing; and his contentment rests on having a good time, like a monkey yelling joyfully and jumping incessantly. But when the share of life given by God is ending, he replaces this senseless decline with lamentations, diseases and weeping. Look at those retired persons without any advantageous activities, ever complaining everywhere, filling to overflowing anterooms of hospitals, and observing people walking by the squares and waiting a bad death, and holding with avarice on the scarce life they still have. Can a person like that renounce, even though this is his last act, breathing in a puff of pure air? Never! But they are on the threshold of a new world.
The Teaching 15, about “The Becoming”, reads, “Ordinary men reincarnate periodically every seven hundred years”. “In the majority of cases, individual beings reincarnate seven times with feminine aspect, and seven times with masculine aspect.” “The belief in incarnation –founded on so logical reasons– is extremely comforting, since it explains the cause of human inequalities.” Then, if life expectancy in men is 70 years, and he reincarnates every 700 years, then just 10 percent of the total occurs in the physical body, with some consciousness of his soul, and ignoring what happens on the other 90 percent. Men are ignorant; they refuse to learn and know; and they like to live like barbarians.
Perhaps the main Maitreya’s task is to educate men by spiritualizing life and death. The image of people about death as an end is a very harmful mistake. Souls should be prepared to die in peace, and to detach themselves from things of this world, particularly family things and economic things, which govern this modern society. In order to approach the constructive state conscious about a good death, Master Santiago’s Teachings are very helpful, particularly “The Becoming”, and those Teachings training for ascetic exercises, meditations and background examination, and “The Way of Renunciation”.
In the opinion of many persons, the doctrine of Reincarnation is strange, in spite of the fact that all religions stood by it at some time of mystical exaltation, and other persons, even though they do not give their opinion, pay no attention to it because it is something seemingly remote. The Reincarnation is a universal phenomenon of all times, since the time when the first man died. The individual being is obliged to live periodically in the flesh, and to experience the matter, willy-nilly. The reincarnation does not derive from beliefs; it is a law given since the beginning by the Divine Evolution Plan. Is there another way to progress and reach the spiritual destination? Beliefs, rituals and blessings are helpful, but it is the individual man, with his self-denying efforts, that achieves liberation. And one cannot get this in a lifetime or in ten lifetimes; we need many reincarnations, in addition to intermediate states in other dimensions of the existence, and we need to experience, along with the rest of Humanity, the immense conquests of sciences, art and thought, and pleasures offered by Nature with its harmonious variability, which are available to men. Life on Earth is the great school, in which we learn disciplines of human knowledge. That is why we ever come back until completing the career in order to get the title of a Realized Man.
People do not understand the reincarnation, and the public opinion deals with cloning, transplantation and another similar nonsense of managerial laboratories promising more life, and even plant immortality. But these expectations are already achieved by the dynamics of the evolution, more efficiently and with excellent results, through reincarnation. If we examine the times of human stages and the duration of the Aryan Race, and we calculate it, we see that the ordinary man could live again on this Earth and with an infinite variety of alternative experiences, 170 times, bearing in mind the present incarnation. Can the best laboratory in the world offer a more fabulous and attractive marketing than that offered by natural life, free, without dollars?
If reincarnation is, like death, an inescapable law, human beings lay aside this good chance by ignorance. Death and a subsequent reincarnation are not dark and irrational fatalities but gifts of God for the good of the human being. One needs to cooperate with the Divine Plan. To refuse it is to harm oneself in vain. One should learn to die, and be prepared for the next life, which will be a consequence of our actions in this life. Just as in the University a first course properly fulfilled is fundamental to pass to the following one, so our present life enables us to perform the next incarnation with excellent score. Why the evolution is so slow, and men go on behaving as primitive beings without intelligence? Because they do not strive, and then they experience a very bad death. Why are handicapped children born with mental defects, in degenerate environments, carrying a quite sorrowful karma? Because they can harvest only what they sowed in a previous incarnation. Why are there so many different races, fortunes, families, social classes, intelligence, instincts, beauty or ugliness, strong or weak beings? Because each life is the logical continuity of the previous experience; there is neither injustice nor chance; you get what you earned.
Reader: our life belongs to us; it is not of the State, or of the collectivity in which we move, or of a master, even though we would be slaves. The Holy Masters help us so that we may take full possession of our being. We can be owners of life, death and future incarnations. If and when we renounce to mediocrity. Master Santiago incarnated when he believed it necessary after 3,300 years of patient waiting, in the most proper form for the Great Work; he dies with full control of his soul by ecstatic death at the proper time for the expansion of the Message on Renunciation; he goes on working on higher dimensions from the Sacred Order of Fire; and he assists the Faithful Disciples in constituting a planetary Mystical Body without frontiers, along with the redeeming mission of the Solar Initiate Maitreya.
José
