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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Reincarnation On Trial

Is Sumerland just a waiting room for one's next incarnation? Is the Earth the only classroom?

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Dr. Carl Wickland, Gateway Of Understanding, writes:

The theory of reincarnation subverts the natural spiritual progression; too much stress and importance is placed upon this brief mortal life. The teaching of the reincarnationists that we must return again and again to earth life to become perfected is equivalent to saying that, after one has passed through kindergarten, grade schools and university, he must return to kindergarten over and over again to learn everything that is to be learned pertaining to life.

What is mortal life but a kindergarten? Too little is credited to the vaster opportunities of the next school in the spiritual realm, the verity of which has been so abundantly demonstrated and which may be easily verified by the unprejudiced student through intelligent Psychic Research.

The entire scheme of reincarnation is a limited idea, one that fails to recognize that this is a formative plane and that there are many planes and schools on the Invisible Side which offer far greater opportunities for the higher soul culture than does this mortal plane. There is no need of returning to the mundane when we can progress from sphere to sphere, or school to school, and thus ultimately realize the "God within."

To live morally and uprightly, to learn in this life what we are living for, and to realize there are future opportunities, is undoubtedly the cardinal object of our human existence.

Editor's note: Why this unreasonable emphasis, a kind of religious fervor, on the part of some, that we learn spiritual lessons only on the Earth? Why the new "infallible doctrine," the new "one true way"? How strange and ironic is this narrowness. Reincarnationists will often subscribe to the concept that the utterly vast universe is likely home to many peoples and countless life forms; but then, why the provincialism here, why begin to sound like Big Religion's Inquisition of old, demanding that Galileo profess the Earth to be unique, the center of the universe, the only place where God could teach us anything?

• Carl Sagan, Cosmos, The Backbone of Night: "There are in fact 100 billion galaxies, each of which contain something like a 100 billion stars. Think of how many stars, and planets, and kinds of life there may be in this vast and awesome universe... We find that we live on an insignificant planet, of a humdrum star, lost in a galaxy, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe, in which there are far more galaxies than people... Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there's a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time." Editor's note: Since Dr. Sagan's time, we now estimate not 100 but 200 billion galaxies.

our planet is only a tiny part of the vast cosmic tapestry, a starry fabric of worlds yet untold

Editor's note: 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars! countless worlds in space, as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth, a starry fabric of worlds yet untold.

But, this "starry fabric" represents but our 3-dimensional universe. There is much more that lies hidden to our mortal senses.

We learn from afterlife entities that all of space is occupied and populated with various life forms - "a cosmic tapestry" consisting of layer upon layer of interpenetrating worlds, each composed of energies vibrating at different frequencies; each invisible to the others, but each as solid to its inhabitants and ours is to us.  

The Spirit World informs us of millions of planets whereon intelligent life is found; some species, far more advanced than our own.

Why should we easily dismiss this? on what basis but parochial arrogance? yet, some choose to believe, like narrow-minded churchmen from the Middle Ages, that we and our little world are the only ones in this ultra-vast multi-dimensional cosmos. Why must reincarnationism become the new Catholic Church with its insistence that its domain be deemed the center of the universe?

Einstein was not impressed with this restricted view: "It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware."

Robert James Lees, from the afterlife, transmitted his Life Elysian. His work is one of my favorites within this genre.

• Editor's note: In his report, near the end of the book, Mr. Lees shares with us a most personal account. He describes how, with several expert helpers, he was able to rescue his Twin-soul lover, trapped in a dark, unpleasant place. She'd lost much of her mind, having been overcome by terrors; however, a girl on the rescue-team was able to appeal to a vestige of her feminism, her dormant, lost-love for Robert, bringing her sufficiently to her senses which allowed the team to lead her out of her sordid prison to a better place where she would recover herself. As we've learned, this is not an isolated case.

Lees offers thoughts on reincarnation:

... I would here relate an incident serving to show how Paradise is adapted to undertake, where necessity arises, the whole of the educational work connected with a soul which Earth is supposed to perform.

I have more than a passing pleasure in doing this, because I am sure that a glance at the great work of educating children on our side will be of genuine interest to my readers; and second because I would combat an erroneous idea gaining ground in the minds of some that an almost endless series of re-births on earth is demanded to explain ‘some of life’s most puzzling problems.’

It will be altogether impossible to deal exhaustively with the question of reincarnation at this time, but let me briefly say that it is a subject for which in my Earth life I felt much sympathy and have made wide inquiries concerning it since crossing the boundary, with this result: among the souls who are still subjected to earth conditions - from whom all experiences have to be received with caution, and not acted upon until they are confirmed from more reliable sources - there are many who honestly think reincarnation to be a fact, and teach it to be so; among those who have passed away from these conditions and learned to accept truth for its own sake, who know and study, tracing origins and sequences many of them through unsuspected ages beyond the rise of history, I have been unable to meet with one holding the theory of rebirth to be true.

 

Editor's note: The Spirit Guides communicating with W. S. Moses (above) also speak of the tendency of immature spirits near the Earth-plane promoting superstitious ideas, of which reincarnation is a prime example.

 

The origin of the idea is to be found in savage superstition. Without a definite knowledge of immortality and equally certain that there is more in man than simply body, it has always been a problem to the untutored mind as to what happens when the body ceases to breathe and begins to grow offensive from decomposition. The
philosophy of ignorance is always expeditious, and the savage solved the problem by allowing a new-born child to inhale the breath of a dying man, and the departing life was thus provided with another body, in which to continue its existence.

From this crude beginning the idea of transmigration of souls has been worked over and over in various ways with much philosophical reasoning and speculation, but it stands still where we found it - a baseless superstition, alike at variance with the [natural] law, love and purpose of God.

I am not at all unconscious of the fascination of the subject, and would, for this reason, willingly continue the discussion of it were it reasonably within the scope of my present purpose. But it not being so, I must resist he temptation for the present, with the hope that I may return to it at some future time. I might, however, here call attention to the unstudied side-light which is necessarily thrown upon the question by the record of my general experiences, the which I think will show with some degree of reasonable clearness that God has made provision to meet every just requirement that can possibly arise by far more expeditious and less cumbrous means than such a circuitous and hypothetical system.

It must always be borne in mind that all the requirements of God from men are based upon justice. To expect perfection to be produced by imperfect conditions would be to expect the impossible, hence the attainment to Nirvana in the flesh would be a condition as unrealizable as stepping, in the mortal body, from Earth on to the surface of the Sun. Let us begin to be reasonable and appreciate the fact that evolution from the human to the Divine must proceed in the future according to the law which has governed the past.

We have still to climb from step to step, and as we go, must perforce be continually dropping the lower until by imperceptible gradations we ascend to the goal. In this process it must needs be that this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this ‘mortal must put on immortality’ before we reach the zenith, and the eye bear the sight of that uncreated beam. From this handicapping limitation of the flesh the incarnated soul cannot free itself. It is a house of bondage from the influence of which one can only be free by breaking away, and ten thousand births would furnish no increase of advantage, especially where the memory of all that has gone before is not available for guidance.

Like all man-made systems, the speculation of re-birth is a weariness and confusion to the mind, without a place of rest in its ceaseless struggle to escape a spiritual Scylla [a sea nymph who was transformed into a sea monster: later identified with the rock Scylla] on the one hand and Charybdis [a monster mentioned in Homer and later identified with the whirlpool Charybdis] on the other. God has provided a better way than this, to one phase of which I would now invite your attention.

There was a world of meaning, of promise, of hope, in that command of Christ to His disciples after the five thousand had eaten and were filled from ‘five barley loaves and two small fishes.’ ‘Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.’ This is the eternal principle working through all creation. Men have now learned as a scientific fact that only the form of existence can be changed, nothing can be destroyed. If this is so in the material, which is the instrument, how much more must it be so in the spiritual, which is the operative agent working through the material!

With this principle still working through the life of Paradise the same
watchful care over the fragments is manifested. Nothing must be lost. In the smallest of all particles is hidden divine potentialities. Gather these up, for each must be sent to its own place to be tended, developed and assisted to fulfil its appointed sphere.

It is to one of the nursery-homes of these spiritual fragments I would now conduct you, where we may watch and learn to understand how Paradise deals with the first unfoldment of mind and intellect. I use the term ‘spiritual fragments’ advisedly in this connection, since we shall meet not only with souls who passed away in the process of nativity, but others who in the halftime of gestation were able to make no more than one feeble independent movement and then expire. Surely these are fragments of humanity truly, yet they survive, and are carefully assisted forward into a full and strong maturity.

So beautifully and considerably does the sphere of the spiritual overlap the physical that most adequate provision is made to reach and protect all such little ones, of whom earth never takes cognizance. Unknown, with an existence unsuspected, still they live. Nothing must be lost. God’s plans are laid for saving even to the uttermost, and the nurseryhome over which our now well-known friend Cushna [an ancient Egyptian afterlife entity who manages a school for the dispossessed children from the earth] presides is one of the numerous establishments appointed for such work in connection with children.

There is ample accommodation here - and when I say ample I do not mean simply that each child is allowed so many cubic feet of breathing room by measurement, but I refer to the generous overflowing provision so characteristic of all God does - for about two thousand souls ranging from the boundary-stranded infant I have referred to, to those who may have known an earth existence of several months, the limit being determined not so much by age as other circumstances we need not here discuss.

They are drawn from every nationality of Earth and brought up together, one of the very first efforts being to prevent any approach to racial differences and establish the unity of the human family. When the preliminary course has furnished ability to proceed, the child goes forward from strength to strength through the advancing and ascending schools of eternity.

Longfellow struck a chord of true spiritual music when he sang of one who had passed into the courts of Paradise:

“Not as a child shall we again behold her;
But when, with rapture wild,
We to our hearts again enfold her
She will not be a child.”

Childhood and youth are imperfections, and no more represent true
manhood and womanhood than daybreak is synonymous with noon. Heaven, when we reach it, will be found to be a perfect home for a perfect people, and all must attain the qualification to receive
admission. Paradise will consummate in this respect what Earth has no power to achieve. It is the legitimate function for which God has called it into existence. Childhood has to be carried forward to the full beauty of manhood and womanhood, and age brought back to the strength and vigour it has lost. Cushna, himself, is a striking illustration of this latter effect. I have already spoken of it, but the fascination it exerts seems to increase every time I come in contact with the benevolent Egyptian, upon whose shoulders rests the mystic mantle of evasive age so indescribably and beautifully blending with the exuberant sprightliness of early manhood. The consciousness of this, it will be remembered, was the first impression I received when I met him at the Home of Rest, but the fullness of it was more forcibly brought home to me when I found him so actively engaged in the education of children in this scene
of more than fairy enchantment, which I was assured was the better place for learning to know him as he is...