reincarnation

• only spornagia experience

46:7.5Sporna­gia are the only crea­tures in all the uni­verse of Neb­a­don who ex­pe­ri­ence this or any other sort of rein­car­na­tion. They are only re­ac­tive to the first five of the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its; they are not re­spon­sive to the spir­its of wor­ship and wis­dom. But the five-ad­ju­tant mind equiv­alates to a to­tal­ity or sixth re­al­ity level, and it is this fac­tor which per­sists as an ex­pe­ri­en­tial iden­tity.

• Asian belief in man’s return as animal

85:3.1Prim­i­tive man had a pe­cu­liar and fel­low feel­ing for the higher an­i­mals. His an­ces­tors had lived with them and even mated with them. In south­ern Asia it was early be­lieved that the souls of men came back to earth in an­i­mal form. This be­lief was a sur­vival of the still ear­lier prac­tice of wor­ship­ing an­i­mals.

• origin of idea

86:4.5The prim­i­tive doc­trine of sur­vival af­ter death was not nec­es­sar­ily a be­lief in im­mor­tal­ity. Be­ings who could not count over twenty could hardly con­ceive of in­fin­ity and eter­nity; they rather thought of re­cur­ring in­car­na­tions.

86:4.6The or­ange race was es­pe­cially given to be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion and rein­car­na­tion. This idea of rein­car­na­tion orig­i­nated in the ob­ser­vance of hered­i­tary and trait re­sem­blance of off­spring to an­ces­tors. The cus­tom of nam­ing chil­dren af­ter grand­par­ents and other an­ces­tors was due to be­lief in rein­car­na­tion. Some later-day races be­lieved that man died from three to seven times. This be­lief (resid­ual from the teach­ings of Adam about the man­sion worlds), and many other rem­nants of re­vealed re­li­gion, can be found among the oth­er­wise ab­surd doc­trines of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury bar­bar­ians.

• stultifying belief in weary and monotonous lives

94:2.3The un­due con­cen­tra­tion on self led cer­tainly to a fear of the nonevo­lu­tion­ary per­pet­u­a­tion of self in an end­less round of suc­ces­sive in­car­na­tions as man, beast, or weeds. And of all the con­tam­i­nat­ing be­liefs which could have be­come fas­tened upon what may have been an emerg­ing mono­the­ism, none was so stul­ti­fy­ing as this be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion—the doc­trine of the rein­car­na­tion of souls—which came from the Dra­vid­ian Dec­can. This be­lief in the weary and monotonous round of re­peated trans­mi­gra­tions robbed strug­gling mor­tals of their long-cher­ished hope of find­ing that de­liv­er­ance and spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment in death which had been a part of the ear­lier Vedic faith.

94:2.4This phil­o­soph­i­cally de­bil­i­tat­ing teach­ing was soon fol­lowed by the in­ven­tion of the doc­trine of the eter­nal es­cape from self by sub­mer­gence in the uni­ver­sal rest and peace of ab­so­lute union with Brah­man, the over­soul of all cre­ation. Mor­tal de­sire and hu­man am­bi­tion were ef­fec­tu­ally rav­ished and vir­tu­ally de­stroyed. For more than two thou­sand years the bet­ter minds of In­dia have sought to es­cape from all de­sire, and thus was opened wide the door for the en­trance of those later cults and teach­ings which have vir­tu­ally shack­led the souls of many Hindu peo­ples in the chains of spir­i­tual hope­less­ness. Of all civ­i­liza­tions, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most ter­ri­ble price for its re­jec­tion of the Salem gospel.

94:2.5Caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan re­li­gio-cul­tural sys­tem, and as the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can per­me­ated the north, there de­vel­oped an age of de­spair and hope­less­ness. It was dur­ing these dark days that the cult of tak­ing no life arose, and it has ever since per­sisted. Many of the new cults were frankly athe­is­tic, claim­ing that such sal­va­tion as was at­tain­able could come only by man’s own un­aided ef­forts. But through­out a great deal of all this un­for­tu­nate phi­los­o­phy, dis­torted rem­nants of the Mel­chiz­e­dek and even the Adamic teach­ings can be traced.

94:2.6These were the times of the com­pi­la­tion of the later scrip­tures of the Hindu faith, the Brah­manas and the Up­an­ishads. Hav­ing re­jected the teach­ings of per­sonal re­li­gion through the per­sonal faith ex­pe­ri­ence with the one God, and hav­ing be­come con­tam­i­nated with the flood of de­bas­ing and de­bil­i­tat­ing cults and creeds from the Dec­can, with their an­thro­po­mor­phisms and rein­car­na­tions, the Brah­manic priest­hood ex­pe­ri­enced a vi­o­lent re­ac­tion against these vi­ti­at­ing be­liefs; there was a def­i­nite ef­fort to seek and to find true re­al­ity. The Brah­mans set out to dean­thro­po­mor­phize the In­dian con­cept of de­ity, but in so do­ing they stum­bled into the griev­ous er­ror of de­per­son­al­iz­ing the con­cept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spir­i­tual ideal of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, but with a dis­tant and meta­phys­i­cal idea of an all-en­com­pass­ing Ab­so­lute.

• spirits do not return to planet of birth

112:3.7Upon death the Thought Ad­juster tem­porar­ily loses per­son­al­ity, but not iden­tity; the hu­man sub­ject tem­porar­ily loses iden­tity, but not per­son­al­ity; on the man­sion worlds both re­unite in eter­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion. Never does a de­parted Thought Ad­juster re­turn to earth as the be­ing of for­mer in­dwelling; never is per­son­al­ity man­i­fested with­out the hu­man will; and never does a dis-Ad­jus­tered hu­man be­ing af­ter death man­i­fest ac­tive iden­tity or in any man­ner es­tab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the liv­ing be­ings of earth. Such dis-Ad­jus­tered souls are wholly and ab­so­lutely un­con­scious dur­ing the long or short sleep of death. There can be no ex­hi­bi­tion of any sort of per­son­al­ity or abil­ity to en­gage in com­mu­ni­ca­tions with other per­son­al­i­ties un­til af­ter com­ple­tion of sur­vival. Those who go to the man­sion worlds are not per­mit­ted to send mes­sages back to their loved ones. It is the pol­icy through­out the uni­verses to for­bid such com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing the pe­riod of a cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion.

• spirits do not return to planet of birth

146:7.2Je­sus fur­ther ex­plained to his apos­tles that the spir­its of de­parted hu­man be­ings do not come back to the world of their ori­gin to com­mu­ni­cate with their liv­ing fel­lows. Only af­ter the pass­ing of a dis­pen­sa­tional age would it be pos­si­ble for the ad­vanc­ing spirit of mor­tal man to re­turn to earth and then only in ex­cep­tional cases and as a part of the spir­i­tual ad­min­is­tra­tion of the planet.

• spirits do not return to planet of birth

150:3.53. The spir­its of the dead do not come back to com­mu­ni­cate with their fam­i­lies or their one­time friends among the liv­ing.

• older Jews, Plato, Philo, Essenes tolerated belief in

164:3.4There was, through­out all these re­gions, a lin­ger­ing be­lief in rein­car­na­tion. The older Jew­ish teach­ers, to­gether with Plato, Philo, and many of the Es­senes, tol­er­ated the the­ory that men may reap in one in­car­na­tion what they have sown in a pre­vi­ous ex­is­tence; thus in one life they were be­lieved to be ex­pi­at­ing the sins com­mit­ted in pre­ced­ing lives. The Mas­ter found it dif­fi­cult to make men be­lieve that their souls had not had pre­vi­ous ex­is­tences.