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Keep A True Lent
Chapter 13
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[Keep A True Lent]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Reincarnation
Chapter 13
THE WHOLE MAN--spirit, soul, and body--must be lifted up
into the Christ consciousness of life and perfection, which
is the goal of man's existence.
The Western world in general looks on re-embodiment, or
reincarnation, as a heathen doctrine. Many people close the
door of their minds to it, without waiting to find out what
message it may bring when interpreted in the light of
Truth. It is the object of this article to set forth the
Unity teaching concerning reincarnation; to show why we
consider it reasonable and to explain its relation to, and
its place in, the Christ doctrine.
The teaching of Jesus is that all men shall, through Him,
be made free from sin and be saved to the
uttermost--spirit, soul, body. But until this salvation is
attained, there is death. To give men opportunity to get
the full benefit of salvation, life is necessary, and a
body through which to express life is also necessary. So,
when man loses his body by death, the law of expression
works within him for re-embodiment, and he takes advantage
of the Adam method of generation to regain a body. Divine
mercy permits this process in order that man may have
further opportunity to demonstrate Christ life. But
generation and death must give place to regeneration
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and eternal life. The necessity of rebirth must, therefore,
pass away with all other makeshifts of the mortal man. It
will have no place when men take advantage of the
redeeming, regenerating life of Christ and quit dying.
Re-embodiment should not be given undue importance, because
it is merely a temporary remedy to be followed by the real,
which is resurrection. The whole man--spirit, soul, and
body--must be lifted up into the Christ consciousness of
life and perfection.
Jesus teaches that rebirth or reincarnation is the unifying
force of nature at work in its effort to restore man to his
original deathless estate. Man, through his disregard of
the law of life, brought death upon himself, as taught in
the 3d chapter of Genesis. But a single span of life, from
the birth of an infant to the death of an old man, does not
constitute all of man's opportunity for living. Life is
continuous and in harmony with the wholeness of Being only
when it is expressed in a perfect body; hence man must have
a body in order to gain an abiding consciousness of life.
Through repeated trials at living, man is finding out that
he must learn to control the issues of life in his body.
The objections that the natural man raises to re-embodiment
arise largely from the fact that he lives in the personal
consciousness and cannot see things in the spiritual and
universal. He thinks that by re-embodiment he loses his
identity. But identity
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endures. Personal consciousness does not endure. The
personal man is not immortal, and he dies. This is clear to
anyone who is willing to give up his belief in the reality
and importance of the personal consciousness.
The personal man with all his limitations, all his
relations, must give way to the universal, the Christ man.
The privilege is ours to give up or forsake
everything--father, mother, husband, wife, children,
houses, lands--for Christ's sake and so enter into the
consciousness of eternal life. By doing this we come into
the realization of eternal life and receive a hundredfold
more of the very things that we have forsaken. If we refuse
or neglect to make this "sacrifice" and prefer to live in
the narrow, personal way, and cling to the old personal
relationships, there is nothing for it but to meet the
result of our choice, and to sever all those relations by
death. It is just a question of giving up a little for the
all and gaining eternal life. So if re-embodiment frees one
from the old, personal relationships, it is not such a
dreadful thing after all, for it gives us new personal
relationships. Rising out of these into the universal is a
work that everyone must do willingly for himself. Death and
re-embodiment do not give redemption. Reincarnation serves
only as a further opportunity to lay hold of redemption.
The pure, incorruptible substance of Spirit, built into the
organism through true, pure, spiritual thought and word,
makes the body incorruptible and
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eternal. As the mind changes from error to Truth,
corresponding changes take place in the body, and the
ultimate of these changes is perfection and wholeness in
every part. Therefore those who are trying to lay hold of
eternal life have ground for their faith in the promise
that they will be saved from the grave.
Knowing that spirit, soul, and body are all necessary to
man and that he cannot truly be said to live except in
their conscious union and expression, the error of
believing that death is the open door to a higher life, the
gateway to heaven, is easily seen. There is no progress in
death. Death is negation. The demonstration of eternal life
can be made only in life--soul and body together working
out the problem and together being lifted up.
Sense consciousness has no power to lift itself out of
ignorance and sin, so the mere matter of repeated births
has not taken the race forward. It is the descent of Spirit
from time to time, as the people have been able to receive
it, that has made all progress. As men's growth has made it
possible, new truths have been discerned and new
dispensations have come. When the time was ripe, Jesus came
and brought the good news of salvation from death. But His
words had to work in the race consciousness for nearly two
thousand years before anyone was sufficiently awakened and
quickened to believe in a complete redemption and to strive
to lay hold of it. The promise is that the leaven of the
Word will finally leaven the whole of the human family and
that all
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people will come into the light of spiritual life.
From the standpoint of creative Mind it is plain that
re-embodiment serves a purpose in affording opportunities
for spiritual development. All that is gained in spiritual
growth in one's life experience becomes part of the
individual's real identity; and if he is faithful, he will
finally gather such a store of spiritual power and wisdom
that he can demonstrate salvation of his body through
Christ, who is "able to save to the uttermost." But, we
would repeat, reincarnation is only an opportunity.
"The hour . . . now is." Right now the resurrection work is
going on, and men and women are awakening to a new
consciousness of life, understanding, and bodily
perfection. This resurrection work must extend to every
member of the Adam race, whether he is what we call alive
or whether he, as Jesus said of the dead, sleeps. All must
be awakened and be unified in soul and body.
Many of the present-day ideas of resurrection have come
down from past centuries of ignorance and have been
accepted without question because they seem to be supported
by a literal interpretation of certain Bible texts. But in
these, as in all Scripture, we should go back of the letter
and see the spiritual meaning of the parables and the
symbols used to teach the truth about the raising of the
dead. Thus we shall find unfolding day by day in ourselves
the awakening and resurrection of thought that we once
supposed would come in a single day to the bodies
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of those in the grave. When this raising of our dying and
dead thoughts has gone far enough in us, we shall find
ourselves gradually slipping into continuous health; that
is, we shall realize that our bodies are self-renewing and
therefore naturally immortal. Such a mighty and
far-reaching work would be included in the promise "Greater
work than these shall he [man] do."
Mention is also made in John's Gospel (King James Version)
of "the resurrection of damnation." Damnation is
condemnation. Paul makes it very clear that, by Adam's
transgression, condemnation came on all his race. As death
has no power to help anyone, the condition of the Adam man
is not bettered by dying. Therefore, when people are
re-embodied they "come forth . . . unto the resurrection of
damnation," in other words, condemnation or correction.
Everyone begins where he left off. But though one may have
died in condemnation and been re-embodied in that state, he
has opportunity, when re-embodied, to come up into Christ
(in whom is no condemnation), identify himself with the
Christ race, and demonstrate through Him the deathless
life. So is proved the divine justice of including all in
sin in Adam, that all may be delivered in one, even Jesus
Christ.
Everyone who would demonstrate that he is risen with Christ
must first lay hold of life by faith and affirm without
wavering that he is raised out of sin and condemnation and
death into eternal life. Then
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the word of life carries on day by day the resurrecting,
redeeming work in the mind and in the body. "I die daily,"
I am raised daily. Every day some old limitation or error
loses its hold and passes away and the imperishable,
incorruptible substance of Truth becomes a little more
firmly established in consciousness. In this way the body
is transformed and raised up in honor, incorruptible,
immortal. This is the raising of the dead, as commanded by
Jesus.
However, some of the details of this great work must of
necessity be, at this time, mere speculation. It is not
profitable to allow our minds to dwell on mortal
questionings about how the work of Spirit is to be done in
and through us. It is our place to hold ourselves in a
positive life thought, realizing always the omnipresence
and perfection of life in God, thus bringing perfect life
more and more into manifestation in ourselves and in
others. When we realize how much our faithfulness means to
the race, we shall rejoice in being true to the great
principles of Truth that will bring to pass the time when
death and the grave will be no more. "And death shall be no
more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor
pain, any more: the first things are passed away."
That you do not remember your past lives proves nothing.
Neither do you remember the day on which you were born, but
you do not on that account question the fact of your birth.
Comparatively little of your present life is remembered,
but this does not
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alter the fact that you have lived. Memory, to the natural
man, is a matter of physical brain records, photographic or
phonographic in character. The memory of experiences in
past lives is not clearly recorded in the new brain
structure of the infant. Such memories are usually in the
nature of vague impressions; the sense of identity is
blurred. But in the book of life, the great mind of the
universe, all identity is sharply marked, and as the
individual becomes quickened and raised out of personal
consciousness into the universal, he will be able to bridge
over the breaks in personal experience. He will come to
himself. Realizing his spiritual identity as a son of God,
he will not entangle himself with either present or past
personality, but will claim and demonstrate his divine
sonship. He will no longer limit himself to a brief span of
life, beginning with birth and ending with death, but will
live in the consciousness of eternal life, which has
neither end nor beginning.
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[Keep A True Lent]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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