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Dynamics for Living
Reincarnation
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[Dynamics for Living]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
THE Western world in general looks upon reembodiment, or
reincarnation, as a heathen doctrine. Many people close the
door of their minds upon it, without waiting to find out
what message it brings when interpreted in the light of
Truth. It is the object of this presentation 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.
Jesus Christ Teaching
The teaching of Jesus Christ is that all men shall, through
Him, be made free
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from sin and be saved to the uttermost--spirit, soul, body.
Until this salvation is attained, there is death. To give
men opportunity to get the full benefit of salvation, life
is necessary. A body through which to express is also
necessary. When man loses his body by death, the law of
expression works within him for reembodiment. 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.
Regeneration
Generation and death must give place to regeneration and
eternal life. The necessity of rebirth must therefore pass
away with all other make-shifts of the mortal man. It will
have no place when men take advantage of the redeeming,
regenerating life of Jesus Christ and quit dying.
Reembodiment should not be given undue importance. 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.
Heathen Thought
Whenever there has been a nation of thinkers who were not
bound in materialism, those
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thinkers have accepted reembodiment as a fact. It is
rejected only where the craze for wealth and for fame and
for the things of the world has darkened the mind with
materiality.
The heathen who have not received Truth as revealed by
Jesus Christ do not know where and how reembodiment fits
into the race redemption. To them it is a fixed,
unalterable law.
They believe in karma, the accumulated effects of the sins
of past lives. The burden of karma they have carried for
ages, and they expect to carry it for ages more until they
have worked out of it. This makes them victims of a blind
fatalism, weary treadmill travelers from birth to death,
and from death to birth.
There is no such hopeless note in the doctrine of Jesus
Christ. He came to bring a full consciousness of abundant
life, complete forgiveness and redemption from all sin,
victory over death and the grave, so delivering man from
any occasion for reembodiment and from all beliefs of karma.
The heathen hold that reincarnation is one of the natural
evolutionary steps of man's development. We teach, and our
doctrine is sustained by the teachings of Jesus, that
rebirth is the unifying force of nature at work in its
effect to restore man to his original deathless estate.
Man, through his disregard of the law
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of life, brought death upon soul and body. A single span of
life, from the birth of an infant to the death of an old
man, does not constitute all man's opportunity for life.
Continuity
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. The divine law, as taught by Jesus Christ, must be
understood and applied in all life's details, and when this
is done the Eden state will be restored.
The objections that the natural man raises to reembodiment
arise largely from the fact that he lives in the personal
consciousness and cannot see things in the universal. He
thinks that by reembodiment he loses his identity. But
identity 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.
Release
All the personal man--his limitations, his relations--must
give
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way to the universal, the Christ. The privilege is ours to
give up or forsake everything--father, mother, wife,
children, houses, lands--for Christ's sake, and so enter
into the consciousness of the absolute. By doing this we
come into the realization of eternal life and receive a
hundredfold more than we have forsaken.
If we refuse and cling to the old family relationships,
there is nothing for it but to meet the result of our
choice, and to give all those relations up by death. It is
just a question of giving up a little for the all and of
gaining eternal life. So if reembodiment frees one from the
old personal relationships, it is not such a dreadful thing
after all. It cannot give anything more than new personal
relations. Rising out of these into the universal is a work
that everyone must do willingly for himself. Death and
reembodiment do not give redemption. Reincarnation serves
only as a further opportunity to lay hold of redemption.
Union
The pure, incorruptible substance of Spirit, built by the
transforming power of the Christ into the organism through
true, pure, spiritual thought and word, makes the body
incorruptible and eternal. As the mind changes from error
to Truth, corresponding changes take place in the body, and
the ultimate
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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.
Mortal Mind
The idea of progress in death has its origin in the mortal
mind, which reasons from its own limitations instead of
from absolute Truth. The mortal mind desires to preserve
eternally the personal consciousness and all personal
relations. Man therefore attempts to make and to people a
heaven, or spirit world, where all the old family relations
are as he knows them in his present life. He clings to this
belief with a tenacity worthy of a better object, and it is
usually only after hard experience that he is willing to
drop the personal. Eternal life cannot be
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demonstrated in personal consciousness. The great family of
Jesus Christ, the redeemed Adam race, are all one, and the
little selfish relationships of the Adam man have no place
in the new order.
Illogical Beliefs
Another illogical belief about the destiny of man is that
the patriarchs and the prophets, and all others who have
lived, have been lying in their graves, some of them for
thousands of years, having no place in the onward movement
of the race.
Another teaching, unfounded in Scripture or in reason,
holds that they who formerly lived are now either in a
realm of eternal bliss or in a state of unending torment.
It is far more logical to believe that the race is a unit
and that all its members grow and develop together as well
as individually. Thus we find it only reasonable to think
of every man and every woman as coming onto the stage
repeatedly, keeping up connection with the race and its
experiences.
Growth
Mortal 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
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been able to receive it, that has made all progress. As
man'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. 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 will come into
the light of life.
From the standpoint of the universal it is plain that
reembodiment serves a purpose in affording opportunities
for spiritual development. All that is gained in spiritual
growth in one life experience becomes part of man's real
identity. 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. But reincarnation is
only an opportunity.
Resurrection
If generation and reincarnation are not the means of
restoring to their place in the race those who have died,
what is the means that accords with the divine law?
Resurrection.
Whether they still walk the earth, or have
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ceased to breathe and have been buried from sight, all are
in a dead state, and all must be raised from the grave of
ignorance and sin. Right now the resurrection work is going
on. Men and women are awakening to a new consciousness of
life, of understanding, and of 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 beliefs about resurrection have
come down from past centuries of ignorance, and have been
accepted without question. They seem to be a literal
interpretation of certain Bible texts. In these, as in all
Scripture, we must get 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. As we do
this we find going on in ourself the very awakening and
resurrection that we once supposed would come in a single
day to buried people. When this raising up, redeeming
process has gone far enough in us, we shall probably be the
means of awakening and raising other buried ones.
Phases
Everyone begins where he left off. When reembodied, he has
opportunity
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to come up into Jesus Christ, identify himself with the
Jesus Christ race, and demonstrate through Him the
deathless life. We must remember that there are steps and
phases in this great process. When we understand them, we
shall see that men will be raised to their place in the
Adam race, then raised out of Adam into 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 life eternal. Then the word of life carries on,
day by day, the resurrecting, redemptive work in the mind
and in the body. 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.
It is not profitable to allow our mind to dwell upon mortal
questionings about how the work of Spirit is to be done in
and through us. It is our place to hold ourself 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 ourself and in others.
When we realize how much
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our faithfulness means to the race, we shall rejoice in
being true to the great truths that will bring to pass the
time when death and the grave will be no more.
Memory
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 that does not 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
memories of experiences in past lives are 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.
In the book of life, the great Mind of the universe, all
identity is sharply marked. 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 the 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
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in 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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[Dynamics for Living]
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