Reincarnation

The cyclic law

The word reincarnation is Latin and means "in flesh again". Sometimes the classic Greek word "palingenesia" is used, which in English means rebirth. The Greek word "metempsychosis" means "the soul's wandering from place to place", which normally is translated to "transmigration of souls". In this connection the word is often used with a negative charge, as if the reincarnation idea implies that the soul restlessly wanders from body to body. However, the common feature is the actual idea of repetition or cycle.

The idea of reincarnation is connected with the principle of conservation of energy and the cyclic lawfulness. The principle of conservation of energy can in this context be understood in this way: We cannot perish, but our energies can undergo transformation and change. As living beings we cannot cease to exist, as our inmost essence is divine and thus immortal, transcendent and outside time and space. Every living being is "a fragment of God" and the life stream consequently unquenchable. However, the outer idioms change. Therefore you may say, and rightly so, that we have only one life (that is the eternal), but we have many incarnations.

The cyclic law is one of the most fundamental laws that we are able to observe. It applies everywhere, from the largest to the smallest, and expresses itself simply in all existing things' pulsating, rhythmic interaction between activity and rest, extroversion and introversion. In nature we see the tide as a result of the moon's orbit. The entire solar system is one rhythmic movement, and the earth's slope and rotation result in the seasons' cyclic recurrence. Not only solar systems, but also star clusters and galaxies rotate, because the cycle is energy in motion. In our own body we feel the heartbeat's interaction between diastole and systole, and our breathing, hormone balance and cell rhythm indicate other pulsations, like the interaction of day and night and sleep and awake. Everywhere in our lives we witness periods of activity and rest, potentiality and actuality, latency and manifestation, introvert and extrovert exertion.

This simple and beautiful principle is so universal, that we often do not notice it at all. The flowers open in the sunlight in the morning and close again in the evening. Our own life has periods of intense rushes and dynamics followed by slow periods where the best thing to do is to retire into reflection and immersion. And society is one giant demonstration of rhythms and pulsations, from the traffic lights' constant change between green, yellow and red, to the day's recurring rituals in private life and job. One of life's most common features might be this cyclic expression, and the reincarnation principle is no exception. In some periods the human soul is retired into its essence and acts in higher dimensions, whereupon it returns to outer activity and tries its strength against new challenges. When the soul recurs outwards it makes an idiom of mental, emotional and physical matter. We then say that the soul is born and appears as a personality in the physical world. For a time it then displays its possibilities and tries to reach the planned aims, whereupon it discards its outer form by the so-called death, and withdraws to the higher dimensions. Reincarnation can be expressed in this simple way: It is the soul's pulsating breathing, a continued change between introvert recharging and extrovert activity. The consciousness reaches for the compact regions of manifestation to create and form, whereupon it withdraws to higher dimensions to assimilate and incorporate the gained experiences, so they become permanent qualities.