I. The Relevance of Knowledge about reincarnation at the Beginning of the Age of Aquarius

Today, in a time of spiritual awakening, at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius, a basic question, and at the same time an age-old adage of mankind, is a subject of increasing relevance: the knowledge about reincarnation, that is, the possibility a soul has to incarnate several times in a human body. The teaching of reincarnation is part of early Christian thought—even though the Church erased it from western thought. It gives answers to questions concerning suffering and death, the purpose of life on earth, and about life after this life. As a part-aspect of the law of cause and effect, reincarnation offers a chance for the intensive purification of the soul.
 

The following explanations, which throw light on the subject of reincarnation from an original Christian point of view, present in detail the spiritual principles that pertain to reincarnation. They are based on the knowledge revealed by the Spirit of God which is taught in Universal Life, an Original Christian community of the present times.

Reincarnation—a basic question and an age-old adage of mankind
reincarnation—this is a basic adage of mankind. At all times and in most cultures this subject has been an element of faith and of speculation. The well-known Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung held that: "reincarnation is an expression which definitely belongs to the age-old statements of mankind. These age-old adages are based on what I call the ‘archetype.’ In their very origin all statements regarding the supernatural are determined by the archetype, so that it is not surprising that we find statements about reincarnation among many peoples."

 

1 Knowledge about the reincarnation of a soul is the basis for a satisfactory interpretation of suffering and guilt—of the very meaning of existence. It gives an answer to the question why children are born in misery, crippled and sick. From the religious point of view, the same question is raised: How is this possible if a God of love exists? On the other hand, why are many people born into wealth, prosperity and health? And, why are there so-called child prodigies?

 
The question of whether there is a possibility of repeated lives on earth is a most essential one. It concerns the very basic interpretation of our human existence; it relates to concepts of man, of the world, and of God.

Knowledge about reincarnation is not only widespread in eastern religions—for example, Hinduism and Buddhism—but to many great western poets and thinkers of bygone and modern times, this knowledge is self-evident to their way of thinking. Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato and Virgil, and then later Goethe, Hölderlin, Schiller, Schleiermacher, Fichte, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Voltaire, among others, were convinced of the possibility of repeated lives on earth.

Today the idea of reincarnation is upheld by large esoteric movements, for example, the Anthroposophists, the Rosicrucians or the Lorber groups. Universal Life, too, upholds the teaching of the possibility of several incarnations in a human body for a soul.

 
Science, too, is interested in reincarnation. Extensive material is available, for example, the work of Prof. Jan Stevenson who, after several years of research on over 1,500 cases of spontaneous recollection, expressed the conviction that the cases scientifically examined by him "by far exceed the mere suggestion of reincarnation; to me they adequately prove it."

 
Another well-known name is Thorwald Dethlefsen who led his patients back into former lives by means of a method which he himself developed, thus bringing to light memories deeply rooted in the soul. He used this method to treat psychosomatic ailments in their present life.2

Despite, or rather because of, these research results and the widespread knowledge about reincarnation, there is no standard doctrine but many different opinions which of course overlap, and in part coincide, in their essence and in the application of this knowledge.

 
It is like the question about God: All religions affirm His existence—but there are different concepts about His nature. Everywhere there are smaller or larger sparks of the one truth, mixed with differing human opinions and conceptions. The same applies to reincarnation. The fact is hardly denied, but when it comes to the details the statements can differ considerably. For instance, the concept of reincarnation cannot simply be identified with the transmigration of the soul; eastern understanding differs from western—depending on which image of God it is based upon.

 
Unlike the opinion of the Catholic and Protestant teachings, we are convinced that there is also a Christian viewpoint on the doctrine of reincarnation and, moreover, that the knowledge about the reincarnation of the soul is part of early Christian thought and an essential element of Christian faith.

 
"The knowledge about reincarnation was a fixed part of Christian thought during the time of early Christianity and its first centuries. Jesus of Nazareth also taught about reincarnation and many church scholars considered reincarnation as self-evident." 3
 

Hermann Bauer confirmed this in his work on reincarnation.4 He critically evaluated Greek and Latin biblical texts, council documents and works of early church fathers, and came to the conclusion that reincarnation is an early Christian teaching. References in the Bible are, for example, found in Matthew 16:14 (also Luke 9:19), when Jesus asked who people thought He was. Thereupon His disciples answered Him that some thought Him to be John the Baptist, others Elijah, and yet others Jeremia or some other prophet. In another example, Jesus spoke of the return of Elijah, meaning John the Baptist (Mt. 17:10-13; also Luke 9:8 and others).
The church teacher Rufinus confirmed in a letter to Anastasius that the belief in repeated lives was common knowledge for the church fathers and that, at all times, it had been passed on as an old tradition. Origenes (ca. 185-254), who was one of the greatest Greek church fathers, taught reincarnation with strong conviction; the original Bible manuscripts in Greek and Hebrew were still at his disposal.5
 

The doctrine of reincarnation was thus a constituent part of Christianity in the first centuries. All the more surprising, that this knowledge was and is not taught by western churches.

Church versus reincarnation
How did the elimination of the truth about reincarnation develop? Let us look into this question briefly.
For many reasons, both political and human, numerous theological disputes about the teachings of Origenes broke out. Since Origenes was acknowledged everywhere as a prominent figure in the early church—he was the authority, and both opponents as well as supporters referred to him—knowledge about reincarnation became more and more associated with his name. In the course of the following centuries, the dispute about Origenes became increasingly strong, thus requiring a definitive decision. And so, a crucial event followed which resulted in the repression and elimination of the doctrine of reincarnation: At the synod of the Orthodox Church in the year 543 in Constantinople, the teachings of Origines were banned with nine anathemas (curses).

Among them were two curses which indirectly condemned the teaching of reincarnation. First, the pre-existence of the soul is denied and, in this connection, that souls originally existed as pure beings in heaven who then, however, broke away from God and incarnated into human bodies. Secondly, all those are cursed who do not believe there is an eternal damnation for demons and impious men as well as punishment for all those who believe in a reintegration return to God (apocatastasis).6
 

The formulation of these anathemas was carried out per the instructions of Emperor Justinian I who considered himself the supreme ruler of the church. The anathemas ordered by him were confirmed by the synod of 543 and, ten years later, Pope Vigilius signed the curses submitted to him by the Council of Constantinople, although according to council reports they had not been discussed at all.
 

The personality of Emperor Justinian, the general conditions of war in the Eastern Roman Empire, and the threatening danger of being confronted with an additional internal political-religious front in Palestine were the political motives for the elimination of the doctrine of reincarnation.

In order to fill the gap resulting from the condemnation of the teaching of reincarnation and in order to support the doctrine of only one human life, new dogmas had to be created. These dealt mainly with original sin, creation of the soul at the moment of begetting, mortal sin, judgment day, purgatory and eternal damnation. At the same time, the necessity of salvation through priestly intermediaries was established, for without them this system of doctrines could not have functioned.
 

With this however, the questions about the meaning of suffering and guilt that were stated at the beginning are, from the very start, unanswerable. With empty theological phrases, people who ask existential questions are consoled with the apparent mysteries of God which should not be put into question.7


II. Origin, Nature and Spiritual Aim of Man

The possibility of repeated lives on earth of one and the same soul is a basic truth of our human existence. In order to understand the meaning and significance of this, we should first become aware of the origin, nature and spiritual aim of man.

The Fall of the angels
Originally, we human beings were pure angels, divine beings from the eternal heavens. We are children of God, perfect images of God-Father, who once lived in the seven dimensional Absoluteness, in the light of God. We cannot imagine the glorious heavenly life of these pure spirit beings; we can at best have a sense of it in moments of highest inner bliss. It is a life of being directly permeated by the Spirit of God, by God’s radiating light, a life of infinite fullness, joy, harmony and love.8
 

However, one spirit being, Satana, turned away from God; she had negative sensations and began to imagine a kingdom of her own.
Here, in the willfulness of Satana, lies the origin of the so-called Fall-event, also called "Fall of the angels." 9
Satana enticed other spirit beings into disobedience towards God; as a result of their unlawful behavior—they violated the divine law of love through their willful actions—they were increasingly incapable of being irradiated by the spirit of God; their light visibly decreased. When they did not listen to the instructions of the cherubim (archangels) either, they were led from the pure heavens by the archangel, Michael.
 

As a result of the departure of these disloyal children of God, the so-called wall of light developed, which encloses the pure heavens. The more a spirit being turns away from God through its negative, that is, egotistic and willful, actions, the more energy it gives to this wall of the law.
Because the fall beings continuously violated the law, a steadily increasing condensation of the once fine-material forms took place. This happened to the formerly pure spirit beings as well as to parts of the spiritual planets that had left the pure heavens with them. In this way, little by little and according to their degree of condensation, the seven so-called Fall-planes with their seven respective sub-levels developed.
 

The energy potential of the ether bodies belonging to the once light-filled spirit beings reduced more and more; they became dark and shadowed. The ether body became smaller and smaller, and seven times seven garments developed around it. In their vibrations, these garments are identical with the Fall-planes. We call this shadowed, covered body, the soul.

The soul is the book of life. All sensations, thoughts, words and actions, whether positive or negative, are recorded in it. The negative vibrations constitute the shadowing (the burden) of the soul. They are the garments, or veils of clouds, which keep away the divine light.
 

Because of this increasing condensation, the soul became encapsulated more and more. The seven garments, also called soul garments, drew together into spiritually compressed points which are called consciousness centers (chakras). Via these consciousness centers the formation of the coarse-material body ensued and man came into being. The human body is, so to speak, the vehicle of the soul, with which it moves in matter—which in the meantime had also developed.

The deed of redemption of Jesus, the Christ
As a result of the life of the fall beings that was adverse to God, the spiritual atoms, of which their ether bodies consist, rotated more and more slowly, leading to the aforementioned condensation. Satana, who was now also called Lucifer (light bearer), planned to make the spiritual atoms rotate so slowly that they would reverse their direction from right to left. This would have meant a successive degeneration finally leading to the dissolution of all forms into the eternal ether. This concept of the dissolution of all forms is still an element in eastern religions, all of which were founded before Christ.
 

However, Jesus, the Christ, the incarnated Son of God, stopped this process with His deed of redemption.10 When He said on Golgotha: "It is finished," His divine heritage divided into sparks and a so-called Redeemer-spark became embedded in each soul, in each human being. This is active as the Christ-force in the fourth consciousness center, a supporting and maintaining energy that upholds the divine filiation of God in each soul, thus preventing further degeneration. The Christ-spark is the redeeming and healing power within us.
 

It was also the mission of Jesus, the Christ, to teach the path back to Absoluteness to a mankind which had gone astray, for many prophets before Him had tried this in vain. He, the greatest prophet and mystic in the history of mankind, proclaimed the path of selfless love, the path within. In the Sermon on the Mount, His teaching is summarized in a concentrated form; it is an offer proffered by God, who wants to lead His children back to the eternal home, to the heavens of light.
 

By way of the deed of redemption of Jesus Christ, each one of us bears the Redeemer-spark within himself, and this spark strives to return into the Absoluteness, into the Kingdom of God. It is a force that presses for self-recognition, for change—from an externalized life that is oriented towards wanting to possess, to be and to have. It is the transforming and redeeming flame in every heart, the guiding light for each one who seriously turns to Christ and to the divine laws.

The aim of soul and person
And so, the goal of every soul and of every person is—whether this is accepted or not—to become again a conscious child of God, a free heavenly being which lives and acts in the light of God, sharing His power and glory.
To accomplish this, it is necessary to lighten the seven soul garments which are active as consciousness centers within the human being and to make the energy body—the once pure spirit body that has been shadowed and darkened by an unlawful life—shine again until it is uncovered once more and can be completely irradiated by the Spirit of God. For, we are of divine origin.

The meaning of life on earth - the earth as a school of life
The above-mentioned path back to the Absoluteness, the metamorphosis from man to God-man, to a conscious child of light, can be walked as a discarnate soul in the seven Fall-planes—which since the Redeemer-deed of Jesus, the Christ, are also called planes of purification and preparation—as well as in the human garment. It is the path of the step-by-step purification of the soul from all burdens, the path of selfless love that leads back to the heart of God.
On earth we have the possibility to complete all seven consciousness levels with their sub-levels, to dissolve all consciousness centers. In this way, the earth is also a place of grace, a school of life, in which we can purify ourselves considerably faster than in the planes of purification. The reason for this will be explained later.
 

And so, the time on earth is precious and should be a time of growing awareness, a time of intensive effort to purify the soul and to spiritualize the person, by recognizing and overcoming one’s faults and burdens and by a life of selfless love.