Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:37 — 31.1MB)
For regular Gnostics Insights, subscribe here. Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS
My brother and I have discussed the concept of reincarnation for over 50 years. Bill has always favored the concept of reincarnation and I have always provided alternative explanations from a Christian worldview. But, once I had begun writing my Simple Explanation theory of everything, I came around to his point of view. In the past few years, Bill has used the concept of reincarnation with his hypnosis clients, and we have both been able to observe apparent evidence of reincarnation in practice.
For most of my life, the meme bundle that I hold has stuck pretty closely to evangelical Christianity, and we all know that Christianity currently holds that reincarnation does not exist. It seems to me that evangelical Christianity emphasizes the born-again meme so heavily that it doesn’t want any soul believing they have another lifetime during which they may be saved. Christianity is all about closing the deal here and now. When it comes to salvation, more lifetimes means more delay. Added to that is the expectation that any day can be the end of times or Judgment Day. What if someone thinks they can delay salvation until the next incarnation and then the world ends and that soul is left on the wrong side of the salvation divide?
But, over the last 15 years of writing and contemplating the Simple Explanation, and now The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, I have changed my point-of-view. I now can see that it makes a lot more sense that all souls are reincarnated time and time again. So, here is the reprint of an article titled “A Simple Explanation of Reincarnation” that I posted on May 16th of 2011 to my Simple Explanation blog.
Reincarnation is a meme common to most world religions and spiritual traditions, with the notable exception of contemporary Christianity. Many ancient as well as modern philosophers also incorporate the reincarnation meme into their philosophies.
Reincarnation is typically defined as “entering the flesh again.” Depending upon the particular memes held by one’s belief system, it is said that after a human passes on they may reenter their next life as a newborn human, or possibly an animal or some other form.
The Simple Explanation defines reincarnation this way:
Physical “death” breaks the bonds of a Self’s material instantiation, but not its karmic pattern. The freed unit of consciousness continues its existence at a non-material level until its karmic pattern causes it to reattach to a particular, newly instantiating aggregate of cells, at which time it is born again into Creation.
A previous Simple Explanation article, “Who Am “I” After Death?” describes the process this way:
The “me” that continues to influence the fate of the Self unit of consciousness after death is nothing but the holographic pattern of all the choices ever made by my unit of consciousness. In life, this karmically generated vibratory pattern attracts or repels the memes associated with my meme bundles. The memes I think of as “me” are not a part of my Self unit of consciousness, but are drawn to me by my karmic pattern. It is my karmic record that attracts and repels the patterns of memes surrounding my life at any moment. That the “you” that exists between material incarnations is nothing but your karmic record is proved by one of our basic assertions that all units of consciousness are fundamentally one and the same, and that all units of consciousness begin their individuated journey as perfect echoes of God. Then it follows that “I” develop as a result of my choices and the choices of others—“I” am my perfect unit of consciousness enshrouded in karma and the memes that my karma attracts.
The Simple Explanation suggests that reincarnations are not random events, but the continuation of karmically-mandated cycles of consequence that do not end with death. It is not logical to expect the consequences of one’s actions to end at one’s death; if you cut off someone’s ear and then die, does the person’s ear suddenly grow back? No. Consequences of behavior are not affected by the death of the doer.
The memes that one favors in life also continue to live on in the shared transpersonal field after one’s death. They were not the unit of consciousness’s property or invention to begin with, therefore it is safe to assume they also continue on after death.
In the Simple Explanation model, “I” consist of my karmic pattern, the memes I hold onto, and the “aggregate units of consciousness of my material body, from the subatomic particles to molecules to cells, all the way up through the units of consciousness of the body’s organ systems” overlaid upon my Self’s perfect unit of consciousness. In terms of reincarnation, it is only the aggregate units of consciousness and their associated material bodies that change from incarnation to incarnation.
In practical terms, here’s how I see reincarnation playing out. This person, Cyd, is composed of a Self unit of consciousness that is a fractal replication of the Metaversal unit of consciousness, and virtually identical to the Metaversal unit of consciousness. Overlaid upon the Self unit of consciousness is Cyd’s personality, which is largely defined by the memes Cyd holds onto, plus Cyd’s karmic record which inclines Cyd’s choices this way and that, plus Cyd’s physical body and its desires and limitations.
When this particular physical body is no longer able to sustain the constellation of units of consciousness that make up “Cyd,” this particular hierarchical collection of units of consciousness will disband their union, and all units of consciousness more complex than the molecular level will also pass on, along with the governing Self unit of consciousness. This means that at death, not just one soul passes away, but the souls of millions of aggregate units of consciousness, too. (The molecular, atomic, sub-atomic units of consciousness do not pass on at this time, because they are still able to do their respective jobs.)
Every newly instantiating piece of creation needs a unit of consciousness to oversee its life. At every conception, be it a leaf or a seed, a cell, an organ, or an egg, perhaps even a planet or a galaxy, nature’s karmic computer attaches a governing unit of consciousness. “Cyd’s” unit of consciousness will probably cycle into another newly aggregated body of units of consciousness who all, in the most perfect way imaginable, “deserve” one another. This new Cyd will resemble old Cyd to the extent that new Cyd adopts old Cyd’s memes. These memes will be drawn to new Cyd by way of old Cyd’s karma, which attracts some memes and repels others. Cyd’s new body may also carry some physical traits forward from the previous life in the form of epigenetic patterns that cause genetic traits to turn off and on, as karmically determined. It’s likely that new Cyd will be a human, not just because Cyd was human before but, more persuasively, because Cyd’s particular karma and meme bundles best instantiate her human form.
However, if I love to swim and surf and think about surfing nonstop, and I spend all my time sitting on the board on the water, I could very well reincarnate as a porpoise. Who knows? It has to do with the memes and the karma. I don’t see our incarnations as a process of becoming pure. It’s my understanding that the Hindu version of reincarnation believes that over many, many lifetimes, 10,000 lifetimes, 1,000,000 lifetimes, you become a better and better human being and you shed more and more memes until you have achieved the nil state of zero memes and the pure consciousness of the Father. I don’t think that’s the case because I don’t see a lot of progress in that direction. In general, it doesn’t seem to me that people are dropping memes throughout their lifetime. I think they probably come in with a certain meme bundle. Some of those memes rearrange, they get new ones, they drop old ones, but they’ve still got memes when they go forward into the next life. I don’t see each life time as a process toward perfection.
However, we do know that through gnosis you can in an instant reconnect with the Fullness of God. You can in an instant, know the Father, and that is what the Gnostic Gospel is all about. It’s remembering that you come from the Fullness of God and that you will return to the Fullness of God. And according to the various gnostic gospels as laid out in the Nag Hammadi, this world that we find ourselves in is inherently troublesome. That’s why it’s called the Deficiency, and it is inherently a source of delusion. Ongoing delusion. This is the work of the Demiurge and the archons. I think we’re caught in an endless war and that we are recycled down here to fight that war until the end of time. We don’t cause the end of time. The end of time was determined by the Fullness of God. We are part of a plan. We are part of the plan of the Pleroma. And there will come a judgment day when time does end and everything is recalled and that will be the day of full salvation for All Souls, including the fallen Logos. And the Deficiency and the imitation will not coexist with us any longer. We will all be living in a paradise that replicates the dream of paradise that has always been in the mind or the Fullness of God.
hold your phone’s camera up to the donorbox above and then click on the website that appears on your phone if you care to donate. thank you!