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From Birth to Rebirth → Rebirth and Reincarnation
- #1
31 Aug 2019
The wheel of life does not stop for long--soon it will turn again and pass from the point of death to the point of life.
∫- #2
30 Jul 2015
The thought of the body, of being identified with it, guarantees that a dying person will come back here again.
∫- #9
5 Feb 2016
Better than being born to wealthy parents is being born to wise ones, for then the child will not only be taught spiritual values but will see them demonstrated before his eyes.
∫- #14
6 May 2015
None of us is thrown into this world against his will. All of us are here because we want to be here.
∫- #17
30 Aug 2017
All men come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind's bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable.
∫- #18
2 Feb 2018
The tendencies brought over from past births, the experiences and contacts made then as well as in the present one, explain his acting as he does, and his being what he is.
∫- #20
2 Jul 2016
At any given moment, a man thinks and acts according to, and as a result of, his whole mental and physical experience of life and his whole character and nature. These cannot be limited to the single short life on earth he now knows, for that will not explain many of his tendencies and traits. They must include all his previous lives.
∫- #21
16 Mar 2015
All things contribute to the making of man--the history of his past and the climate of his land, the people among whom he is born, and his own particular tendencies. The most important is his karma.
∫- #30
29 Jul 2020
The complexes and tendencies pre-existing the present birth and hidden deep in his subconscious mind, must sooner or later come through to the surface mind.
∫- #33
23 Jun 2017
The traits and tendencies which a man receives from the preceding births constitute in their totality the personal self which he knows as ”I.”
∫- #38
5 May 2017
The ego inherits the tendencies, the affinities, and the antagonisms which have shaped themselves in a long series of births behind the present one.
∫- #39
21 Sep 2017
… He cannot behave differently from the way he does--that is, if he is not on the quest and therefore not struggling to rise beyond himself. His own past--and it stretches back farther than he knows--created the thoughts, the acts, and the conditions of the present.
∫- #47
13 Feb 2016
... Two loving friends are near each other even though their bodies are in separate continents; two hating enemies are far from each other even though their bodies are in the same room...
∫- #57
20 Feb 2016
What we were in the past is not important. What we are now is important. What we intend to make of ourselves in the future is vitally important.
∫- #65
31 Jan 2012
He who has taken many births has a great wealth of total experience behind him. This manifests itself naturally in wiser decisions and better self-control.
∫- #67
13 Jun 2015
That a truth which is so clear to their own minds could be so obscure to other minds, is easily explicable by the grading processes of reincarnation. Each man's present state and views are the outcome of his past experiences in past lives.
∫- #81
2 Dec 2018
The man who finds his mind suddenly illuminated, but does not know why it came about, may find his answer in the doctrine of ”tendencies”--prenatal and karmic--reappearing from former lives and held hitherto in the deeper mental levels.
∫- #82
14 Jan 2018
It is easy to despise as stupid those of obvious inferior intelligence, but it would be well to remember that we were once at the same level. The notion of rebirth teaches tolerance.
∫- #89
2 Nov 2014
... I am unwittingly remembering and using again my own capabilities from a former birth. This is possible only because I am mind. Mind alone can continue itself. Capacities in any field cannot appear out of nothing. The individual who shows them forth is repeating them out of his own deeper memory…
∫- #93
22 Nov 2014
The capacity to commune with the Overself exists in all men; it is a universal one. But it does not exist to an equal degree. For those who can accept the doctrine of rebirth, the explanation of this inequality lies there.
∫- #95
9 Apr 2017
The very nature of reincarnation prevents anyone from completely proving it. But there is no other theory that is so reasonable to help us understand our evolution, history, capacity, genius, character, and inequality; no other so useful to help us solve the great problem of why we are here on earth at all…
∫- #99
30 May 2013
The reincarnations which precede the present one contribute to its characteristics and help to shape its happenings. But this does not mean they give all its characteristics and happenings. Some develop out of the outer facts and inner reactions of this present birth.
∫- #101
9 Jul 2016
His conduct while alive will contribute to the kind of body and environment he gets next time, his thought and feelings too. We earn from life and pass up higher or go down lower like pupils in graded school.
∫- #103
30 Jun 2013
Where is any man's biography which is more than fragmentary, opinionated, and biased? For without the background picture of earlier lives in other bodies the materials are thinner than the compiler believes them to be.
∫- #110
29 Mar 2015
One may experience a sense of loss if he has not recovered the degree of awareness achieved in previous incarnations.
∫- #129
13 Feb 2015
The feeling of familiarity with someone met for the first time, of vague indistinct recognition which we sometimes get, may have varying significances. But one of them is an echo of remembrance of previous contact in a past birth.
∫- #136
18 Aug 2019
Since it is not from the animal but from the human state that the Essence of Being can be realized (because the animal does not possess the necessary faculties), the processes of rebirth must fill the gap between lowest animal to highest human.
∫- #139
8 Feb 2015
Only when the desire for perpetuation of personal existence finally leaves him is a man really near the point where even a little effort produces large results on this quest. But getting tired of the wheel of rebirth's turnings does not come easily.
∫- #143
7 Aug 2018
If a new birth is a new opportunity to gain spiritual experience, it is also a new opportunity to commit errors and acquire vices.
∫- #144
18 Jul 2011
Looking at the monstrous wickedness and folly in the world today, it would seem a stupid and hopeless effort to believe that human character will become any better than it was and still is. But the fact of reincarnation, with its tremendous possibilities, restores this hope.
∫- #150
16 May 2019
All the reincarnations which are necessary to the unfoldment of his character and capacities must be lived through.
∫- #160
22 Feb 2016
When he looks back upon the long series of earth lives which belongs to his past, he is struck afresh by the supreme wisdom of Nature and by the supreme necessity of this principle of recurring embodiment. If there had been only one single continuous earth life, his progress would have been brought to an end, he would have been cluttered up by his own past, and he could not have advanced in new directions... Without these breaks in his life-sequences, without the advantages of fresh surroundings, different circumstances, and new contacts, he could not have lifted himself to ever higher levels, but would only have stagnated or fallen to lower ones.
∫- #165
27 May 2016
We repeat these appearances on earth in a constant process and a long cycle of time. But contrast it with the beginninglessness and endlessness of life itself. What is this but a fraction of a fraction of a moment?
∫- #172
29 Dec 2010
When a man has established himself in the Universal self, in the awareness of its oneness, the series of earthly reincarnations of his personal self comes to an end. For himself, they would serve no further purpose.
∫- #194
7 Dec 2019
Greeks who believed strongly in the idea of rebirth were not only the initiates of the Orphic Mysteries, but also among the most celebrated thinkers, especially Plato.
∫- #204
18 Apr 2019
Each comes to the front of the stage, plays out his allotted role, and moves away…All mankind become a company of actors, appearing in play after play, each story different, each part acted in a new body.
∫- #205
20 Dec 2017
The periodic return to earth-life was a belief shared by poets like Goethe, Shelley, and Browning, by thinkers like Plato, Schopenhauer, and Swedenborg.
∫- #210
30 Nov 2014
We have to become in actuality what we are in potentiality; all our rebirths are engaged in this process.
∫- #212
1 Jul 2012
Until he finds his Overself, no man can escape this coming back to the earthly life. And this remains true whether he loves the world or is disgusted by it.
∫- #214
18 Nov 2014
We come back to this earth of ours and not to some other earth because it is here that we sow the seeds of thought, of feeling, and of action, and therefore it is here that we must reap their harvest. Nature is orderly and just, consistent and continuous.
∫- #217
20 Sep 2020
… he knows that his history did not begin in the country where he was born. He knows that it will not end in the body in which he dies.
∫- #221
7 Sep 2013
... Is all the vast intelligence of this universe which gave birth to our own minute fragment to be forever separated from us? No! We shall live again, die again, and return again unless and until we have fulfilled the divine purpose which brought us here.
∫- #222
13 Aug 2011
If it had been possible to attain salvation in the non-physical worlds, we would not have been born in this one. We are here because nowhere else could we, in our present state of progress, find the right environment to ripen those qualities which will lead us further toward this ultimate goal.
∫- #223
15 Aug 2011
The eventual trend of evolution is through and away from personality, as we now know it. We shall find ourselves afresh in a higher individuality, the soul. To achieve this, the lower characteristics have slowly to be shed. In this sense, we do die to the earthly self and are born again in the higher self. That is the only real death awaiting us.
∫- #225
9 Feb 2013
If it were true that a bad man must always remain bad, where would the hope be for mankind? But in the perfect wisdom of the Infinite Mind, human lives are so arranged that the bad man will go on garnering the untoward results of his deeds until his mind, first subconsciously but later consciously, perceives the logical and causal connection between his act and his suffering and begins the attempt to control his evil tendencies. Both this education and this effort will continue through many births for a single one would be too short in time, too poor in opportunity, for such a total reformation to be achieved.
∫- #226
18 Mar 2016
Even those who are well-intentioned and spiritually minded make many mistakes in life simply because they cannot see the unfortunate results to which their wrong decisions and actions must necessarily lead. Only experience can lead to their correction and only reincarnation can give enough experience.
∫- #227
19 Apr 2013
Life in the flesh is a gift if we are using it rightly but it becomes a curse if we are not. Every incarnation should be used to help one get somewhat farther in doing this job of achieving an Overself-inspired existence.
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