Reincarnation, the idea that a person may return to Earth more than once after physical death, is a very ancient belief and is dominant in many Eastern religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism. It appears to have been an accepted belief in early Christianity, as suggested by certain passages in the Bible (Matthew 11:14, 17:12-13, 26:52; John 3:3, 9:2; James 3:6, etc), but was removed from Christian doctrine in the Fifth Century by the Ecumenical Council, reportedly because it gave the �masses� too much power. Today, reincarnation is fast gaining acceptance among Westerners, partially due to the increased influence of Eastern thought, and also through the teachings of Theosophy, Esotericism, Edgar Cayce, Alice Bailey, and New Age spirituality.

As presented by the Master Djwhal Khul, or the Master D.K. as he is usually called, reincarnation is a great natural law on our planet under which each Soul returns in physical form many times, maybe thousands of times, upon this Earth. This Law of Rebirth differs from the notion of transmigration of Souls - that human Souls may pass into the bodies of animals, or even lower forms of life - and asserts that once a Soul individualizes within the human kingdom that Soul always returns in ever more effective human bodies in the process of evolution of consciousness. The return is initiated by the Soul, the immortal, spiritual aspect of each human being, which inhabits a new personality at each incarnation, consisting of physical, emotional and mental vehicles.

At the end of each lifetime, the Soul records three �seeds of the future� according to the state of the individual at the time of death. These seeds determine the quality of the personality vehicles (physical-etheric, emotional and mental) in the next incarnation as well as the karma that needs to be worked out.

Many people misunderstand the idea of reincarnation and tend to expend much effort searching out unimportant and unprovable facts about past lives, debating the length of time between incarnations, and puzzling over other insignificant details, missing the true significance of this process - a process that began when THE ALL THERE IS, or THE ONE, willed the manifestation of form. At that point all beings within Itself and within Its realm began to take on dense physical bodies. Thus the Solar Logos, or the living entity our solar system embodies, manifested the planets and all systemic matter and non- matter as His body. Likewise, the Earth's Planetary Logos, as a microcosm of the Solar Logos, manifested this planet and all life on it as His physical body, as well as the laws of nature that govern it. And each Soul, as a sub-component of the Planetary Logos, manifests a human being with a physical body, emotions and thought. Thus form on every level is a component or a microcosm of the unity that we call God, or THE ONE, and is, in every molecule of its being, a result of divine purpose. The essence of form is, in fact, manifested purpose and the result of divine Will.

All entities created through the divine Will of THE ONE are subject to the laws that THE ONE has imposed upon them, including the law initiated with the creation of form, the Law of Cause and Effect, also called the Law of Karma. This law, as interpreted for us by Newton, states that for every action (cause) there is an opposite and equal reaction (effect), and this affects every atom at every level of our universe. Thus we human beings are affected by causes or karma from various sources including many that are beyond our awareness: karma from the Solar Logos and the Planetary Logos, from the human kingdom as a whole, national karma, racial karma, from groups to which we belong, and from our own actions in thousands of past lives.

All forms are likewise controlled by the Law of Cycles, as may be seen in the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, by its turn on its axis causing day and night, by the fall and rise of tides, and by the birth/death cycle of physical incarnation itself. Likewise, all living beings are controlled by the Law of Evolution, the instinctual desire to progress, to evolve into more complex and refined beings, to achieve perfection in material form.

Through the Laws of Rebirth, Evolution, Karma and Cycles, we and all other species have gradually evolved to our current state. In the early days, large groups of forms - plants, animals and later man - came in and out of manifestation in a natural cyclic rhythm. At first man was quite animal-like, being mainly conscious of his body and physical environment, and surviving on mere instinct, not having developed his emotions or mind.

As the group cyclic reincarnation continued, man gradually acquired responsiveness to finer sensations and desire, and as his physical and emotional aspects eventually merged, he was able to attain that which he desired. It was his aspiration for things of material form that determined his next incarnation. Even today, those who are predominately emotionally and physically oriented, who are not taking responsibility and attempting to control their lower urges, are unconsciously carried forward on the tide of human evolution. The activities of the reincarnating group as a whole predispose its future, for group karma, not individual, rules in this case.

History depicts how man has learned to discriminate between self and not-self, good and bad, spirit and body, love and hate, and has developed the ability to think. By learning to think, he freed himself somewhat from group karma, but he also acquired the ability to create karma, such that each action created an obligation that at some point would come to fruition or be repaid. It was now these causes that kept him upon the �great wheel of rebirth.� If he thought or did evil deeds, he would again face evil at some future time, and if he thought or did very unselfish, loving acts, positive results would be his repayment.

And so today man continues to evolve. After many lifetimes, he becomes aware of his spiritual self, his Soul, and he begins to tread his self-created �Path of Return,� the return to THE ONE. He spends many lifetimes in a battle of Soul vs. personality control and eventually comes to understand the Law of Cause and Effect, learning that we are, in actuality, all a part of THE ONE. In time he learns to detach from events in this world, controlling his thoughts and actions, and thus avoid creating negative karma. And he eventually allows the Soul to guide the personality and work through old karma. As he detaches himself from form and renounces his desire for the personality-based life of this world, he frees himself from karma and is no longer required to return to earthly incarnation.

But the Soul-infused individual, having gained knowledge and understanding of God�s Plan for us, often chooses to return to help implement the Plan. He may incarnate to perform some specific service for a more advanced entity, to bring healing energy of a certain type to a group or individual, or to serve those less advanced Souls who need inspiration from a more evolved Soul. Having achieved �Christ-like perfection� and having acquired full consciousness of his Soul group and of the Soul in all forms, he returns in unconditional love as a service to humanity and to the Hierarchy.

The Law [of Rebirth] exists; of the details of its working we know as yet nothing. �When Christ reappears, our knowledge will become more true and realistic; we shall know that we are eternally related to the souls of all men, and that we have a definite relationship to those who reincarnate with us, who are learning with us the same lessons and who are experiencing and experimenting with us. This proven and accepted knowledge will regenerate the very sources of our human living. We shall know that all our difficulties and all our problems are caused by our failure to recognize this fundamental Law, with its responsibilities and obligations; we shall then gradually learn to govern our activities by its just and restraining power. The Law of Rebirth embodies the practical knowledge which men need today to conduct rightly and correctly their religious, political, economic, communal and private lives, and thus establish right relations with the divine life in all forms. (The Reappearance of The Christ, pp. 118, 120.)

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