Q: My hiccup with reincarnation has to do with how an individual's personality can continue for eternity. Don't individual personalities cease to exist, since the Bible says we must decrease so that Christ can increase?

A: I say this NOT in any judgmental sense, but I get the impression that you are still thinking within traditional religious parameters. I have come to believe that Christianity is a myth and not literal history. I also feel certain that its main message - that we need a savior - is not true. We are part of God, and so we have always existed. Reincarnation is not a recent invention of God. It is a function of the fact that God is Creator. We are part of him, and in a sense we are his fingers and feet and eyes, the mechanism through which he remotely interacts with his own creation. We are completely loved and completely free. We can choose to do nothing, or we can opt to incarnate.

Since we don't need a savior, the person and presence of Jesus has a totally different meaning for us, outside the church. He may well be a personification of the Holy Spirit. He is the face of God, for people who demand that God have a face. Our life is NOT focused on being one with Christ, for several reasons - 1. Jesus said we would do more than he did. Therefore, while he can be a model for us, even he thinks we have the potential to outdo him. 2. Our focus should be on becoming one with the God pf creation, not with the Jesus of religion. 3. Rather than seeing ourselves as miserable sinners worthy of hell, as religion teaches us, our goal should be to become like God, in our own evolutionary journey. Only as we grow in wisdom and spiritual power does God benefit from the trust he has placed in us.

Our various incarnations are like rooms in the nautilus shell. We outgrow one lifetime, one level of consciousness, one set of challenges, and go home to ruminate on what we have learned. Then we design the next task for ourselves in a never-ending series of growth experiences. This is much more entertaining than sitting around strumming a harp on a cloud for eternity. Although we can do that if we so choose.

As far as ceasing to exist as individual entities, reincarnation pretty well requires that we retain the same central spiritual core, or future lives and their accompanying karma would be meaningless. However, I suppose that at some point God can recycle us back into himself so that we come out with a whole new identity. Someone has said that God is creating for himself a consort, a spiritual consciousness, a partner capable of full communion with himself. That would be the human race, or its spiritual equivalent. Each of us is an atom in that spiritual organism. Thus, we have a separate identity even though we are part of the unity that is God. An atom in your leg could not exist without the whole of you, but you could not exist without that atom (and all of its siblings.) In a similar way, you are one with God and yet distinctly you at the same time.

Posted 2-06-07

Copyright: John W. Sloat 2007