35. The Law Of Karmic Return
- What happens to people who will not take responsibility for balancing their karma?
- Don't people go to heaven or hell when they die?
- What happened to the real core of Christ's teaching?
- Have any Church scholars taught reincarnation since Jesus?
- How important is it to believe in reincarnation?
Mrs. Prophet, what happens to those who will not take responsibility for balancing their own karma? And what about those who withhold the teaching of karma and reincarnation from the people?
Jesus said, “Woe unto you, lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” Jesus was speaking of those who take the letter of the Law and split that letter and destroy the key of knowledge of God, which is in the great mystery that is revealed by the Holy Spirit. The understanding of the continuity of the soul's evolution is absolutely basic to true Christianity.
Then, do people not go to heaven or hell when they die?
It is not so much heaven and hell that I am concerned with but those in the pulpits of every nation who are preaching that there is no return of the soul, there is no opportunity. What this means is that there are individuals who have defied God, who are unwilling to atone for that sin, to reincarnate and undo the wrong they have done—in other words, to balance their karma and serve life and to set themselves and that life free.
They want someone else to do it for them and so they take the teaching of Jesus Christ as the World Saviour, they take his tremendous demonstration of love for us and they turn it into an escapism whereby they can totally escape from the law of karma. This is the great tragedy—that the real teaching and the real meat of Christ's teaching is taken from his children today.
What happened to that teaching, Mrs. Prophet?
As I said before, Jesus taught that John the Baptist was Elias come again. There's no way we can rationalize that Jesus was not teaching the doctrine of reincarnation. But if we need further proof, we can read Matthew 16, where Jesus says to his disciples, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” And his disciples answer, “Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias or one of the prophets.”
The point here is that the disciples are telling him that others are speculating on who he might have been in a previous incarnation. Jesus never rebukes them, never says to them, “This is of the devil. It is wrong for you to speak of this.” But he goes right on with his question because he is not interested in speculation on who he was in his last life.
He wants to know if they have identified the eternal nature of the Christ, so he says, “But whom say ye that I am?” And this is when Simon Peter gives his famous answer, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus blesses him and says, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”
And so Jesus demonstrates to his disciples that the Christ is his eternal nature and that it is by the identity of the Christ that he desires to be remembered, not by his previous incarnations. Thus he teaches us all where we should place the emphasis.
We're not particularly interested in knowing who we were in our past lives. But the doctrine of reincarnation enables us to face the fact that what we are today is the totality of what we have been before. Without that understanding we cannot evolve to the place where we can reunite with the I AM THAT I AM.
Mrs. Prophet, have any of the Church scholars taught reincarnation in the period since Jesus left us?
Well, as a matter of fact, Origen of Alexandria, one of the most influential members of the early Church—as influential as Augustine—actually taught the preexistence of the soul and the doctrine of reincarnation. His writings have been almost completely destroyed because he was condemned and his theories were anathematized.
But, in fact, he set forth not his own logic but the understanding of the Christian mysteries prevailing among the group of souls who had retained the message that Jesus gave. John speaks of this when he says that there are so many things which Jesus did that the world “could not contain the books that should be written.”
Nevertheless, Theodora and Justinian determined in the year 543 that certain of Origen's teachings should be anathematized. And therefore the doctrine of reincarnation has fallen into what we might call the subconscious body of knowledge of the Church.
It's interesting to note that Theodora was a prostitute before she became empress and the wife of Justinian. In contemplation of the doctrine of reincarnation, she could not face the consequences of what a future life might be because of her previous sins. She would rather make permanent the doctrine that she could be saved through the Christ than bear her own burden, which the law states we must all do. And so we see that it was rebellion against the inner law that Christ taught that caused so much controversy to rise up against Origen.
Mrs. Prophet, how important is it that a person come to believe in reincarnation?
Saint Germain, who is the master of the Aquarian cycle, teaches us in one of his dictations how important it is. He says that it is the keystone in the arch of being. Without the understanding of reembodiment, as he calls it, we cannot really understand our soul's path of evolution. He says:
It would be most beneficial if the human monad would refrain from prejudgment in matters of cosmic doctrine and even better if he could universally accept the reality of reembodiment. For it is in the acceptance of this fact of life that he will truly discern the wisdom of the ages and more easily understand his reason for being.
It is most difficult for people in any age, observing in the life span of a comparatively few short years a series of events relative to the personal self, to be able to judge the world in which they live and the society from which they have derived both bane and blessing, and then to be able to perceive matters pertaining to the Spirit and properly assess them.
By correctly understanding and accepting his own reembodiment, the individual develops a cosmic sense of the continuity of self—past, present and future—and is better equipped to see behind the surface effects of today's circumstances the underlying personal causes that stretch back across the dust of centuries. Simply because men lack conscious memory of a previous existence does not deny the validity of this truth. Many have experienced the sudden feeling of having done before that which they are doing for the first time in this life.
Many have noted with interest the incidence of genius (that some call a “gift” or “talent”) in art, music and science, or other aptitudes that appear at an early age, indicating the soul's resumption of the broken thread of identity. Modern physicians take note of the distinct personality of babies on the day of their birth. And all over the world fascinating stories have been documented concerning people's recall of vivid scenes and experiences from a past life.
In the Summit University Press book Quietly Comes the Buddha, Gautama Buddha says, “Consider that you yourself have sown the wind and that if you would enter into the fiery core of being, you must first reap the whirlwind.” What does that mean?
To “sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” simply describes the law of cause and effect. In order for that law to be fulfilled, the individual soul must reincarnate because one cannot receive the full impact of all he does in a given lifetime.
So Gautama is talking about the fact that we must face our karma first, before we come to the judgment, before we come to the trial by the sacred fire, before we are to be weighed in the great balance of life.
God allows us to balance our karma and he gives us extensive opportunity until, ultimately, when that span of opportunity has been fulfilled, there comes the final judgment, which is written about in the Book of Revelation.
It seems that most people in the world are actually getting behind in the game rather than getting ahead. Is there any hope for them?
The problem is that people in the West are not actively balancing their karma because they do not consider it a necessity. The children of God have unwittingly derived their philosophy from the fallen ones, who say: “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.”
These fallen ones are actually teaching the doctrine of the death of the soul. And the children of God have nowhere to turn because their leaders teach them: “It doesn't matter what you do, you can never pay your debt. You can only lean on Christ, who died for your sins.”
And so, with round after round of this false doctrine, embodiment after embodiment, comes the utter disappointment that the soul cannot yet be received in the resurrection by the Lord Christ because she has not settled her accounts. Therefore the Lords of Karma direct the soul once again to return to the scene of her crime, if you will, to stand, face and conquer all that has transpired in the past.
So then, you would attribute the general spiral of decay in the world to people's failure to take responsibility for their previous lives?
Not only previous lives, but the present life! Not only do people not come to grips with the distant past but they can scarcely take responsibility for what they did yesterday. People are walking out on responsibility everywhere and this is what is behind the moral decay of civilization.
Mrs. Prophet, don't you preach a rather hard doctrine?
It is the Law. And if we betray the Law, we betray our own souls. We will all keep reincarnating until we are willing to balance our karma.
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