Have you Lived Before? Karma, Reincarnation and Christianity
Have you Lived Before?
Karma, Reincarnation and Christianity
TRANSCRIPT OF LECTURE EXCERPTS
I believe that the concept of karma and reincarnation are the most important concepts that we can know and understand to discover the meaning of life, to answer imponderable questions, to understand our reason for being and to truly understand what Jesus Christ and the apostles, the prophets and the patriarchs taught and what they lived, what is recorded in the scriptures of the Judeo-Christian tradition. All of it is there.
Jesus did teach reincarnation. But I am not going to begin my speaking to you this evening with Jesus’ teaching but I am going to take it in a sequence that starts from the beginning and goes to the very present hour.
I’d like to tell you about my own journey on the Path to begin with because God revealed the concept of reincarnation to me at a very real early age.
How many here have had an experience where you have remembered a past life somehow someway? Raise your hands high. There’s quite a few people here this evening who have had that experience. How many of you have never had a sense of ever remembering a past life? Quite a few of you also.
Before we’re through I think some of you who think you haven’t remembered a past life will realize that you have and that is in the sense of being very familiar with a certain situation or location or with a certain person or group of people, having an instantaneous dislike or even a sense of danger around some people and a sense of having known someone else a long time, finding it very easy to get to know someone.
We have little hints but, as a matter of fact, God in his mercy draws the shade. It’s a curtain of forgetfulness when we enter the birth canal. It is a mercy to us because we have an assignment for this life. We shouldn’t spend our days wishing we were who we used to be or longing for the good ol’ days that might have been better. We need to be locked into the here and now and recognize what an opportunity it is to be in embodiment, to have the blessing of being in a place of liberty and opportunity as we do to work out the karma of the past.
I just want to tell you that when I was about four years old and playing in a little play area that was fenced and a beautiful garden that was created by my parents, I was playing in my sandbox. It was a beautiful day. The clouds were moving over head and this was in New Jersey in Red Bank where I was born. And all of a sudden as though someone turned a dial I was a child playing in the sand along the Nile River. And I experienced the beauty of that scene as a child. It was as real as where I had just been in my own little play yard.
After some time, I don’t know how much time passed, it was as though the dial turned again and I was back at home, back in that little play yard. I wasn’t dizzy. I wasn’t dazed. I hadn’t passed out. I was just continuing to play in the sand.
So I jumped up and I ran to find my mother. I found her cooking at the kitchen stove. And I said, “Mother,” and I, then I recounted what had happened to me. And I said, “What happened?” And she sat me down and sat and looked at me across the table and she said, “You have remembered a past life.” Instead of ridiculing or denying what I had sper, experienced, she explained to me that the soul does not necessarily have the ability to accomplish her mission, her reason for being in a single lifetime and that the soul is eternal.
And so if we need another lifetime and another to fulfill our mission, God gives us a new mommy and daddy and we come out of a new mommy’s tummy. But it’s the same soul. It’s the same person. And our body is like a coat we wear. It wears out before we’re through with what we have to do. She explained to me in the simplest childlike terms that I could understand.
I had already observed children who were born maimed or blind, some people gifted, some people wealthy. She said she could never understand an unjust God in terms of one life, that the justice of God must be the continuity of being.
My heart pondered God and Jesus as I had been praying to Jesus since a small child. I saw the naturalness of it. And I realized that there must be some reason why God had showed me this past life. And I didn’t find out the reason till I was well into adulthood and realized that that life was key to the work that I had to do in this life.
No doubt at that moment there was transferred to me some substance of myself, perhaps some heavy karma that I had to balance, a mission I had not fulfilled in that moment of that glimpse into the distant past.
Since that time God has revealed to me other incarnations where I have learned lessons of momentums of good that I have built which I could build upon, of mistakes I have made, some serious mistakes, serious karma that I had to balance in this life. That, in fact, is why we are all here.
You have wonderful m, momentums of good karma that you bring with you and you also have negative karma that must be balanced with individuals, persons no doubt in your family today, people you know or people you will meet. Life is a challenge and an opportunity.
A long time ago reincarnation and karma was removed from Church doctrine and Christendom has suffered ever since.
Since this is such a key thread in the understanding of our souls’ journey, I ask you to stay with me this evening because I have much to say on the subject. I don’t want to leave a stone unturned in bringing to you this understanding so that you can do your own research, meditate and consider what you come to in your own heart regarding this subject. You should not believe something because I say it but because the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking to you in your own heart and confirming that truth.
I have always walked and talked with Jesus and Jesus has always answered my questions about scripture, about the sermons of the pastors and ministers, about the mass, about the rabbis and so forth. I have read my Bible all of my life and asked Jesus for answers and he has either answered me immediately or perhaps many years later.
I know that your life is walking and talking with Jesus also as you make it so. But you have to have a listening ear to listen for the Lord. Make time and space when there is quiet in your life, when you’re alone, when you walk in a beautiful place or a garden and so you can speak to God without the clamor of so many voices of the world and so many noises we are subject to.
So I shall begin with all the joy of my heart in bringing this subject to you.
The belief in reincarnation is ancient and widespread. In 1886 the Reverend W. R. Alger wrote A Critical History of a Doctrine of a Future Life. It became the standard Christian work on the subject of immortality.
In his book Alger wrote: ” No other doctrine has exerted so extensive, controlling and permanent an influence upon mankind as that of metempsychosis , and that’s another word for reincarnation: the notion that when the soul leaves the body it is born anew in another body–its rank, character, circumstance and experience in each successive existence depending on its qualities, deeds and attainments in…preceding lives.”
Before the advent of Christianity, reincarnation was a part of the spiritual beliefs of many of the peoples of Europe, including the early Teutonic tribes, the Finns, Icelanders, Lapps, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Germans, early Saxons, and the Celts of Ireland, Scotland, England, Brittany, Gaul, France and Wales.
The Welsh have even claimed that it was the Celts who originally carried the belief in reincarnation to India. Author Ignatius Donnelly suggests that the Celts’ belief in reincarnation was derived from the inhabitants of lost continent of Atlantis who had migrated to Ireland.
In ancient Greece, both Pythagoras and Plato believed in reincarnation. In the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras taught that the soul had many incarnations, which were the opportunities for the soul to purify and perfect itself. “The human soul is immortal,” he said, “for it resembles the heavenly stars, and like them is involved in perpetual motion.” According to his biographer, Pythagoras claimed that he had been embodied in the past as Aethalides and Euphorbus and that he had died at the hands of Menelaus at Troy.
In the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., Plato taught that the soul is immortal and that its circumstances in its current life depend on its disposition formed in a previous life. He tells the story of a group of souls about to embody who are advised by a prophet: “Virtue owns no master. He who honors her shall have more of her, and he who slights her less. The responsibility lies with the chooser. Heaven is guiltless.”
According to some scholars, statements made by the first-century Jewish historian Josephus indicate that the Pharisees and Essenes believed in reincarnation. Others believe these are references to the resurrection of the dead in new bodies.
Some tribes of American Indians as well as numerous tribes in Central and South America have believed in reincarnation.
Reincarnation was also taught by students of the Cabala, a system of jewish, of Jewish esoteric mysticism that arose in the thirteenth century. Reincarnation is still a part of the religious beliefs of the jewish, of the Jewish Hasidic movement, founded in the eighteenth century.
Today the belief in reincarnation also exists among over one hundred tribes in Africa as well as among Eskimo and Central Australian tribes and many peoples of the South Pacific, including Hawaiians, Tahitians, Melanesians and Okinawans.
The most elaborately developed concepts of reincarnation are found today in the religious traditions of India–especially Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. In these religions reincarnation is linked with the law of karma.
The same law of cause and effect and of free will that is taught in the Old Testament is affirmed by Jesus in his parables and in his warnings to the seed of the wicked.
The most amazing thing to me is how many Christians study the scriptures all of their lives and do not conclude that the law of karma is written in the Four Gospels and in the writings of the apostles. To me it shows that our clergy does not teach us what those scriptures really mean, does not point out the obvious that is right there sitting in front of us in black and white.
It’s not a question of mysteries. It’s not a question of some arcane interpretation. It’s the exact words that were spoken by Jesus and the apostles are giving us God’s law of karma.
Now we’ve talked about karma in the Old Testament. And Jesus said: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. ” So Jesus came to fulfill the law of the Old Testament and it was the law of karma that he came to fulfill.
“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” The jot and the tittle that we all must pay that will not pass, the jot and tittle of the law, that is the law of karma. Jesus is stating it. We will pay every jot and tittle where we have violated the law of God until all is fulfilled.
If you want to be around f, here for a million years just ignore that, just ignore that entire teaching. If you want to get on with the universe, if you want to go o, beyond the stars and arrive at the next station of your evolution in realms of glory then pay your debts now and pay them quickly, pay them to everyone. Call up people and tell them you love them, tell them you’re sorry for something you ded or did or said to them ten years ago or thirty years ago. Set your life right with everyone. Bring joy to people.
In Matthew 12 Jesus lectures the scribes and Pharisees. He says, “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things [that is, good karma , good works]: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things” [that means, bad works, bad karma]. It’s a description of how the intent of the heart is, how the soul is, so will the karma or the acts be.
A, here Jesus set forth, sets forth a karma that will not be broken. These are not the words of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs. These are the words of our Lord: “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
Did Jesus say, “But if you accept me as my Lord and Saviour I will neutralize this law”? Show me in the New Testament where Jesus says that this statement right here is neutralized. He never neutralized it. It is true to this very hour and this very day. We are accountable for every idle word we speak. We must control our tongues and our thoughts and feelings that propel them in an uncontrolled manner.
The Sermon on the Mount is a treasure trove of the law of karma. Jesus states the mathematical precision of the law of karma: “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would do that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”
In fact, the entire sermon in Matthew 5 to 7 is Jesus’ doctrine on the rewards for righteous and unrighteous conduct , karma. The Sermon on the Mount is a sermon on karma. Go home and burn the midnight oil and read it tonight and read Jesus’ words with a new enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.
It is his teaching on the consequences of thoughts, feelings, words and deeds. It’s the greatest lesson on karma, as the law of personal accountability for one’s acts, that you will find anywhere.
At the scene of his arrest Jesus reiterates the law of karmic retribution. As the Book of Matthew records: “One of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him: ‘Put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.'”
Jesus may have had compassion on the high priest’s servant but he also had compassion on his disciple. He put that ear back on and healed the man so that his disciple would not have the karma of having his ear cut off or some other karma for the event. Think of that. Not all of us have Jesus in the flesh with us to immediately undo our hasty acts.
Again in the Book of Revelation we read: “He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity .” If we enslave anyone to any habit, to any pernicious type of behavior we shall so be enslaved. “He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”
Yes the saints have the faith and the patience to endure their karma, but the seed of the wicked do not have that patience, nor do they have the patience to balance their karma. And therefore they continue to sow evil unto the day of their final judgment. These are the fallen angels that continuously sow evil in our midst and show no sign of repentance.
In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians he makes clear the law of karma. He learned that law of karma from Jesus and from life . The apostle Paul wrote : Every maen, “Every man shall bear his own burden.”
What is our burden? Our burden should be light, as Jesus said. “My burden is light,” because he had no karma. The only burden we carry around with us is a pack of troubles which is the karma we brought in this life. Jesus said, “Every man shall bear his own burden.” He didn’t say, “I will carry your karma for you.” Every man shall bear his own burden.
“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: … whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. ” When you sow your crops in the springtime you’re sowing good seed. When you gather the harvest in the fall that is your good karma for having plowed the land, sowed the seed, tended it through the summer, understood agriculture and how to grow what you’re growing. And so your crop is commensurate with your carefulness. That is what we’re doing every day of our lives, except the harvest is not always in this life. Sometimes we sow tomorrow morning what we reap today. It comes very quickly. “[Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.] For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
We don’t weary in well doing because our well doing is balancing our bad doings of past lives. So we keep on serving, we keep on helping people, we keep on taking care of people, whatever is our job and our calling. We live to serve because we know the end of our karma will come. And that’s the means that God gave us and why we are so blessed to have this body today.
Paul concluded, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men.”
Paul teaches Christ’s doctrine of the rewards for labor when he writes to the church at Corinth: “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour….Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”
Now I’d like to give you a teaching from Jesus in the New Testament on reincarnation.
“As Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, saying: Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind? ” Think now of the understanding that the disciples had in order to have been able to ask such a deep question.
“Jesus answered them, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”
The disciples knew the law of reincarnation and karma. They knew that this man could have been born blind from the sins of a past life. They also knew the Old Testament law that says, ” The sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons to the third and fourth generation.”
Jesus said it was neither of those situations. He hadn’t sinned. His parents hadn’t sinned, but he had come into embodiment born blind by his free will so that he could be healed by Jesus and that the works of God could be manifest in him and the glory of God could be revealed.
Now, if Jesus had desired us to know that the implication of this conversation on the part of the disciples was not accurate then and there he would have delivered a sermon denying karma and denying reincarnation, in other words, denying the premise of the question of his disciples, but he did not do so.
This teaches us that the discussions of reincarnation went on between Jesus and his disciples. The scriptures say that there were mo, so many things that Jesus said that the books of the world could not contain them. We know we do not have all of Jesus’ words.
Biblical commentators are at a loss to explain why the disciples would have even considered whether a man’s blindness from birth could be due to his own sin. We find in Jewish tradition that some rabbis discuss the possibility that a child could sin in his mother’s womb. But there is no trace of these discussions until the third or the second or century–after Jesus’ time.
Acknowledging that it is a puzzling question, Rudolf Bultmann, a leading twentieth-century New Testament scholar, writes: “The reference can hardly be to sins committed in a pre-existent state, even though the idea of the pre-existence of souls had found its way into syncretistic and Hellenistic Judaism. Nor is it likely that a belief in the transmigration of souls is assumed here.
“However, the question perhaps is intended to pose an impossible alternative in order to show up the absurdity of the dogma [that the sins of parents could cause their child’s blindness].”
That’s the end of the commentators ‘ quote. I included it this evening so that you could see the absurdity of it, which is often typical of bibil, of Bible commentators. They don’t have a plausible explanation yet they refuse to even consider the possibility of pre-existence or reincarnation as implicit in this scene.
Then we have the next teaching of Jesus Christ on reincarnation.
The disciples were coming down the mountain with Jesus , down the Mount of Transfiguration. On the mountain the disciples had seen Moses and Elias talking with Jesus. As you know Elias is the Greek name for the prophet Elijah.
When the disciples asked Jesus, “Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?” –if Elias is appearing to you out of heaven then how come he didn’t go before you as is prophesied that he would, what’s he doing in heaven? But Jesus said : “Elias truly shall first come and restore all things. And I say unto you he has already come , and they knew him not, but they have done to him whatsoever they listed ” and so will they also do to the Son of man.
“The disciples then understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptist.” Why did they understand it? Because they already knew the doctrine of reincarnation. They were part of the group of Christians known as the Essenes who believed in reincarnation.
So Jesus, when he said, “He’s already come,” he was simply saying he had already reincarnated and been beheaded by Herod.
It was a pupulr belied, it was a popular belief among the Jews of Jesus’ day that the prophet Elijah would come again as the forerunner of the Messiah, as the Lord had prophesied through the prophet Malachi:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”
The suggestion that the passage may infer a belief in reincarnation is not something new to this century. The fourth-century Church Father Jerome, for example, specifically argues that the Matthew passage should not be interpreted as supporting reincarnation.
The fact that Jerome makes such an argument tells us th, that some Christians of his day believed that Jesus and the disciples accepted, or were at least aware of, the concept of reincarnation.
Apart from the religious and philosophical speculations about reincarnation, there is a growing body of investigative research on the subject. The latest trend in this research uses hypnosis and other methods of therapy. The evidence often surfaces unexpectedly.
As Dr. Alexander Cannon writes in his book The Power Within:
“For years the theory of reincarnation was a nightmare to me, and I did my best to disprove it and even argued with my trance subjects to the effect that they were talking nonsense. Yet as the years went by one subject after another told me the same story in spite of different and varied conscious beliefs. Now well over a thousand cases have been so investigated and I have to admit that there is such a thing as reincarnation.”
Dr. Helen Wambach, the clinical psychologist and regression therapy expert who pioneered past-life and pre-natal research, regressed hundreds of people in the course of her career. She once said: “Ninety percent of the people who come to me definitely flash on images from a past life. If you are sitting in a tent on the side of the road and a thousand people walk past telling you they have crossed a bridge in Pennsylvania, you are convinced of the existence of that bridge in Pennsylvania.”
Dr. Ian Stevenson, the world’s foremost investigator of children’s past-life memories, prefers not to deal with hypnosis. Instead he interviews children who have had past-life memories and then tries to independently verify the details of their previous existence. Dr. Stevenson, a psychiatrist, has meticulously documented 2500 of these cases, chiefly from India, Sri Lanka and Burma.
Although I believe hypnosis can be dangerous and I do not recommend it as a tool in psychotherapy, there is no question that the findings of the hypnotherapists are extremely interesting and worthy of study and in a majority of cases authentic.
Breaking new ground in past-life hypnotherapy, joctr, Dr. Joel Whitton, a Toronto psychiatrist, delves into the experiences of his subjects between their earth lives not just in their previous lives , between their earth lives. He refers to the period between incarnations as the “interlife.”
Following is a summary of the findings of Dr. Whitton and other therapists. Subjects generally describe their experience between embodiments as a heightened state of awareness that they recognize as being more real than life on earth.
If it’s a heightened state of awareness, then these subjects have been in the etheric octave. The etheric octave is what Christians call the heaven-world. There are thirty-three planes in that etheric octave. So you can go to the first or second levels, which would be called the levels of heaven, and still reincarnate from there. And in those levels you find the retreats of the Ascended Masters, schools, universities, cities of light, golden ages taking place.
Perhaps you’ve been there in your just previous interlife, many interlives. Perhaps that’s where you journey when you put your body to rest at night and you engage in soul travel. Here are the retreats of the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood and there we are invited to study in their universities.
So one of Dr. Whitton’s subjects told him after coming out of hypnosis: “You’ve woken me up to an unreal world. Now I know where the true reality is.” Another described the experience as “unworldly ecstacy.”
In 1978, Dr. Edith Fiore reported that some of her subjects saw “beautiful lakes, beautiful scenes, gleaming cities.” Subjects who were regressed to their life between embodiments commonly say they appeared before a group of wise, elderly beings (usually three, but sometimes four or seven in number). The Karmic Board I, I spoke to you about are seven Ascended Masters of great attainment assigned by Jesus Christ and the Father-Mother God to receive us when we pass from the screen of life and also while we are in soul travel. Their complete number is seven but often there will be one or three or four or five or however many required by the soul they are reviewing.
Ascended Masters and Cosmic Beings can duplicate themselves. In other words, they can be one or a thousand in manifestation. That is because they are one with God. And we call their presence, the presence of that person who has reunited with God, the Electronic Presence.
That is why Jesus Christ can talk to you as you pray at your bedside at night and can talk to everyone else on the face of planet earth simultaneously as that person is in prayer or in need. A God-free being who has ascended from this mortal coil can manifest himself anywhere he is needed at any time. That is why prayer is so powerful. We ask Jesus to appear to everyone on earth who is sick and to be at their bedside and to heal them. You should never limit prayer.
And so it is entirely possible, according to this Law of the One, the one can manifest one times one times one and still be one, that the Karmic Board can review every soul of earth simultaneously when they pass or giving them instruction between lives.
So what Whitton is saying, that although this committee acts as a board of judges, subjects report feeling peaceful in their presence. The book Life Between Life , written by Dr. Whitton and Joe Fisher, describes the role of these judges: “The members of this etheric tribunal are highly advanced spiritually and may even have completed their cycle of earthly incarnations.” Obviously, they have completed that cycle. They are Ascended Masters.
“Knowing intuitively everything there is to be known about the person who stands before them, their role is to assist that individual in evaluating the life that has just passed and eventually to make recommendations concerning the next incarnation.”
Now, this is Whitton’s report about what his subjects have said about the Karmic Board. So this is independent corroboration to the Ascended Masters’ teachings that I’ve been giving you for the last thirty years.
So Dr. Whitton goes on: “If there is a private hell in the life between life, it is the moment when the soul presents itself for review. This is when remorse, guilt, and self-recrimination for failings in the last incarnation are vented with a visceral intensity that produces anguish and bitter tears on a scale that can be quite unsettling to witness.”
So here these people are regresh, are regressed under hypnosis and they’re telling Dr. Whitton what they’re experiencing before the Karmic Board. And right under that hypnosis they’re actually involved in tears and anguish and burden and sorrow and the worst possible self-recrimination. And he is saying if there is hell, this is that hell.
“Rather than confirm the self-loathing and dissatisfaction of the contrite soul, the board of judgment expresses encouragement, pointing out where the life has been positive and progressive. The judges radiate a restorative, healing energy that assuages all guilt.
“For the purpose of self-assessment, the soul is confronted with an instantaneous panoramic flashback which contains every single detail of the last incarnation. Don’t we all know the proverbial story of the drowning man who sees his whole life flash before him just before he’s about to drown and then he’s saved and he comes back and tells the story? Well, this is the exact thing that happens before the Karmic Board.
“Said one subject of Dr. Whitton: ‘It’s like climbing right inside a movie of your life. Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail.'” Most of us would rather not see that movie [laughter] but from this day forward we can make sure to remember that every moment we are making the film of our life story and we’re the one that’s going to have to watch it.
Dr. Whitton says: “‘Total, total recall. And it all happens in an instant.'” That’s kind of hard to understand, isn’t it?
“The judges gently assist the soul in an objective understanding of its actions within the larger context of many lives.”
Based on the experiences of their subjects, Whitton and Fisher say that some people who do not believe in reincarnation and have firm expectations of what will happen to them after death are in for a rude awakening. [laughter] Now, this is precisely why I have journeyed up and down the United States, Canada and nations all over the world, giving this message and this teaching.
When I think of the false indoctrination of a false Christianity, which is not of the true teachings of Jesus Christ, and how people believe this to their graves and when I see, because God has shown me many, many, many times, the consequences of souls who depart with faith that they will meet Jesus Christ and be taken into heaven and they are not but they must sit in the astral plane and deal with their karma before they can even be taken to a place of light, when I see that–and I see it all the time, I can assure you as God is my witness–I desire to continue to preach this message again and again and again.
Because every soul who feels a resonant chord with what I am saying, who has the Holy Spirit, who can confirm what I am saying is true, can make an about turn and change his life and live the rest of his life in balancing karma, in invoking the light of God–as I am going to teach you how to do throughout this class–and have such a difference of an experience when finally his time comes to quit this mortal body.
And I want to tell you that is why I am here today and why it does not matter to me what the orthodox churches or various religions say about me or say against me or how they preach against me on their talk shows, on radio, on TV, and talk about me as a false prophet and so on. It makes no difference whatsoever because I know that what I am speaking is truth, confirmed by the witness of the Holy Spirit, and that it is changing people’s lives and helping their salvation, helping their path, taking them out of the coils of unreality and an irresponsible pleasure cult because they don’t have to do anything at all to gain salvation. Jesus Christ did it for them.
It really doesn’t matter to me at all what people say or do to me. I will keep on preaching this message because it is the real message of salvation. [18-second applause]
Both Whitton and Wambach have found that between embodiments many people plan their next lives in conjunction with the board of judges. Now when you get to the place where you can plan your next life and have it go your way, you’re pretty advanced on the Path. You also plan with the board of judges when you have considerable karma and they show you how you have to go and balance that karma.
Whitton and Fisher say that in writing the life plan, which they term the “karmic script,” you get to write your own karmic script, “the judges’ recommendations are made according to what the soul needs, not what it wants.” I can see how very persuasive in their love and wisdom the Karmic Board can be to get us to agree to go down into difficult karmas and make it through those karmas.
“Those who fail repeatedly to overcome major challenges in their lives find they are urged by the judgment board to place themselves in similar situations until these challenges are met successively, until these challenges are met successfully. Said one woman: ‘I am being helped to work out the next life so that I can face whatever difficulties come my way.'”
Whitton and Fisher also point out that “Group reincarnation, in which the same set of souls evolves through constantly changing relationships in different lives, recurs frequently.” This is also according to the teaching of the Ascended Masters.
Just remember, when you’re regressed under hypnosis you are not bound by your situation ethics, by your belief system, by your indoctrination, by any hamperings of society. You are a soul that is independent of that programmed mental body. And so you are speaking out of the depth of the wisdom of what the soul knows.
So these group karmas we see all over the world, if you’re ever riding through the United States in, in areas that are wide-open spaces and you come to these tiny little towns where people live in trailers and, and they make their living by either farming or ranching or, or something that has been in that place, you find that those are islands of group karma and that people in those little towns have been reincarnating century after century together. And they’re put together so they can finally work out their differences, their animosities, this group karma that they made. And until they determine to love and love perfectly, they will never get out of that group karma and get on with life.
And everytime I go through one of these towns I say to myself, “How can anybody live here for their whole life?” And then I remind myself, “Well, of course, it’s group karma that keeps people stuck there.”
“The karmic script often calls for the renewed involvement with people who have figured, pleasantly or unpleasantly, in previous incarnations. In the words of one who felt compelled to make compensation to others: ‘There are people I didn’t treat too well in my last life, and I have to go back to the Earth plane again and work off that debt.'”
It’s a wonderful thing how sincere and true souls have such a sense of conscience when they see the reality and how they want to reembody. And that brings us to the crime of our time which is abortion because all of these babies who are aborted are souls who really desire to come into embodiment to balance their karma. And their timetables are being set off.
Millions and millions of souls have had their lives aborted by the abortion of their bodies since Roe versus Wade in this century. And so the whole balance of who should be in embodiment is totally off today. Mil, millions of souls who should be here are not. People you know, people you need to work out karma with, they’re not here.
This is why abortion is a sin because it aborts a life plan and the opportunity for an individual at a certain point in time and space, a certain moment in a century, to come into embodiment and play his part on the stage of life. This is why we have to support all women who are pregnant with this teaching so that we can give them that true support and comfort to help them bear their babies to term and to encourage fathers of these children to support and comfort those who are bearing their children.
It’s a very serious matter today. Your own divine plan is hampered because of children who have not been born with whom you had karma and needed to deal with in this life.
It’s one of the most important prayers you can make each night to God, to Jesus and to Mother Mary to save all souls in the womb and bring enlightenment to parents and sponsors that they are not aborted. It is such an important assignment of prayer that we must take.
And so according to this person who said he had to get back to balance karma for those he didn’t treat well, he says, “‘This time, if they hurt me in return, I’m going to forgive them because all I really want to do is to go back home. This is home.'” And this is what he’s saying when he’s regressed. Where he is when he’s regressed is home.
The authors continue: “Growth is just as often dependent upon reunification with those whose company is not so exhilarating. ‘Oh no–not her again!’ groaned one subject, on being told [at inner levels that] his personal evolution would best be served by being reborn to a woman he had murdered in a previous life. [responses]
“In order to be placed in a suitably karmic situation, some subjects were advised to accept bodies that were defective. Indeed, bodily affliction must sometimes be accepted in the cause of higher development.”
And what do we have today? Nobody wants to give birth to an imperfect child. If there’s any concept that there’s going to be an imperfect body, they want to have an abortion.
Some of you may have seen this woman on the news who was suing her doctor because she thinks she should have had an abortion and should have been told she could find out that she was going to have a Down’s syndrome baby. And now that she’s got this si, Downs syndros, syndrome baby she spent $80,000 on treatment and cure for this child. They’re broke. They’ve lost their house. They’ve lost everything.
And in this newsclip is this sweet child, happy little child that is crawling around on the floor, so grateful to be alive even with the impairment of Downs syndrome. And this mother in the presence of this child is saying, “My doctor should have told me I was going to have a Downs syndrome baby so I could have an abortion and not had to go through all this trouble and spend all this money and now our life is ruined because of it.”
Isn’t that a sad, sad conclusion to reach when God has given you the gift of this happy, loving child? It’s just hard to imagine. But we can imagine it because people need to be taught what is the reality and the unreality of life.
How do we know that there is not profit and growth to a soul in a body that has Downs syndrome? Of course there is. Every type of maimed and imperfect body has a soul that is gaining an experience through that body and we who are there who are whole who have to help and care for that one are also paying karma. We need to find joy in our karmic lot no matter what it is.
Dr. Whitton’s research also shows that there are karmic tests built into the karmic script. Whether or not we pass these tests determines how fast we progress in this life. Whitton and Fisher give a dramatic example:
“Steve Logan, as a young man, felt extremely negative toward s his father and rarely visited him in the Miami nursing home where he lay seriously ill. On one occasion, however, Steve, feeling that something important was at stake, was drawn to visit his father. He arrived at the nursing home to find the old man very sick and connected to a variety of life-sustaining devices.
“As Steve stood alone at his bedside, he noticed that his father was having difficulty breathing because the respirator tube had become dislodged. The situation presented Steve with a dilemma: he could either call a nurse to save his father’s life or he could turn a blind eye and allow him to die. After a moment’s reflection, he ran from the room shouting for a nurse who hastily replaced the tube.
“Some years later, at the age of twenty-nine, Steve had a serious bicycle accident in a small town in Oregon. He was hit broadside by a truck and was considered very lucky to escape with a fractured femur.”
When Steve was in his early forties, he learned under hypnosis “the connection between these two events, both of which figured in his interlife planning. He reports: ‘My karmic script clearly stated that the life-or-death incident with my father was most definitely a very important test that I had set myself. If I could forgive him his transgressions against me–which appeared to extend over several lifetimes–I would not be killed in the bicycle accident.
“‘The expectation was there in the plan that because of my past conduct I would allow my father to die. But I passed the test and, after my accident the plan was at an end!'” Because Steve had passed his test, he said “sketchy plans for future lives had been brought forward to operate in the current life.”
Isn’t that amazing? You never know when you render a service and a kindness to someone what that is really doing for your own soul. Will you ever miss an opportunity again? [“No.”] No.
God only lifts the veil upon our past lives when there is something our soul needs to learn from that memory. A past-life memory is not something to be taken lightly. When you become aware of a past life, the karma of that embodiment comes to the fore, so to speak.
As soon as you are aware of it, it’s like e, opening a can of worms. You can no longer ignore it. You can go through the agony of the experience. You can have great remorse. You can be burdened. And the only thing you can do is roll up your sleeves, makes calls to the violet flame each day and seek to serve to set life free.
I have come upon past embodiments that have grieved me profoundly, profoundly grieved me and have sparked in me a tremendous desire to serve to set life free, to make amends, to serve the Ascended Masters. And I’ve been grateful for all the years of being on this path that I could balance that karma and that I could move on.
And so every one of us has these lives which we do regret. And when we come upon them, our love for God is so great that we are here and we can do something about it and we correct it. We can make up what we have not done, especially if the wrongs we have committed are against those who are today Ascended Masters. So we want to help the Ascended Masters contact many people and do what they have to do and what only we can do for them because we are in embodiment and they are not. People can’t hear them speaking. They can hear us speaking.
So don’t be afraid of those lifetimes. Don’t be afraid to go after it. It can take you six months of very, very hard work and a path of strict initiation and you can balance through the violet flame and service one lifetime. You have to be an initiate and a true disciple to do that. It doesn’t happen to many people.
But when you do balance the karma of a certain lifetime, you will notice that by and by your Holy Christ Self will reveal to you the next most important embodiment that you need to tel, tackle, for which you need to balance that karma.
So it keeps on going. But it’s like one step begins the trek of a thousand miles. Each time you go through an embodiment, you have this tremendous sense of liberation and victory and the mastery you gain by doing it and you apply it to the next and the next.
The Ascended Masters’ teachings and their decrees is a wonderful way to approach this process. Without it, it can be the via dol, dolorosa, the way of sorrow. But with the Path and the teachings, it is truly the way of joy.
If you become aware of a past life prematurely, you may not be ready to deal with the karma of that embodiment. How can that happen? It can be forced by taking LSD or other drugs where you go into kind of an astral state and you see previous lives. You can seek hypnotherapy and ask for regression and therefore uncover a lifetime that should not have been revealed to you until you graind, gained greater mastery on the Path, which isn’t given to you in the sequence of when you should hear about it. There are other more important karmas that you need to balance before you know about it.
I’ve also seen a situation of psychic readings, readings by clairvoyants and so forth, past-life readings that do not involve you being in hypnotherapy but involve someone taking a reading for you. Nine times out of ten these are incorrect. But people believe the more than they believe the Bible. They become absolute law in their lives. They believe they were such-and-such a person. They did these terrible things. That’s why they’re terrible today. Or they were somebody great and mighty and this is why they should be great and mighty today. And such readings put people so far off the track of reality that it is better if they seek a true path of living discipleship, pray, give the violet flame, and not try to take heaven by force.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.” So we don’t have to wrest the secrets of ourselves or the universe because the process of the violet flame unfolds them. If you will get the book The Chela and the Path , you will see how you go to certain retreats of the Brotherhood where you are shown a film of a past life. If it’s a group karma, a whole group of people may be in one of these theaters on the etheric plane and you may be watching a past life together.
You see what you have done. You see the scenes and then the Master teaches you how to invoke the violet flame and you see the violet flame passing through the record. And night after night after night you go to this retreat. You invoke the violet flame and you see how the records are gradually being erased. Then you go back to your body and you are determined to do good works and serve on earth because you’re highly motivated because you know it takes both.
And if you’re lucky you come in contact with the Ascended Masters’ teachings so you give the violet flame now while you’re in your waking consciousness in your body each day.
So what will happen when you’re in your body is that as you give the violet flame, frames of past lives, glyphs of these past lives will come before you. As you’re transmuting them, as they’re going into transmutation, you see vestiges of them. You get glimpses. You see yourself as you were a long time ago. You can have regret. You can have burden. But you can also know you’re transmuting it today.
That is the lawful way of seeing past lives, of doing so because you’re doing this prayer of penance, the violet flame decrees, and because you are sus, supported by that science which says that you are clearing that record at the tain, same time you are seeing it so you’re not forever going to be a prisoner of that record.
Psychotherapy is not the means of transmutation of the record. You may gain resolution with someone you know because you’ve seen the record of the past and you’ve decided to make it positive in this life. But that record will still remain until you learn how to use the sacred fire of the Holy Spirit to erase it.
The violet flame, then, is the key to your union with God in this life. This is the conclusion of my message to you this evening. Thank you. [33-second applause]
END
NOTE: Have you Lived Before? Karma, Reincarnation and Christianity is based on a lecture given by Elizabeth Clare Prophet on Friday, October 11, 1991, during the four-day Class of the Golden Cycle held at the New Orleans Airport Hilton. This video includes excerpts from the Lecture.
READ MORE HERE: PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR
What is Karma and What is Reincarnation?
[Sanskrit karman, nominative karma, “act,” “deed,” “work”] Energy/consciousness in action; the law of cause and effect and retribution. Also called the law of the circle, which decrees that whatever we do comes full circle to our doorstep for resolution.
Paul said, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Newton observed, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
The law of karma necessitates the soul’s reincarnation until all karmic cycles are balanced. Thus, from lifetime to lifetime man determines his fate by his actions, including his thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds.
Origin
Karma is God’s energy in action. Originating in the Mind of God, energy—action-reaction-interaction—is the Trinity of the Logos. The creative forcefield of the Mind of God is the source of karma.
The word karma has been used both broadly and narrowly through the centuries to define man’s ever-evolving concepts of causation, of Cosmic Law and his relationship to that Law. The ancient origins of the word are an energy key governing the flow from Spirit to Matter. Karma, according to the ascended masters, is taken from the Lemurian root meaning “the Cause of the Ray in Manifestation”—hence “Ka-Ra-Ma.”
Karma is God—God as Law; God as principle; God as the will, the wisdom and the love of Spirit becoming Matter. The law of karma is the Law of being, being always in the state of becoming—the movement of the Self transcending the Self.
Karma is the law of cycles, the moving out and the moving in through the spheres of God’s own cosmic consciousness—the breathing out and the breathing in of the LORD.
Throughout the seven spheres of the Spirit-Matter cosmos, karma is the law of creation, the antahkarana of the creation. It is the integration of energy flow between the Creator and the creation. Karma is causes becoming effects, effects becoming causes—which in turn become effects. Karma is the great chain of hierarchy, link by link transferring the energies of Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending of cycles.
Karma as opportunity
When people talk about karma, they often think of the wrath of God, of punishment, of the idea that if they have been bad before they’re going to have to suffer now. This is one more ramification of the teachings of hell-fire and damnation, the concepts that have been propounded by Lucifer to thwart the true Christian doctrine.
Karma is not punishment. Karma returning to us is simply the law of cause and effect—for every wrong that we have done we must anticipate a joyous opportunity in the future to undo that wrong. And we have to seize that opportunity with rejoicing because here is a chance to balance our debts to Life.
Returning karma is the glorious opportunity for us to be free, for us to learn the law of non-attachment, non-possessiveness, and to realize the effects of the causes we have sent out. It is altogether natural and proper that we should be able to be on the receiving end of whatever we’ve sent out. If we have sent out love, we have a right to know what it feels like to receive that love in return, and if we have sown hatred or sadness, that’s going to come back also. And when it comes back we shouldn’t have any sense that this is unjust.
Unfortunately, many see the Law of God as a law of disaffection and disavowal. They envision a God who has no use for us but is simply the Lawgiver who stands ready to strike mankind with a rod of punishment. But God does not deal our karma to us as punishment. Karma is a manifestation of an impersonal law as well as a personal one. The purpose of our bearing our karma is that karma is our teacher. We must learn the lessons of how and why we misused the energy of life.
Until that day comes when we recognize the Law of God as a Law of love, we will probably encounter difficulties. But if we will only hasten that day’s coming into our own life, we will recognize that karma is actually grace and beauty and joy. We should understand, then, that the Law that comes to us is the Law of love. When it becomes chastening, it is the chastening of love. When it becomes the fruit in our life of our own advancement, this is the fruit of that love.
Transmutation of karma
Saint Germain teaches the accelerated path of transmutation of karma by the violet flame of the Holy Spirit and the transcending of the rounds of rebirth through the path of individual Christhood leading to the ascension demonstrated by Jesus.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
LECTURE: Teaching on Balancing 100% of Karma – February 26, 1997
El Morya Dictation: Lanello Completed Balancing 100% of His Karma Feb 26 1997
The Summit Lighthouse®
Ascended Master Library
The Gold Mine Is Here
- Over 1300 lectures by Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet on angels, auras, healing and more
- Over 4100 dictations by the ascended masters on the spiritual path and how to attain your mastery
- Spiritual songs to the angels, ascended masters and hierarchs of the nature kingdom, violet flame, protection and healing decree services for your devotions, chakra alignment, karma balancing, aura cleansing and anchoring peace on the planet!
- Search by ascended master, date, category and more.
The Archives
For additional information please visit the Summit Lighthouse website. Learn how to become a Keeper of the Flame.
