Karma, Reincarnation & Christianity – Part 2 of Full Lecture Oct 11, 1991

Karma, Reincarnation & Christianity
Part Two of Full Lecture October 11, 1991

LECTURE TRANSCRIPT

Some of Jesus’ teachings also may have been lost unintentionally through scribal errors in the process of copying and recopying the Bible.

Today we possess thousands of New Testament manuscripts. These manuscripts differ from each other in 250,000 ways! So what did Jesus really say? We will ever know? We will know it in our hearts because the Holy Spirit will reveal it to us and we will know it because what he said is written in akasha. It is on the ethers. And some day we will hear him speaking as he spoke then. Just like we hear ourselves on a tape recorder today, we will hear that recording of what Jesus taught us.

“Heaven and earth may pass away but my word will not pass away.” That’s his promise to you. Nothing is lost.

Professor Merrill M. Parvis says:

“It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the manuscript tradition is wholly uniform.”

There is also reason to believe that the scriptures have been deliberately edited for doctrinal purposes.

One piece of evidence is Codex Sinaiticus, written about 340 A.D. It is one of the oldest existing copies of the Bible, but it was not available to early translators. Codex Sinaiticus differs from the canonical text that has come down to us today.

For instance, in our Bibles in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel we read that a leper says to Jesus: “If you will, you can make me clean.” “If you will, you can make me clean.” Codex Sinaiticus continues: Jesus, “angry, stretched out his hand and touched him and said, ‘I will; be clean.'”

In later manu, in later manuscripts the word “angry” was changed to “moved with compassion.” [responses] Evidently someone could not accept that Jesus could become angry. Why would Jesus be angry at a leper? Maybe he’s angry at him for what he did in a past life which was his karma that made him a leper. Or maybe the leper had demons who spoke to Jesus through him and dared Jesus to heal him. “If you will, you can heal me.” He could have said it in a, a type of a challenging way.

Whatever provoked the sacred fire of Jesus’ wrath, nevertheless he did heal him. Can you bring water to those who need it?

Some of Jesus’ teachings could also have been lost in the process of setting the canon, the scriptures that were accepted as part of the Bible. The selection of the approved scriptures took place between the second and fourth centuries. During this period of time writings considered heretical by the Church Fathers were severely criticized and suppressed. Among the prime targets were the Christian Gnostics.

The Gnostics were members of a number of re, different religious groups that flourished in the second century A.D. This was a time when Christianity was characterized more by its diversity than by a unified body of beliefs. The Christian Gnostics themselves held divergent views–some were strictly ascetic; others were accused of being morally licentious. But they did share a common belief that the means to salvation was not through faith, as the orthodox clergy claimed, but through gnosis.

Gnosis spelled g-n-o-s-i-s, it ‘s the Greek word meaning “knowledge” or “understanding.”  Gnostic is therefore spelled g-n-o-s-t-i-c. So to the Gnostics, gnosis meant self-knowledge, knowledge of God, and knowledge of the universe in which they lived. The Gnostics claimed to possess an advanced teaching that had been secretly handed down to them from Jesus through his closest disciples.

In other words, the Gnostics were on the path of personal initiation under Jesus Christ as opposed to the path of the Roman Orthodox church was, which was salvation through faith and grace and through the priests or the bishop or the pope.

Some Gnostics were openly antagonistic to the Church. Others considered themselves to be part of the early Church and held prominent positions in Christian communities.

In the second century these groups presented a major challenge to the survival of orthodox Christianity because they disputed some of its key beliefs and practices, especially its teaching that there was no salvation outside the established Church.

Sometime after the Church won the support of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century, the orthodox powers succeeded in banning and finally destroying the works of those they labelled as heretics, including the Gnostics. The writings of the Gnostics were so thoroughly suppressed that until recently we possessed only a handful of their original works. An astounding discovery made in just the last forty-five years has shed new light on the Gnostics and their teachings.

In 1945 an Arab pesedent, an Arab peasant accidentally discovered some fifty-two leather-bound Gnostic texts in an earthenware jar buried by a huge boulder near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. These texts have been dubbed “The Nag Hammadi Library.” You can read every last one of them in English in a book called The Nag  Hammadi Library . It’s available in your bookstores today.

The manuscripts were made in about 350 to 400 A.D., but the original texts from which they were copied date back to the second century.

In at least one case, The Gospel of Thomas, the manuscripts may include traditions from the second half of the first century, which is the same period of time in which the four gospels were written down.

Some scholars have surmised that monks at the nearby monastery established by punkomi, by Pachomius may have buried these Gnostic works in the fourth century when the archbishop Athanasius decreed that all apocryphal books reflecting heretical ideas be purged. Other scholars believe that the collection belonged to non-Christians who lived in that area of Egypt.

It was not until 1977–sixteen hundred years after the texts were buried–that a full English translation of the Nag Hammadi Library was finally published.

These Gnostic texts are significant because they tell us much about the diversity of early Christian religious thought and the real religious controversies of the day. They also reveal parallel paths taught by Jesus and Gautama–the paths of the Christ and the Buddha.

During this weekend I’ll be lecturing on two key Gnostic texts discovered at Nag Hammadi–the Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Thomas.

One of the higher teachings that the Gnostics said came down to them from Jesus was the doctrine of reincarnation.

The eminent nineteenth-century Gnostic translator and scholar G. R. S. Mead wrote of the Christian Gnostics: “Gnostics were transmigrationists. ” Transmigration, as you know, is another word for reincarnation. They found no difficulty in fitting [reincarnation] into their plan of salvation, which shows no sign of the expectation of an immediate end of all things–that prime article of faith of the earliest days of Christianity.

So where the early orthodox Christians thought that Jesus was immenently returning and they would be received in the resurrection, the world would be coming to an end, the Gnostics did not think any such thing. They saw the continuity of life down to our time and long beyond.

“Far from thinking that reincarnation is alien to gospel-teaching, the Gnostics elaborately interpret certain of the most striking sayings in this sense, and give graphic details of how Jesus, as the First Mystery, brought to rebirth the souls of John the Baptizer and of the disciples, and supervised the economy of his own incarnation.”

The Gnostics believed that Jesus was instrumental in bringing his disciples and John the Baptist into reincarnation for his time.

“In this respect the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia offers richer material for those interested in this ancient and widespread doctrine than can be found in any other old-world document in the West.”

That’s the end of the quote from Mead.

Pistis Sophia, probably written in the third century, was first translated in 1851. Some of these Gnostic texts had survived other than those found in for, 1945. And Pistis Sophia was one of them discovered earlier.

Pistis Sophia relates long conversations between the disciples and the resurrected Jesus about the mysteries of God and the fall of the heavenly being called Pistis Sophia, whose name means “faith-wisdom.”

In the Fourth Book of Pistis Sophia the Saviour tells Mary Magdalene: “I have turned Elias and sent him into the body of John the Baptizer, and the rest [of the prophets] also I turned into righteous bodies, which will find the mysteries of the Light, go on high, and inherit the Light-kingdom.”

In Pistis Sophia Jesus describes the karmic penalties for different souls. He tells what would be the fate of any man who was a curser , someone who curses.

A being named Yaluham “bringeth to the soul a cup filled with the water of forgetfulness and handeth it to the soul, and it drinketh it and forgetteth all the regions to which it hath gone.” That soul is “cast down into a body which will spend its time continually troubled in its heart.”

Next Jesus’ disciples ask him what would happen to the soul of a man who had been arrogant and overweening. Jesus says that his soul would be cast “into a lame and deformed body, so that all people would despise it persistently.”

When the disciple John asks Jesus what happens to “a man who hath committed no sin, but done good persistently, but hath not found the mysteries,” Jesus says this man will be “cast down into that body which will be good to find the signs of the mysteries of the Light and inherit the Light-kingdom forever.”

A celestial being will bring this soul “a cup filled with thoughts and wisdom, and soberness is in it. And this soul is cast into a body which can neither sleep nor forget because of the cup of soberness which hath been handed unto it.”

So souls with very good karma do not sleep the sleep of forgetfulness, of not remembering that they have come from God, of not remembering that they have lived before. But they are given the grace of a good body and they come into the knowledge of the mysteries. And they have a cup of soberness, for life is sober to them. They’re not constantly making pleasure and making merry, because they’re concerned about eternal realities and about their soul and about all the souls they see around them who are in that state of forgetfulness and have no sense of the equation of life and its challenges and the burdens that can e, come upon people because of ignorance.

Jesus continues, “But [this soul] will whip its heart persistently to question about the mysteries of the Light until it find them, through the decision of the Virgin of Light, and inherit the Light forever.”

So there are souls who are continually seeking God, continually seeking for God to correct them. They self-correct, they self-discipline because they want to be one with Jesus. And anything that separates them from Jesus they want that to go out of their lives.

Jesus is continuing now, “If on the contrary he hath sinned once or twice or thrice, then will he be cast back into the world again according to the type of the sins which he hath committed,” end of quote.

So we see here that Jesus’ doctrine is, it is possible to be on a path of Light and moving toward God and to be very advanced on that path and yet to make karma again, to sin again and to have to come back again. So we need to be careful if we are on a path of initiation, if we are Jesus’ disciples that we realize that until we permanently attain union with God we may be subject to err, to make karma, to make mistakes and to cause ourselves to reembody again.

Turning to other Gnostic sources on reincarnation, Clement of Alexandria tells us that the Gnostic Basilides believed that “the soul previously sinned in another life and undergoes its punishment in the present one.

“Excellent souls are punished honorably, by martyrdom. Other kinds are purified by some other appropriate punishment.” This is what Clement tells us.

Scholar Bentley Layton interprets the Nag Hammadi text called Zostrianos as teaching reincarnation. The work destribes the fate of a person who “comes into being by seeking things that do not exist” and being unenlightenment, and, being unenlightened, comes “down into the realm of generation [ that is, becomes reincarnate ] because of it. “

Seeking things that do not exist means desiring to dwell in unreality. That which is unreal is not of God. If we seek those things that are unreal

because they give us pleasure we sink into a lower vibration and one where we must reincarnate. “And, although possessing immortal eternal power, this person is bound in the body’s advance, made to be alive, and bound each time, [ that is, in each reincarnation ] in strong fetters.”

Fetters is a Platonic cliché for the material body. In other words, we are all in the fetters of our material body as we sit here tonight. We don’t realize that so much except when we become free spirits, when we travel in soul travel at night and we feel the freedom from the body and, of course, the ultimate freedom through the resurrection.

The text goes on to say that when this person responds to the Gnostic call (which is the call to awaken and to return to his divine origin), he will begin “once more to dwell within.” He will dwell and desire to dwell in reality, in what is real. However painful that reality may be he is willing to live with it rather than into the escapism of unreality.

In the Book of Thomas , another Gnostic text discovered at Nag Hammadi, the Saviour tells his disciple Thomas that those who were once believers but have died without their “first love” will be consumed in their concern about life and “will be brought back  to the visible realm .” Scholar Marvin Meyer reads this as an allusion to reincarnation.

At the end of the Book of Thomas Jesus says: “Watch and pray that you may not be born in the flesh , but that you may leave the bitter bondage of this life.”

He was concerned that his disciples pass all their tests so that they would not have to return again. Some of those twelve apostles ascended at the conclusion of that life and some did not ascend to this, until this century.

In the Nag Hammadi Library’s Secret Book of John Jesus describes how souls who are host to “the contemptible spirit,” host to “the contemptible spirit,” reincarnate again and are not saved until they follow a soul in whom the Spirit of Life dwells.

Jesus has sent those to earth in this day who do have the spirit of life to lead souls who do not have it who yet need teachers in the flesh whom they can see and hear and understand and from whom they can receive the lost Word, which they already know deep within their being, but it has to be quickened and awakened again. And the true awakening does not come any of us until we realize that our Father-Mother God has called us home in this life and we must answer the call. That is when the grand search begins.

The text then reads: “John said: ‘Lord, where will the souls go of people who do not know to whom they belong?’ He said to me: ‘The contemptible spirit grows stronger in such people as they lose their way.

This spirit lays a heavy burden on the soul, leads her into evil actions, and hurls her down into forgetfulness. After the soul leaves the body, she is handed over to the authorities who have come into being through the first ruler.'”

These authorities are fallen angels.    “They bind her with chains, throw her into prison, which is an analogy, which is an analogy for the body, and abuse her, until finally she emerges from forgetfulness and acquires knowledge (gnosis). This is how she attains perfection and is saved.”

Knowledge of God, knowledge of the self, knowledge of the universe.

“I (John) said: ‘Lord, how can the soul become youthful again, and return into the nature of its mother or into man?’ He said to me: ‘This soul needs to follow another soul in whom the Spirit of Life dwells, because she is saved through the Spirit. Then she will never be thrust into flesh again.'”

This evening I am attempting to give you my definitive statement on reincarnation and karma because you need it, because I love you, because God loves you and because it’s time that you went forth with that teaching–and if you didn’t get it all written down, the tapes will be out in a few weeks–that you learn it, that you meditate upon it, that you consider what of it that you are going to make a part of yourself. And then give this liberating truth to so many who hear bits and pieces and this and that from various authorities but never have the whole picture.

At the conclusion of this lecture I have some very exciting studies that have been done in our time today of regressions to past lives, another proof of reincarnation.

Just now we have to go back to the Church Fathers and when and where and how the doctrine of reincarnation and karma got removed from Roman Catholocism and therefore Protestantism and why we doe not, we do not carry the tradition of these teachings with us today, why we go outside of the Church to pursue that teaching.

I say let the Churches and the Church Fathers teach this doctrine, because Jesus taught it and because Origen of Alexandria taught it.

The historical record actually shows that the reincarnationist viewpoint was alive and well in the early days of Christianity.

Professor Geddes MacGregor writes:    “Though Gnostic tendencies came under suspicion and eventually under the condemnation of the Church, Gnostic teachings were a live option for the earliest generation of Christians. To belong to the group called the pre-existiani (the name for Christians who taught the pre-existence of the soul), pre-existiani was by no means looked upon with the disfavor that adherence to such views eventually evoked.

“The fact that Tertullian, one of the earliest of the Latin Fathers of the Christian Church, writes as vehemently as he does against reincarnationist interpretations of Christian belief is eloquent witness to the widespread influence of such views that, according to him, merited such denunciation.”

Some of those who espoused a belief in pre-existence, if not in reincarnation, were the Church Fathers themselves. One of them was Justin Martyr, who died in about 165 A.D.

Geddes MacGregor writes:     “According to the Dialogue with Trypho , he taught that human souls inhabit more than one body in the course of their earthly pilgrimage.” That was Justin Martyr.

“He even suggested the possibility that those who live such carnal lives that they deprive themselves of the capacity to see God may be reincarnated as beasts.”

The Church Father Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the second and third centuries, supported the idea of the pre-existence of Christ and man in his work called  Exhortation to the Heathen.

In another work, however, he seems to state that man does not have a previous existence. But a contemporary of Clement claimed that he wrote “wonderful stories about metempsychosis and many worlds before Adam.” In the ninths, in the ninth century, Photius said that Clement taught reincarnation.

Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston write in their book Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery : quote, “Clement was a Platonist and headed the famous catechetical school in Alexandria. W. R. Inge says that Clement ‘admits frankly that he does not write down all that he thinks; there is an esoteric Christianity which is not for everybody. But it is plain that he leans toward the doctrines which his pupil Origen develops more boldly.’

“Clement was deposed as head of the catechetical school because of his eclecticism.” He brought in too many different strands of ideas from too many places, his eclecticism. ” And Origen, although only eighteen years old, took his place.”

MacGregor writes: “Origen certainly taught a doctrine of pre-existence of the soul and probably taught a form of reincarnationism, and his influence, as the greatest thinker of his day in the Christian Church, was immense.”

The issues surrounding Origen’s views are complex. He was highly esteemed , although he did have detractors.           Origen’s goal was to develop a systematic theology based on the interpretation of scripture. He was an extremely prolific writer. Tragically, very few of his works have survived the hammer of orthodoxy. They were the victim of political maneuvering both inside and outside the Church.

At the instigation of the sixth-century Byzantine emperor Justinian the First, Origen’s teachings were anathematized. Anathematized means “cursed.” To a, to anathematize means “to curse.”

In Justinian’s zeal to restore the Byzantine Empire to its former estate and bring unity to the Church, the emperor wanted to rid his realm of any belief that was not orthodox. One unorthodox movement that was becoming popular in the monasteries of Palestine was a pantheistic mysticism that based itself on a form of Origenism. Some scholars say their teachings were far afield from the original teachings of Origen.

After receiving complaints about these Origenists, Justinian issued a long edict denouncing Origen as a heretic. He convened a local synod in Constantinople in 543 to anathematize (or curse) certain of Origen’s teachings. Especially troublesome to the orthodox clergy were Origen’s teachings on the pre-existence of souls and the pre-existence of the soul of Jesus Christ.

A decade later, in 553, in an attempt to deal with other doctrinal controversies, Justinian summoned the entire church to the Fifth Ecumenical Council–but without the agreement of the pope. This council confirmed Justinian’s anathemas against Origen. Almost all the bishops in attendance represented the Eastern Church and not the Western. The pope, Vigilius, refused to attend.

Scholars today question the le, legitimacy of the anathemas against Origen because there are no records documenting papal approval.

As the New Catholic Encyclopedia admits, “in the discussions of the council little attention was paid to Origen, except to put his name in the list of heretics condemned in canon 11. He was not mentioned in the Emperor’s opening discourse, which is the source of the council’s anathemas, nor in the letter of Vigilius approving the council after the fact. But later councils have repeated the condemnation.”

An earlier edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “It is easy to understand how this extra-conciliary sentence was mistaken at a later period for a decree of the actual ecumenical council.”

The Encyclopedia article asks: “Were Origen and Origenism anathematized? Many learned writers believe so. An equal number deny that they were condemned. Most modern authorities are either undecided or reply with reservations.”

In theory, this missing papal approval leaves the way open for the belief in pre-existence and reincarnation among Christians today. In practice, however, the actions of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and of the later councils that rubber-stamped the curse upon Origen, have resulted in the Church’s rejection of pre-existence and reincarnation.

Two of the council’s anathemas against Origen read as follows:    “If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.” Let him be cursed.

Can you imagine that to believe something that someone says you can’t believe you are to be cursed? That is why I sing “God Bless America.”

“If anyone shall say that Christ had different bodies and different names, became all to all, an Angel among Angels, a Power among Powers, has clothed himself in the different classes of reasonable beings with a form corresponding to that class, and finally has taken flesh and blood like ours and is become man for men; if anyone says all this and does not profess that God the Word humbled himself and became man: let him be anathema.”

Now, that doctrine which is being cursed is the teaching that Jesus Christ came to save everyone and all creatures and therefore he appeared to them at the level where they were, whether they were in hell, whether we, they were in some other dimension–whatever classes of reasonable beings, to all people upon this planet Jesus Christ is come as their Saviour. What is so bad about that concept?

If Jesus is our Saviour then he has to come and save us where we are.

The list of fifteen anathemas approved by the council ends with the statement: “If anyone does not anathematize”–and then it lists the names of several so-called heretics, including Origen–“as well as their impious writings, let him be anathema.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is mind control with the threat of an eternal cursing, an eclesiastical cursing upon your head if you don’t allow yourself to be controlled.

It is clear from Origen’s writings that he taught the pre-existence of the soul. But because so few of Origen’s writings remain today, we can’t be sure of his opinions on reincarnation.

Geddes MacGregor writes: “Origen suffered even more from his friends than from his enemies. We find we cannot really say what he held because his friends imposed a sort of informal censorship on works and passages that seemed to them to besmirch his orthodoxy. So such works and passages that contained his more adventuresome and interesting ideas were allowed to simply disappear. Disapproving scribes did not copy them.” Oh, the scribes. [laughter]

Though one might expect Origen to embraze re, to embrace reincarcenati–[laughter] I am going to get some hot tea, that will help. Though one might expect Origen to embrace reincarnationism, we do not find in the extant text any clear statement in support of it.

“While he attacks the widespread notion of his day that the soul of a human being could ever be imprisoned in the body of a beast (which he considers unfitting for a creature made in the image of God), he does concede that the notion of reincarnation is a very plausible one.

“One is left with the impression over and over again that Origen is attracted to reincarnationism but that some forms of it with which he is familiar are suspect in his mind.

“He considers at some length the alleged identity of John the Baptist with Elijah. In the end, however, Origen concludes by reaffirming the complexity of the subject.

“He remarks, nevertheless, that the question the Jews asked John the Baptist [‘Art thou Elias?’] presupposes ‘that they believed in reincarnation as a doctrine which they inherited from their ancestors and which was therefore in no way in conflict with the secret teaching of their masters.'”

1. W. Butterworth, who translated Origen’s work entitled On First Principles, says: “Origen’s only motive in ascribing a pre-existence to souls was to defend the justice of God. The different surroundings into which men were born was to him a real difficulty. There is probably no other Christian father who has a heart so tender, so sensitive to human suffering, as Origen had.

“[Origen believed that] the sojourn of man in this present world is designed to discipline and educate him, so that he may rise in the scale of being. He may, however, fall.

“And just as the utmost heights lie open to him, so do the lowest depths. Punishment is always remedial, never purely retributive. However low a spirit may fall, he may rise again. And however high he may soar, a fresh fall is still possible.

“It was this condition of things which gave rise to Jerome’s caustic criticism that according to Origen angels might become devils and the devil an archangel. That is indeed what Origen meant to assert: that as no limit could be placed to human wilfulness and sin, so no limit could be placed to the power of God’s love, when once the human soul had responded to its healing and uplifting influence.

Origen was led to be, “Origen was led to the belief that one day the love of God would prove stronger even than the freedom of man and that all created spirits would return to that unity and perfection which was theirs at the beginning… The system thus outlined was based upon a belief in man’s free-will.

“Origen is fully conscious of the importance of free-will and he devotes a long chapter to examining it and meeting objections.” With this emphasis on free will, Origen writes in On First Principles : “The position of every created being is the result of his own work and his own motives.”  There is the teaching of karma.

Origen points out the case of Jacob and Esau, of whom God said before they were even born, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Origen wondered about this. He thought this would mean that God was either capricious and unfair or else that the souls of the two brothers already struggling in the womb had committed deeds in some previous existence.

Origen noticed that Paul had wondered the same thing when he asked how God could say such a thing about infants “not yet born, neither having done any good or evil.” In his letter to the Romans, Paul asks: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.”

The question of Jacob and Esau can be applied to us: Why is one person born with good health and genius and talent and another born deaf or dumb or blind?

Origen wrote:

“The same question which faces us in connection with Esau and Jacob may also be raised in regard to all the heavenly beings and all creatures on earth and in the lower regions.”

From his study of the situation of the twins, Origen elicited this proof of pre-existence, karma and reincarnation. He said:    “A close look at the scriptural account of Jacob and Esau will show that there is no injustice with God. Although it is said that they, that before they were born or had done anything in this life, the elder should serve the younger, still one finds no injustice with God. Nor does one find injustice because Jacob supplanted his brother in the womb. We should only realize that Jacob is so worthily loved by God on the merits of some previous life and hence deserved precedence over his brother.”

I believe without a doubt that Origen believed in reincarnation. The vast majority of his works wud, would tell us that simply did not survive.

So Jacob comes forth on the merits of a previous life. Esau comes forth on the demerits of a previous life.

“It is possible for us to understand that even before the present life there were rational vessels “–this is Origen talking–there were rational vessels, that is, souls ” which had purged themselves or had not, and that from this circumstance each vessel received, according to the measure of its purity or impurity, its place or region or condition in which to be born or to fulfil some duty in this world.

“All these, down to the very least, God supervises by the power of his wisdom and distinguishes by the controlling hand of his judgment. And thus he has arranged the universe on the principle of a most impartial retribution, according as each one deserves for his merit to be assisted or cared for.

“Herein is displayed in its completeness the principle of impartiality, when the inek, when the inequality of circumstances preserves an equality of reward for merit. But the grounds of merit in each individual are known with truth and clearness only to God, together with his only-begotten Word and Wisdom and his Holy Spirit.”

That is the end of the quote from Origen in “On First Principles” and it does show that he acknowledges the preexistence of the soul.

We know that Origen didn’t write down all that he believed. He himself tells us that his enemies were waiting to “contrive hostilities and persecutions” against him for his beliefs.

He writes in his commentary on Genesis: “If I shall wish to dig deeply and open the hidden veins ‘of living water,’ immediately the Philistines will be present and will strive with me. They will stir up disputes and malicious charges against me and will begin to refill my wells with their earth and mud…

“If I wished to approach my most patient Lord, and if (as the disciples said to him: ‘Lord, who has sinned, this man or his parents that he should be born blind’) I say: ‘Lord, who has sinned, this Esau or his parents, that he should be born thus hairy all over and shaggy, that he should be supplanted by his brother in the womb?,’ then immediately the Philistines stir up quarrels and malicious charges against me. And for this reason, leaving this well and calling it ‘enmity,’ let us dig another.”

With that, Origen moves on to his interpretation of another passage. Isn’t it a shame that we have lost the profound insights of this man of God because of religious bigotry and its consequent persecution?

Origen eventually was persecuted. He was imprisoned. And when he was finally released, he died shortly afterward.

Origen applied the scheme of divine justice to the spiritual realm as well as to the earthly. He writes:

“God made one a demon, one a soul and one an angel as a means of punishing each in proportion to its sin. For if this were not so, and souls had no pre-existence, why do we find some newborn babes to be blind, when they have committed no sin, while others are born with no defect at all?

“But it is clear that certain sins existed before the souls, and a result and as a result of these sins each soul receives a recompense in proportion to its deserts. They are sent forth from God as a punishment, that they must undergo on earth, a first judgment. “That is why the body is called a frame, because the cl, because the soul is enclosed within it.”

According to an excerpt of his work translated by Jerome, Origen wrote plainly that “angels may become men or demons, and again from the latter they may rise to be men or angels since all are possessed of free-will, and may of their own accord admit either of good or evil.”

Why , then, did the orthodox church reject the concept of pre-existence and reincarnation? Why was the Church so antagonistic to the teachings of the Gnostics and Origen? The reasons were both theological and political. Geddes MacGregor explains that one circumstance that inhibited official acceptance of reincarnation was “the extremely apocalyptic character of the primitive Christian temper.”

He says:

“In the first century, the Second Coming of Christ was expected imminently and with it the rolling up of the present world ‘like a scroll.’ Then would come a new and better order under Christ’s kingship. In such a climate of expectancy Christians could have little interest in speculations about the pre-existence of the soul, and less still in reincarnationism. Indeed, when people feel the end of the world is at hand they have no interest in any kind of philosophical speculations.

“Theoretically, as the eschatological hope of the Church gradually came to be reinterpreted as less imminent, interest in the themes of pre-existence and reincarnation might be expected to reawaken.”

The reason that such an awakening never took place on a full-scale level was more political than theological. Reincarnation has ben, been denied by the church for political more than for theological reasons.

And this is what I told you I would tell you about theologians. It is plain and simple that reincarnation presented a threat to the established hierarchy of the Church.

Dr. chrf, Christopher Bache writes:

“It was characteristic of ecclesiastical thinking in the Patristic period (that is, the period of the fathers of the early Church) to see the church as indispensable to a Christian’s salvation. Its priests were mediators of God’s grace channeled to believers through the sacraments they controlled. Reincarnation granted too much author, reincarnation granted too much autonomy and too much authority to individuals. It had too much potential to undermine the centralized authority. And it is centralized authority that the Roman church saw as critical to the survival of Christianity.”

Basically reincarnation emphasized the role of free will and individual accountability. The orthodox hierarchy felt threatened by such implications.

Scholar Elaine Pagels writes in her book The Gnostic Gospels:    “Orthodoxy legitimized a hierarchy of persons through whose authority all others must approach God. Gnostic teaching, as Church Fathers realized, was potentially subversive of this order.

“When the orthodox gained military support, sometime after the Emperor Constantine became Christian in the fourth century, the penalty for heresy escalated. Christian bishops, previously victimized by the police, now commanded them. Possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed.”

It’s like the old joke about Pierre that Mark Prophet liked to tell. The priest is walking down the lane and he comes upon Pierre and he says:

“Are you going to church today, Pierre?”

And Pierre says, “Aha, I’m not going to church today, Father. I’m not going anymore in my whole life!” “Why not, Pierre?”

“Because I’m going in my next life–and then I’m going to become a saint.”  [laughter]

After having studied the historical record and the reasons why the Church acted the way it did, Dr. Bache, who was raised a Catholic in the South, comes to the following conclusion:

“At the very least, we can say that if Christianity’s rejection of reincarnation stems not from any basic incompatibility with the gospel but rather from an incompatibility with the Patristic theory of the Church, then no core tenet of faith prevents its being reconsidered today.”

Unfortunately, the Church’s suppression of so-called heretics didn’t stop with the Gnostics or with Origen. During the Middle Ages, there was a resurgence of Gnostic ideas among Christians, especially the Albigenses, who were also called the Cathars (from the Greek word for “pure”).

The dread Holy Inquisition was originally established to compat, to combat the Cathars. The Cathars were, in essence, the Gnostics come again. (Old Gnostics never die, you know–they just keep on reembodying as heretics!) [laughter, 10-sec. applause] Hello, all you new, born-again Gnostics. [laughter]

In the thirteenth century the Cathars inhabited an independent principality in France whose language, culture and learning was the apex of French medieval civilization. They believed in reincarnation, their preachers were both male and female, and they rejected the clerical hierarchy of the orthodox church. And like the second-century Christian Gnostics, they sought firsthand religious experience rather than relying on faith alone for their salvation.

Edmond Holmes points out in his book The Holy Heretics that the Cathars believed in the doctrine of rebirth. Summarizing their beliefs, he writes: “If there was an original Fall, as the result of which a definite number of souls fell from heaven to earth, and if there has since been no addition to that number, it is only by the action of the law of rebirth that the earth has continued to be inhabited by mankind. The departed soul is reborn in another body, reborn again and again, until the time comes for its final deliverance from earth.”

Dr. Arthur Guirdham says that cathar, catharism, Catharism , Dr. Arthur Guirdham says that Catharism was

“a resurgence of primitive Christianity, and was stamped out for the very reason that it was primitive Christianity. It was a mystical, real, living experience of Christianity as opposed to an avidly theological concept.”

The prosperous civilization and rich culture of the Cathars was wiped out by what amounts to nothing less than genocide. For forty years, starting in 1208, Christian soldiers summoned by not so innocent Pope Innocent III waged the bloody Albigensian Crusade.

When it was all over, almost a half million people were burned or massacred. Crusaderd wer, Crusaders were promised the same rewards as those who fought in the Holy Land–expiation of penances, remission of sins, a guarantee of going to heaven, and as many goods as they could plunder. In their wake they destroyed crops, razed towns, and slaughtered whole populations. In one attack alone, 15,000 Cathars were murdered at the town of Béziers.

It is said that when the pope’s representative was asked how the soldiers should distinguish the heretics from the true Christians, he replied:

“Kill them all. God will recognize his own.”

Although these words may have been exaggerated, they never luv, they nevertheless reflect the ruthless intent behind the crusade.

I want to remind us of that point. “At the very least we can say that if Christianity’s rejection of reincarnation stems not from any basic incompatibility with the gospel but rather from an incompatibility with the Patristic theory of the church, then no core tenet of faith prevents its being reconsidered today.”

We are not in the church for political redi, reasons. We are in the church for spiritual reasons. [13-second applause]

There’s another facet of this entire subject that you need to know and understand and get under your belt. It’s the concept of salvation by grace versus works, in other words, grace versus karma. The question is does reincarnation negate the role of Jesus.

In my discussions with Christians, I have found that they deny the law of karma based on certain passages in the Epistles that emphasize salvation by faith and grace. They say that good works, though an important part of Christian life, are no guarantee of salvation and that because Christ died for our sins, we are not required to pay the price for them.

They also say that the concept of karma and reincarnation–that we must keep embodying until we pay all our karmic debts–negates the role of Jesus as Saviour. And so I would like to address both of these points because one day someone is going to ask you this very question.

The Protestant doctrine on grace versus works is that man is justified (that is, saved) by grace alone through faith. He is not saved through his good works or sacramental actions. Traditionally the Catholic Church teaches that grace is communicated to man through the sacraments, which are administered by the priest. Luther, the leader of the Protestant Reformation, based his doctrine of justification by faith on Paul’s statement in Romans 1:17: “The just shall live by faith.”

Another key scripture for Protestants is Romans 3:28: “Man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” What law are we talking about? We’re talking about the commandments of God and the commandments of Jesus but we’re also talking about the law of karma.

So Paul is saying in Romans man is justified by faith without the deeds, the works, the karma, of the law.

However, the fathers and doctors of the Church have always interpreted these passages to mean that faith expressed through good works (that is, an active faith) is what saves man. The path of salvation by faith and by works is the path of balancing karma.

Protestants today will tell you that if a person has faith he will automatically do works of love. Luther himself said:

“Faith is a most vivid, active, and busy thing, which cannot help doing good deeds all the time.”

But, fundamentalist Protestants say, Christians do not need to perform good works in order to be saved. In Catholic thought, faith and works have never been separated. Works are a sign that faith is real in one’s heart. Faith is hollow if it is not matched by a commitment of works in this world. That is why we ascribe to someone sainthood because of their works. The life of the saint is studied or the proposed saint, and if it all adds up and the miracles are there, then we recognize that person as a saint. Who has ever become a saint in the Catholic Church without works?

So if you ask a Catholic, “Are you saved?” he’ll say: “I’m working on it.”  [laughter] Good for you.

But if you ‘re a fundamentalist Christian and you’re asked , “Are you saved?” then you will say unequivocally: “Yes, I am saved. I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour.”

There are many levels of Protestant denominations today and more liberal Protestants might not be so certain of their answer. Different denominations put more or less emphasis on the role of works in salvation.

In Matthew 25 Jesus illustrates that the final judgment is based on the karma of an active or an inactive Christianity. These are Jesus’ words on the matter, not the apostles’. Here works of love are the  key to salvation. The Lord promises to those who minister unto him even in the person of “one of the least of these my brethren” that they shall inherit the kingdom, whereas to those who do not minister unto him for the very love of Christ in all people, he says:

“Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

There is no mention by Jesus Christ that if you accept him as your Lord and Saviour, this teaching, this law is going to be revoked. It is a misinterpretation of scripture that brings us that doctrine.

The apostle Paul, in his exhortations to the stubborn Romans, confirms Jesus’ teaching on the wages of karma. This passage reads in the Jerusalem Bible:

“[God] will repay each one as his works deserve. For those who sought renown and honor and immortality by always doing good there will be eternal life; for the unsubmissive who refused to take truth for their guide and took depravity instead, there will be anger and fury.”

Whose anger and whose fury? God’s? No, not God’s. The returning karma, the returning karma itself is misqualified energy that comes back to you, gathering more momentum of its kind. That is the anger and the fury that comes upon you.

“Pain and suffering will come to every human being who employs himself in evil…; renown, honor and peace will come to everyone who does good. God has no favorites.”

That’s Paul’s statement. Now the author of Hebrews says:

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” And Paul writes to the saints at Ephesus: “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Here it is evident that good works alone do not satisfy the whole law of salvation. Yet without them we have no proof of our discipleship in Christ, called as we are by our Lord to be “doers of the Word and not hearers only.”

This passage has profound meaning for me because, although works are necessary, we could do all the works we could do day and night forever. But would they really pay the price, the price for our loss, our, our going away from God, our going away from Jesus? In the end, the works are required but the salvation is by grace. Yes, we must balance our karma. But there is grace from Jesus Christ that makes us able to transcend the former self and enter in to the exalted state of being an immortal.

Without grace there is no salvation. But grace is not extended to us or offered to us until we have given that responsible answer to God by being willing to work each day to pay our debt.

The apostle John wrote in Revelation 20:12:

“The dead were judged out of those things were wri, which were written in the books, according to their works.”

The books with a plural s in Revelation refers to each man’s own book of life in which are inscribed the recordings of his works–his positive and negative karma.

There is a mighty angel who is called the Keeper of the Scrolls and he has many angels in his service. And an angel is assigned to each one of us writing down our thoughts, our feelings, our words and our deeds.

And those are the books. Elsewhere in Revelation there is reference to the Book of Life, one book in which are inscribed the names of those who receive salvation.

Revelation 20:13 repeats the statement that the dead were judged “every man according to their works,” that is, their karma. Remember that Revelation is the dictation of Jesus Christ to John when he was on Patmos in his nineties. He wrote down that book as Jesus gave it to him.

Nowhere in Revelation do we read that these violators of Christ’s love are saved by a last-minute, death-bed confession of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Rather, as James reminds us, “faith without works is dead.”

Moreover, Revelation does not say that the dead are judged or vindicated by faith alone, or by grace alone, or, for that matter, by works alone. All three are indispensable to eternal life. That is the final truth of the matter.

Revelation 21 and 22 say with a ring of finality Jesus’ teaching on karma. Jesus defines two paths–the path of the overcomers and their reward, and the path of the violators of God’s laws and their end in what is called the “second death,” which is the merciful canceling out of the soul potential that has denied the incarnation of God within her temple.

If there is a soul who eternally exercises her free will to deny God and her laws and to do wicked perpetually, there is a coming of an end of cycles whereby that soul can simply be canceled out. And that is what the second death means. It is mercy to the soul to not to have to endure the karma for having eternally blasphemed against God.

These souls are in the categories of fallen angels, rebels against God, who have not, in all the time that Jesus Christ has preached to them, been wooed back to the love of his heart.

So Jesus dictates to John these words which he wrote.

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

“And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”

Under the law of karma and reincarnation, what is the role of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour? I believe that we are saved through the grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And without that grace we could not find our way through the labyrinth of our karma.

I also believe that the real meaning of “saved” is that Jesus’ grace allows us the time and space through reincarnation to atone for our misdeeds and mistakes. That is the real grace, that we are alive today and here and not in hell. We have not been forever condemned because of our sins because we had only one life to live and we did it wrong. We are here today alive and well, with his blessing, to make good.

Jesus took embodiment himself to show us how to walk the path of the incarnation of the Word so that we could learn how to balance our own karma. He came as the example, the teacher. This is the real meaning of the grace of Jesus Christ. Grace does not cancel out sin. It gives us opportunity to make our amends, time and space in which to do penance for our sins–our karma.

Now I have the most exciting part of this message to give you which offers abundant proof for reincarnation. But with it, you will not convince those who are in the orthodox tradition. But you yourself may be convinced and enlightened.

Would you like to stretch for a moment? [“Yes.”] This is really exciting. If you’ve stayed this long, [laughter] don’t leave now.

You know, I’m here because I’m really excited about the teachings. You’re excited, too, aren’t you? [“Yes.”] Good. [5-second applause]

If you’ll open this Jesus’ Watch booklet, we can sing “I’ll Walk with God.” [inaudible] It’s on page 28. If you want to, you could walk around the room and come back to your seat, if you feel like some exercise.

OK.

• [Song 72, “I’ll Walk with God,” sung (Mario Lanza version).]

I’d like to invite you to sing “Jesus of Galilee.” Picture yourself standing on the shore of the sea of Galilee, Jesus coming toward you in his great Ascended Master light body. The whole time you are singing this, just see Jesus coming toward you. At the conclusion of this song, we’ll begin again.

• [Song 68, “Jesus of Galilee,” sung ]

Won’t you be seated. We’re ready to begin and we invite you to return.

This chapter of my exegesis this evening is on past-life and inter-life regressions.

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] I am giving it to you for another reason: because I want to ignite a spark so you’ll go out and preach the same message and have the great, great good karma of winning many souls to the real and living Ascended Master Jesus Christ. [6-second applause]

Whitton and Fisher write: “It appears that people are sometimes afforded the setting they have imagined or have wished for while on Earth.” That is true and that entire concept which they bring up from these regressions I have covered in a five-hour lecture that I delivered on devachan. It was the third in the series of “On Dealing with Death, Discarnates and Malevolent Spirits.” I’ve given three lectures on the subject, one of them based on Ghost, one on Flatliners and one on the teachings of devachan that comes out of Theosophy and the adepts of the Far East.

And devachan is a place of wish fulfillment and that wish fulfillment is gratified to people when they pass from the screen of life so they can live out their fantasies in a place where whatever they wished is happening so that they can get through those desires and those wishes and maybe even prepare for a future life.

So there is a compartment that God has prepared for us but, unfortunately, this devachan does not always come true for those who have taken Jesus’ doctrine, the false doctrine taught, and are determined, no matter what happens, they’re going to be greeted by Jesus and ushered into the kingdom. Sometimes they are simply not given the benefit of even having the wish fulfillment of this because the Lords of Karma have decreed that the sooner they recognize that they have been under a false doctrine and false teaching, the sooner they will desire to come back into embodiment and to do it right. So they give them a dose of realism instead of a dose of wish fulfillment.

Most of you here, one time or another, have spent time in devachan between embodiments and that’s OK. The Law provides for it and it’s very helpful for the growth of the soul. If you would like to learn more about transition and what the soul goes through, those series of three lectures will help you tremendously.

And there’s a current movie out you might want to see. It’s called Dead Again. I don’t intend to analyze it again. [laughter] I’ve analyzed enough movies for you. You’ve got the teaching in those lectures now so you can go analyze it for yourself. But it’s a very good story about reincarnation, extremely well done.

So as Whitton and fisn, Fisher were saying: “But fundamentalists who believe that strictly doctrinaire living will be rewarded by an audience with Jesus Christ and a pew in the kingdom of heaven are courting disappointment. Dr. Whitton’s subjects with narrowly religious past lives have discovered in the interlife that the complex and protracted course of personal evolution cannot be supplanted by the simplistic notion of being , quote, ‘saved.'”

One subject remembered a past life as “Victor Bracknell, a pious seventeenth-century Puritan, unshakable in his conviction that he was doing God’s will. He was equally unshakable in his belief that he would be rewarded at death by the sight of Jesus. But the life between life brought him no Christ-like vision, no heavenly haven. Instead, he was confronted with the conflicts that had caused him, in his blindness, to inflict suffering on others.”

Many of Dr. Whitton’s subjects reported that they spent their time between embodying, between embodiments studying. “Most of the subjects,” write Whitton and Fisher, “have found themselves hard at work in vast halls of learning equipped with libraries and seminar rooms.” These halls of learning are always on the etheric octave.

“Doctors and lawyers, for example, have spoken of studying their respective disciplines during the interlife while others remember applying themselves to such subjects as the laws of the universe and other metaphysical topics. Some even tell of studying subjects that defy description because they have no earthly counterpart.”

What you will find in the archives of the libraries of the etheric retreats of the Great White Brotherhood–and that term Great White Brotherhood does refer to those who have the aura of the white light; it does not refer to la, to, to the race at all. It comes from Revelation 9 in which there is the discussion of the saints robed in white.

What we find, therefore, is that in the universities and archives of the Great whi, White Brotherhood is all of the science, the invention, the law and the records of all civilizations that have ever existed on this planet and those beyond this planet. I mean, you could spend eternity in these archives.

It is a tremendous opportunity between lifetimes for those who have truly desired to understand the record of earth’s history, how we came to what we are today, what caused the sinking of Lemuria, Atlantis, what were the past great golden ages in which we lived of which we have a memory and how did we get where we are today and how do we get out of the mess we’re in in terms of the nuclear arsenals that are still present on the earth despite Bush’s unilateral action, et cetera.

So there is much to be done between embodiments and you don’t have to think about being bored in heaven playing a harp. [laughter] There’s lot of other things to do in heaven.

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.

I can remember when I was nineteen I was standing on the street corner in New York City. I was oni, on an Antioch co-op job at the United Nations. And I was going to or from work and I was standing on the corner with a mob of people that were about to cross the street. The light changed and we had to wait.

And there was a man in front of me who was older and he was disheveled, you know, something like a street person. He, he certainly wasn’t a professional. And he had stepped down from the curb and there was a car that was speeding around the corner. There was a car that was speeding around the corner. And I saw the car coming and I saw that the wheels were right next to the curb and in about two seconds this man would be hit and killed by this car.

It was like a moment in eternity. I looked at the car. I looked at the man. I grabbed his shirt and coat from behind his neck and he was such a sliver of a man I picked him right up and lifted him [laughter] onto the sidewalk and the car sped by. And this little unshaven face turned around and looked at me and he said, “Gee, thanks, miss.” [laughter] It was a very rewarding experience. [laughter]

In the same vein, Whitton and Fisher write of another subject who made so much progress in dealing with karmic challenges that he “managed to live several lifetimes within one incarnation.” How many people here feel like you’re living several lifetimes? [laughter] This is “an achievement open to all who pursue their destiny with exceptional vigor.”

That’s the zeal of the Lord. That’s how you go through many lifetimes of karma in one life. And don’t forget, I am going to be teaching you how to do it tomorrow.

“Within one incarnation, he ha d achieved results that, ordinarily, would require the labor of lifetimes.”

That’s what happens when you unite with Jesus and do greater works that he promised you would do.

Whitton’s research also showed how karmic tests not passed compromised the individual’s progress. For example, a person who committed suicide in a previous life learned how she had aborted her opportunity in that life to fulfill her karmic plan, which included a brilliant musical career.

Speaking of her previous life, she said: “If only she had been patient and persevering, she could have had it all.” May you not find yourself saying that about yourself in an interlife.

Whitton and Fisher state that “time and time again subjects have asserted in trance that they must undergo certain experiences in order to purge imperfection and to further personal growth.” One tell s of a man named Ben who in past-life regression “reexperienced a succession of male and female lives in which he participated in vicious exchange s by killing those who treated him badly.

“In this life, he has been plunged once more into a repugnant situation in which he has been tempted to opt for a violent solution. Severely brutalized as a child, Ben grew to hate his father so intensely that at the age of eighteen he came very close to killing him. Then listening to the promptings of an inner voice, he changed his mind.

“From that moment on, his characteristic aimlessness was replaced with ambition, he grew more outgoing, and he went on to pursue a career that brought administrative responsibilities.” Through past-life regression, “Ben learned that he was embroiled in karmic circumstances that were designed to teach him to withstand extreme provocation without recourse to violence.

How many of you feel like you’ve been placed in situations to withstand extreme provocation? [responses] There’s probably nobody that’s an exception to that, including me. [laughter]

He discovered that he had chosen his difficult childhood knowing he would be severely tested by a father who had figured prominently in a series of antagonistic relationships in previous incarnations. “Ben was aware of a voice which said: ‘If you do it right this time, things will work out all right. Luckily for him, he still had an ear for the voice of conscience, the voice of the Holy Christ Self. It’s a blessing when we can listen to that voice.

That voice of conscience said to him, “‘If you don’t do it right , you will require a learning environment of even greater intensity.’ By acting with restraint toward his father, he had wrestled a karmic predicament into submission. By passing this test, he had finally extricated himself from the pattern of error in life after life.”

That’s why you need a time of day to listen when everything is quiet, the phones are off, you’re retiring and you truly meditate deeply upon God. Ask God to show you what you should be doing. Ask him to send his angels to teach you and ask to be taken to the retreat where you need to be tonight, that night, to learn the lessons you must have in order to be a success in this life.

Another example that Whitton and Fisher give is a Jewish surgeon who learned that he was “making compensation for past-life behavior, specifically his cruelty toward the Jews when he was a Roman sergeant stationed in revolt-prone Judea some time af, after the death of Christ. The doctor regained vivid memories of breaking the bodies of Jews half-buried in sand by charging over them on his horse. His karmic role in this life has been to mend bodies as well as to experience the rigors of persecution.”

The lesson that comes across loud and clear from the findings of past-life and inter-life regressions is: You alone are responsible for who and what you are today. If you don’t like who you are, you alone can do something about it. And the circumstances of your life are designed to help you do just that.

Dr. Christopher Bache writes in his book Lifecycles : “Schooled in popular Western psychology from our birth, most of us are accustomed to understanding the traits of our personalities as deriving from our treatment in the home, primarily from our parents but sometimes from siblings or other caretakers. We say: ‘If only they had done a better job, then I would not be the way I am today.’

“From a reincarnationist perspective, however, this gets everything backward. It puts the cart before the horse. The rule of thumb for reincarnation is: ‘I do not have the problems I have in life because I have these parents, but rather I have these particular parents because I have chosen to work on these particular issues.” There you are [laughter]–in the driver’s seat.

“They will recur in one form or another in different areas of our life–in childhood relationships, in courtship, in marriage, in our career, in our health, with our children, and, most of all, with ourselves” because when the day is over it’s ourselves that we have to deal with. “They will keep confronting us until we solve them.”

Study your life. See the persistent patterns. Come and let’s do the violet flame tomorrow and see how God has given us the alchemy of the Holy Spirit, the violet flame, to clear the records of karma. When we give these decrees combined with good works and service and love we will make great progress in balancing karma.

This quote continues:

“Viewed from this perspective, our parents are not the cause of our problems but the first occasion of their manifesting in our lives.” Obviously, they’re the first people we know so we crank up our problems in relationship to our problems, in relationship to our parents.

“Our life has drawn these particular people to us, not the other way around.”

We are born to specific parents because they have the good genes and the bad genes we need to inherit in order to balance our karma.

That is all part of the karmic equation. We have to pick up the genes from our parents so we can pick up the momentums of good of our Causal Body and our past attainment so that we can ride on that positive karma. Even when we have negative karma with those, those parents, they still are the transmitters of the genes that we have to have to make it in this life.

You can always be grateful to parents who “brung” you. They got you this far. You’ve got a body. You’ve got the right genes for your karmic situation and you can maximize that potential and win. There are no perfect parents. Therefore let’s get on with taking responsibility for ourselves. [11-second applause]

You have to remember that you’re never limited by your genetic material or the circumstances of your birth. Mark Prophet said on a number of occasions that he had changed his genes a number of times in his own lifetime. It’s true. Scientists tell you you’re stuck with that DNA chain. You’re not stuck with anything. Your Holy Christ Self wa, is what gives you your genes, which means your genius, your intelligence and all that you are.

And as you balance karma that Holy Christ Self can increase your potential of who you can be and who you are. You are not subject to twentieth century’s concept of genes being the conclusion of the matter. You’ve got a lot more going for you. You just have to keep on balancing karma and you’ll see it come down.

We should not assume , then, that a life of hardship means we are paying off past karmic debts. As Whitton and Fisher write: “If we must endure a hard life, we are not necessarily coming to terms with misdememers, with misdemeanors of an earlier existence. By undergoing certain trials, we may be preparing ourselves for future tasks and accomplishments.”

This is a very accurate reading they’re getting from their subjects.

The accurate reading is that God has a right to test us and we have a right to be tested if we have no karma in the situation.

Testing us is helping us to develop our strength and potential in a certain area. When we endure through a specific assignment and do it well, we gain a certain mastery over ourselves. And that’s what the real purpose of a path of discipleship is all about.

That path of discipleship is so that we can stretch the muscles, the sinews of our mind, our heart, our being, our Causal Body, our etheric body, our soul potential. And as we become more the master of ourselves, we can have the courage to take on more difficult assignments.

As we go through these assignments we understand the pain of others, the burdens of others. We learn lessons and therefore we can help them with a profound compassion for all that we’ve experienced.

So there is a path of initiation and God continues to initiate us even if we’ve balanced a hundred percent of our karma. He gives us challenges and we are ready with great zeal and zest to meet those challenges because we find when we’ve come through them that we’re a better person. We’re less attached to ourselves, less idolatrous, more in awe of God and his wonder, of the work that he can perform for us and that we can perform with him.

We become partners with God and we gain a new sense of stature in the sight of God and a new confidence that is not based on the ego or the carnal mind because we can see that what we’ve accomplished we couldn’t have possibly done with just that ego or that carnal mind.

In other words, you reach the point where the ego and the carnal mind is like a thimble to you. It can’t carry you. It’s no longer who you are. You are this person who is becoming one with Christ and you have come and taken dominion in this body.

And so it becomes a path of the joy of overcoming, the joy of victory, rather than the great burdens of karma balancing even though karma

balancing can be a great joy also. So there is great happiness for those who deal with their karma and then enjoy a good test and are ready to exercise for it and pass it.

Hypnotic regressions and reincarnation bring up the obvious question: If we have lived before, why don’t we remember who we were? As I said earlier, the Gnostic text Pistis Sophia speaks of the soul drinking “the water of forgetfulness.” This is a theme we hear echoed in many cultures. The Masters call it the veil of forgetfulness which descends when the soul joins the body and enters the birth canal.

The Ascended Masters teach us that from the moment of conception a soul is part of the body but that the soul enters the body and then goes back up to higher octaves during the period of gestation, of pregnancy. So the, the soul may come and go into the body and, but finally at birth the soul is in that moment entering the birth canal with, in the body. And when the soul comes into the body, the soul may still journey and travel out of the body.

Memories are there till age three dimly , memories of past lives. Children have them from birth through about age three. They don’t necessarily understand what they are seeing. They know it is a past life. They can’t articulate it. They don’t tell us about it. They think we know it because we’re their parents. They think that’s what life is all about. You just know who you are and where you came from.

And gradually as the soft spot closes over and the baby gets older, he no longer remembers past lives but he has taken with him the experience of them. And at that point they are sealed un til the Karmic Board decrees an opening of the veil. And the Karmic Board decrees that when you are ready to learn a lesson of something very good or something bad or something in between, information that you need to have to be successful in this life.

So this is another argument against abortion, the question as to whether the fetus feels pain in an abortion.

The fetus feels pain just as you and I feel pain because the soul is attached to the body and the soul within the body does experience the pain of literally being murdered, massacred in the womb by the various forms of abortion practiced today.

So recognizing that the unborn fetus, that body, knows pain as a being who is independent, who is a soul, who in consciousness is really an adult entering a new body and having to grow up again, recognizing this and truly believing it and understanding it, no person of good conscience or of true love would ever allow an abortion again.

This is the message that the world must hear. It must get out there and every one of our voices has to count for those souls in the womb who cannot be heard. They cannot bear witness to this. They must speak in their behalf as their advocate. And I am very certain that all of us, because we live in this century, will have a karma for not having spoken out in defense of unborn life when we know these truths and these teachings.

In Greek mythology, souls ready to reincarnate had to drink from the rithr, had to drink from the river Lethe, whose waters made the soul forget her previous life. Dr. Stevenson reported that many of the children in Thailand with past-life memories claimed to remember being offered the “fruit of forgetfulness” before being reborn. Isn’t that amazing?

Mohandas Gandhi once explained: “It is nature’s kindness that we do not remember past births. Life would be a burden if we carried such a tremendous load of memories.”

The burden of past-life memories is described by Dr. Wambach in her book Reliving  Past Lives. She tells of how a five-year-old black youngster named Peter, whom she was treating for hyperactivity, one day began telling her of his life as a rookie policeman. She writes: “He talked about how he played basketball, and said he wished he’d be able to smoke. He said he liked smoking cigarettes before and didn’t know why he couldn’t smoke now. I worked with Peter in the playroom for three months. His hyperactivity continued.” That’s because his diet didn’t change. “Though he was able to sit and relax when he discussed his life as a policemen with me.

“The subject seemed to obsess him, although this may have been because I was the only person other than his small sister who would listen to him. One day his mother reported that a policeman had brought him home because he was out in the middle of the street trying to direct traffic. [laughter]

“Peter’s behavior showed no signs of improvement. He was withdrawn from treatment, and I have no idea what became of the bright-eyed little boy who remembered his past life.” Helen says, “Since that time, I have felt that it is not wise to encourage young children to recall past-life experiences. It certainly didn’t help Peter, and he seemed to make his, it seemed to make his adjustment to this life more difficult.”

It would have helped if the therapist had taught the child “Heart, Head and Hand Decrees.”  If a child who is going through this can give calls to the violet flame and can be taught that he is now to concentrate on this life and understand the good that, that he had done in a previous life, if that’s accompanied with the violet flame, the records will slowly be transmuted and he will lock in to his present assignment.

Without the violet flame and without dietary change, a lot lot, a lot less is, is being done and can be done for children than what could be done for them with a change of diet and with the violet flame.

Dr. Bache points out another reason for sealing the memories of the past:

“In isolating us from our larger identity,” he says, “our amnesia intensifies our learning experience by focusing us completely on the experience in which we are presently engaged. When we are distracted and give only half our attention to what we are working on, the results usually show it.”

Whitton and Fisher add that

“this amnesia is invaluable in that it prevents endless pining and homesickness for the grandeur that has been left behind and allows the individual to embark on the new life unhindered by confusing echoes of past deeds and misdeeds.

“Equally important, knowledge of any plan the soul may have made for the forthcoming life is necessarily subjugated. Just as it is pointless for a student to be furnished with answers before sitting down to a written examini, to a written examination, so the test of life requires that certain information is temporarily withheld from the conscious mind.”

We have to learn at inner vel, el, we have to learn what we have to do at inner levels. And we have to come back not knowing the rules of the game or what we’re supposed to do but it’s all locked up inside of our soul. And if we listen and if we follow the precepts of the teachings of Jesus, doing unto others only what we desire to have done unto us, following the Ten Commandments, obeying the basic moral code of society, we will pass those tests.

Isn’t it interesting how God wants to give us exams for which we are not allowed to have our textbooks open? It’s a closed-textbook exam. That’s what life is all about, a closed-textbook exam.

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

ONLINE TRANSCRIPTS: PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

Karma, Reincarnation & Christianity – Part 1 of Full Lecture, October 11, 1991

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LECTURE: “Karma, Reincarnation and Christianity”. This is Part No. 2 of a Two Part, Four Hour 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.

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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.

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LECTURE: Teaching on Balancing 100% of Karma – February 26, 1997

El Morya Dictation: Lanello Completed Balancing 100% of His Karma Feb 26 1997

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