"LAW OF REINCARNATION"

 Zélia de Toledo Piza

  In previous articles, we treated about the Law of Polarity, Law of Evolution and the Law of Karma. Today, we bring some data on the Law of Reincarnation. I want to clarify the following: these four Universal Laws are completely intertwined, so that each on exists in function of the other. For didactic purposes, we are addressing each one at a time, trying to highlight their salient features.

Reincarnation was accepted by the Greeks before Christ. Pythagoras said: "The souls survive the bodies and move into a state above, below or similar, according to live for the divine, for the sensible world or for themselves, and after a rest period, they return to take physical shape."

 In the Bhagavad-Gita II - 13.22, one of the oldest books in the world, is registered as follows: "As a man abandons worn garments to use the newest, so the soul leaves the worn body to take up a new body."

 The Mazdeism of Zoroaster says: "Each life is a birth of the soul so that she pays the mistakes of their past lives, until achieving redemption."

 In the Book of the Dead, of the Egyptian philosophy, we find: "Life is the return of the soul to the physical world."

 The disciples of Jesus do perceive that this idea was current among the Jews because, as recorded in 6:13,14 Matheus, some said to be Jesus the return of Elijah, others of Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

The early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Origen accepted reincarnation. This theory was abolished at the Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, when the writings of Origen were condemned.

Reincarnation is also known as the Law of Cycles. Everything is born, grows, reaches a certain peak, then declines and falls, but the cycles are repeated forever, in new conditions.

Thus, human life is cyclical. Man is born, reaches maturity, then declines and dies. But all deaths of the nature, including the man, are apparent. Witness the phenomenon of the fruit that, when it dies, revives with new potential.

The man's body dies, but his higher consciousness, his inner self is eternal and is reborn for a new walk.

We can define reincarnation as the process by which the consciousness, or the divine principle, through the soul, takes on a new physical form and covers new cycle of evolution.

The Law of reincarnation comes to explain why men are born with characteristics and destinations as diverse: some in favorable conditions, others in adverse conditions. Some are born with perfect health, other patients and sometimes even distorted, and some children still die. Starting the journey with so much inequality, where would be the divine justice if there was only the opportunity of one lifetime?

The Laws of Karma and Reincarnation allow us to understand the imbalances and sufferings of human beings.

The current personality of the individual is just the product of all the work he's been doing through various incarnations. Of course the being is influenced in the present life, from pregnancy, environment, education, etc... But if one proposes an improvement honest and firm, can override all the bad influences that can receive and neutralize the karma he brought to this life.

The purpose of each life is to acquire conscience. The more awareness acquired, the more the man approaches the whole, the less awareness, the more he distances himself from the whole. Thus, in each incarnation we have two paths: either evolve or regress.

Life is a journey, a school. If a man clings to the things surrounding him, unable to discern that things are means not ends, after death, he receives the consequences. If, however, he can walk a ascencional way, he receives the corresponding award. The man himself is the one who creates his heaven or his hell. Each one is responsible for his own earthly life. The Free Will is that guides the path of evolution. A life is an infinitesimal fraction of Eternity, but a life lost unnecessarily is a blot difficult to be erased in the Big Book of Evolution.

What keeps a man tied to the Wheel of Births and Deaths is the ignorance of the Universal Laws and the attachment to links with the matter.

Man can be free of successive passages through this life when, through evolution, becomes equal to the very Law