Reincarnation & The Tibetan Rebirth Process

Tonight we’re discussing the sophistications of the rebirth process, looking at reincarnation from many different points of view. Reincarnation is a cyclic process, it’s a big circle. We end up where we begin, in a sense. Where we begin though, is not this world. We’re not really indigenous to this world. This world being a temporal plane of reality. You might say that we’re all light. We’re all composed of light, and that there are many dreams that are available in existence, and this is one particular dream that we find ourselves in now. What we call this lifetime, this evening, this moment. Birth and death are stages of transition, but life is a continuous transition. Reincarnation is an apprehension of a movement, and the movement occurs in time. Without time, there’s no reincarnation. Reincarnation is a reflection of time in this world. There are of course, many people who do not necessarily believe in reincarnation. Their sight is confined to one particular structural lifetime. They’ll be surprised. Pleasantly, I hope.

Reincarnation in the large sense, of course, is the progression of the soul of the Jiva, or the Anatman, if you prefer, through a cycle of lifetimes of incarnations. The idea is of course, essentially, quite simple, and that we are all part of the source. We’re all one with God. We’re eternity and a part of eternity as in that marvelous poem by Andrew Marvella “On a drop of dew”. Just like a little dew drop separating itself from the cosmos, we separate ourselves from existence for awhile, or seemingly so, and we enter into incarnation. Into a temporal plane where there is time and space. The world. We have a body. We pass through hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of existences. In each lifetime, we’re exploring another part of our own self which is eternity. Our larger body is eternity.