Reincarnation

Introduction Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant. This doctrine is a central tenet within the majority of Indian religious traditions, such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism; the Buddhist concept of rebirth is also often referred to as reincarnation.[1] The idea was also fundamental to some Greek philosophers as well as other religions, such as Druidism, and later on, Spiritism, and Eckankar. It is also found in many small-scale societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.[2]

Positive Features of Reincarnation

The doctrine of reincarnation has many positive features that recommend it: 1. It offers one of the classic explanations for why some people suffer misfortune while others enjoy a lucky life: the misfortune can be explained as the result of my own misdeeds in a previous life. 2. It maintains the justice of the cosmos by insisting that each person is responsible for their own future. 3. It provides a reason to endure suffering and pain, for the sake of expiating sins of past lives. This is a good doctrine for the religious life. 4. It dampens pride. Whatever our good qualities, in past lives we no doubt committed many sins. Although in this life we might enjoy privilege and high status, in past lives we were no doubt living in poverty and wretchedness. 5. In the modern New Age dress, reincarnation is good news, since it gives everyone a second chance. This helps explain its popularity. 6. It creates human solidarity, since anyone we encounter could be a brother, a granddaughter, a mother or a son. In a previous life I might have been my neighbor's father; therefore that neighbor is my son. My worst enemy may be my son or grandson. Therefore, to wrong any human being may be harming my own kin. 7. It creates solidarity with all creatures, because they also may be reincarnated humans, and I might have been one of them in a past life. Reincarnation links all life together in a seamless web; that steak you just ate might have come from a cow that was one of your offspring from a previous life when you were a cow. 8. Reincarnation is compatible with Eastern cultures which are attuned to the cyclic rhythms of nature. The rebirth of souls into new bodies is as natural as the new growth of plants every spring.

9. For Christians like Geddes MacGregor, giving people a second chance is confirms the

love of God. It is therefore superior to traditional teaching that sinners are judged to eternal punishment in hell.
Henry Ford

American industrialist Henry Ford was convinced that he had lived before, most recently as a soldier killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. A quote from the San Francisco Examiner from August 26, 1928 described Ford's beliefs: I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty-six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts mens minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us. In AMORC writings, it is not uncommon to find comments such as In every true religion... (Rosicrucian Initiation, 1st Portal, p.1) Introductions to Rosicrucian Portals (self-initiation instructions) carry the following statement: Each of the worlds great religious founders, those who left to mankind a spiritual heritage, a system, doctrines or a code of living by which man could commune with the God within, was a beacon of Divine Light in a dark and saddened world of humanity. Their lives were shining examples of the truths they expounded. The bitterness that oftentimes exists between the present-day exponents of these great religious movements is because they in their own lives and conduct do not, as their predecessors did, exemplify their religious principles. It is intriguing and inspiring to read The Story of Light, the beginning and evolution of the great religious movements, the construction of broad roads upon which man hopes to reach a closer understanding of his God. It is most befitting that with each initiation intended to evolve your consciousness you be given a brief biography of these religious founders, these eminent personages. H. Spencer Lewis wrote two books focusing on the life and teachings of Jesus - The Mystical Life Of Jesus, described as The most surprising book ever written; and The Secret Doctrines Of Jesus. The Mystical Life Of Jesus claims to be based on facts contained in ancient Rosicrucian and Essene records, which do not, we are informed, reflect the incomplete, partly erroneous, and greatly veiled life of Jesus as it appears in the

Christian Bible... (Mystical Life, p.18) The Rosicrucian Order claims to have inherited or located many such records, but these are generally kept secret.
The Rosicrucian Order believes that Jesus was NOT the first and only, but the last and greatest of all the messengers of God conceived in this manner and born on earth. (p.93) We are led to believe that, according to Essene records at the school in which Jesus was educated at Mt Carmel, he registered under the name of Joseph, the reincarnation of Zoroaster, the Son of God. (p.158)

Cosmic Consciousness: AMORC believes that the consciousness of God pervades all things. This consciousness equals divine, infinite intelligence, and has vitality, mind and constructive power. (Rosicrucian Manual, p.164) It is also called the Universal Mind and the Soul. (Rosicrucian Manual, pp.191,194) AMORC recognises only one Soul - that is the Soul of God, the Living, Vital consciousness of God. Within each living being there is this Universal Soul, and this is the Soul of man...The Soul in man is the God in man, and makes all mankind a part of God... (Rosicrucian Manual, p.191) Spirit - is seen as a divine universal essence pervading all nature, even unconscious matter. It is different from Soul in that it operates at a different rate of vibrations, and can therefore enter even atoms, while Soul can only operate psychically. (Rosicrucian Manual, p.191) Death/Reincarnation: AMORC does not believe that there really is such a thing as death. Rather, death, or transition, is synonymous with birth, for both mean entering into another state. Both are a form of Initiation affording an opportunity for greater advancement...Matter is indestructible...it can change only its form or nature of manifestation...Neither body nor the soul ever dies... (Rosicrucian Manual, p.165) The soul and personality of the person move onto the cosmic plane at death, and when the time is right, the personality begins another incarnation; never regressing to animals and only occasionally changing sex. The Rosy Cross: AMORC prefers the term `Rosae Crucis to `Rosy Cross. AMORC believes the Cross derives from ancient Egypt, or possibly Atlantis, It has NO Christian connection in AMORC thinking. The story goes that when an early Egyptian mystic stood worshipping the sun, he raised his arms, giving a cross-shaped shadow. The rose is seen as a symbol of the circle of life, especially of reincarnation.

Together, the symbols have many different meanings. The simplest explanation is that the rose represents Secrecy and evolution while the Cross represents the labors and burdens of Life and the Karma which we must endure in our earthly existence. (Rosicrucian Manual, p.43)
Dennis William Hauck, Ph.D. Author and lecturer on alchemy and its modern applications. Abstract The alchemists believed that no transformationwhether in the laboratory, in the body, or in the soulcould succeed without the presence of a mysterious ingredient known as the Materia Prima (First Matter). Nothing was more important to alchemists work than this energetic essence, which they believed could be extracted from any substance and actually rendered tangible and visible. Materia Prima: The Nature of the First Matter in the Esoteric and Scientific Traditions Presented at the Hidden In Plain Sight Conference at the Rosicrucian Order AMORC, San Jose, California, on July 23, 2010. Dennis William Hauck, Ph.D.

Can an idea or project be reincarnated?

Rosicrucian Digest Volume 89 Number 2 2011
Page 49

While the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, founded in 1915, is and always has been a non-sectarian philosophical, initiatic, and educational organization, the founder and first Imperator of AMORC, Harvey Spencer Lewis, was also at one time the Bishop of the Pristine Church of the Rose Cross, which he founded. This church, whose tenets were primarily Gnostic in nature, in the broad sense of this term, was created by H. Spencer Lewis in San Francisco in the early 1920s. Inspired by his childhood minister, S. Parkes Cadman, a radio church pioneer in New York City, H. Spencer Lewis decided to offer non-sectarian church services on a radio station in San Francisco. They included an opening ritual with vowel sounds, a musical program, a highly informative but brief discourse followed by a question and answer period, and a closing ritual. This was the first Radio Church in the western United States and was extremely popular.

To Rosicrucians, the rose symbolizes the Inner Self unfolding and as each petal of the rose unfolds, it reveals our Inner Self in all its beauty and glory. This particual rose design is from an illustration in Robert Fludd's work entitled "Summer BonumThe rose gives honey to the bees."