Theos-Talk Archives (January 2002 Message tt00059)

[Brigitte quotes HPB:] She wrote:
<<"We will now present a few fragments of this mysterious doctrine of reincarnation-as distinct from metempsychosis-which we have from an 
authority.">>>

Reincarnation is the rebirth of a monad into a physical body of flesh, either human or animal. Metempsychosis or reimbodiment is a more general term and can apply also to reincarnation into minerals and plants or gods and goddesses.


<< "Reincarnation, i.e., the appearance of the same 
individual, or rather his astral monad, twice on the same planet, is not a rule in nature;">>

The key term here is "astral monad" which is not even close to a "monad," and another example of her misusing the word monad. She is talking here about the fact that the personality of ego (astral monad) does not normally reincarnate. 


<<<"Therefore, while the gross matter of each of these several entities is suffered to disperse itseif at death, through the vast realm of 
being, the immortal spirit and astral monad of the individual-the latter having been set apart to animate a frame and the former to shed its divine light on the corporeal organization-must try a second time to carry out the purpose of the creative intelligence.">>

Again here are some good examples of her misuing terminology. Her "immortal spirit" is only immortal in the sense that it is spiritual rather than material. But it is not eternal and is not permanent. But she is saying here that we have a spiritual component in our nature that expresses itself periodically on lower planes as a series of human incarnations. Her "immortal spirit" is the Reincarnating Ego, itself a ray or expression of something higher.


<<<"If reason has been so far developed as to become active and discrirninative, there is no reincarnation on this earth, for the 
three parts of the triune man have been united together, and he is cäpable of running the race. But when the new being has not passed beyond the condition of monad, or when, as in the idiot, the trinity has not been completed, the immortal spark which illurninates it, has to reenter on the earthly plane as it was frustrated in its first attempt. Otherwise, the mortal or astral, and the immortal or divine, souls, could not progress in union and pass onward to the sphere above....">>>

Animals and those who have not yet developed spiritually reincarnate more or less immediately back on Earth. Those who have developed a little spiritually and morally will enter devachan first. The Bardo Thodol tells us that the after-death state lasts only 49 days (itself a symbolic number and not to be taken literally) and then one is reborn into one of the six realms, of which the human being is but one. Devachan, literally god-land or land of the gods, is in the realms of the gods and jealous gods.


<<"[T]he monad which was imprisoned in the elementary being-the rudimentary or lowest astral form of the füture man-after having passed through and quitted the highest physical shape of a dumb animal .... . that monad, we say, cannot skip over the physical and intellectual sphere of the terrestrial man, and be suddenly ushered into the spiritual sphere above.>>>

This refers to the business of not skipping evolutionary developmental tasks.


<<<What reward or punishment can there be in that sphere of disembodied human entities for a foetus or a human embryo which had not even tirne to breathe on this earth, still less an opportunity to exercise the divine faculties of the spirit? >>>

The "reward" or "punishment" here is for the parents, not the child.

Jerry S.

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