Reincarnation – a Discussion
“You are a new spirit”, he said, “but I am an old spirit”. These are the words my lover said to me as he tried to explain why I could not understand him. This was Peter at his most profound and it is true that I struggled to comprehend a mind so different from my own. Or was he similar? I had met my match and no longer knew anything.
The whole theme of reincarnation is something of a minefield for the mind – my mind then - and situated on the border of faith with understanding. Many are those who can intuitively feel that it occurs, whilst simultaneously denying the existence of God. For an individual to ‘remember’ a past life is not an uncommon occurrence and that most people can read into the past to some degree is undeniable. Whether our souls are for the most part original or usually re-cycled is debatable, granted that one already believes there is a soul in the first place.
To reincarnate (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) is to ‘bring soul of (person) into another body after death’. Nothing is said about animals, however, which much surely be prime candidates for reincarnation, whatever it may be, as otherwise evolution would have no meaning. Perhaps it is also possible for reincarnation to occur during a lifetime and not necessarily following physical death and an immediate birth, as if by consequence. If reincarnation is a spiritual event then I do not see why it need be fully contingent upon the state of the body. As you can see, me know nothing about this - but who does know something about this?
It must also be possible for beings to share, exchange, or modify energies between one another whilst they live, in order to regenerate and improve matters. To understand wholly the concept of reincarnation may involve a perceptual increase and at least a heightened sense of time, as indeed the whole of evolution could even be seen as a
form of reincarnation. For it is certain after all that human beings are (so far) a final product of evolution and must therefore contain within their design all, or at least many, other species that came before them. There must be an amoeba somewhere in all of us, along with a frog-face, a bird with lightening reactions, a predatory feline, or more or less man’s best friend. It is right that we should care for all our other creatures, for surely they are, have always been, and always shall be, part of our greater selves.
I had not previously seen myself as a new spirit - quite the opposite in fact - and felt quite taken aback that Peter had independently confirmed me as being one. I did not know whether to be pleased or insulted and wondered if being new was better than being old. I suspected that he might have been suggesting I didn’t know very much, so I was determined to prove that I at least knew more than he did. In any case, I concluded, it was my good fortune to have a spirit at all, seeing as I had almost given one up in the name of love an aeon ago.
The night I seemed to give up my soul, I had been given gifts of such tremendous import that I felt unable to bear them. As such, when the sword of truth was placed in the right hand, followed by the shield of justice in my left, the gift of love that came in between was so extremely valuable that I felt I had no other recourse but to offer my soul in return. Almost fainting through the weight of those gifts, which practically made me lose my breath anyway, it was an automatic response for me to turn the sword inwards - the only weapon in existence that might have penetrated the protective force of that most wonderful shield. As I felt the blade enter I heard a small voice calling urgently for me to stop. All that was gained in the day seemed lost in the night.
Within the space where my will had once existed, my fate was to be inhabited by the spirits of those I loved, whilst remaining conscious that I had nothing of the same to offer in return; my own spirit was out of anyone’s reach above the stars, at least until Peter brought be back down to Earth. The same night this all happened (only about half an hour later, in fact) I knew things about the people whose spirits inhabited myself that I had not known before. In short, I became even stranger.
Or perhaps I was confusing thinking with being: This is a section which brought me doubt and uncertainty, except now, when I know that I should say something that I at least know is true: “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword”
After the soulful sacrifice I had looked up at the stars in defiance: “I’m taking it back!”. But my power had gone and would not return for another age when. I did not even know that it ever would, indeed I believed it never could, so it became my obsession that the love for which I had died should continue for eternity. And true love never dies, so I hoped to be in true love, which is why I eventually found myself with the new man in such circumstances, no longer knowing anything, no longer one-dimensional.
The idea that I may have been a new soul was intriguing actually, especially as I could quite clearly remember the one that had gone before it. Now I see why, but at the time it seemed strange. I wanted to somehow explain that I could understand him, because I had been an old soul, even an ancient one, and I could remember the things from those lifetimes which remained part of my self. But I did not speak, or could not speak, because for him I had just been born.
