Theos-Talk Archives (April 1995 Message tl00131)

Jerry writes:

> Interesting attitude.  If you don't agree on reincarnation
> "as presented in theosophical literature" than exactly whose
> version _do_ you agree on?

No one's!  Try

 ;Reincarnation formula

Reincarnate %1 %2 %3 ..... %n

 ;where variable is variable

> I have recently found where Jung suggests (never comes right out
> with it though) the possibility that the psyche can take on a new
> ego in the theosophical sense of reincarnation.  He clearly does
> say that the psyche pre-exists and post-exists the ego, which is
> only a part (the conscious part) of the psyche.

Jung gives very clear (and different from your apparent usage)
definitions of psyche and ego.  The latter, for example, he sees
as a complex within the personal unconscious, and actually call
it "the ego complex" - that is, a collection of affective
experience(s) which calls itself "I" from a number of differing
viewpoints (cf.  Ouspensky).

> Until we can raise our consciousness to the Ego and
> experience the process of reincarnation for ourselves, I am
> afraid that we will simply have to accept it on faith.

There's the problem.  If Ego in Jerry is the same thing as Monad
in Alan, then the doctrine as usually given refers to the
reincarnation of this "essence" (cf.  Ouspensky again).  As the
"lower vehicles" do not reincarnate, we do not therefore (it
says) remember past lives as a matter of course.  If that is so,
we are dumped here unjustly, for we have (it says again) to learn
the lessons bestowed by karma from past lives without being
allowed to remember what we did wrong.

To accept anything "on faith" is a dubious proposition.  Insofar
as faith=trust then we will only trust what or who we already
know to be a reliable source or witness.

> I like your "variant possibilities."  This reminds
> me of H.H. the Dali Lama who once spoke of wanting to come
> back as a fly.

That's nice! :-).  I have past life memories, but I do not
believe that they are necessarily memories of my own personal
experience - only that they are memories of past lives.  Spelling
it out: they could just as easily be the real memories of people
who have gone before, and are long since "dead" by our usual
definition of death.  Who or where they are now is another story.

> Ah, well.  Back to my Quiet Room.
>
> Jerry S.

... keep a space for me ....

Alan