© 2012 Bruce Johnson – Reprinted with permission from Shining Lotus Metaphysical Bookstore Newsletter January 2012
by Bruce Johnson
553 A. D. was the year the Fifth Ecumenical Council met in Constantinople at the request of the Emperor Justinian. That year Justinian and the Council voted to anathematize or curse the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul, and by implication, reincarnation. To teach, or believe in reincarnation after that date was to be solemnly cursed by the Christian church, and so its study was undertaken at the risk of one’s Soul.
The Laws of Reincarnation control an orderly process of evolving and perfecting the human personality through cyclical rebirth alternately into spiritual and physical worlds. The learning and experiences of the personality or temporary self gained in each incarnation are absorbed and integrated by the Soul or permanent Self during a rest and assimilation period in spirit between physical embodiments.
The physical body is a garment, or temporary clothing worn by the Soul during physical incarnation, with its nature and quality determined by personal karma. The parents of the reincarnating soul provide the raw materials and heredity of the physical body appropriate for the learning to be experienced in any given lifetime. The Soul, in its’ long course of incarnations, occupies both male and female bodies, balancing karma while gaining necessary experience in each.
The doctrine of reincarnation shines a much needed light on the subject of abortion and interrupted human pregnancies. Abortion involves making not available a physical body for an incarnating spirit to inhabit in its up-coming physical life. Contrary to the erroneous belief that human life begins at conception, there is no set time that all souls coming in human incarnation permanently attach themselves to the fetus via the silver cord. Until that time, which is often just prior to birth, the physical fetus is a miniature house with its own intrinsic life, perhaps containing lights, heat, and plumbing, but no occupant.
The unnumbered interrupted pregnancies of past millennia have not harmed the spiritual and physical evolution of humanity, as the Laws of Reincarnation provide alternate opportunities for the very much alive spirit to be born physically, if one door to incarnation is closed.
Reincarnation- an east-west anthology, by Joseph Head and S. L. Cranston is a great book, showing reincarnation in the religions of the world.
Bruce Johnson has over 30 years of study in the fields of Ancient Wisdom and occultism. He has taught classes on a wide range of topics, from Atlantis to mediums to Zoroaster. He is also a spiritualist minister, with a background in spiritual astrology. He lives in Colorado with his wife and their cat.
