Stages Of Development Of The Soul

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

OF THE SOUL

The length of a soul's sojourn in the beyond varies with the individual. It is certainly not true, however, that several hundred or several thousand years lie between the incarnations, as is widely maintained. It is significant that in the distant past intervening phases of a few hundred years occurred. But at present the intervals between incarnations are usually less than ten years. The shortening or lengthening of the

interval is the mechanism which controls population levels. The shorter the interval the greater the number of people living on earth.

In this context one should not forget that humanity is not a closed realm with a constant number of souls but something like a transit station. If we compare incarnations to forms in a school we can think of humanity as a secondary school. Just as before and after the secondary school there are other places of learning, so the soul passes through different realms until it is mature enough for humanity; and when it has become a perfected human being there awaits endless hierarchies with further tasks lying outside the human kingdom.

One also finds in the human soul memories reaching back into the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, but one should not equate these with incarnations in the narrower sense. Only with humanity does the development of the individual soul begin, for in the animal kingdom the group soul still reigns. Occasionally, however, a human soul can be demoted to an animal kingdom. Such demotions probably apply to the beginnings of humanity and are by no means the rule.

A common question in whether or not one's sex changes over the series of incarnations. Although we know from experience that sex does change we still cannot throw much light on this question since we are not yet clear about the law which governs this change. Having tested many hypotheses I am at present of the opinion that a soul possesses a definite sex but that it also has a double of the opposite sex. In most incarnations the individual has the sex that the soul possessed in the beginning. Incarnations in the opposite sex only occasionally intervene so that particular experiences can be undergone and karma cleared. The soul frequently but not invariably meets its double since the two are dependent on one another in their development.

The repeated encounter with the same person over long chains of incarnations is certainly an astonishing phenomenon. Love and hate, attraction and repulsion are merely vestiges from the past. The clearing of karmic debt always involves the same person on whom one inflicted the wrong that originally brought about the guilt. One of the most deeply striking experiences in reincarnation therapy is to realize how similar are the problems that occur throughout an individual's incarnations and how many millenia go by without any change in his or her basic pattern of behaviour.

Part of the therapy may owe its success to this very realization. By surveying spans of time which to our consciousness seem enormous, we are able to see the overall structure of the problem and the nature of the chain of errors with great clarity. Reincarnation therapy works like a microscope, sharpening our perception of the personality structure in all its details.

Through confrontation with guilt we are forced to shoulder the responsibility for our own fate and in doing so, to change ourselves. At first the patient expects only a change in his symptoms, overlooking the fact that this can only take place in connection with a change in himself. In reincarnation therapy we learn the meaningfulness and justice of fate. We learn that with each action we harvest what we once sowed and sow what we shall one day harvest. This recognition forces us to live in the here and now. We perceive that we are cradled in a cosmos guided by meaning and purpose and that our sole task is to serve it. This reconnection with the primal purpose is re-ligio, the final goal of our therapy, for healing is a matter of religion.