05. REINCARNATION -

Here we quote once more the Essene position. This time upon the topic of Reincarnation, which is in no way considered to be a Dharma belief.

"In the ancient Essene New Testament, Jesus teaches the following five main points in regard to REINCARNATION:

1. Jesus teaches that souls reincarnate in order to gain experience in their quest for perfection. We read in The Gospel of the Holy Twelve:

- - - - "The soul is purified through many births and experiences."

1. In another passage of the same manuscript, Jesus states:

- - - - "So through many births will ye be made perfect."

1. Jesus teaches that all creatures -- not only humans -- must continue to reincarnate until sufficiently purified. Jesus said:

- - - - "As all creatures come from the unseen into this world, so they return to the unseen, and so will they come again till they be purified."

1. A third point made by Jesus on reincarnation is that there is a time of rest and reflection between lives:

- - - - "... and to them will be given space to consider, and amend their lives...."

1. Jesus taught that what we do in one life will follow us into our next life:

- - - - "The body that ye lay in the grave, or that is consumed by fire, is not the body that shall be, but they who come again shall receive other bodies, and as they have sown in one life, so shall they reap in another."

1. According to Jesus, once we are sufficiently perfected we need not reincarnate anymore:

- - - - "Blessed are they who suffer many experiences, for they shall be made perfect through suffering: they shall be as the angels of God in heaven and die no more, neither shall they be born anymore, for death and birth have no more dominion over them."

Once we reach a certain level of spiritual evolution we will have angelic bodies that never die. At that point, we will have no need to reincarnate anymore.

WE WILL HAVE TRANSCENDED THE WHEEL OF REQUIRED DEATH AND REBIRTH."

Now Buddha indeed within his own Brahmin tradition believed in rebirth, but not reincarnation, for in the early Buddha Dharma rebirth did not mean that consciousness of the dead would be reborn nor would human Identity be reborn, there being no afterlife or soul.