Reincarnation

Introduction

In Martinus's analyses, reincarnation or rebirth is the transfer of a living being's abilities and dispositions, in the form of talent kernels, to a new physical organism. The physical body is therefore treated as a temporary instrument of experience rather than as the whole living being.

Reincarnation is not an isolated doctrine in this world picture. It connects the analyses of immortality, superconsciousness, talent kernels, development and karma: the same enduring being renews its organism, carries forward acquired capacities, and continues the consequences of its earlier way of living.

This article describes Martinus's own account and the arguments he gives for it. One such argument interprets differences in apparently innate abilities as results of experience and practice extending beyond the present life.

Death and renewal of the organism

Martinus describes an organism as a purpose-built but temporary tool for a particular form of manifestation and experience. In this framework, death is the release from an instrument that can no longer serve the being's needs, while rebirth is the construction and use of another physical organism.

He illustrates this continuity with an annual-cycle analogy. A tree loses its leaves but retains the root and trunk from which a new crown can grow; correspondingly, the living being loses the physical body while its fate element, level of consciousness and talent kernels continue into a new terrestrial-life cycle.

The cycle is thus not presented as the restoration of the same body. It is an exchange of organisms through which a continuing subject can enter new phases of physical experience.

Life between physical lives

The interval between embodiments is not described as unconscious non-existence. Martinus writes that, between physical lives, terrestrial beings pass through spiritual planes before returning to birth in the physical world.

Within that account, every terrestrial being has a temporary passage through what Martinus calls "the divine world". This passage is one stage in the larger route between discarnation and a new incarnation, not the being's permanent home at its present stage of development.

Continuity without ordinary memory

Martinus does not make detailed, brain-based memories of former lives the basis of reincarnation. He writes that earlier experiences persist through what they have become: talents, dispositions, habits and qualities of consciousness that shape the being's present possibilities and limitations.

This distinction means that forgetting the surface details of a former existence does not, in Martinus's account, remove its developmental result. What has become an automatic or habitual capacity—what he calls "C-knowledge"—is carried by the fate element and talent kernels from one organism to another.

Superconsciousness and renewed bodies

Martinus describes the superconsciousness as existing beyond the living being's changing physical and spiritual bodies. Its fate element contains talent kernels, and through this structure the being renews its bodies and creates its reincarnations.

The concise definition in The Eternal World Picture 2 places the same mechanism at the centre of rebirth: abilities and dispositions survive in a spiritual form and participate in forming the new organism.

Development across lives

A single terrestrial life is, in this analysis, a segment of a much longer developmental course. Desires, projects and abilities may require more time than one organism's lifespan allows, so further organisms make continued experience and fulfilment possible.

Martinus also treats an individual's level of ability as the result of accumulated experience and practice. He points to differences in apparently innate talents as evidence, within his argument, that development began before the present life; he does not present detailed former-life recollection as the main proof.

Accordingly, reincarnation preserves both growth and individuality. It does not imply that all people begin each life at the same psychological or moral stage; each new life continues a different history of habits, capacities and unfinished development.

Reincarnation, development and karma

In his discussion of human moral development, Martinus describes beings as being born through reincarnation into cultural environments beyond those of their earlier development. The effects of their previous conduct then contribute to further experience and development through the law of karma.

Karma is described as a law of cause and effect rather than a punishment imposed from outside. Reincarnation provides the continuing sequence of lives within which abilities, conduct and their effects can remain connected; present choices in turn help shape later lives.

Martinus therefore presents rebirth as his answer to otherwise arbitrary differences in circumstances and development. In his analysis, present fate belongs to a continuity extending beyond one lifespan rather than to an externally imposed reward or punishment.

Scope within Martinus's cosmology

Reincarnation concerns repeated embodiment within a broader eternal life. It is one expression of the principle of cycles and is tied to the being's need for changing instruments of experience; it is not, in Martinus's account, an endless repetition of identical lives.

His later analyses also describe reincarnation itself as developing through different forms. A complete treatment therefore extends beyond ordinary human rebirth to biological development and changing modes of embodiment.

References in Martinus's works

• Livets Bog 2, sections 321, 328, 384 and 569: memory, superconsciousness, the interval between lives, and renewal of organisms.
• Livets Bog 3, sections 648, 729, 732, 735, 739, 748 and 750: cycles, continuity of development, talent, fate and Martinus's arguments for rebirth.
• Livets Bog 4, sections 1260 and 1262: reincarnation, moral development and karma.
• Livets Bog 6, sections 1966 and 1969: development of the reincarnation principle and changing forms of embodiment.
• The Eternal World Picture 2, section 17.4: concise definition of reincarnation through transfer of talent kernels.

See also

• Talent Kernels
• Karma