Reincarnation

Introduction

Martinus describes reincarnation, or rebirth, as the transfer of a living being's abilities and dispositions, in the form of talent kernels, to a new physical organism. In his world picture, the physical body is a temporary tool for experience rather than the whole living being.

Reincarnation connects several parts of Martinus's world picture, including immortality, superconsciousness, development and karma. The enduring being renews its organism, carries acquired capacities forward and continues to experience the effects of its earlier conduct. Martinus 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 temporary tool for a particular kind of experience and expression. In this analysis, death releases the being from a body that can no longer serve it, while rebirth gives it a new physical organism.

He illustrates this continuity through the yearly cycle. A tree loses its leaves but keeps the root and trunk from which new leaves can grow. In the same way, the living being loses its physical body, while its fate element, level of consciousness and talent kernels continue into a new earthly life.

Reincarnation is therefore not the restoration of the same body. It is the replacement of one organism with another, allowing the same living being to enter a new period of physical experience.

Life between physical lives

Martinus does not describe the interval between physical lives as unconscious non-existence. He writes that animals and humans pass through spiritual planes before returning to birth in the physical world.

One stage is what the Danish text calls den guddommelige verden ("the divine world"). At the present stage of development, an earthly being passes through this world temporarily; it does not yet live there permanently.

Continuity without ordinary memory

According to Martinus, reincarnation does not depend on detailed, brain-based memories of former lives. Earlier experiences remain through what they have become: talents, dispositions, habits and qualities of consciousness that shape the being's present possibilities and limitations.

Forgetting the details of a former life therefore does not remove its developmental result. The fate element and talent kernels carry automatic or habitual capacities—called C-viden in the Danish text—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. Through this structure, the being renews its bodies and reincarnates.

The Eternal World Picture 2 gives a concise description of the same process: abilities and dispositions survive in a spiritual form and help to form the new organism.

Development across lives

In this analysis, one earthly life is part of a much longer course of development. Some desires cannot be fulfilled within one body's lifetime, so later lives make their continued fulfilment possible.

Martinus treats a person's abilities as results of accumulated experience and practice. Within his reasoning, differences in apparently innate talents indicate that development began before the present life. Detailed memories of former lives are not his main argument.

People therefore do not begin each life at the same psychological or moral stage. Each life continues an individual history of habits, abilities and unfinished development.

Reincarnation, development and karma

In one discussion of moral development, Martinus describes people being reborn into cultures more advanced than those in which their earlier conduct developed. The effects of that conduct then become part of the experience through which they develop further.

Martinus describes karma as a law of cause and effect, not as punishment imposed from outside. Reincarnation connects the lives in which conduct and its effects are experienced. Present choices, in turn, help to shape later lives.

For Martinus, rebirth explains why people begin life under different conditions and at different stages of development. Present fate forms part of a continuity extending beyond one lifespan; it is not an externally imposed reward or punishment.

Scope within Martinus's cosmology

Repeated physical lives form part of a broader eternal life. Reincarnation is one expression of the principle of cycles and gives the being changing tools for experience. The lives are not identical repetitions.

Martinus's later analyses describe reincarnation itself as changing through different forms. It extends beyond ordinary human rebirth to biological development and other ways of taking physical form.

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
• Superconsciousness
• The Living Being
• The I
• Life after death
• Evolution
• The Spiral Cycle