The Permanent Atom
Traditional psychology essentially blames our life, and our personality, on our heredity, and our environment, which allows you to shift blame away from yourself in some subtle way. Whereas the teachings about karma, which come from Buddhism and other ancient religions, say that you cannot transfer blame outside yourself for anything, and it is all on you. That does not mean that it is your fault, but it means that it is for you and by you and, more than that, you have before you the perfect ingredients for the next phase of your growth, your evolution. That is really the essence of what karma is about, and it is rooted, perhaps, in the ancient tradition of initiation, which is based on the idea that we are evolving spiritually, not just physically.
As we evolve through a world and a universe made of frequencies, every now and again, we transcend the level that we are on and move to a higher frequency. That paradigm shift is called an initiation, and sometimes they are sudden, and sometimes very slow. The ancient mystery schools would perform their initiations in secret, but now the secret of initiation is an open secret, as the real initiations take place in everyday life, as, in fact, they always have.
One single virtue that you are here to polish.
When we are looking at the idea of reincarnation, or rebirth (as I prefer to say), we have to look at the soul. I call this the Causal Body, a subtle, higher-dimensional body which is part of who we are and is the part that survives death. Some teachings call it the ‘permanent atom’, almost as if there is one atom inside us that survives death over and over. In a sense, that is the Causal Body: a subtle essence that maintains a kind of evolutionary story as it incarnates and reincarnates. Over aeons, you get to polish this body, this atom, and each lifetime can be devoted to polishing a single virtue. Think of your life now. Perhaps there is one single virtue that you are here to polish. It could be forgiveness or sacrifice or self-love, or perhaps it is self-forgiveness, which seems to be a pretty universal one. It might be developing extraordinary art or music, or some other great form of service that you are here to perfect in this life. Or it could be finding ways of tackling the trauma that life brings us.
What happens through this notion of incarnation is that we take on a wound, a core wound, and we take it on for the sake of the whole. We come here to repair and transform that wound, some broken part of the world, and we are an aspect of that wound. The Kabbalists call this the Tikkun Olam. It is about allowing our suffering to cut us so deeply that it cleans us and awakens us, and we are here then to transcend the suffering. Think of the intense grief that some of us have to go through. It might be the loss of a loved one, even the loss of a child. The intensity of those levels of grief can propel us to a higher initiation, to a higher level of consciousness where we become aware of the transcendent.
I was amazed when I read that in the UK, where we are generally a rather conservative and reserved group of people, one in three people believe in angels. ‘Is this really true?’ I thought to myself, ‘They’re keeping very quiet about it!’ It was very revealing, that even in this modern, materialistic, science-based culture that we live in, which is all based on looking for external fulfilment, there is a deep feeling in us that there may be something more, and people want to believe in angels. Science and materialism can do great damage, even for all the wonderful things they bring us, because they can really damage subtler worldviews, like the perfection of the notion of reincarnation, and angels.
There is a saying, a ‘ring-pass-not’, which means that, as a whole, we don’t remember our previous lives, because we forget them as we come through into form. When we go out, we remember them again, but when we come back through the veil they are once again forgotten. Could you invent a more perfect and beautiful game? Your awareness grows as you transcend the thoughts, opinions and worldviews you have taken on, and as you access those more ancient memories, even though they are not specific, but more general memories, the Causal Body becomes more resplendent and more shining.
Every event in our life is pointing us directly at that higher purpose.
In every life we are given a task to fulfil, a higher purpose. How do we find what it is? We find it through realising that every event in our life is pointing us directly at that higher purpose, and especially the suffering, which is not just suffering for the sake of suffering, but pointing you towards a higher purpose. In the alchemy of rebirth, we have lives of suffering, and you might say that some of us are ‘doing time’ for dark deeds that we have done in the past. There might be some truth in that, because that is how karma operates. But there is also the possibility, if you are a more advanced soul, or perhaps have more shine and radiance because you have done more work on yourself, that you might choose to take on more suffering. How might you tell those two apart? It is how they deal with the suffering.
There are those that cave in and just give way, blaming others and becoming lost and hopeless. Then there are those who rise through it. This may be explained by individual karma and collective karma. Once you have purified the individual karma, you take on the collective karma, the karma of the whole, because you have burnt up all your own from the past memories of things that you did.
Collective karma has a different quality. It feels more weighty, but it also feels less connected to you. All human beings are actually sharing in the karma of the whole, and all deeds belong to all of us. Then the higher souls may come in and may take on more karma for the sake of the whole, and this is the Christ impulse, the realisation of the Christ.
Consciousness forgets itself so that it can remember itself.
Once the soul has passed all the exams here in ‘Earth School’, it will leave the university and enter the universal, the eternal, and that consciousness is then permanently aware of itself as eternal. It can move onto higher spheres and higher levels of union and wholeness, until it merges with the entirety, the Divine. Earth is the ultimate classroom.
We think that time and space are real, as we are governed by them, and yet in our Causal Body we have a memory of eternity. Consciousness incarnates from pure eternal awareness down into the deep material realms and forgets itself so that it can remember itself. It dives into the illusion of time and space, the Maya. If consciousness did not do this there would be no story. If there were no time and no space, there would be no story. The purpose of this higher human perception is to pierce the storylines of incarnation and rise up through them.
You might ask, ‘What is the point in this?’ But we can’t really ask why, although, of course, ‘Why?’ is the quintessential human question. In this case only our ascension and transcendence can answer why. We may find that there is no answer, and it just is. But ‘it just is’ does not satisfy the human mind, only the divine mind, which can accept simply the will and the mystery of the whole.
Everything is for you.
So consider your life from this perspective of rebirth. What are you dealing with right now? How are you dealing with it? What marks are you getting in your exams? There is always room for improvement, and of course you can sit the same exam again and again. Are you going to come back? Why not excel in your exams? Why not assume everything is your responsibility? Everything is for you.
Every drama is created by your higher self so that you can transform it and transcend it. That is the central message of my teachings of the Gene Keys. Every Shadow contains a Gift. How many diamonds can you find in the darkness of your life, in the coalface of your suffering? Once you start finding them, you can begin working for the wider whole and help others find their diamonds. Then we can live lives of deep service, wishing only to serve the whole and transform the darkness around us.
We ask the great compassionate question, ‘What is the highest service I can offer the whole during this life, during this incarnation?’ And then we live that question.
