Rawson on reincarnation.

There is a good deal of difference of opinion with regard to details of reincarnation. Schopenhauer, Fichte the younger, Herder, Lessing, Hegel, Leibnitz, Paracelsus, Boehme, and Hume, all were in favour of the theory of reincarnation. The reason for this is that reincarnation is a little nearer the truth than the belief that when man dies he goes to hell or to heaven.


. . .it will be seen that the so-called "ego" does not
return to this material world, as it never has been in it, but always is in heaven.

Man is now and always has been a perfect spiritual being in heaven. He is seen falsely in this world, this state of consciousness, as a material man. When this material misrepresentation what is called dies, its human or carnal mind passes into another state of consciousness, another material world, and the material body decays in this state of consciousness. When the so-called man wakes up to find himself in another material world, he has another material body, because his mind is not changed; it still is material, and he has to work out his salvation, purifying his so-called mind by turning in thought to God, which he continues to do.

When the material thing called a man has what is called died, and has passed on into another material state of consciousness, the real spiritual man does not leave heaven, for heaven is still here then, as much as it ever was. The real spiritual man is therefore seen again here, that is, in this state of consciousness or material world, as another material being, another cinematographic-picture man; only in this case he is seen again as a little child, which grows and grows, becoming more and more like the real man, until this new misrepresentation in its turn again dies, its place to be taken by another child. This goes on until the so-called end of the world. Each so-called man passes from one state of consciousness to the next, from one material world to another, until ultimately he has sufficiently purified his so-called mind to dematerialise. That is to say, he ultimately ceases his material dream existence, and appears, to wake up and find himself in heaven; that is to say, to find that in reality instead of being a material man liable to sin, disease, and death, he is a perfect being in a perfect world, governed by a perfect God. [“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” Psalms 17, verse 15]

There may be a hundred or more different states of consciousness, with a hundred or more different misrepresentations of your real self, all apparently struggling through various material worlds, and gradually improving. These worlds are all here, probably interpenetrating each other. When the final end of matter comes all these fictitious worlds cease to exist at the same moment, and all these so-called human beings, these misrepresentations of your real selfhood, appear to wake up to find themselves in the one spiritual world, the world of reality, and all of them appear to merge into the same perfect spiritual being, your real selfhood, of which they have been the misrepresentation in the different material worlds. In other words, all false sense disappears.

It will be seen from the above that, unlike reincarnation, the so-called ego does not pass on from world to world, and then ultimately return and be re-born as a little child into this material world, with a future dependent upon its past; but the spiritual man always has existed perfect, in a perfect state of consciousness, and the material misrepresentation passes on from world to world, gradually improving his so-called mind through the action of God, until he ceases his dream life and appears to wake up and find his true self.

The theosophists, In reading the " Akashic Records," as they call these cinematographic pictures of the past, have found that over and over again a somewhat similar chain of events occurs, Mrs. Besant speaks of these successive periods as "recurrent cycles in history," and states that reincarnation "affords the only sufficient explanation." Now we understand what they really are, and why reincarnation Is as incorrect as the theory that at death we go either to heaven or to hell.

" When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter and proved it, it was no matter what he meant " (Byron).

Berkeley, 1685-1753, Bishop of Cloyne, whilst putting forward a metaphysical view of the world, and stating that there exists nothing but man's thoughts of things, was, as Huxley called him, a "mixed logician." Mr. Oldroyd[1] has said that " Christian Science is Berkeleyism run mad but his system was only semi-metaphysical, practically pantheism. Berkeley wrote: "Although our sensations are wholly subjective, we do not deny an independent reality of things." He also said that there was "no substance of matter, but only a substance of mind termed spirit; that there are two kinds of spiritual substance, the one eternal and uncreated, the substance of Deity; the other created, and, once created, naturally eternal." He fell from the sublime to the ridiculous by recommending tar water as a panacea for all human ills. He had not seen the fundamental Principle, that all was divine Mind, God, and not the limited human sense wrongly called mind; consequently he could not keep his practice on a level with his theory.

Bits and Bites from
Life Understood From A Scientific And Religious Point Of View And The Practical Method Of Destroying Sin Disease And Death (1947)
by F. L. Rawson

[1] A.E. Oldroyd A Reply to Christian Science 1926