The first time I “remembered” a past
life, it came in the form of a visual flashback to my death as a small child in
India who had fallen into a raging river off a wooden raft, as my mother
screamed in panic. Another life ended by being stabbed in the back (where there
is now a birth mark) as I raised my hands upwards to bless a large group.
Re-membering past lives is like waking from a dream, the last scene lingering
in your mind.
Personal stories of past lives, in
all probability were the basis for the doctrine of reincarnation and
subsequently the immortal soul. Whether or not you believe in reincarnation or
the immortal soul, one must admit that the ancient philosophers in Greece,
Egypt, India and Persia were obsessed with the idea. The relationship between
reincarnation and the Kundalini–enlightenment transformative process is
essential to understanding the allegorical nature of mythology and most
importantly all the world’s religions.
Life evolves over vast spans of
time. It took over 2 billion years for life to evolve from single-celled to
multi-cellular organisms. The human body contains around 100,000,000,000,000
(one hundred trillion) cells.
Reincarnation is the religious
or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after
biological death, will begin life again in a new body. This doctrine is a
central tenet of the Indian religions. Many of the greatest philosophers
of the western world, such as Plato and Pythagoras, believed in reincarnation
or “metempsychosis”, as they called it.
Reincarnation, in this context, is
nearly identical to biological evolution: an organism, over the period of many
lives, is transformed into something entirely new through an intrinsic
property of its inner growth. The only difference between this notion of
reincarnation and the modern concept of evolution is that reincarnation implies
the existence of an immortal soul overseeing the entire process, on its journey
to enlightenment.
Enlightenment is that permanent
state of higher consciousness developed after the soul individuates through its
many earthly incarnations, while Kundalini is the intelligent power that
transforms the body into a suitable physical expression of one’s consciousness.
Some traditional Buddhist and Hindu
beliefs state that the process of reincarnation is an endless cycle of births
and deaths, and that freedom is attained by escaping into nirvana or heaven.
But the real goal of reincarnation, and thus evolution, is to spiritualize the
human body, elevating the mind to a state of consciousness where it becomes
aware of its own immortal nature.
Brain Evolution and the 12 Signs of
the Zodiac
The Sun’s movement through the
Zodiac became an allegory of the soul’s reincarnation in a sequential path
through the twelve signs of the zodiac. As an example, the twelve apostles of
Christianity are personifications of the twelve houses of the zodiac or twelve
personalities, and which is similar astrological symbols surrounding
the sun god Mithras. Following with this line of thought-Hercules had
twelve labors to accomplish before he was reaccepted as an Olympian God. The
Sun Gods, their miracles and savior status is an allegory of the Souls
enlightenment. This cycle of twelve has been woven into the fabric of fairy
tales, with the 13 being unlucky because of its association with death and
transformation, as in the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty.
The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac
Since ancient times, the Zodiac
motif has symbolized the unique characteristics that the soul developed
during its many incarnations. The implication is that reincarnation involves
the evolution of the human personality, with its roots in the biological organ
of the brain. In other words, Kundalini and the symbolic Zodiac are both
connected to brain evolution. Hellenic civilization taught that the soul
descends from the stars into bodily form and eventually returned to the
heavenly fixed stars, a belief that was symbolically encoded into mythology and
religion by parables and allegory. Plato states in the text Laws:
The soul of man is immortal. At one
time it comes to an end – that which is called death – and at another is born
again, but is never finally exterminated. On these grounds a man must live all
his days as righteously as possible. Thus the soul, since it immortal and has
been born many times, and has seen all things both here and in the other world,
has already learned everything there is.
Philosophically, the ancient’s
universe was more akin to a giant hologram with each microcosmic part replicating
the information of the macrocosm, as the ancient maxim “as above so below” so
aptly implied. From this holistic viewpoint the Sun; because of its life giving
light and warmth, was the most appropriate choice of symbols to be
deified as “God” and worshipped as the intelligence behind the universe.
It is precisely these types of
inferences that will serve to inform empirical research on Kundalini. In order
to do this, a person must move away from a literalist interpretation of the
ancient myths and religion. Reincarnation is but one of the symbols contained
in ancient mythology that helps to decipher the mysterious biological and
psychological processes that occur upon the awakening of Kundalini.
Literal vs. Allegorical
Interpretations
A disagreement between the
literalist and allegorical interpretation of the ancient myths has always
existed. Even in ancient Greece, the philosopher Socrates was given hemlock
because of his denigration of the traditional Greek Gods.
Knowing how often reincarnation and
similar motifs are found in the world’s myths, the literal interpretation of
religion as a historical record becomes untenable. Today, there exists a great
valley of separation between the common views of religion as history, and
the ancient philosophical belief in religion and myth as symbolic allegory.
Ouroboros as emblem of mortality.
George Wither Collection of Emblems, Ancient and Modern. 1635
Much of the iconography in world
mythos is used to embody functions within the human body. The theory of
biological evolution controlled by Kundalini would help to explain the globally
recognized “Virgin Birth” symbolism, as the word “Virgin” symbolizes the inward
circulation of sexual energy and its sublimation. The “tree” which so many Gods
and saviors are killed or crucified upon is a reference to the cerebrospinal
system and denotes the major physiological transformation which occurs after
Kundalini ascends upward from the base of the spine to the brain. Kundalini
itself is symbolized by the serpent or snake and is the most widespread of all
images encountered in mythology, as it denotes both creation and destruction
utilizing the spiral path of prana.
A desire for spiritual experience
must be the deep-seated impulse in human consciousness, affecting the
biological structure of the brain as it drives the human psyche on its
spiritual journey toward higher state of consciousness – a state that is
entirely different from knowledge of any other type, philosophical or
otherwise. This search for enlightenment was so important that it was inscribed
on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo using the aphorism “Know Thyself.”
According to Plato:
The ultimate design of the Mysteries
[…] was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended […] a perfect
enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good.[1]
Western culture has a jaundiced view
of ancient spiritual beliefs; there is little mention of the immortal soul,
reincarnation, enlightenment, and Kundalini in the many modern interpretations
of mythology, despite these doctrines being widespread in ancient times.
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