Karma and Reincarnation, Page 12

As we saw above, the passage of the soul through the astral world (called “Purgatory”¹¹ by the Roman Church) is a time of judgment, for all of the personality’s astralities, its passions and desires, must be burned away by the “refiner’s fire” and one suffers judgment regarding every conscious earthly event, seeing one’s self from the eyes the other (Mt 7,12). If one has repented and acted accordingly on Earth, then the judgmentof the sin itself, when reached, is of little consequence. The karmic consequence of the forgiven sin is itself not a burden to the soul here, for the just soul desires to make restitution, and that is accomplished in future incarnations.

“Death” only occurs once for a personality, but it occurs over and over for the Individuality until the latter attains to a sufficient state of perfection of its lower bodies that it need not reincarnate again (like the Buddha). At that stage it “cannot die any more” (Lk 20,36; Rev 3,12), having thus “attain[ed]... to the resurrection” (Lk 20,35). And even here, we must differentiate between the “first death,” that of the physical body, and the “second death” (Rev 20,6,14; 21,8), that of the etheric body. The “first death,” in this sense, refers to the time when the physical body of human beings will be no more, and the “second death” to the far more distant time when humanity will lay aside also its “etheric body.” When the etheric body is no longer needed, one who has not perfected that body will be subject to the “second death.” We can see that there is much below the surface of the literal language of Heb 9,27.

3. Mt 17,1,9-13; Mk 9,2,9-13:

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart.... And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of man is raised from the dead.” And the disciples asked him, “Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” He replied, “Elijah does come, and he is to restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of man will suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. (Mt)

On its face, this passage seems clearly to speak of the reincarnation of Elijah as John the Baptist. And as would be expected, it has been the focus of much dialectic. The Old Testament’s closing prophecy was that Elijah would return “before the great and terrible day of the Lord” (Mal 4,5). Either that prophecy must be nullified, or “the great and terrible day of the Lord” had no reference (contrary to Jesus’ clear implication above) to the Christ event, or Elijah was reincarnated as John the Baptist.

To get around this obvious matter, opponents of reincarnation philosophy cite two other passages. The first is the angel’s message to Zechariah that Elizabeth’s son “will go before [the Lord, Christ] in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Lk 1,17). The necessary inference is that, as in the case of Elisha, who sought a “double share” of Elijah’s spirit and was granted that Elijah’s spirit should “rest on him” (2 K 2), John the Baptist was endowed with a guiding spirit but not the “burning bush” of Elijah, his Individuality or “spirit” per se. The second is the denial by John himself that he is Elijah (Jn 1,21). From the standpoint of dialectic, both of these are most appropriately raised.

The first point pales when one notes that Luke recognized John the Baptist as the reincarnated Adam soul in telling how the babe leaped in Elizabeth’s womb upon the approach of its soulmate in Mary’s womb (Lk 1,44). This was Luke’s way of expressing what his mentor, Paul, had expressed in the “First and Second Adam” passages. For a fuller discussion, see “The Nativity.” According to Steiner, the Adam soul, as then constituted, incarnated in Israelite history as Phinehas, Elijah and John the Baptist, and still later as Raphael and Novalis (cf. Mt 17,11, “and he is to restore all things”). The most concise reference for these is Prokofieff’s Eternal Individuality (EI). Given this recognition of reincarnation by Luke, it is doubtful he intended to weaken the thrust of the first two Gospel accounts.

The second point is a more impressive objection. It is addressed directly by Prokofieff in EI, which is summarized in Vol. 3. It has to do with the changing of the Individuality’s guardian angel between the personalities of Elijah and John the Baptist. (The guardian angel is the immediate source of one’s earthly revelation from the spiritual world.) See “Widow’s Son,” ^{fn 15, herein.}