Karma and Reincarnation, Page 18

5. Lk 20,27-38; Mt 22,23-33; Mk 12,18-27:

There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.”

For the levirate law in question, see Deut 25,5 and Gen 38,8. Luke’s version above is much more explicit than the other two. Much that needs to be said about this passage is said under Point #2 above, but one critical thing needs to be added. In both the Luke and Mark passages Jesus relates his answer to Moses’ “passage about the bush.” He is stressing that the “bush” that burns but is not consumed is the Ego or Individuality and not the “personality.” That an Individuality is not “married” is clear upon reflection. Only perishable personalities marry. We will recognize our loved ones in the spirit world, but the recognition will be of their Individuality. It is a more meaningful recognition than that of the personality only. Recognition of the Individuality implies insight into all of its former personalities, thus recognition of them in a manner of speaking. The passage also makes it clear that the “resurrection” is after one has “attain[ed] to that age,” and no longer needs to reincarnate, as indicated by “for they cannot die any more.” Until that “age,” one is “raised” as indicated “in the passage about the bush” (see “Bush”).

Anyone who doubts this latter point should search existing commentaries for an explanation of the last two sentences (vss 37-38), which are essentially identical in all three synoptic Gospels (even in Matthew as we shall see). Look there for any depth of meaning, anything that necessarily makes logical sense independent of (the tendentiousness of) established doctrine or dogma. Just how is it that these two sentences show that “the dead are raised?” For the only thing the passage about The Burning Bush says is that all who are descended from these three are “living,” not that they have necessarily, or from that fact alone, been “raised from the dead.” Now, let us look for further confirmation on this point. “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” first collectively appeared at the conclusion of Genesis (Gen 50,24). But there it did not speak of God as specifically “the God of” thesefathers. More important, with reference to the synoptic language in question, it did not speak of the “Bush.” The first place in the scripture where “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is used is in Ex 3,6, the very passage about the “Bush” (and for this reason Matthew may be deemed to refer also to the “bush” passage). And the first person “I Am” was used there for the first time (see “I AM” and “Name”). Now, what is the ruler over the “Three Bodies?” It is nothing less than “The Burning Bush,” the “I Am,” the Ego, the eternal Individuality. It is the Christ-enabled and empowered “I Am” that is never consumed. It “lives” on even though it has not yet “attain[ed] to that age and to the resurrection.” Clearly, it is the god of, the ruler over, “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” who, in this instance, allegorically¹³ portray the “Three Bodies.” But how is it that it is “raised from the dead” in a manner distinguishable from the “resurrection” as Lk 20,34-38 clearly says? (And the Matthew and Mark passages can be no less meaningful, for they too say that the “Bush” passage shows that the dead are raised, and say nothing of “resurrection” itself.) The Ego is raised from the dead by the process of being “Born Again”¹⁴ (Jn 3,3) on Earth as described in the first part of this essay. Doctrine and dogma to the effect that these passages refer to the resurrection, rather than to reincarnation, simply miss the deeper (esoteric) meaning that was not to come into the general comprehension of humanity until it could “bear” it (Jn 16,12) in the age of the Consciousness Soul, the age of the Second Coming and the “Lord of Karma.” Christ clearly understood this, and at least Paul, Luke, and Lazarus/John (and probably others among the “Twelve” and the Evangelists) came to understand it.