Salvation Time and Reincarnation

For many readers, especially the devoutly religious, the concept of reincarnation in my novel might be problematic. Although I’ve always questioned my own traditional Jewish upbringing, it wasn’t until my experience of “crossing over” to the other side following my motorcycle accident that I realized God truly did set up souls to incarnate over countless lifetimes. The purpose behind it is to give the soul multiple opportunities to grow closer to God and advance with each new lifetime. Before being born, a soul chooses the circumstances of his or her life including sex, race, sexual orientation, country, family, health challenges, money issues and just about everything that affects material existence. Yes, we also have free will. Which means we also have the ability to rise above these circumstances. As human personalities and mind-beings, we’re not allowed to remember everything our souls have chosen to experience in a particular lifetime — at least not consciously.

Why?

Because if we already knew everything, there would be no chance to learn, grow and move ahead in our spiritual development.

That’s why legitimate practices like Past Life Regression Therapy can be very helpful. We have the God-given tools to aid us in our spiritual development which includes learning how to confront evil and choose courage over fear as Eyal Grad’s grandfather explains in Step Two during a discussion about Hitler and the Nazis:

“Saba, how could God approve something so diabolical and wicked?” Eyal asked incredulously. “As you yourself stated, these victims were innocent people. Why did God allow Hitler and his minions to commit massive genocide?”

“Well Eyal, from your perspective I can understand how it appears that way. And yes, what the Nazis perpetrated on earth was pure evil; there is no argument about that. However, you must also remember that before they were born into their earthly bodies, the souls of those the Nazis terrorized purposely selected this mission on earth. They saw their entire lifetime long before they ever took human form. We also have to keep in mind that God endows all human beings with free will. Hitler and his men used their free will to torture and murder millions; we the targets of his hatred, however, failed to exercise ours. Or more precisely, we failed to use our free will to do the right thing. We chose fear over courage; cowardice over rebellion. Instead of fighting, questioning or resisting, we got used to being the world’s scapegoats and figured, ‘It won’t be so bad.’

We could not have been more wrong.

“Instead of seizing the chance to confront evil as God wanted us to do, we simply went along with it. Even if the end result had been the same, the lesson we learned in that lifetime is that it’s far nobler to go down with a fight than to become submissive sheep, easily led to slaughter.

“If only we had banded together and used common sense, we might have been able to save ourselves. By choosing to meekly obey the Nazis and forget that we are also children of the One Creator worthy of dignity, respect and life, we failed the test for that incarnation. God challenged us and we fell short.”

After pondering his grandfather’s words, Eyal asks another valid question:

“Saba, have any of these souls who were once Nazis reincarnated since then?”

“Oh yes Eyal,” he answered confidently. “Depending on where they were in their own development, some of these former Nazi souls came back in the next lifetime as sick, homeless Haitians to make up for what they’d done. Others opted to return as religious fanatics—suicide-bombing Islamists in one lifetime, rigid orthodox Rabbis in another. Remember, life is an eternal opportunity to learn, grow, repent and move closer to God. The cycle is endless.”

Unlike many who believe in reincarnation today, I am not espousing moral relativism: far from it. Evil is evil and must be confronted, defeated and atoned for by those who commit it. That may be another reason why people who believe in individual liberty and limited government take issue with the concept of reincarnation. But for me it’s about understanding why God allows ten percent of the population of incarnated human souls to come to earth truly demented. It’s to teach the rest of us a lesson about standing up to evil and doing the right thing. For those souls who commit heinous crimes against humanity, in addition to an earthly punishment (I’ll post about my concept of a fair justice system soon), they also reincarnate under very dire, lowly and challenging circumstances, e.g. as a homeless person in the next lifetime to truly make reconciliation and understand why their actions were wrong.