Dear Soul Arcanum:
I believe in reincarnation, and also that we can communicate with spirits. How soon do spirits decide to reincarnate? If they do choose to reincarnate, how can we communicate with them? Aren’t they in the physical plane again, and therefore out of the realm of such communication? Are souls required to reincarnate a certain number of times before they can retire to the spirit world permanently?
– Jean
Dear Jean:
No one living can answer these questions with certainty, for they are some of the deepest mysteries of life. I can only relay what I have come to understand via my own experiences with spirit communication and my own spiritual studies. Further, we must assume that our perspective is distorted from the start because of our conceptual dependency on the idea that time is linear, which appears to be true physically but NOT true metaphysically. How this may affect matters of reincarnation is downright mind boggling.
It’s my understanding that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to reincarnation, for there are many variables that would affect such decisions. Some people spend a lot of time in other dimensions before reincarnating in the physical, and some people return to Earth quickly.
Dr. Ian Stevenson is a leading researcher into evidence for reincarnation, and he has suggested that the average span between incarnations is about 15 months. The nature of his work may skew his views, however, as he focuses on children who remember their last lifetime and can visit their former homes and families to demonstrate their knowledge of those people and places. Obviously, for this to happen, one would have to reincarnate very quickly, or those family members would have departed life as well. (People who did not reincarnate quickly like this would not find themselves subjects of his research.)
In some religions it is believed that reincarnation is immediate: as soon as a person dies, he or she is conceived or born into a new life. In other spiritual traditions and cultures, an interval of many years is considered the norm.
As for the factors influencing such decisions, they appear to depend on the circumstances of one’s death: sometimes release from the physical is a blissful relief, sometimes it seems to come too soon, and there are lots of possibilities in between.
When a person had a trying life or suffered physically before death and was spiritually evolved enough to go to a pleasant spot in the afterlife, death is no doubt a relief. We might imagine it’s a bit like leaving behind a very busy work schedule and the discomfort of a frigid winter to take a lovely, relaxing vacation in Hawaii. Most people will not want to return to that cold climate again, and given the choice, they’ll put it off. Some people, however, will quickly get bored with the perfect weather and not having much to do, and will long for another adventure: a new life in a new place with a new body.
If a person had a lot of wonderful things happening at the time of their death, or if they left important unfinished spiritual business that is “haunting” them in the afterlife, death may seem to come too soon. In this case, it might be a bit like being suddenly called away on business; we might have a strong sense of responsibility pulling us to go back home and take care of things, or we may have dreams and desires we’ve left unfinished that we long to fulfill, and this could cause us to decide to reincarnate quickly.
If you think about it, there are no doubt lots of factors that would come into play. If a soul mate decided to reincarnate, you may be tempted to follow. If you’re longing for the opportunity to reincarnate with a young grandchild, you may decide to wait until that child crosses over and you can incarnate together. If you’re devoted to watching over a loved one from Spirit for the rest of their life, you may wait on moving on to a new life yourself.
As for how we could communicate with spirits of people who have reincarnated, first, we can’t communicate with ALL spirits whenever we desire – not by a long shot. It’s thus possible that when a spirit is “unavailable,” it’s because they’ve returned to the physical.
However, it’s my understanding that this is a far more complicated subject. For example, many years ago I read for a man who lived in Germany. During the reading, I had (what I thought was) a spirit named Klaus come through for him. I saw him clearly and described him as looking very much like a certain film star. I described how he dressed, that he chain-smoked cigarettes, and the rather unusual, loping way he had of walking. I also brought through advice from him about my client’s situation.
It blew both my mind and the mind of my client when he reported that he definitely could identify Klaus, but that Klaus was a living, breathing coworker of his! I could tell no difference between this “spirit” and the other spirits I frequently connected with who had crossed over.
For more information on this phenomenon, I recommend a book called The Boy Who Saw True, which is the diary of a Victorian boy who was gifted with second sight. In it, he describes how he communicated with a “spirit guide” for years, only to learn as he grew older that his spirit guide was embodied on Earth. Here’s how the guide explained himself to the boy:
“You must pardon me for having disappeared so suddenly the other day, but I was called back to my body. As I gave you no reason to think otherwise, I expect you imagine I’m a dismembered spirit? But that’s not exactly the case. To be explicit, I happen to be a so-called Anglo-Indian, and I am communicating with you while out of my body, which is asleep thousands of miles away from here.”
This notion certainly opens up all sorts of possibilities!
As for what we must do to end the cycle of rebirth, in New Age parlance, we might say that we must evolve beyond the Earth’s range of vibration. That doesn’t mean we’re all done, mind you; it’s more like we’ve moved up in grades in school. If Earth life is first grade, each day that we attend first grade might be one lifetime, and when we finish that grade, we’ll move on to a new classroom. Some people take accelerated courses in which they are more challenged but may progress faster. Some find school in general easier than others. Some people even flunk out; believe it or not, if we fail to learn, eventually we can be reabsorbed by our Source.
Eastern religions teach us that we must free ourselves of karma to end the cycle of rebirth. For our purposes here, we might say that karma is that which makes us return: return to life on Earth, to certain people/relationships, or to certain experiences. If we have promises or desires to fulfill or issues to resolve, these loose ends tug at us to go back and tie them up. Through spiritual growth, right action, and transcendence of desire/attachment, we free ourselves from having to reincarnate.
For a Christian perspective, the key to spiritual freedom can naturally be found in the Bible:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew, 6:19-21
This means when we stop seeking things we can’t take with us when we go, such as money and material possessions, physical pleasures, fame and other ego-based goals, and instead focus on those things we CAN take with us, such as knowledge, spiritual wisdom, inner peace and love, then we’ll have risen above the lessons of the physical plane, and will be free to move on to subtler dimensions of experience.
– Soul Arcanum
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