SYMPOSIUMS
LECTURE
No. 4 – THE AFTERLIFE AND REINCARNATION ACCORDING TO AUMISM
No. 4 – THE AFTERLIFE AND REINCARNATION ACCORDING TO AUMISM
I – Introduction
In this introduction we will define the afterlife and reincarnation in very general terms.
I.1 The afterlife
“That which follows earthly life; the world in which the future life is placed.”[1] The afterlife is not necessarily linked to belief in the existence of GOD. Whether we are believers or not: what lies beyond life? This question haunts believers and atheists alike.
In religions, the afterlife is revealed to believers by GOD, and in this lecture we will deal with the teachings of Aumism on the afterlife.
In atheism: atheists deny the existence of GOD and of any divine order, but some atheists accept the idea that the Spirit exists and survives after the death of the physical body.
Spiritism is a “doctrine based on the existence, manifestations and teachings of spirits, most often disembodied human spirits. (An incarnate human is used as a medium between the world of humans and the world of spirits during spiritist séances.)”[2] Spiritists believe in an afterlife without the existence of GOD.
Parapsychology “is the rational, in-depth and multidisciplinary study of facts that seem inexplicable in the current state of our scientific knowledge, and that involve the psyche and its interaction with the environment”.[3] Parapsychology deals with haunted houses, with reincarnation, and therefore with the afterlife, without appealing to belief in GOD.
Agnosticism is the doctrine that rejects everything that cannot be grasped through experience. Agnostics do not deny the existence of GOD; for them, if GOD exists, He belongs to the realm of the inaccessible. Agnostics believe in the spirit.
“According to the Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism survey by WIN-Gallup International (2012), the number of people worldwide who identify with a religion is 59%, against 23% with no religion and 13% atheists. In France, these figures are respectively 37% (believers), 34% (no religion) and 29% (atheists). France is the fourth nation with the most atheists, behind China, Japan and the Czech Republic.”
This survey shows that worldwide about 2 people out of 3 believe in an afterlife as defined by a religion.
Today, the question of the afterlife is raised above all by the many cases of near-death experience (clinical death). The first publication on this subject was by Raymond Moody in 1975 (Life After Life). Two million cases of clinical death have been recorded in France, and more than 60 million worldwide.
The phenomenon of clinical death is therefore becoming a subject of scientific study. Science sets out to study phenomena that repeat themselves and to draw empirical laws from them. In cases of clinical death the experience has been repeated many times, and all the subjects describe the same experience: they pass through a great tunnel at the end of which there is light, and they are welcomed by beings of light.
I.2 Reincarnation
“In certain religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, etc.), reincarnation is the migration of the soul which, at the moment of death, passes into another body.”[4] Reincarnation belongs, or has belonged, to the beliefs of a great many religions. Let us quote some texts from the different traditions:
– Zoroastrianism
From the book of the prophet the Great Abad, the Desatir: “Those who, in the time of prosperity, endure grief and pain, endure them because of their words or their deeds in a former body.”[5]
– Buddhism
“The soul migrates through all forms, from the stone, through the plants and the species of animal bodies, and into men of various characters, until it reaches perfect enlightenment in the Buddha.”[6]
– The Church Fathers
Saint Jerome (who fixed the canon of the Bible in 396, was trilingual and had his nuns recite the psalms in Hebrew): “The doctrine of reincarnation has always been communicated, in ancient times, to the small number of the elect, as a truth that was not to be spread among the mass of the people.”[7] Let us recall here that it was at the Council of Constantinople in 553 AD that reincarnation was removed from the knowledge of Christendom. But let us also quote a position of the Church of the Vatican, between 1979 and 1980, given by Cardinal Ratzinger: “The Church is not reincarnationist, but I am inclined towards research on this subject…”
– Islam
“I died in the mineral and came back as a plant,
I died to the plant and came back in an animal,
I died to the animal and became man,
Why should I fear death?”[8]
Surveys carried out in the West show that on average 20 to 25% of the Western population (Europe and North America) believe in reincarnation. This percentage reaches almost 50% among those who believe in God, and almost 75% among those who have had an NDE (near-death experience)!
Worldwide, we can say that more than half of the population of our planet believes in reincarnation, that is almost 3.5 billion people!
I.3 Conclusion
We can conclude that the notions of the afterlife and of reincarnation are shared by a great many human beings, believers or not. What changes are the beliefs about the afterlife. The near-death experiences lived by more than 60 million people on Earth bring tangible evidence about life after death, and show that 75% of the people who have had a near-death experience afterwards believe in reincarnation.
We will now look at the afterlife in Aumism, and then at reincarnation in Aumism.
II – The afterlife in Aumism: the Column of Light
As was mentioned in previous lectures, Aumism considers death to be a change of state. In Aumism, the soul stripped of its body joins the Column of Light, which welcomes all souls after the death of the physical body.
What is the Column of Light?
The Column of Light is a structure made up of 6 branches, located in the astral plane of the Earth. The different planes are shown in the table below, which allows us to situate the astral plane. The different planes are: the earthly plane (material plane), the astral plane (plane of elementary feelings), the lower mental plane (concrete intelligence), the higher mental plane (abstract intelligence), the plane of creative Intuition (formless contemplation) and the plane of the Absolute (HAMSAH MANARAH).
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Plane of the Absolute: HAMSAH MANARAH |
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Plane of creative intuition: formless contemplation |
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Higher mental plane: abstract intelligence |
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Lower mental plane: concrete intelligence |
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Astral plane: plane of elementary feelings |
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Earthly plane: material plane |
“God is only a principle, an indivisible energy that humans, the brothers, amuse themselves by breaking into pieces, by dividing.”[9] This divine principle is present in each of us; our soul is our divine part.
This Column of Light, created in 1985, is the crystallisation of billions of prayers directed by His Holiness the Lord HAMSAH MANARAH during the cosmic battles aimed at saving the Earth from self-destruction. “In the Golden Age, the world of the dead becomes a world of Light organised as a Column of prayer, within which resound the songs and hymns of Unity of the souls at last reconciled, around GOD THE CREATOR, present in each one.”[10] The souls leaving matter are welcomed into the Column of Light by representatives of the Luminous Hierarchy, who will help them to evolve. The Column of Light is made up of 21 planes of consciousness. The soul is directed to the plane of consciousness that corresponds to its degree of evolution.
“The earthly Column of Light has six branches in which live all categories of souls, from the nature spirits, through humans, up to the souls having the rank of angel, archangel, buddha, bodhisattva… in the hierarchy of Evolution.”[11]
The Column of Light is a post-mortem University where the soul learns to live according to the 12 principles that govern this Column, listed below:
“1. The principle of constant Evolution towards GOD
2. The principle of the quest for the Ideal of Unity
3. The principle of Divine Love
4. The principle of Universal Solidarity
5. The principle of Solidarity between souls
6. The principle of tolerance of differences
7. The principle of the Unity of Religions in Heaven as on Earth
8. The principle of Fusion in GOD
9. The principle of the evolutionary Pyramid of souls
10. The principle organising life after death
11. The principle governing the selective reincarnation of souls
12. The principle transforming humanity generation after generation through the rigorous Application of the selection of Souls before incarnation.”[12]
Why the Column of Light: the role of the Column of Light
The Column of Light was created for the advent of the Golden Age (a state of consciousness in which the human being is in Unity with the Creator), to put an end to the horror of Karma, for “the soul that remains attached to the past generates its karma”.[13] “Remember, son of the Earth, war upon war bloodied matter for a few rosaries of millennia. Whole peoples were decimated together with their traditions, their religions, their customs. Remember, son of Heaven, divided and opposed to one another were the paradises of the Heavens, as was, and still is, the rainbow of the religions of the Earth.”[14]
Learning the principles that govern the Column of Light allows the soul that incarnates no longer to fight in the name of its Religion (principle 6 of the Column of Light) and no longer to set Heaven against Earth (principle 7 of the Column of Light). The Column of Light replaces the paradises and the hells; it frees souls from their past and prepares them for a positive reincarnation. “Redemption is possible whatever the burden of accumulated sins, on the one and only condition that you persevere in carving the rough stone of your soul and that all your cells adhere to the inner Golden Age. Be blessed, helped, assisted. Accept the prospect of the effort to be made. Go forward, courage, victory is already granted to you!”[15]
The Column of Light is the path of effort and of work on oneself, which will allow the soul to evolve and to be able to reincarnate. The Column of Light banishes Karma. In the Column of Light there is neither paradise nor hell; there one learns about the “Golden Age Heavens”.
“The Golden Age Heavens allow evolved souls to give absolute priority to prayer, to meditation and to the ardent desire for fusion in the Divine… for the aim is not to rest and let oneself go, but indeed to attain Divine Reintegration in GOD.” “The Golden Age Heavens are not Golden Age paradises. They are centres of consciousness where evolved souls learn to fuse in GOD, and then to come back down into matter, crowned with the glory of the ONE, to take a physical body and strive to attain fusion from within matter, in order to set a good example to the souls who believe that fusion is impossible.” “In the new heavens, the only adoration is the Unity of the Faces of GOD.”[16]
III – Reincarnation in Aumism
Before speaking about reincarnation, it is important to recall the Law of Evolution, which has replaced the Law of Karma. Both laws include the principle of causality: what we think, we become. The difference is that the Law of Evolution forces the soul to detach itself from its past, and thus to evolve and not to accumulate the Karma created by attachment to memories of the past.
His Holiness describes the 12 reasons why Karma is harmful; we will quote three very significant ones:
- “Karma was born of the aspiration to eternal rest, contrary to the Law of Evolution of forward movement;
- Karma generates war upon war and accumulates above humanity the storm clouds of collective self-destruction;
- The Law of Karma was set in motion against the Will of GOD, to satisfy the thirst for power and revenge of the Sages of ancient and vanished Hyperborea.”[17]
Human beings have free will, and through their dark thoughts they themselves create the hells of self-punishment, maintained by a constantly renewed Karma. With the Law of Evolution, God will save the Earth from self-destruction by allowing human beings to escape from the cogs of Karma. The Column of Light is governed by the Law of Evolution, and incarnation becomes a privilege granted to evolved souls, who will incarnate to accomplish a mission decided before incarnation. These souls will be “INSTRUMENTS OF THE DIVINE”.
“The privilege of incarnation is won through strength of will, detachment and selfless service. If, O souls of the Earth and of the Column of Light, you are candidates, strive to pray a great deal, to meditate a great deal. Even if you should fail 100 times, never despair, for one day your perseverance will triumph over the residual Evil that chains you to the past.”[18]
It is when the soul has reached the 17th plane of the Column of Light that it is entitled to incarnation. One last question is put to the soul before it leaves the Column of Light:
“What will you do with the privilege of life, once it has been granted?
Lord, I will spread the Golden Age, the Ideal of unity, love, brotherhood and solidarity. I will avoid the pitfalls of weariness, retreat, flight and selfishness, and will make myself the servant of all, expecting nothing in return!”[19]
“Once accepted for incarnation, the soul will no longer have the possibility, as in the Iron Age, of choosing its parents, its family, its country according to criteria of karmic ties. The Selection Council of the 17th level will make the best choice for the soul concerned.”[20]
Conclusion
Thus, year after year, the Column of Light will give birth to Golden Age souls who will work to establish the Golden Age on Earth. With the Law of Evolution, there will no longer be incarnations in bodies carrying a heavy Karma. In the Golden Age Heavens, open to the souls of Light of all Traditions, “souls will be able to experience Fusion with GOD before incarnating again and achieving this fusion in matter, in order to set an example to the people of Earth who believe that Fusion is impossible”.[21]
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[1] Definition from the Larousse dictionary.
[2] Definition from the Larousse dictionary.
[3] Definition from the Larousse dictionary.
[4] Definition from the Larousse dictionary.
[5] Book of the prophet the Great Abad: the Desatir.
[6] Sermon of the Buddha.
[7] Saint Jerome.
[8] Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Masnavi, IV.
[9] Le Flambeau d’Unité, p. 57.
[10] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 90.
[11] La Doctrine de l’Aumisme, p. 266.
[12] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 121.
[13] La Loi d’Évolution des Âmes, p. 51.
[14] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 106.
[15] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 241.
[16] La Doctrine de l’Aumisme, pp. 269-270.
[17] La Loi d’Évolution des Âmes, p. 55.
[18] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 297.
[19] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 304.
[20] La Révolution du Monde des Vivants et des Morts, p. 331.
[21] L’Unité des Visages de DIEU, p. 255.
