The life of man is a film. It is certainly difficult for our Cartesian minds to grasp this concept. Our three-dimensional minds are badly adapted to ideas and facts which touch on the domain of the eternal.
Incomprehensible as it may seem, our life is truly a film produced in accordance with a script. This film goes on continuously, without ever stopping, in such a way that, at the time of his death, man is born again. What seems absurd is that he is born in the same place, at the same date where he was born before, and of the same parents. So the film goes on again. Each human being, then, is born with his own particular film. this represents the field of action in which man is called to apply his conscious efforts. The repetition of the film is not reincarnation, although these two notions are often confused. Exterior man, who lives in the system of the Future-Past cannot embrace in a single moment the ensemble of his film, nor even the part that contains his immediate future. To do so, he would need to enlarge the slot of his Present. It thus happens to him that, faced with certain events, he will feel that he has already seen or lived those events. Some see in such phenomena the proof of so called reincarnation. In reality, phenomena of this sort are the result of a casual and temporary surge of fine energies in the organism: the slot of the individual Present then enlarges for a few moment, and some significant facts of the immediate future slip into the waking consciousness. In this way, the impression is created of a return of another time. In a certain way this is true, although the impression of having lived before is only caused by mechanical unfolding of the film. By reincarnation, we must understand a phenomenon of a very different order. Although the theoretical film revolves integrally on the plane of possibilities, meaning in eternity, the film of the exterior man clings to the plane of realization, that is, of Time, but only to the extent strictly necessary to satisfy the ends of the Ray of Creation.
True reincarnation, on the other hand, occurs entirely in time, and belongs integrally to the domain of the Real, well understood as part of the broader frame of Manifestation. The human personality is not a reality in the proper sense of the word, but a possibility. It plays a role in the film to which it is attached, from which it will not disappear until the moment of the Second Birth. At that moment, it will cease to be a Personality. Because of its indestructible union with the real "I", it will be transfigured, and so it will become an Individuality. As long as man lives in the wilderness, self-satisfied and immersed in lies and illusions, the film will unfold with mechanical inflexibility, and the Personality will remain entirely unchanged.
These circumstances start to change the moment man crossed the first Threshold. This passage can be compared to the conception of the future Individuality. The Staircase symbolizes the period of gestation, and the crossing of the second Threshold represents the second Birth, the birth of Individuality. As man becomes more and more integrated with his "I", growing his Individuality, he becomes progressively integrated with the Cosmos and acquires "gifts" appropriate to his individual nature. Simultaneously, he progressively participates in real, objective existence, which finally characterizes his being.
This is liberation from the bonds of the film. It is only at this point of evolution that true individual reincarnation becomes possible. True reincarnation is not mechanical; it is done consciously, generally to accomplish a mission. It is important to grasp clearly the difference which exists between the film, a mixture of possibilities, and reincarnation in time, which belongs to the domain of the Real, and to understand the meaning of this difference. At the time of the second Birth, that is to say, by crossing the Second Threshold, man escapes his bondage to the film, and enters the domain of redemption. He is then admitted into the sacred brotherhood of living Beings. These beings are an unshakable force: those who are part of it are no longer subject to illness or sorrow. Death loses its hold over them. They have overcome the world. In theory, the film in which man is born and in which he lives can go on until the end of the world, on condition that he is happy, satisfied with himself, attributing his virtues to himself, and blaming others for his mistakes and misfortunes. Properly speaking, this kind of existence cannot be considered as human; it could be described as
anthropoid. This term is justified in the sense that exterior man, immersed in self-satisfaction, represents the crowning achievement of millions of years of evolution of the species from its animal ancestors, yet from the point of view of esoteric evolution, he is a possibility which has not yet been realized. If we envisage the problem of esoteric evolution from the point of view of the film and the different parts man can play in it, it is clear that this kind of evolution is impossible as long as the film can always be considered as turning in the same circle. People who perform in such a film are those we have called
anthropoids, puppets, the dead who, in the words of Jesus, "believe themselves to be alive."
Esoteric evolution starts when man, by his conscious efforts, proves capable of breaking the circle and transforming it into an ascending spiral. The spiral represents an intermediate state between the position where the human Personality is found to be trapped in the film, which revolves mechanically in a way hardly separated from the eternal plane, and that of the perfect, free Individuality, who is able, if need arises, to reincarnate consciously in Time. This is an intermediate state in this sense, that the film definitely departs from the plane of the eternal, from the plane of possibilities. The curve of life, which for exterior man does not in practice differ from a circle, transforms itself into a spiral and does not end - as it did previously - almost at its point of departure: the distance between these two points now marks a definite progression in Time. The film in the form of a spiral belongs to human beings who climb the staircase. Complete disengagement of the film is produced at the moment of crossing the second threshold. If man is able to do that successfully during a single life, so breaking the circle for the very first time, he does not return to it. Such a case is very rare: it is the lot of the just. Generally, this liberation requires several lives; several revolutions of the spiral. As a general rule, each revolution occurs in Time, and consequently can appear to be a reincarnation. In reality, it is nothing but a return to exterior life. A pseudo-reincarnation like this is neither conscious nor personal: it is the actors in the film who return, and they do not remember any previous experiences.
However, a change is possible as soon as the conscious efforts of man increase the effect of the Time factor by enlarging perception of the Present. In a film which unfolds in a spiral in this way, the contents of the play change; they change in two ways: first in each life, that is, during each revolution, and also from spiral to spiral. The composition of the cast, the circumstances, and the scenery all change. Two elements however remain permanent: first, the general aim, to reach and cross the second Threshold; then the absolute condition for crossing this Threshold, that all the karmic debts which have been accumulated in the present life, as well as during previous spirals, must be neutralized and liquidated. Before the Second Threshold, every drama must be played out to its denouement. The work is hard and difficult because man constantly makes mistakes. The attentive reader has already understood that following the spiral, or climbing the Staircase, is reserved for human beings who have already absorbed a certain quantity of Cosmic Sun influences and who thus possess a more or less developed magnetic center. This does not guarantee that they will make no more errors. It is true that from the time man first mounts the Staircase he is watched, especially if he makes sincere and considerable efforts. The Esoteric Brotherhood offers him a helping hand. Certain meetings, a play of favorable circumstances, are the forms taken by this help. This assistance does not, however, free him of the need to work on himself and to go on making conscious efforts. In addition, it must be said that often the proffered help is not used, because man does not listen to the advice given, or because he does not grasp the meaning of the favorable circumstances and the possibilities of progress which open before him. He is still more than half a creature of the domain of Illusion, he continues to take frequent impulsive decisions, and often turns against his own avowed aims. It must be understood that as long as a man has not attained and crossed the Second Threshold, he will have to start all over again. He will restart every spiral in the wilderness, he will once again have to discern the Cosmic Solar influences, cross the First Threshold, and climb the Staircase step by step. It is true that no conscious effort is ever lost, but the experience acquired in one spiral only appears in the next in the form of innate personal aptitudes, or vague recollections of people in the cast.
Re: The Game: The Computation Matrix
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