FROM BIRTH TO REBIRTH
Volume 6, Part 2
February, 2026
Paul Brunton begins this category by contrasting the condition of what we might call the lower or ordinary self with that of our “innermost being, the mysterious Overself.”
Life-in-Itself is infinite and unchanging, but there is an end to the kind of experience undergone by the living entity in its finite human phase. Just as sound goes back into silence but may emerge again at some later time, so this little self goes back into the greater being from which it too may emerge again at another time. [9:1.1 & 2]
The innermost being of humans, their mysterious Overself, links them with God. It does not change with time nor die with the years. It is eternal. [9:1.14]
Whether we confront the mystery called death or the equal mystery called life, the revelation must come in one or the other state: there is a connection with HE WHO IS. For this are we born and our oscillation between the two happens at the Mind of the World’s behest. As, so sleepily and unwittingly, we shape and light up these fragments of being that we are, quite simply the connection gets uncovered more and more. [9:2:211]
PB speaks quite specifically about the transition called death and gives some helpful suggestions for preparation and in undergoing this process.
When the end of life comes, and a person goes out of it like a candle in the wind, what then happens depends upon their character, their prevailing consciousness, their preparedness, and their last thoughts. [9:1.83]
The dying person should cross their arms over their chest with interlaced fingers. They should withdraw the mind from everything earthly and raise it lovingly in the highest aspiration. [9:1.89]
Death is the great revealer. In that vivid but dreamlike experience which follows it, each person is shown what they have really done with their earth-life, what they should have done with it, and what they failed to do with it. [9:1.93]
When he was dying, Heisenberg said to von Weizsäcker, “It is very easy: I did not know this before.” At another moment he said, “I see now that physics is of no importance, that the world is illusion.” He passed away in peace. [9:1.104]
Just when life is ebbing fast away, when death is vividly in attendance, the long-sought but little found state of enlightenment may arise and accompany the event. [9:1.94]
How should we understand the idea of reincarnation? Why is this necessary? Does the personality continue?
There, in this necessity of developing, balancing, and coordinating all the parts of one’s being, is a further argument for the necessity of reincarnation. A single lifetime is too short a period in which to fulfil such a task. [9:2.235]
Until a person finds their Overself, no one can escape this coming back to the earthly life. And this remains true whether they love the world or are disgusted by it. [9:2.212]
This feeling that we have seen this place before, passed through that situation, comes from a former personality. The soul is the same, but the outer man is not. [9.2:114]
PB educates us regarding the structured universal processes which govern and guide the development of the individual units of consciousness: fate, necessity, and karma.
The unexpected events which happen to us apparently without cause or connection in our conduct constitute fate. The tendencies by whose influences and the circumstances by whose compulsion we act the way we do, constitute necessity. The results of those actions constitute Karma. [9:3.2]
All humans come back to bodily life again if they leave a residue of karma. All karma that is not brought to an end by bringing the mind’s bondage to the ego-thought to an end, makes reincarnation inescapable. [9:2.17]
The innate tendencies of one’s mental life give rise to the natural compulsions of one’s active life. We cannot behave differently from the way we do–that is, if one is not on the quest and therefore not struggling to rise beyond oneself. One’s own past–and it stretches back farther than we know–created the thoughts, the acts, and the conditions of the present. [9:2.39]
How is the embodied individual to proceed within this universally structured pattern of evolution?
Memory is a spiritual faculty inasmuch as it gives us the chance and means to extract teaching wisdom and guidance from the past. It enables us to visualize past experience and make it either a guide or a warning in dealing with present problems. [9:2.66]
A person’s moral response to a happening, as also their mental attitude toward it and emotional bearing under it, are largely free. It is in this realm, moreover, that important possibilities of further spiritual growth or else materialistic hardening are available. They may renew inner strength or fall back into sensual weakness. [9:4.24]
Referring to his writing in The Wisdom of the Overself, PB clarifies:
There are two kinds of immortality (so long as the lower self dominates consciousness): first, the “endless” evolution of the ego, gradually developing through all its many manifestations; and, secondly, the true immortality of the everlasting, unchanging Real Self–or Overself–which forever underlies and sustains the former.
My reference to not clinging to the ego simply means that the aspirant must learn the art of releasing what is transitory in oneself and in our existence–that which can survive only temporarily. The Real Individuality–the sense and feeling of simply Being–can never perish and is the true immortality. [9:3.181 – partial]
Compiled by Judy S.