(i) speculations on pre-incarnate existence, a view from the apocalypse

a reflection

an aphorism of mine yielded these two posts by Bruce Charlton and this one by Frank Berger - plus comments - all of it very interesting. i found myself adding to the party.

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one can only speculate about the mechanisms of incarnation. this fact alone also makes one speculate on why this is, why can’t we have definite knowledge, but that we’ll leave for another time.

(we shouldn’t be so negative on speculation anyway. it is a creative endeavor. and after all, tracing the word back to its origins, it means to look. it’s thus good to SPECulate on this SPECtacular adventure that is existence. and i susSPECt that if you are perSPIcatious you might end up with a very good perSPECtive. though of course, we’ll only really know in retroSPECtive.) wordplay over.

i’m inclined to believe that God, not being a bureaucrat, in fact, being the very opposite of one, does not personally vet and approve every incarnation. nor does he shape every body by hand. everything is a process, with multiple beings involved (gods and angels and all that included). and so, much like a baby grows into a man or a woman, a spirit, entering the door to incarnation - all these of course are mere images, which does not make them any less true - takes flesh in much the same way, through a process. and God is involved in that process in an analogous way to how he is involved in the developmental process that makes a baby grow into an adult, or a seed into a tree. of course, he might be involved more with some than with others. this seems undeniable too.

in any case, if we believe, as i do, that a human born on the earth was once a disembodied spirit, then looking at the world, we might have to explain the quality and type of the people who live now, and the sheer number too. analogously, much like an acorn grows into an oak and a mustard seed grows into a mustard (i chose this one on purpose, exceptions notwithstanding, as Jesus said), everyone grows into what they already are in potential. God could not violate this if he wanted to - and he obviously wouldn’t want to, or he wouldn’t be God.

so it is possible, even likely, that at least some of the humans that live now wanted to incarnate before but just couldn’t, because the world could not support it, whether for very practical reasons or because their spiritual constitutions could not find a suitable body. or perhaps they tried but died very early and were allowed a retry. i don’t know. we have to work backwards anyway.

this also raises interesting questions about the evolution of consciousness. those of us who are born now who have a very markedly different mentality from almost all of our ancestors, which, still, is a small minority, all things considered, and i mean ALL things - was that because our spirits were already in this mindset, and thus we could only come here now, or for some other reason. who knows. i need to think more about this one.

but exceptions always exist, and modern consciousness, taken in a planetary scale and even discounting the past, is certainly an exception. so let’s forget about that for now, even though it seems to be related to what will be said later about deals made before we incarnate.

first, much like the seeds mentioned before, the body we take has to be suitable to our spirit. it is in a way merely an outward expression of an inner disposition. thus where and from who we are born is not random at all. i could not be born chinese (regardless of how much i love their ancient culture). some people are born smart, others dumb. some beautiful, others hideous. some able, some disabled. some prone to this or that sin and this or that virtue, and so on and so forth. now, if we take a step back we can see patterns, though we might not want to.

the aphorism that started all this was one about pre-incarnate spirits making deals with the devil. this seems to me to explain a lot, at many levels. we live in apocalyptic times, with all the shades of meaning that word has - from the popular to the etymological. given that so much disfunction exists in the world today, it is easy for me to imagine certain pre-incarnate pressures, snares, promises. and certain spirits being pressured, ensnared or merely taking those promises at face value.

thus i see various things happening at the same time, and in collusion - also given the reality of two current enemies of God, Ahriman and Sorath, now colluding, now fighting for supremacy, but in any case, they hate God just a tiny bit more than they hate each other and themselves.

i see, for one, the hordes of the antichrist, incarnating already hellbent on destruction, without much choice either, it's just their nature. and all the damned devil, Sorath in this case, had to promise them was a free hand to fulfil all their base desires, unimpeded, since law and order have left the scene pretty much everywhere and with no chance of returning, not in any true and holy sense, only as a farce. meanwhile their spirits are deaf to God, who i imagine advised them to refrain. but they go in anyway. short sightedness is certainly a mark of these times, everywhere we look and with many flavors. short sighted spirits lead to short sighted embodied creatures. we may speak here of a premature incarnation. capacity for repentance on this contingent? i see very little. repentance requires a certain level of abstraction and foresight, the same they lacked when they entered through the door. can they learn? nothing is impossible. but it is unlikely. the objective from Sorath’s perspective seems obvious to me: destruction, ugliness, vileness, all of that, contributes to the entrenchment of atheism. especially when those on the side of God have no good answers to these questions because they think it’s all determined by God anyway. just shut up and accept it. it’s all part of the plan. and it is God’s (a deadly proposition in my opinion).

another group, a much smaller number, and more intelligent and cunning, were probably specifically recruited to remove all barriers at higher levels to the destruction, thus incarnate with more foresight - though a foresight already hellbent against God. these are the ones who know pretty much from start to finish what they want - their names even appear on the news, it’s so obvious. and they are tireless workers, as far as i can see. the demon of slowness (Sloth) could be of help, but he’s lazy.

then there are the puppets of Ahriman, ridiculous little devils, pursuing their more civilized, too civilized if you ask me, strategy of total control. these are somewhat in the middle between the other two. i’m not talking about the mere human minions, which everyone who participates in modern society, me included. i’m talking about high decisions. these names too appear on the news, even more frequently. my intuition is that Ahriman is still in control on paper. he too is deceived by the much larger and much scarier devil Sorath.

these are blinded to the truth that it all cannot but end in abject destruction and misery - sin makes you stupid after all. but still, they hate life, and they hate God - or his purposes anyway - and the reality here isn't exactly encouraging to make them reassess. these are the Grand Inquisitors. too much freedom, too many loose ends. so they think they can control things and that such control is for the greater good. at least most of them do. still, if there's any hope of repentance, i'd say it's in these ones, if nothing else because they do have some foresight and, unlike the others, they actually desire something positive, though not good. but i'm not holding my breath. plus, for every one that repents, and starts the journey in the opposite direction, a thousand others, who made no such pacts when they came here, join their ranks already in the middle of the symphony, singing in unison that all we need is a good dose of old time theocracy - a devil's bargain. you know these people don’t you? they want to turn the clock back, completely misreading the composition of current humanity - in great part because they refuse to acknowledge that not everything is created from scratch by God when we get here, when it seems almost undeniable that most of it is not.

so where is God in all this? i think God probably refuses to intervene too much, whether as prevention or as cure, except for individuals and individual circumstances, which are neither cures nor preventions but lessons, because it's worthwhile, and may be the only way, for us to learn the truth, to see the faces of evil very clearly, so we don't make the same mistakes in heaven, otherwise we would destroy it out of complacency and illusion, repeating the pattern.

i don’t have a static view of heaven, where it will necessarily be happily ever after. this seems to me to violate the nature of freedom. in short, we can still screw it up. it is a level up, but the levels go forever in both directions, and nothing is guaranteed. which is why this life is so important, and what we learn here is so important, and why the motivations that brought us here seem to play such an important role.