Exploring Reincarnation in the Light of Christ - a conversation with Lynn Sparrow Christy

Lynn Sparrow Christy tells us about  reconciling reincarnation with Christianity in a very scholarly and detailed way.   She has really worked hard on developing her beliefs and she shares them with us . 

Lynn  also discusses the intersection of spiritual concepts like growth, collective consciousness, and authenticity.  Very cool stuff.!

Transcript

1:17

We're back with Lynn Sparrow Christie, and I'm very happy to be, and I wanted to go into and get right down to business here, talking about reincarnation. I know that I believe in reincarnation, and I think you do, but tell me, what do you think about reincarnation? I do believe in reincarnation, and from the time the idea first came to me in a reasonable There was an inner sense of knowing that this is. true. There was just that Internal sense. Now it took me from the time I first began to think in terms of reincarnation, to the time when I could say, yes I do believe it, about three to four years because I was so steeped in In a Christian perspective that said, Oh, no, no, that's wrong. It's the opposite of believing in the work of Christ that I was very, very cautious in adopting reincarnation as a personal belief. But over time, I came to see that reincarnation was completely compatible with the teachings of Jesus, completely compatible, even with the work of Jesus in the world. And that my My faith and my relationship with Jesus was only enhanced by taking a multi life into my personal perspective. I am so glad you shared that with us because that is so important to me. I don't want people who are, Raised either a lot or a little or in the Christian faith, which is a lot of people. I don't want them to worry. What's going to happen at the end of this life? What's going to happen? I don't want them to worry. That's why I named this podcast, Life It Just Keeps On Going. I want people to say, hey, it keeps on going. Don't worry about it. want to be alienating people who believe in Jesus. believe Jesus was here, and Jesus fantastic. And I try to live every day like Jesus. I, I affirmatively try to act in a very Christian like way. So tell me how can reincarnation and Christianity, how could they go together? Now, Jim, you've just asked me one of my favorite questions in the whole world. Okay. Because, to me, that is crucial because As you have said, so many people, even if they're not still actively involved in a Christian setting, were raised that way. And there's something that runs very deep to not turn against your roots. And for me, because I was so, I was at that time in my teens where there were Jesus freaks and I suppose I would have been one of them. I was like that. So, it was key to me. That I not, turn my back on my walk with Jesus as I began to more and more see how reincarnation explained things better than the typical heaven and hell idea did. And so one of the first things I, at that time I used to have a practice where I would pray and ask a question and then open my Bible at random. for an answer. Now, that's rather, that's a rather crude way of discerning. That dried up for me as I got more mature, and I'm not allowed to do that anymore. I have to use a more But at the time I was just, I was a kid, and I needed answers. I needed answers. So, I did that about reincarnation. I prayed to be shown the truth, and I had my eyes closed, and I fanned the pages of my Bible, and I opened it, and I put my finger someplace, opened my eyes, and it was a passage from the Book of Acts, where Paul is before the Sanhedrin, and he's being questioned, and he says, if this work or this counsel, not be of God. It will come to naught. But if it is of God, nothing can stand against it. And what was really, it just, I was getting ready. At that point, I was looking at a study group that had to do with these concepts, and they even had an organizational structure that involved councils. So if this work or this council be of God, so it was like, if this is God's work, then Nothing can stop it. And if it's not God's work, it won't come to anything anyway. And I continue kind of studying my Bible. And actually my first book, Edgar Cayce and Christian Faith, deals with this. It kind of goes through the process that I went through in holding up the Bible. The idea of reincarnation against core Christian dogmas. And I use that word dogma deliberately because these are doctrines that are pretty well set. And, and it was specifically, The dogmas of the, the branch of Christendom that makes it all about Jesus saving work. It's, it's not through our own works, but through His saving work that we're saved. I was steeped in that. And one of the things I found when I studied my Bible was a very interesting story where Jesus and his disciples encounter a man born blind. Mm hmm. And the disciples ask a very interesting question. They say, Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Now, Pause there for a minute. These are Jesus closest allies. These are the ones he's giving the up close and personal teachings. These are not just the general public. And they are saying, Did this man sin before he was born or did his parents sin before he was born? As the explanation for his blindness. Now notice what Jesus didn't say. He didn't say what do you mean sin before he was born that doesn't there is an assumption implied there. Yes Yes, they would not have Asked that question if they did not assume And there was a general, at that time reincarnation was a fairly widely held belief at that time and place. But, to me, Jesus response was even more important, because He, rather than saying, Why are you spouting that heresy? Or, oh, good for you. You know about reincarnation. You don't know anything that obvious. He says, neither of you, you've forgotten there's a third possibility. His response in essence is that neither this man nor his parents sinned. This condition so that the works of God might be made manifest. And on the spot, he heals the man and gives him his sight. And what I love about that story is that it takes the disciples away from their focus on Punishment and reward which is what most people do with reincarnation. Oh Karma, you do good things good things happen. You do bad things bad things happen punishment and reward It's but Jesus points them to what his whole story was about and that is Grace. He says, This came about, in today's parlance, we might say, according to divine order. I am going to heal this man, I'm going to give him back his sight, and everyone who witnesses this will be changed in how they view the world, what's possible, that things are not as they seem. This condition came in so that the works of God might be made manifest. And I think this applies to us in our lives. Some of the most difficult things we face If we embrace reincarnation, sometimes our first question is, what bad thing have I done to bring this on myself? And I would say, that's not the best place to go first. It's to say, how can this thing that is so difficult, so painful, whatever it may be, how can my dealing with this make me wiser? More compassionate, deeper, more mature. How can it grow me? What can it teach me? can it teach me? And there is where everything in life is an opportunity to grow, to learn, and to, and so we see that Jesus, Jesus, the one opportunity. That we see in the Gospels, for Jesus to say yea or nay to reincarnation, He deflects it, and He points elsewhere. The other passage that I really want to mention, because it's the one that always gets mentioned, in the book of Hebrews, it says, it is appointed unto a man once to die. to die, and after this, the judgment. And that is often rolled out as the absolute biblical put down of reincarnation. But of course, proof texting, to come up with one little verse to make your point, is, usually requires taking things out of context. And this is no different because the whole context, it goes on to say, so Christ was once offered as the, we won't get into all the language of sacrifice and atonement and so on, but it points to the work of Christ. If you look at the tenses in the Greek of that, it's, we once died and that brought judgment, but now there is new life in Christ. It's not one as an ordinal or a quantifier, we die one time. Right. It's if you look at the structure of the Greek sentence, it's not that. It's, once we died. And now and there, and that judgment followed that. But now there is no life. And I think it refers to the idea that the soul died. However, we wanna look at the Eden story, and I'd love to go into that a little more if you would like to. But, the so-called Fall involved a certain blinding to our true nature. As beloved eternal sons and daughters of God and the judgment there is a sense of being cut off from our source, but our source has been opened back up to us again in Christ. And that's why I don't think that Jesus was just a teacher. I think he was the one who, through a series of incarnations, perfected the pattern of being a full human whose consciousness was fully God realized, the so called Christ consciousness. And when he completed that experience, there was a breakthrough on other levels of the collective consciousness. And I hope I'm not getting too arcane here, but this is so important to me in putting reincarnation together with one's Christian faith. me back up and we'll just talk a little bit about that. So I did a lot of studying with Buddhists and there's a lot of talk there about how you continue to grow until such time as you've been fully realized and then you don't need to come back and, and live it again. And that, had attained that. To me, it's pretty obvious that Christ had also attained that. And that this is a situation of getting to the point where you are fully realized. and that's why, He was able to do a lot of these things that people talk about and why he's such a wonderful example for all of us because he was kind and giving and caring and forgiving and but but still Strong and brave and did all the human aspects, but also all that beautiful Giving and loving and he had gotten there as you said Which I don't I haven't really thought about before by making progress Yes. By growing. Yes. And,, tell me how his getting to that level became a breakthrough in collective consciousness. Two things. I would, first of all, piggyback on what you said about the, the Buddhist approach. And as you would know, there is a very high calling within Buddha, and that is, And that is the fully realized soul who for his own development has no need to come back, but comes nevertheless for the sake of others. Yes, yes. Now the thing, and we also can find from the East, and this is the beauty I think of when you take. Study of the East and study of the West and look at the points of intersection. There is a wonderful principle in the Eastern traditions where the master has what's called a transmission that is shared with the students. This is not a teaching. This is a consciousness breakthrough. That the master can impart to the student. So that typically students who will take a guru find that when they meditate in the presence of the guru, the guru's attainment elevates their meditation experience. And so there is the well established idea in the Eastern religions that because We think we're separate little islands of consciousness, but we're really all one at a deeper level. When one person attains and overcomes, the whole is impacted. In a way that we might not even begin to imagine. And transmission is one almost mundane example of that principle. So that the master's attainment is essentially shared with the student. Jesus invites us to that kind of relationship when he says, Take my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now we know a yoke takes two animals and distributes the work equally so that the stronger one helps move the weaker one. Bears the weight. A disproportionate share of the burden for the weaker one. Jesus Urges us to take his yoke. He urges us to plug into him. I am the vine You are the branches And I think it's this principle that in the level of oneness What he accomplished was cosmic in scale, and it created a breakthrough. we have the beautiful symbolism of the veil in the temple being torn at the moment of his death. Now, the temple, symbolically, is a beautiful picture of our levels of consciousness. We have the outer court of the temple, which was called the court of the Gentiles. Well, that's just our everyday consciousness. Okay. Filled with everything from what we've just seen on TV to what we want to have for lunch. Right. and then there is the inner court that can only be entered with special preparation. That's the interior that we enter when we go inside to do our work of attunement with meditation and prayer. But then, there is the Holy of Holies. That place where the Ark of the Covenant was stored, where only the high priest could enter, and then only, I believe it was only once a year, with all kinds of special preparation. This is, we could call it, the place where the highest self Resides if we're looking at this as a model of a human being. Yes, when Jesus at the moment of his death The veil that separated the inner court from the Holy of Holies was torn open Which is like saying the way has been opened To that highest realization. and so to me, I think we have the capacity to join with his energy in a way that leverages our attempts. We're not in it alone. It's not just how much effort can I put in to be a good person, although that's very, very important. Do I remember to say, do it in me and through me. Because your strength. will sustain me. And you know, Jim, in some ways, this is not as, metaphysical as it might sound. You think about in the world of athletics, if one person breaks a record for running the mile, suddenly a lot of people break it. Yes. how many times in the world of science have, has the same scientific breakthrough popped up In multiple labs or among multiple groups of scientists at the same time. And they've done some crazy studies where, when animals are able to master something, then others of their species are able to master it as well. There are a lot of things in the literature that talk about the way the animals, Attainment in consciousness on the part of one has a spillover effect into the whole. So, my sense is that, the soul we know of as Jesus, so realized that oneness with God that he actually created a breakthrough that is even more powerful than simply his teachings, and that has complete compatibility with the idea that I reincarnate, I get to reincarnate. To come back as many times as it takes. To fully realize the highest that I'm capable of. And even then, if I read it correctly, the goal isn't to graduate from the earth as quickly as I can, but it is to participate. in co creating here in the earth. The Bodhisattva vow, if you, if you will. Yes, yes. And again, just to emphasize that it's not a singular, voyage that, uh, soul is on. It's not, I'm gonna jump ahead of everybody else. It's, I'm going to make progress and I'm going to help others. Yes. Is that right? That is exactly right. And so sometimes that can help us when we're really struggling with something. If you think, okay, my effort to overcome whatever bad habit we may know we have or characteristic that's not the nicest part of our personality that we want to change. We all have that. We all have them. And of course, as the Oracle of Delphi said, and every spiritual tradition has kind of Echoed know thyself is key until you're willing to really look at yourself You're probably not going to do a whole lot of growing because we love to stay blind to our own stuff But anyway, that's another story Talk to my wife about that she'll fill you in on that one But but the idea is And I've lost my train of thought about where I was headed with that. But the, the idea is that we, are here to participate in bringing spiritual consciousness into matter, into our own bodies and into the earth. That is a big statement right there. Yeah. To bring spiritual consciousness. into ourself and the earth. I know from talking with people who do energy work, with people like acupuncture, or qigong, or reiki, or things like that. They talk about, Bad, or difficult things of energy, of things that happen, getting through, into our body. Does this have anything to do with that or is it a totally separate thing? No, I think it has to do with it in the sense that We have this great mystery at the core of existence and spoiler alert, I'm not gonna solve it. Oh darn! Actually, it's a dual mystery. How did something come out of nothing? I mean, what is the beginning? No matter how much we try to explain things, we always come up against a wall. We just push the wall further back, so to speak. We never solve it. How did something come out of nothing? And secondly, how is it that energy and matter are seemingly distinct? And yet, maybe they are just two different manifestations of the same thing. And so, one way of looking at it, and I'm drawing here on The field of evolutionary spirituality, which is, uh, some of the best thinkers of our day are speaking and writing on this. I'm drawing on some of the things that the great theosophical thinkers of the late 19th, early 20th century talked about. I'm drawing on some things that some of the great, uh, Yogis, Aurobindo is a good example of an evolutionary spirituality view coming from the yogic tradition. One way or another, they all deal with this. idea that the unmanifest, invisible potentiality that is the source of all things kind of precipitates down into manifest form. That is, appears as stars and planets and life forms, and that is called involution. As undefinable, undifferentiated spirit takes on form, it is involving itself in physical manifestation. Then, evolution. is the path of starting at the very bottom of matter, so to speak, and becoming increasingly more infused with consciousness of spirit, so that essentially it is a matter of The coming into our consciousness and when it comes into our consciousness that means bringing it into our bodies through those energy flows that you're referring to when you talk about the acupuncture and the Qigong and the Reiki, but even most would agree that there is primordial consciousness in every cell of our bodies we As the thinking person kind of running the body to the cells of our body as the God we think about is to us. That the cells of our body are all, there's, there's a, there's a beautiful statement And, one of the readings of Edgar Cayce, who we talked about in our last episode, that the cells of the body are universes being birthed. And that's a paraphrase, but that's the essence of what he says. And that we are corpuscles in the body of God. That we are the cells of, if God had a body, It would be, it would be, be made up of us, yes, the collective, right, and, and in the same way that these, what is it, we have 60 trillion cells or something like that in our bodies? We are the consciousness responsible for all those cells, and as physical matter lives through our bodies as a cell. It can be infused with greater and greater levels of consciousness. I know from attending the, reincarnation seminar that one of the speakers talked about the diamond soul or something along the lines of that, our collective consciousness is evolving. And that's what you're talking about here, is that we as cells in this collective, we are trying to grow and that's benefiting the the collective. Like, like the collective is one organism kind of like it's one person. We the little cells are trying to increase so that the whole can increase is that a proper analogy? I would say that it is, yes. And I guess the big thing that I would want to kind of pull out of that is to not then get rid of our sense of our being a self. have this crazy idea that to be ourselves means to be separate and other than. Okay. Other things. So we have this basic, one of the first things we learn as an infant is self versus not self. Yes. But the great paradox in the spiritual path is that we are somehow involved in a process where we are becoming our true selves, self with a capital S, as we become more and more at one with all other selves. And as counterintuitive as that seems at first, I think we've all had moments. Where, in a particularly compatible group of people, we feel more like ourselves than we do when we're alone. Absolutely. And, and there is something in that. There is a, beautiful statement, again, I'm going to reference, Cayce, where he said that, of course, the soul returns to God. But the question, what we decide through our lives in the earth, is whether we return, as he put it, into the future. Empty, as at the beginning, or bearing the name. Now, that's a really interesting and a rather poetic way of describing what I understand to be saying, that each of us is developing, a unique self that is simultaneously one with all. We are focal points of awareness in the overall something that we call God. And of course, that which was spawned of God can't disappear. But whether it unites to God, With consciousness of being a self or is empty that is devoid of any selfhood Depends on how we help co create ourselves through how we develop as individuals in the earth So let's go back over that because that's some pretty deep stuff right there. Yeah, so tell tell me again How we develop in spiritual development, that's what I'm trying to do in this life. I'm trying to develop spiritually, become a better person become closer to spirit, I guess. I'm trying to become closer to spirit. And I think what you're saying is that as People become closer to spirit, then what happens? That they become more aware of being a true self, a self. That is also one, the, the paradoxical statement is that the destiny of the soul is to know itself, to be itself, and at the same time, be one with God. Sometimes, and certainly some of the Eastern traditions would suggest that we dissolved into the hole. The dew drop is, returns to the ocean. Okay. And, That can kind of sound and feel like our goal is annihilation, you know, it's, it's not unlike, yeah, it does kind of sound like that. Yeah, it does kind of. Yeah, we did all this and then we're just kind of, we just sort of dissolve and, nothing, and where, The idea, and there are certainly those of the Eastern tradition that would agree with this idea. Notably, a quote from the Tibetan Lama Govinda said, It's not that the dew drop returns to the ocean. It's that the entire ocean is poured into the dew drop. that is a very different perspective. That we know ourselves to be a unique expression and consciousness of the all that is. Call it God, call it whatever you choose to call it. And our uniqueness in no way interferes with being completely at one with the whole. And that's how we can feel the more combined with others, with everything we are, the more we are like ourselves, the more we feel ourselves. Right, if we don't look, I mean sometimes people can lose themselves wanting, wanting to fit in with a crowd or or just buying into something because it's what everybody else is, it must be true because they're all saying it. But when a person through Grappling with what life throws their way Becomes more and more authentic. I like I like the word authentic. That's a great word Because we human beings are really good liars And I mean, we're really good at lying to ourselves about who we even are and acting we can and acting and so on So we're growing in authenticity to authentically mesh with Authenticity our divine origin and destiny. And as we do that, we are more and more at one with every other consciousness that is also growing in authenticity as a unique expression of the divine. That is fantastic. And what a wonderful feeling to feel That as we, become more authentic and we become more ourselves and we become not affected by kind of day to day needs of being better than the other guy or this or that. We just are ourselves. We're, we're us. We're authentic and we're together with all mankind. We're all one. And, and that's, that's it. That's fantastic. The more we grow in authenticity, the more we're at one with others. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. You know, there aren't many people that I have met, Lynn, that can talk about these things like you do. And I mean that there aren't many people that can just come think this through and come out with these kind of things. There aren't many. I've been around a long time and I've talked to a lot of people. So I can tell you that. Thank you so much for sharing these things with us. I, I know that, that I'm going to listen back to this several times. And, and I hope that anybody who's listening to it will listen several times because there is a lot in here. There's an awful lot in here. And, I'm hoping that in the future that you'll come back and talk again. I mean, there's, I know that I had planned to talk about 20 other things, 20 other things with you. Those are all good things too. And, thanks again so much. We're, we're kind of running late on our time here, so I'm gonna have to finish things up, so, okay. Jim. Thank, thank you. It's been my pleasure. Oh, wonderful. And I have to say, you do a. Great job of conversing with your interviewee and to me, that's the key. Thank you. You, you engage in the conversation, good questions, good reflections, good, good recaps and summaries. Thank you. And that's a gift too. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. All right. Talk to you again. Thanks. All right. Bye. Bye.