Reincarnation Research from an Esoteric View

One problem within esoteric research is the belief that clairvoyant faculties are needed, but that is not necessary within most areas if there are enough leads through accessible sources, it’s a question about eyes that have learned to see.

The following methods are useful both with and without clairvoyant faculties, as deeper detective work may be needed to find where to look.

A prerequisite is that we need to get the necessary understanding within the area we want to research, an intuitive recognition of the person.

All physical activity tells about the spiritual reality behind it. It gives us knowledge we need to create the necessary hypothesis for the project. Many things we may think of as small details may contain vital information. Steiner leaves many small curious details in his texts that are difficult to interpret, but they are puzzle pieces that connects to other puzzle pieces.

Let’s take reincarnations research. It’s complicated as a great understanding of the souls involved is necessary if it should not be a guessing game. Many try without having the patience to make the necessary research, so they design a guessing system instead.

It’s actually a little like a criminal investigation where we create a profile to work on, like:

💫We create puzzle pieces with every bit of archetypal information we have on the incarnating soul.

💫Then we look for candidates matching this profile and we look for logical dependencies between the incarnations.

This is like putting puzzle pieces together, a picture is needed to make the theory possible. We are looking for the underlying patterns, morphological forms.

This is of course only possible if we have to do with persons who have a large footprint in history, like Arjuna, Gilgamesh, Zarathustra, Hiram Abiff, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Hypatia, Joan of Arc or Christian Rosenkreutz.

If we are looking at our own incarnations I think we need to have special knowledge about our own previous incarnation to get an intuitive understanding of our archetype and mission. With this information we may find even earlier incarnations.

Through Contemplative Inquiry we may find a starting point, if the spiritual world agree in your quest. It’s also possible, in the state of half-sleep, to ask if we have lived in a given year. The response can be given as Yes, No or a YesNo, for death or birth year. YesNo sounds like Yes and No is said at the same time, not as following each other.

Rudolf Steiner have written about the understanding of the individual, that the details is significant for understanding the personality:

We shall not easily find our way into the innermost nature of karmic connections if we do not pay attention — with the eye of the soul, of course — to the particular mannerisms of an individual.

Believe me, for the study of karma it is just as important to be interested in a gesture of the hand as in some great spiritual talent. It is just as important to be able to observe — from the spiritual side (astral body and ego) — how a man sits down on a chair as to observe, let us say, how he discharges his moral obligations. If a man is given to frowning, to knitting his brow, this may be just as important as whether he is virtuous or the reverse.

Much that in ordinary life seems to be quite insignificant is of very great importance when we begin to consider destiny and observe how it weaves its web from life to life; while many a thing in this or the other human being that appears to us particularly important becomes of negligible significance,

Generally speaking, it is not, as you know, very easy to pay real attention to bodily peculiarities. They are there and we must learn to observe them naturally without wounding our fellow-men — as we certainly shall do if we observe merely for observation’s sake. That must never be. Everything must arise entirely of itself.

When, however, we have trained our powers of attention and perception, individual peculiarities do show themselves in every human being, peculiarities which may be accounted trifling but are of paramount importance in connection with the study of karma.

A really penetrating observation of human beings in respect of their karmic connections is possible only when we can discern these significant peculiarities. From Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies – Volume I.

See also On Spiritual Research – Practical Guidelines