Reincarnation & Astrology In the second of these articles on reincarnation the focus is upon the reincarnated human unit, the personality, and upon what horoscopy is able to tell us of the nature of any lifetime. For the purposes of illustrating a point, let us consider the matter of suicide and why, practically and quite apart from any ethical consideration, suicide is so ill-advised. A person who takes his life is left in the same mental and emotional condition - almost always negative - but now without the means of bringing about change. Rather than ending suffering, suicide consigns a person to even closer identification with it because he has removed himself from the physical plane where, in time, change could come about. The physical plane may be the place of pain, poverty and illness but it is also the place where release is won through hard knocks, hard lessons, suffering and grace. It is the place where the outworking of the Law of Cause and Effect will eventually reveal to us our self-limiting attitudes and sabotaging behaviour patterns. Out of incarnation the opportunity for change is much reduced: the subtle planes are places of refinement rather than transformation. Incarnation- reincarnation- assigns consciousness to a personality form, the means of participation on the physical plane and a 'package of opportunity'. These opportunities are provided under Karmic Law and are designed to restore and maintain balance, both within the consciousness of the incarnating unit and within the groupings to which that unit belongs. Compliance and recognition of opportunity is more than a matter of personal gain; it is a duty that we have to others. Just as the planets of our solar system orbit the Sun, so the energy principles or categories which create our consciousness when we are in personality form are designed to be organised by our sense of self. In horoscopy the sign and house position of the Sun represents the sense of self, the identity, which is consolidated by the inferior planets: Mercury and Venus - respectively, the messenger and the handmaiden of the Sun. The astronomical Mercury and Venus are the planets the orbits of which are closest to the sun. This new identity is impressed upon the consciousness developed by past life. It gives coherence to this 'package of opportunity'. Mars and Jupiter are the planets which represent the urge to move on and in this capacity they serve the Sun. Continuity is represented by i) the Moon and Saturn ii) The Ascendant and the Ruling Planet. The Moon symbolises the quality of astral consciousness developed by past life experience and Saturn the mental. To consider jointly the respective house placements of the Moon and Saturn in a chart is to see the anatomy of the past life consciousness which can be said to be the foundation of the present lifetime. The Moon and Saturn represent, therefore, the evolutionary aspect of continuity. The Ascendant (Rising Sign) and the Ruling Planet represent the supervisory aspect of continuity. They are the points of interface between the soul and the personality. They supply an energetic framework which gives coherence to lifetimes in different personality forms. The Ascendant and Rising sign remain constant over a number of lifetimes even though the Sun sign is likely to change, moving the sense of self into different zones of the zodiac and different houses in order to restore and maintain balance. The outer planets - Uranus, Neptune and Pluto - represent the collective or the transpersonal, energy principles which act as agents of a kind of change which appears to bypass the Law of Cause and Effect which cements personal reality. The principles represented by the outer planets introduce factors and situations which may be neither of our choosing nor within our capacity to understand their purpose. They take us, therefore, beyond ourselves, exposing us to possibilities which we would not otherwise recognise as opportunities. They define and enforce a group identity which we may or may not acknowledge or recognise. In horoscopy, the outer planets are reflections of higher planes of consciousness. They step down the qualities of these planes to make them functional, if not comprehensible, to human units in incarnation. They provide a glimpse of what lies beyond the perimeter fence of personal reality. A horoscope reveals how the principles which make up consciousness co-operate and conflict with each other. It reveals the relative strengths of past life memory and the new identity; the ease or difficulty involved in moving on into new kinds of experiences and away from what past life has made familiar; and the ease or difficulty experienced in fitting in with generational and social groupings. It is the blend of continuity and newness which each personality encapsulates which makes incarnation a state of opportunity and transformation. It is the state and the means of change. There is, therefore, a wisdom in respecting the shape and direction which the personality would give to a life rather than suppressing or distorting it in the name of some preconceived ideal, a practice encouraged by many of the religious systems of the world, the founding of which predate the awareness of individuality and identity which now exists in Western consciousness. In the West, because of the growth in our understanding of individuality and the strength of our personalities, we need to think again about the function of personality, and not simply repeat clichés which have their origin in Eastern spiritual thinking, the repetition of which , unfortunately, has become something of a mannerism amongst the spiritually aware, especially those whose temperament inclines them towards mysticism. We can denigrate our personalities if we wish. We can despise 'ego- consciousness' and can lament the fate which consigns us to this place of separation, sin, selfishness and partial understanding. Thinkers, writers, poets, teachers and followers have been doing this for centuries and, at most, they have reminded us that there are other planes of consciousness for which to strive. Their complaints and yearnings have altered nothing: the physical plane remains the place of suffering and learning, of purification and transformation, and the personality remains the form which permits participation. The partiality of personal reality permits a kind of specialist learning. Djwhal Khul describes the personality as "the vehicle of manifestation of the soul". Where would we be without it? This is a serious, not a rhetorical question. Consider the position of the person who has committed suicide.... Respect personality for what it is and do not damn it for what it is not. The horoscope will show how to get the best out of it.* * This statement applies to those of us on the evolutionary path. Methods to greatly accelerate the pace of spiritual development have existed since time immemorial. These methods bypass the evolutionary path and they all involve the destruction of the personality and the release of the human unit for all time into soul consciousness. Access to and progress with these methods is solely by way of a living teacher of the required calibre. It is a path for the very, very few and requires the dedication of the very life to this goal. There is no halfway house attempting to replace the authentic personality with a construct or concept is ineffectual at best and dangerous at worst. This kind of imitation remains one of the largely unrecognised perils of the efforts of Westerners to adopt, frequently without any or adequate supervision, the ways of the Eastern spiritual systems. ©1999 - The D.K. Foundation. This article, including this copyright statement, may be freely distributed but not altered, expanded or abridged in any way. We thank you for respecting this request.