Reincarnation and Destiny, Final

– Providence determines our lives divinely!
A country  is a river and its citizens are always new and different and come from many different horizons. Or, if you prefer, a country is like a house which is destined to be occupied by successive groups of people. For years the house is filled with a joyous atmosphere of music, song and harmony and then, with a change of tenants, the atmosphere also changes and becomes more prosaic or more turbulent. It is still the same house but the climate is quite different.
The destiny of a country can be explained in the same way: Greece (or Bulgaria) is still the same country geographically, but the inhabitants are not the same as those who lived there three thousand years ago or more. And this holds true for all countries… It is no problem at all for the Entities of the Invisible World to let one country slide into decadence while they raise another to great glory. Just why they do this is their secret…

When a human being is to be born into the world, do you think it simply happens like that – just by chance? The fact is that there exists an extraordinarily well-planned, well-balanced economy in the universe which determines the number of human beings that shall be born, when they shall be born and how long they shall remain on earth. Every human need is provided for in advance.. Perhaps you are wondering how the Invisible World can possibly foresee every last detail in this way.
Will you believe me when I tell you that it is all done automatically by computers? Human beings were not the first to invent computers; Nature has been using them for ages! The Cosmic computer contains all the essential data on every creature that exists, and on the basis of his past record it determines when he shall incarnate and in what country, what kind of physical body he shall have, what talents and mental capacities he shall be given and so on.

Then other spirits are assigned to supervise the proper execution of these decisions. They make sure that everything takes place exactly as and when it was planned. If there is to be an ‘accident’ they wait for the precise moment and, unfailingly, the accident occurs as planned. People think these things happen by chance, they don’t realize that they have all been planned and calculated in advance with mathematical precision.

If a particular child is to be born in a particular period, the electronic calculator computes the astrological data and draws up his birth chart, and the child is born – and even conceived – according to plan. All the elements in a person’s horoscope correspond exactly to the life he has led and the deeds he has done in previous incarnations: it is this that determines whether he shall know happiness or sorrow, whether he shall be injured in an accident or not, and so on – and it is all determined automatically.

‘But then what about liberty?’ you may ask. Liberty abides in the spirit; liberty is at work wherever and whenever the spirit manifests itself, modifying the pre-ordained processes, improving or accelerating them. But broadly speaking life is triggered and set in motion in the same way as a motor vehicle. Like a toy train, it runs along the rails, stopping here and there at stations, and coming to a final halt only when the spring has run down.
Now let us look for a moment at this idea of our destiny being determined ahead of time. As I have already said in one of my other lectures, we have the opportunity before we come down to earth of changing certain things, providing the Heavenly Hierarchies allow us to, but once we are born, we no longer have that possibility, our lives must unfold as planned, and our entire organism, our nervous, muscular, circulatory systems, our bone structure, our health and our intelligence, all are part of our fixed destiny.

This is why I say that you cannot change your destiny in this incarnation, but if you start to work now on the next one, if you hope and ask and pray for the next one to be different, it will be. During this incarnation you are limited, but in the next one, you will have everything you long for. It is important that you know this, otherwise you will never do anything to ensure that your next incarnation is an improvement on this one. Why do you suppose that so many people are in such terrible situations? It is because they didn’t know how to work in their previous lives, what to work toward, what virtues to develop, what opportunities to ask for in the next life.

Listen carefully to what I say, my dear brothers and sisters; listen and use it for your own good. Make up your minds to profit from the years of life ahead of you. Meditate, hope and pray for all that is best, because in this way you will be launching plans and ideas which will crystallize and take concrete shape in the future. If you want to escape blind subservience to destiny you must overcome your weakness and not allow yourself to be enslaved by the lowest levels of life over which you have no control: breathing, procreating, eating, drinking and sleeping.

The question then arises: what do we have to do to enter the realm of Providence? First of all we have to realize that between these two levels, between destiny and Providence, lies a zone in which free will must come into play, and that the principal task of a disciple is to free their will so completely that they are able to move, work and be active in the world of the spirit.

To summarize: all creatures (and there are many) who let themselves be dominated by their instincts and their physiological needs, who do no spiritual work, will never be able to change their destiny, their lives will unfold as decreed. Those who work ardently and do all they can to enter the world of love and light may escape. Destiny is cruel and relentless, that is true, but they can rise beyond its reach to subtler regions from which they receive beneficial elements that counteract and neutralize the negative influence of destiny. Of course, you could say that it is still destiny, for Providence is a kind of destiny – but another kind. Providence determines our lives also, but it determines them divinely!

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov,
Izvor Book 202, Man, Master of his Destiny
Complete Works 12, Cosmic Moral Law