An unlit candle wick lit by the fire of another -

is the fire born or is it transferred/transmitted?

Think of this when you want to understand the mystery of reincarnation.

I am born. The fire burns.

How did the fire start?

I would suggest that this fire is a metaphor for the consciousness of the Soul, the Great Self,

and the candle wick represents the particular coming on of a mask of some kind.

And you might think of the Great Self as a vast river with little whirligigs and whirlpools all around in it.

Those little whirligigs and whirlpools represent the manifestation of the Great Self

taking on an infinite multiplicity of identities, personalities, (s)ouls.

Look a whirlpool! inseparable from the Great River.

Look a Lucy Smith! inseparable from the Great Self.

Lucy Smith's soul is the whirlpool in the Great Stream, the Great Soul, the Self, the One.

This is why Maharshi always throws questions put to him back to the source of the question, the questioner.

He wants one to find out, to investigate, inquire inquire inquire into "who is asking the question - who am I? ?"

One might ask him, "Who was I in my past life?"

And he'll say, "Who wants to know?"

Exercise / Method of Practice:

Imagine always with every person you meet and interact with that they are all actually the same person.

The same blackness of the pupil from which one reads this text

is the exact same blackness from which everyone else also sees.

The nothingness from which I spring, is the same nothingness from which every other person springs.

After awhile, you may begin to realize that the only being that truly exists is You, the Self.

Then, it occurs to you that You can never actually die.

Sure, this body may decay and die.

But to the degree one is identified with the body,

then that is like the turkish proverb that says:

He who sleeps on the floor,

never falls out of bed.

Identify with the body, and you are sleeping on a high bed.

When it is realized that one's conception of oneself is an illusion,

then automatically one begins to have the sense that "I will 'be' forever" .

The mask of the ego falls away like sand from my hand,

and then one sees through the egos of others, the false conception everyone is duped into buying as their identity script,

and realizes there isn't a difference between minds initially having been thought totally separate.

My friend said to me the other day, "we are much more psychic than we think we are".

He is right, I believe.

There is but one mind, the omnidimensional imagination of God. And You're That.

So, therefore,

reincarnation in this context becomes a simple matter,

because one understands that death is not the end, but actually an intermediary stage.

Because if death did not exist, then what we call living wouldn't exist either.

Like breath that comes in and out,

consciousness undulates on and off,

from small cycles like waking and sleeping,

to large cycles like being born and crossing the yawning grave.

Many worry about who they were in their past life, and who they might be in the next.

The answer is You were and will be everybody.

Probably smarter then, that we help and love each other, instead of generating hatred and consequences that will destroy the earth and skies of our children's children. If one thinks that death is literally the end, and shall have not to worry about what consequences ensue from their actions across the spider-web of effects that continue after death, then one can understand why people are so incredibly selfish, and their sight limited to this immediate time, not one hundred years from now, not a thousand years from now.

But you see, what happens? when one sees death as a necessary complement to the wave of life-death, which is an intermediary stage? Well, I think one becomes more sensible about what actions are taken in this immediate life, mitigating as much suffering in the world as possible - because you understand that it's not merely our descendants that will inherit the momentum and progress of the past action of the species, but You that will inherit these spectra of effects. That is the Real sense of karma, which simply means "doing" or "action". That's why when someone says to you, "well, it was just your karma", as if they think that you simply got what was coming to you, you can now understand that what is actually being said is "well, it was just your own action, your own doing". Because everyone else's action is also yours, because everyone is a manifestation of the selfsame Self. And You're That!

Hope this helped.