I understand that. What I do not understand is the tendency to take a trivially insignificant number of examples such as those presented and then try to form a general rule from it, applicable to everyone. In this case, it seems, there may be the desire to have a rule regarding the idea of reincarnation . . . that everyone reincarnates from, say, a lifetime in Nazi Germany to a life in post-war North America.
The Manual for Teachers says this about it:
"Changes are required in theof God's teachers. This may or may not involve changes in the external situation. Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God's plan. It is most unlikely that changes in attitudes would not be the first step in the newly made teacher of God's training. There is, however, no set pattern, since training is always highly individualized. There are those who are called upon to change their life situation almost immediately, but these are generally special cases. By far the majority are given a slowly evolving training program, in which as many previous mistakes as possible are corrected . . . "
A "a slowly evolving training program" would be more in alignment with the idea of recurrence.
The idea of recurrence is basically this - A seeming split second after last closing your eyes in the sleep of death, you re-open them with a slap on the butt while hanging by your feet, smacked by the same doctor, in the same hospital room, in the same city, on the same date these many decades ago when you seemed to be born as an infant child, of your same parents and with the same brothers and sisters. You live your life again with no "changes in the external situation."
You are right back where you started . . .
. . . and you get to choose again.
It is like the movie Groundhog Day, except it is your whole life and not just one day.
Manual for Teachers - 24. Is Reincarnation So?
