456—Writing the Script for Your Next Lifetime
Re-Incarnation, Homo Amor and the Four Epistemological Doors to Gnosis
(This piece is a lightly edited transcript of a live talk [July 6, 2025] given by Dr. Marc Gafni on the weekly broadcast One Mountain, Many Paths, founded by Gafni and his evolutionary partner Barbara Marx Hubbard. Thus, the style of the piece is spoken word and not a formal essay. Edited by Dorothea Betz).
Context of the Conversation About Reincarnation
I want to talk to you about reincarnation in some kind of deep and beautiful way and go the next step. We’ve been talking about reincarnation three or four weeks. Welcome, everyone. Welcome
Welcome, everyone. Welcome.
Let me just re-recapitulate for everyone who is new and then go the next step.
We’re talking about reincarnation as part of the context of the new Story of Value.
We’re talking about reincarnation as the realization—the scientific realization—that reincarnation is a valid, accurate description of Cosmos.
Meaning that when I encounter death and I enter into the valley of death and when I then walk through the door, the portal, which is death, it’s not the end of the story.
Death is a night between two days.
And that is not a kind of dogmatic claim, that’s an empirical reality. Death is not the end. The notion that death is a night between two days—that there is a continuity of consciousness—is supported in three distinct ways. I’m going to talk about one of them today.
Deep Philosophical Reflection Reveals: There is Continuity of Consciousness
One of the ways it’s supported is in very deep philosophical reflection. When I analyze dualism and I analyze materialism, I see that neither of them hold by themselves. (Dualism being the idea that there’s a material world and there’s a spiritual world. They are separate worlds. The spiritual world enters and controls the material world. That’s classical dualism. That’s one vision of Reality. There’s another vision of Reality, which is called materialism, the world’s only material.)
Neither of those hold by themselves. They’re insufficient. The world’s not split between material and spirit, two separate worlds. The world’s not just material.
Then there’s a third possibility: idealism. The world is only spirit. The material world is not real at all.
Each one of those suffers from very great flaws. The one that suffers from the greatest philosophical flaws is materialism, which doesn’t work for a lot of reasons.
If you study philosophically the nature of Reality, you philosophically come to the conclusion that consciousness is fundamental in Reality. As Max Planck wrote, “Consciousness is fundamental.”
Planck and Schrödinger, the quantum mechanics kind of pioneers, speak in different ways about consciousness being fundamental. Consciousness is fundamental and consciousness doesn’t end at death’s door. The material world’s also real.
Consciousness clothes itself in the material world.
But consciousness is fundamental. So, therefore, when the material manifestation of this world disappears, consciousness does not. That is, I believe, the best understanding we have of Reality today in the sciences. Even writers like, let’s say, Annaka Harris—who wrote a 2023 book tending toward the classical view of consciousness being an epiphenomenon of the brain, of consciousness, as being not fundamental, of consciousness emerging from the brain being an epiphenomenon, a kind of not ultimately real but just an electric expression of the brain—has even shifted her position. In a recent set of neuroscience conversations—I think 12 conversations—in her 12th conversation, she comes to the conclusion, “Actually, I think consciousness might well be fundamental.” That’s quite a dramatic shift from a person who is really at the kind of center of classical materialism.
Philip Goff, a very important philosopher of science, both in the neuroscience and the general philosophy of science, did a great paper where he talked and engaged in conversation the 15 different positions on this problem in the classical academy, and engaged all of them and came to this conclusion of this fundamental structure of consciousness, which then tells you that there is continuity of consciousness, and consciousness doesn’t end. Consciousness is not dependent on the material body. It’s housed and held by the material body, and the material itself is conscious. The material itself, matter is conscious. Matter—the root word of matter is mother. It’s the matrix. It’s mother. And mother is She. Mother is the living presence. So, matter is the matrix. It’s mother. It’s the living presence. We have said many times the thing is the word. In Hebrew, the davar—the thing—is the word.
In terms of deep philosophical reflection, we get to this conclusion that there’s a continuity of consciousness.
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Mystical Realization of the Continuity of Consciousness
The second approach is in terms of realization. In other words, when I practice, that’s different than philosophical reflection. I come to mystical realization. When I do the practice of gnosis, whether that is
· I’m a whirling dervish Sufi engaged in the intensity of dancing or
· I’m doing the sun dance or
· I’m in ecstatic prayer for 30 days at a time, or
· I’m in Dōgen’s meditation, or
· I’m in some form of profound meditative practice of some other kind.
There’s a multiplicity of practices across lineages, but virtually all the practices lead to the same realization. So, it’s not a philosophical contemplation. That was door one. The second door is the mystical realization of the continuity of consciousness.
Common Sense Knowing of the Continuity of Consciousness
There is what I call a third door—the common sense knowing of the continuity of consciousness. Now, the common sense knowing is not, “Oh, I just know it.” It’s if I reflect. But it’s not a philosophical reflection on dualism or materialism or idealism or panpsychism or what we call pan-interiority. It’s not a philosophical reflection. It’s not a mystical realization in this deep kind of transfiguration practice. A mystical realization is where I transfigure my body, heart, and mind, and I have full and direct access to the mysteries, and I realize the continuity of consciousness. That’s the second door. There’s a third door. The third door is common sense. But by common sense I mean it is an anthro-ontological knowing. Meaning, I know in my body I can get direct access to this continuity. I know it anthro-ontologically. I know it. When I follow my own inner experience.
So let me just give you an example of this that we’ve talked about before. I’ll give you two examples. They’re good examples. One example would be,
· I know that justice is a key dimension of Reality.
· I know justice is the rightness of Reality. Reality should be just. Reality should not be unfair. There’s something wrong if Reality is unfair. There’s something wrong if we live in a Reality which is unfair.
· I know that for most people in the world there is not justice within one incarnation. Does that make sense? I know that for most people in the world, most of the time there is not justice within one incarnation.
For most people in the world, most of the time there is no justice in one lifetime. I’m a Hutu killed by Tutsis or Tutsi killed by Hutus in Rwanda, or I’ve been lynched in the deep South or just any one of a thousand things where a person’s life is cut short abruptly, or a person suffers their entire life and there’s unfairness, and there’s betrayal, and it’s never set right in one lifetime. That happens all the time.
So, justice is the rightness of Reality. We know there should be justice. We can feel it in our body. There should be justice. Reality should be fair. We can feel that. Reality should be fair. One. Two, Reality is not fair within a period of one lifetime. So, that automatically tells me anthro-ontologically, in my body I know it’s not over when it’s over. That’s what Harry Chapin is saying who we cited before, the singer who always sings in one of his songs, “All my life’s a circle, and I have this funny feeling that we’ll all be together again.” And I know that ultimately, there’s what they call in Hinduism this kind of sense of a karmic wheel. There’s a karma, meaning there’s a balancing. Things work out over the course of lifetimes. There’s a righting of the injustices.
That’s a third kind of knowing. That’s an anthro-ontological knowing. Now, sometimes you get that through this kind of philosophical reflection we just did. But other times, you look at something and you just know.
So, I’ll just give you an example here. Let’s see a picture. I look at a picture of my son when he was young together with his awesome mother and with Sally Kempton, the great Sally Kempton, the great teacher, all three sitting on a bench. Now, I look at Sally. I just look at her directly in this picture. And Sally is not with us. Her body is not with us. I remember when I heard about the cremation, which many people do. That means that this body as it lives right now doesn’t exist. So that embodiment, that manifestation, doesn’t exist. And yet I have direct access to the knowing in my body— anthro-ontologically—that Sally-ness still exists.
My beloved partner and I were talking last night about her mom. We were talking about her mother, and she was talking about her mother on her deathbed. She has a direct knowing, which she says to me all the time, she can access her mother directly. She has a direct, clear access. She looks at a picture of her mother, and it’s very clear that although that embodiment doesn’t live, her mother lives. It’s not a mystical realization because I’ve transfigured. It’s not a philosophical knowing. It’s a direct, anthro-ontological, immediate, embodied common sense. It’s a common sensual sense-making that we have. So that’s a third way to know about the continuity of consciousness.
Empirical Evidence Shows the Continuity of Consciousness
But there’s another way. There’s a fourth way. The fourth way is based on the empirical evidence. We’ve looked at the empirical evidence in our previous conversations and we looked at a number of cases from one researcher among many, Ian Stevens at the University of Virginia, who gathers these multiple cases—about several thousand—which clearly point to the continuity of consciousness.
The stories are always about a child who, age two, three, or four, remembers a different lifetime in some village a couple of thousand kilometers away. And Ian Stevens’ team, starting in the mid-’50s, would then come to the village, and they would investigate who is the child and what is the child remembering, and are there any hidden connections between this child and that other village. And then they would go to this other village, and they would see, “Do the people that the child’s describing really exist?” And generally, they did. And was the child’s description of them accurate? And it was. And is the house that the child is describing growing up in as he described? Yes, it was. Often, you’d have a case where the house was painted red and they would take the child to the city to see what the child remembered and the child would see the house that he grew up in, and the house had been painted red. And the child would say, “Oh, when I grew up, it wasn’t red, it was green.” And they would ask the people, “Yes, it was green when the child grew up.
So, this enormous investigation, that pretty close to beyond a shadow of a doubt made it empirically clear, gave empirical evidence that there is a continuity of consciousness, that there is some form of life after death.
Now, to be clear, this evidence doesn’t tell you that every person reincarnates. It says that reincarnation is a possibility. And in these particular cases, there was often a child who died young or a child that died violently. There was some radical interrupting of the life in some way. And there was some sense, therefore, that the life was incomplete. And many, although not all, but many of Stevens’ cases are of that nature. So, Stevens’ research doesn’t point to a kind of universal reincarnation.
Reincarnation is a real feature of Cosmos.
So, what we’ve now done is we’ve pointed to four ways of knowing, the fourth being empirical. And then we pointed out that this empirical way of knowing that we’ve talked about in these previous sessions, the empirical way of knowing. Stevens’ research doesn’t tell us that everyone reincarnates. It tells us that reincarnation is a real structure of Reality, and that’s empirically undeniable.
In Every Moment I Write the Script of the Next Lifetime
There are four different doors to gnosis, to knowing this continuity of consciousness.
The reason it’s important to know is because you experience your life entirely differently. So, let’s say I’m 60 years old. Let’s say I’m 64. Let’s say I’m 42. Let’s say I’m 35. When you’re 20, you’re not thinking about anything, sorry. But although, saying that, you are. I was thinking about that when I was 20. I guess you can be, that’s not true that when you are 20 you are not thinking about it. But the more deeply you reflect on your life and the more accurately you reflect on it, potentially the more powerful, the more beautiful, the more good, the more true, the more potentiated you become.
So, let’s say I’m 60. And I think, “Okay, I’ve got two years left. I’ve got five years, I’ve got 10, I’ve got 15 years, I’ve got 20, I’ve got 25.” I don’t know. But I’ve got a period of time left. So, if I basically feel like, “Okay, what’s left is this next 25 years”, or whatever it is, then I will decide to spend it in a particular way, whatever that particular way is.
But if I understand that this ‘25 years’ is a gateway to the future, if I’m 72, and if I think the next year, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20 years as a gateway to the future, I’m going to experience what I do in an entirely different way. If I have the direct realization that in this lifetime I have the possibility—literally in every moment—to write the script of the next lifetime.
That’s the core of the Solomon Lineage. It’s the core of the lineages in general, that in this lifetime I am writing the script of the next lifetime.
So, this lifetime is not an endgame by itself. And it’s not a zero-sum endgame. It’s an endgame, or said differently, it’s a fabric of Reality, in which my story is connected to all other stories, and my story is connected to all past stories, and my story is connected to all future stories. So how I act in the next day, month, hour, minute, year, two years, five, ten, et cetera, is not how I fill up that time to become most comfortable, although I should have some depth of comfort, which gives me dignity, which allows me to create, that’s absolutely critical. But the goal is to be in a place where I am in radical joy, because—
I’m creating the present, I’m honoring the past, and I’m creating the future.
So, if I have a direct experience of creating the future, then I experience Reality in an entirely different way. I have to have, as Homo amor, an understanding that my continuity of consciousness, is an expression of the continuity of consciousness of Cosmos —which again, if you’re new, Homo amor is the name we give for the emergence of a New Human and a New Humanity in response to the meta-crisis. That’s a core structure of thought, which I’m not going to unpack now.
· There’s a first Big Bang, which explodes in matter.
· There’s a second Big Bang, which explodes in life.
· There’s a third Big Bang, which explodes in the depth of the self-reflective human mind. We don’t end with the third Big Bang. Reality continues evolving. Love continues evolving. Identity continues evolving.
· And I wake up to a fourth Big Bang when I realize I’m not just a Homo sapiens. I don’t just live with kind of practical wisdom or even kind of psychological wisdom, or even some general spiritual wisdom. I’m Homo amor. I am the Amorous Cosmos in person. I am Reality’s love story in person in my love story. I am the CosmoErotic Universe in person. The evolutionary impulse of all that is beats personally in my irreducible, Unique Self. I feel all that is. I impact all that is. All that is impacts me. I’m part of the whole, and the whole is moving through me. That’s the New Human and the New Humanity. That’s the fourth Big Bang. That’s the new Story of Value.
But to be Homo amor, I need to understand that it’s not just that I am the Amorous Cosmos in person in this lifetime. I am, in my continuity of consciousness, in my evolution, in the evolution of my Unique Self, I am evolving the Cosmos. So just like there’s a continuity of consciousness in Cosmos, there’s a continuity of consciousness in my personal life, which is aligned, which is an expression of the plotline of the continuity of consciousness in Cosmos. Let me see if I can say that even more clearly. This is the last piece. Let me see if I can do that even more clearly.
I Reincarnate to Complete My Unique Tikkun
So, I’m a Unique Self. My Unique Self means I have a unique contribution that needs to be made. I have a unique gift to give, a unique poem to write, a unique song to sing, a unique offering to offer up on the altar, a unique sacrifice, a unique joy, a unique way of being and becoming, a unique celebration; that unique celebration, that unique being, that unique transformation, which is my life for most people isn’t accomplished in one lifetime.
So, it’s not just that I reincarnate.
This is how the Solomon Lineage understands it, and it’s also how certain dimensions of Kashmir Shaivism understand it. And it also appears in other lineage traditions in some very beautiful ways, particularly some of the indigenous traditions.
It’s not just that I reincarnate, as in many of the Ian Stevens cases, when my lifetime was cut short in an obvious way. I was shot. I was murdered. I drowned tragically. I got sick. My life was obviously cut short, and so then I reincarnated to complete it.
But there’s another sense in which my life is cut short, which is I didn’t fulfill my mission.
I didn’t complete my transformation,
I didn’t give my gift,
I didn’t live the fullness of my unique story,
I didn’t experience everything that I needed to experience,
I didn’t learn everything that I needed to learn,
I didn’t dance every dance I needed to dance, and sing every song I needed to sing,
I didn’t love at the depth that I needed to love,
I didn’t cry with the tears that needed to be shed,
I didn’t laugh with the kind of belly laugh and peals of laughter that needed to emerge from me.
It didn’t happen, and it needs to happen. And it didn’t happen in one lifetime. So, I come back. I reincarnate in order to complete my unique tikkun which is my unique fixing.
So, in Luria, I’m born a tinuk. I’m born a tinuk—T-I-N-U-K—and I don’t want to spell it specifically that way. It means a baby.
But if I respell that same word, it’s T-I-K-K-U-N—tikkun—which means my fixing. So, I’m born as a tinuk, as a baby, to do my tikkun, to do my fixing.
My life is about my unique transformation. That’s why I am alive.
I am alive. There is a universal wisdom in the world, in the great lineage traditions, at the very depth of Reality—not the provincial fights between religions, we’re not up for that, that we need to leave behind—but there’s a shared deeper truth that all the traditions share.
Goodness Has to Be Trained Based on a Shared Field of Value
This is something I’ve been saying in one version or another for decades, where one of the leading kind of atheists in America just said, “Oh! When I’ve told everyone I’m against religion, I really meant the provincial fights. But actually, there’s a shared deeper truth.” By the way, the reason he said that was, he was pretending that that was always his position, which of course it wasn’t. And he didn’t quite have the audacity to say, “Wow, I got it wrong.” But that’s okay. But the reason his position was shifting was because he had this deep realization. I’m sure I understand why it shifted. It shifted because he had this very deep realization that we won’t make it through without a shared deeper truth.
In other words, people used to think 25 years ago, “Hey, we’ll make it through. We’ll just be decent. We’ll be good to each other. We all are going to be naturally moral. People are inherently good.” It turns out that’s not true: ‘People are naturally good’.
People are not naturally good.
People are inherently good; they’re not naturally good. Goodness has to be trained. You can’t train goodness in a universal world unless there’s a shared Field of Value.
It’s beautiful. Let’s go. Let’s stay close. It’s beautiful.
Unless there’s a shared Field of Value, which has a shared sense of what goodness means, unless that exists, you can’t actually train goodness. Since we’re in a global world where we all collide into each other, we’re living in the unbearable intimacy of a global world where a virus in the wet markets of Wuhan, or a lab leak in Wuhan, China causes COVID all over the world. We’re unbearably intimate with each other.
We need to train in a shared data set of goodness, a shared interior training of goodness, which means there has to be a shared Field of Value.
There has to be a shared deeper truth.
So, the people who led the atheist schools of the last decades, people like Derek Parfit, who was a great moral realist from Oxford, and his students, or people like Sam Harris, or Nick Bostrom, or that gang, they thought, “We’ll make it through without saying there’s a shared deeper truth. We’ll make it through as materialists,” because they just assumed we could get to a sense of shared good. We now realize that’s not true.
It’s quite clear in the world today that absent a powerful and potent experience of value, which can stand against postmodernism, on the one hand, which can stand against the postmodern emptying of value, the postmodern deconstruction of value, and it can stand against fundamentalism, which is also the hijacking of value to my particular group, “God speaking value only to me.”, we won’t make it through. Neither of those are in the Field of Value. Postmodernism is not in the Field of Value, and fundamentalism is not in the Field of Value.
Unless we reestablish a shared Field of Value,
· we can’t have institutions that we trust,
· we can’t have a shared discourse,
· we can’t have an information ecology, in which case, we have utter polarization,
and the entire thing collapses. It’s a big deal.
Four Ways of Knowing the Continuity of Consciousness
Let’s weave it together now.
So, part of the shared Field of Value is that the purpose of a human life is transformation.
The effort towards my transformation is one of the essential purposes of existence. We are here to transform.
Transformation is unique. It’s not just generic. Transformation is not just generic. No, it’s my unique transformation. So, I’m here for my unique transformation.
Now let’s put it together. I don’t complete my unique transformation in one lifetime. It doesn’t happen. Therefore, I’m incomplete at the end of my life. I haven’t fulfilled my mission, my purpose.
So, the lineages have this direct access to this direct knowing. Therefore, I understand implicitly that there must be continuity of consciousness.
That’s part of this third anthropological knowing. Remember we told these four kinds of knowing? Philosophical, realization, mystical realization, transfiguration.
· Number one, Philosophical knowing.
· Number two, transfigured knowing, transfiguration.
· Number three, anthropological knowing.
· Number four, empirical knowing.
These are the four doors, the four ways of knowing the continuity of consciousness. This last one I just talked about, the realization that I’ve got to complete my lifetime. The direct knowing in my body that I’m not complete at the end of my life. Can you access this kind of direct knowing in your lifetime right now in this second, right here, right now, in your life, in your body?
No, it’s not complete. It’s not complete. How did Dylan say it? You know, “What a long, strange trip it’s been,” right? “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” It’s not complete. I know it right now. It’s not Gafni’s telling me. Who cares about Gafni? No. I know it right now. This is what’s called a pointing-out instruction. I have direct knowing right now. It’s not over. I’m not done. That sense of incompleteness.
And there is that desire to complete, to make it whole. That is an anthro-ontological knowing of the continuity of consciousness, of reincarnation, of the fact that I incarnate again.
But here’s the thing. I don’t just incarnate again in this kind of bland, generic way. I incarnate again, not as Marc or Jack, not in my personality, but in my Unique Self.
The configuration of intimacy, the dynamic of intimacy and presence that is my Unique Self, some dimension of that reincarnates.
Maybe I was a man in this world, and I’m a woman in the next world. That’s a different conversation. We’ll get to that next week or the next time we talk about reincarnation. We’re going to talk about man and woman. We’re going to talk about human/animal. Really interesting. What’s that about? Isn’t it? There’s a lot more. We’ve just begun. But here, we just have this direct anthro-ontological knowing, it’s not over when it’s over. I know that directly. I’m going to come again.
I’m going to come again. But it’s not Christ’s second coming, it’s my second coming. It’s the Christ in me second coming so I can become Christed.
Wow! So crazy good to be together, everyone. So crazy good to be together. The greatest honor and privilege of my life is for realsies, just to be with you all. So mad thank you, mad love. Thank you. Yay!
Post Broadcast Commentary
We got a big dive today. But the huge thing about it is in terms of epistemology. In other words, we outlined the four ways of knowing and four ways of accessing the continuity of consciousness.
There’s philosophical kind of contemplation and then mystical transfiguration, hypnosis [DB1] through transfiguration; then three, anthro-ontology, and then four is empirical.
Now, philosophical contemplation, in a certain sense is also anthro-ontology, everything is anthro-ontology because everything lives in our body. And the fact that we can think is also a kind of anthro-ontology, but it’s not in the same way.
Let’s see if we can get that distinction. So, they’re different. Those four ways we outlined today are a very big deal. Very big deal. And then at the end, we outlined a couple of new pieces of the anthro-ontology of knowing.
· What’s the anthro-ontology of knowing that there is continuity of consciousness. That was the whole justice piece.
· And the other was this other form of anthro-ontology, which is somewhere between the anthro-ontology and mystical realization. I showed that picture of Sally, where you have a kind of direct experience. Where did this person go? They couldn’t have disappeared.
But that’s not a philosophical contemplation. You know what I mean? That’s not a philosophical contemplation. It’s not a mystical realization because a mystical realization comes through what? Think rigorously. Through what? We got to go deep. Through what?
Transfiguration!
These are completely different. Philosophical realization is I’m doing philosophy. So, it’s a contemplative, philosophical act.
Mystical realization, we said, is transfiguration. Transfiguration means I’m on a medicine journey. It means I’m transformed in some way. I’m completely transfigured. So that gives me access to gnosis.
Anthro-ontology is I’m not transformed, I’m using my kind of immediate knowing. I’m not doing philosophy. I’m not transfigured.
What’s the immediate knowing? “Oh wow! Justice is real. Reality needs to be fair. Reality is not fair in one lifetime. Well, then we need more than one lifetime.”
That’s not philosophical speculation on materialism. It’s not going to, “Let me work out the five things that undo materialism and the two things that are in dualism.” No, it’s not that. It’s a knowing, a direct, common-sense knowing I’ve got immediate access to. That’s anthro-ontology.
There’s a second form of anthro-ontology, which is, “I have an immediate knowing in my body of something, not because I’ve worked out the implication of it in a second.” Oh, fairness. No fairness in one lifetime. Must be more than one lifetime. No, it’s different.
Second kind of anthro-ontology is the immediate knowing I get from just my immediate experience. I see Sally’s picture. I know she’s not gone.
Those are two forms of anthro-ontology. And then the fourth form is empiricism. That’s a major thing we did. So that’s a big deal. And then we did this very, very radical piece on incompletion within one lifetime. We need to listen carefully. We all listen a little lazily. We think, “Oh, we got it.” But we’re doing very precise breakthroughs in thought. So, the critique of the Ian Stevens piece that someone wrote me was, “Well, reincarnation is clearly real. The only people reincarnated are the people who get killed young.” In other words, the people who’ve got this sudden interruption in their life, they’re incomplete.
So, what we pointed out today was, “No, this incompletion is not only for people whose lives are interrupted. But if we understand that there is a common truth, a deep common knowing, and part of that common knowing is that my life is about unique transformation. All the lineages have this shared idea, if you read them very carefully, that unique transformation is what my life’s about.”
And then everyone had a direct experience, “Oh, I’m not done in this lifetime. I don’t feel like I’ve completed.” That’s called the pointing out instruction, what we just did. That’s a pointing out. We did a pointing out instruction. We asked, “Do you have right now direct access to the experience that you’re incomplete?” And everyone did. We just did this short recapitulation. But just notice how much we did. If we don’t take that away from One Mountain, we weren’t at One Mountain. So, there’s a lot. We just did a lot. That’s a lot. So, let’s hold here.
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