Reference: Course on Subject Clearing
When you have a computer program, you can run it with different inputs and get different results. An individual is a “human program” running with certain “set of postulates”. Another individual is the same program running with a different “set of postulates”. If there are 8 billion people currently on Earth, then the same “human program” is running with 8 billion different “set of postulates”.
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Individuality
What makes an individual different from another individual is the “set of postulates” the “human program” is running on. There are also “animal programs,” “plant programs,” and “mineral programs.”
When you are talking about past lives of a person, you are saying that the human program was running in the past with exactly the same set of postulates as it is running on today. The individual is, therefore, defined by the “set of postulates” the human program is running on. Postulates go very deep. They define the goals and very basic characteristics of the individual. If these postulates change then the individual also changes. He is then a different individual.
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The Self
When Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita refers to himself as unborn and imperishable, he is referring to something without individuality that is the basis of all individualities. It is that, which generates the individual set of postulates and energizes it.
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The Individual
The individual is a “human program” running on a “set of postulates.”
A person in an insane asylum is as much an individual as a normal person in the society. They are different only in terms of the “postulates” they are operating on. Each individual is essentially a “system of postulates.” A person has a right to his sanity. A person is as sane as his postulates are consistent with the postulates underlying this universe according to the Principle of Oneness.
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Body & Past Lives
We measure lives in terms of the life lived by the body. The body is organized according to the blueprint carried by the “human program.” This blueprint is forwarded from one life to the next. From the viewpoint of this blueprint there are past lives when it was manifested as a body.
Such bodies, in different lives, have similarities and differences, just like, in one life, there are similarities and differences in the body from childhood to youth to adulthood and old age. It is those similarities that are thought of as characterizing the individual.
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The Mental Matrix
The “human program” and the blueprints it carries can be thought of as the mental matrix (see Subject Clearing the Mind). The mental matrix has several layers. The deepest layer is, obviously, the layer of the postulates. It has the greatest durability.
The next layer is the blueprint according to which the body is formed, and its various functions occur. These functions include how the various parts of the body operate and coordinate with each other. This layer contains the evolutionary history of the body also.
The next layer forms the higher functions known as consciousness and thinking. These functions have to be continuous, consistent and harmonious with the earlier layers of the postulates and the blueprint. However, in this layer, facsimiles are formed that influence the individual’s thinking and behavior most directly. The influence is adverse to the degree these facsimiles are not assimilated in the mental matrix. In other words, the facsimiles that are in violation of the Principle of Oneness, affect the individual most severely.
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Past Karma
Karma is made of facsimiles that needs to be assimilated with rest of the mental matrix. Usually they exists on the top layer of thinking, but they can go deeper into the layer of blueprint and the layer of postulates. These karmas come forward from one life to the next as part of the mental matrix.
When a person recognizes certain facsimiles from the past as intimate to him, he thinks that those impressions were produced by him. Hence he surmises that he has lived before.
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Summary
A body goes through a certain cycle. Some karma (facsimiles) go through a larger cycle. The blueprint goes through a still larger cycle. The individual “set of postulates” goes through the largest cycle. And the ultimate Self (ability to postulate and to become aware) appears to be eternal in comparison.
The key point here is that the individual is a SET OF POSTULATES, which forms the basis of the mental matrix of a person. The confusion of past lives may be resolved when the person understands which layer of the mental matrix, or the facsimile, he is identifying himself with.
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