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It’s not often that I get into a discussion about reincarnation with other people, but  last night the situation presented itself. My wife and I were relaxing with another couple (new friends of ours) after the four of us saw a movie (Iron Man), had dinner, and took a walk on the beach.

We were back at their place when the topic turned to politics and the U.S. Presidential race. That prompted the husband of the other couple to mention that John McCain, if elected, would be the oldest president ever inaugurated.

“Too old,” his wife said. It was then that her husband, a very fit and active man in his upper 60s, said that he wished he was 18-years-old again, but with the wisdom he has collected over his lifetime.

And that, to me, was a logical jumping off place to discuss reincarnation.

I pointed out that eventually we all get the chance to incorporate the wisdom we gain from our mistakes when we die and reincarnate. My wife shares this viewpoint, but our friends don’t. They’re Catholic. The wife of the other couple asked if I really believed in reincarnation.

I said I did, and that for some, it’s not a belief at all, but knowledge. I pointed out that my sister’s doctor remembers his last 16 lifetimes.

When I was then asked to share more about reincarnation. I put it in the perspective of what I learned from Meher Baba’s book, God Speaks, that all of creation is nothing but a process of finite consciousness evolving into higher and higher forms of consciousness. It’s all a process of self-discovery – of the unconscious becoming conscious

For instance, even a stone has consciousness. If you put it under a microscope, you will see that it is not lifeless. It is full of energy. Though conscious, it is a very rudimentary and finite form of consciousness. And after ages and ages it evolves into higher forms – forms required to express the increasing level of consciousness — minerals, plants, insects, reptiles, and animals. It is only after this long process that consciousness finally identifies with the human form. And in human form we reincarnate over and over.

Why? To learn lessons. More specifically, to learn lessons the hard way — by experience. You could call reincarnation the school of hard knocks. Until we get tired of the pain and suffering that comes from all of our attachments, desires, and the sense of separation that is created by ego, we continue to reincarnate. The lessons are presented to us over and over until we finally understand. Until we finally get it.

When we do finally get it, it makes up our intuitive mindset. It is only then that we turn within to seek peace and fulfillment; it is only then that we begin to seek our identity with the Divine Presence. It is only then that we begin to experience the inner worlds of the subtle and mental planes of consciousness, and eventually experience Self-Realization.

This intuitive mindset prompts us to seek the bulk of our happiness and meaning by diving deeper and deeper into the transcendent experience of the Divine Presence, by discovering that love and oneness is the only reality. When one has this intuition, the happenings of the world take on less and less meaning and inner experience takes on more and more meaning.

That is why we reincarnate over and over, so that we can have that type of intuition, that inner knowing that gives us the knowledge that we are more than the sum of our desires, attachments and identifications.

Our lives are not a crapshoot, as some people think. Our lives are a process, a series of lessons, designed to equip us with the knowledge to progress further on the path to the realization of Existence-Knowledge-Bliss.

We reincarnate so that we can know we are consciousness — consciousness endeavoring to know itself as Infinite Power, Knowledge, and Bliss. In other words, we reincarnate so that our mistaken identity of finitehood can be dissolved in the Infinite Ocean of Consciousness.

If anyone wants to come back to experience being an 18-year-old with that type of inner knowledge, then that would put life on a much higher playing field.