According to esotericism, life is one of the stages of Being. If you know the axiom: “From a mineral to a plant, from a plant to an animal, from an animal to a person … (and further)”, then it is not difficult to guess that the goal of Being, and hence of life, is perfection. But improvement goes along two main independent, but mutually supportive directions - mental and moral. Mental improvement - for the body, moral - for the soul. If we improve mentally during life, using the experience and knowledge accumulated by civilization, then morally - in the process of reincarnation of our essence. The source is Esotericism. Living Knowledge
“The main Doctrine of Esoteric Philosophy does not allow for any advantage or special gifts in a person, except for those won by the“Ego”itself through personal efforts and achievements over a long series of metampsychosis and incarnations.” (? E. P. Blavatsky. “The Secret Doctrine.” T. 1, p. 74. Publishing house "EKSMO-PRESS", Moscow, "FILIO" Kharkov, 2000)
Since our body depends on many factors: humidity, nutrition, temperature, radiation … and so on, our morality is formed from the choice of how we will receive what we need. The most effective way of moral improvement is through suffering. This is why most denominations do not welcome voluntary death. Having voluntarily left this life, you did not work out the program of suffering that was laid down for you for moral improvement. There is an opinion that reason and morality are one and the same. For this to become one and the same, morality and mind must be cultivated separately, then, having reached the required level of cultivation, they may become one. There is an assumption that the source of thinking (mind) is not in the body and generally not in the material world, at least not in such ahow we represent this material world, and the brain is only a repeater.
Indeed, according to the axiom: "From mineral to plant … and so on." our essence did not immediately begin to dwell in a human body and, therefore, could not think as it thinks now, and in a moral sense the same story. So minerals, according to our concepts, have neither reason nor morality, and their rudiments appear only in animals. But what is morality? It is practice, that is, a choice of how to act.
For clarity, I'll give you an example. Because our body needs moisture, we feel thirsty, which makes us want to drink. This desire prompts us to act to seek water. You can find it (spring, river, lake), get it (dig a well), buy, ask, steal, take, and even kill someone like yourself for water. What we choose will constitute the level of our morality. In other words, morality is an individual's choice of his practical actions. At the same time, with the help of reason, we develop scientific and technical progress, but if morality in its development lags behind mental improvement, then with the help of this NT of progress, civilization destroys itself. And this is the law of evolution, otherwise imagine what kind of suffering on a cosmic scale an immoral, but mentally developed civilization can cause? (This may be the reasonwhy we are not allowed to the moon and deep space).
And in order not to inflict this suffering on others, we are improving ourselves morally through them. And since it is mainly in the material body, hence the fear of life. There are two universal laws "Law of Conservation" and "Law of Karma". And here is what Theosophy, namely H. P. Blavatsky, says:
“Occultism claims that a). the life-atoms of our Life Principle (Prana), when a person dies, never die completely. That those atoms that are most saturated with the Life Principle, an independent, eternal, conscious factor, are partially passed from father to son, through heredity and are once again partially attracted together and become the animating principle of a new body with each new incarnation of the Monad. For b). just as the Individual Soul is always the same, so the atoms of the lower principles (body, its astral or life double, etc.) are always attracted by affinity and karmic law to the same individuality over a number of different bodies”(? E P. Blavatsky. "The Secret Doctrine". Vol. 2, p. 782. Publishing house "EKSMO-PRESS", Moscow, "FILIO" Kharkov, 2000).
If mental development is closer to the body, then moral development is closer to the spirit. The highest degree of morality is righteousness, and exceeding righteousness is already holiness. At the same time, the highest degree of intelligence is talent, and the highest degree of talent is genius. Our essence is spirit, that is, a particle from God, which at the end of perfection will merge with him, or maybe become a new Creator. And the soul is a link that connects the body with the spirit, the same silver thread that does not allow our essence to leave the body during out-of-body travel. Death is not a cardiac arrest or cessation of brain activity, but the breaking of this silver thread. In medicine, there are cases when doctors stated that the brain and cardiac activity was stopped, but the patient returned to life even after a few hours.
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There are many cases of returning to life in shamanic practice. I don’t remember, in "Technique-youth" or in "Around the world", somewhere in the 70s or 80s, a case was described when a shaman brought a frozen person back to life after three days. The two examples from the Secret Doctrine given above, in my opinion, confirm the laws of Conservation and Karma. But the accumulation of karma goes on during our life, and it will be worked out in our next incarnation. And what we earned in a past life, we work out in this one. “I will be rewarded to everyone according to his merits” - it seems that this is the case in the Bible, although Christianity rejects reincarnation. According to the Christian concept, the souls of the dead go to Heaven or Hell, depending on their merits in life, and stay there until the second coming, after which the "last judgment" will take place. (In the beginning, Christianity took reincarnation,but in 553 the local council of the Church of Constantinople recognized this as heresy.) Karma is not convictions and exhortations, but, roughly speaking, the carrot and stick that shape our morality.
But it should not be formed from the benefit of the type "I will do everything well and in my next life I will become a saint," but from a pure heart. That is why it is not given to us to remember past incarnations. A good example of the above is in Nosov's children's book "Dunno in the Solar City". To get the magic wand, Dunno had to do three good deeds in a row, but at the same time not think that he was doing them for the sake of the magic wand. And he began to do good deeds, but three in a row at first did not work out in any way: he could not help thinking that he was doing good for the sake of a magic wand, although he did three good deeds in a row. And finally, Dunno is so used to doing good deeds that he stopped thinking about the magic wand, and then he got it. Approximately the same principle and karma, only instead of a magic wand "reward" - morality-righteousness-holiness. And in the future, our essence passes from a person into a new carrier, no longer a person (maybe into an angel) and improves further.
Morality is precisely what (if, of course, a person is really moral) that makes us voluntarily keep within the limits of ethical norms and standards. For a moral person, stealing or lying is as disgusting as, I apologize, shit in your pants. Morality depends on the number of reincarnations: the more reincarnations an entity has experienced, the higher the morality of the individual. And if we assume that the essence (spirit, monad, consciousness, etc.) is our inner part, and the body is outer, then everything falls into place. But all this perfection is given through the suffering of the body. Reason is also given in order to kill the beast in oneself.