The Lexicon
Transformation and the path
Rebirth
Rebirth is the great pattern beneath all transformation: that nothing is born to a higher life without first dying to a lower one. The grain must fall into the earth and dissolve before it can rise as the green shoot; the old self must be surrendered before the new self can appear. Across the mystery religions, alchemy, and the depths of the psyche, this dissolution-and-renewal arc is the deepest law of the spirit, the reason every initiation passes through a symbolic death.
Carried by 35 teachers · across 6 traditions · 9 quotes
Christ tells Nicodemus that a man must be born again to see the kingdom; the alchemists blacken their matter in the nigredo before the dawn of new life; Jung saw the ego's death and the birth of the larger Self as the axis of individuation. To be reborn is not to escape death but to pass through it consciously, again and again, until what is mortal in us has been exchanged for what is eternal. The path is a series of such crossings, each one a little resurrection.
In their words
Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.Gospel of John 3:3
For death is certain to the born, and rebirth is certain to the dead.Bhagavad Gita 2:27
You shall have the power, out of your soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.Pico della Mirandola
Death is the only wise adviser that we have.Carlos Castaneda
In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.Carl Jung