The evolution of the human body occurred partly through the soul's influence on the endocrine glands until the ape-man was a three-dimensional objectification of the soul that hovered above it. Then the soul fully descended into the body and Earth had a new inhabitant: the homo sapien.
Homo sapiens appeared in five different places on Earth at the same time, as the five races. This evolved human is what the Bible refers to as "Adam". When souls incarnated into physical form, it would bring the divine consciousness (i.e., the spirit) in with it. Cayce referred to this divine consciousness as the "Christ Consciousness" or "Buddhahood" or the "superconsciousness". Christ consciousness has little to do with the personality known as Jesus. It means that a person has attained a complete human-divine unity. This human-divine unity has been attained by many people thus far - one such person was Jesus.
The problem for the soul entangled in flesh was to overcome the attractions of the Earth to the extent that the soul would be as free in the body as out of it. Only when the body was no longer a hindrance to the free express of the soul would the cycle of Earth be finished. This is the condition of having a perfect unity of the human with the divine.
In a smaller field, this was the evolutionary drama of free will and creation. In a still smaller field, each atom of the physical body is a world in itself where a drama of free will and creation is occurring. The soul brings life into each atom, and each atom is a physical reflection of the soul's pattern.
With the advent of consciousness, humans became aware that sex meant something more to them than to the animals. Sex is the "door" which new souls enter the Earth, a door unnecessary in other heavenly planetary/realms. Sex is the only means which trapped souls have of being liberated from their predicament - through the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
The plan for the Earth cycle of souls was a limited series of incarnations with periods in between of dwelling in other heavenly dimensions of consciousness. Reincarnation would continue until a soul's every thought and action of the physical body was in accord with the plan originally laid out for the soul (i.e., a human-divine unity, Christ consciousness). When the body was no longer a hindrance to the free expression of the soul - when the conscious mind had merged with the subconscious, the Earth cycle was finished and the soul liberated to move on to new adventures. This conquest of the physical body could not be attained until there was perfection in the other dimensions of consciousness that is a physical representation of our solar system. Astrologically, the goal for the soul is to attain a level of consciousness that represents the total expression of the sun and its planets. Whichever level of consciousness that the soul assumes, it becomes the focal point of activity. The other states of consciousness receded to the position of urges and influences.*
The human race was fostered by a soul who had completed his experience of creation, attained Christhood, returned to God, and became a companion to God and a co-creator. This is the soul known as Jesus. The first evolutionary transformation of ape-men to homo sapiens is who the Bible refers to as "Adam". This was the beginning of the divine consciousness into flesh on the Earth. The soul known as Jesus, was one of the first souls to enter into one of the Adamic races.
The soul of Jesus was interested in the plight of its fellow souls trapped in Earth. After supervising the influx of souls into flesh, the Christ soul took form itself, from time to time, to act as a leader for the people.
At first, these souls just slightly inhabited the bodies of ape-men while remembering their true identities as spirit beings. But gradually, after many incarnations, these souls descended even further into physical consciousness and the result was a decrease in their spiritual mentality. They remembered their true selves only in dreams and in fables that were handed down from one generation to another. Religion came into being as a ritual of longing for lost spirit memories. The arts were born which included music and geometry. This knowledge was brought into the world from incoming souls who gradually forgot their heavenly source. This knowledge had to be written down, learned, and taught to each new generation.
Finally, humans were left with a conscious mind that was separated from their own individuality as souls. This individual identity as a soul became the subconscious mind. The individual identity or awareness of the physical world became the conscious mind. The subconscious mind (i.e., the soul) influenced the conscious mind and gave it its stature and quality. The subconscious mind dwelt in the "suit of clothes" that is the physical body and only in sleep is it disrobed.
Conscious minds, left to its own influence, will work out the plans and desires of God. Humans eventually developed theories for what they felt was true, but no longer knew to be true. The result was the creation of philosophy and theology. Humans searched and discovered higher knowledge which they carried within themselves but could no longer reach with the conscious mind. This resulted in the creation of science.
Humans evolved from having an awareness of higher spirit knowledge to having only mystical dreams, revealed religions, philosophy and theology. This evolution of consciousness ultimately reached a plateau and humans generally only believed what they could see and feel and prove in terms of their conscious minds. Then humanity began the struggle of regaining this higher knowledge.
Meanwhile, the Christ soul continued to teach and lead humanity by incarnating as the Biblical characters named Adam, Enoch, and Melchizedek. Enoch and Melchizedek experienced neither birth nor death. Then Christ soul realized after these incarnations that it was necessary to give humanity a pattern by which they could follow in order to return to God. The Christ soul achieved this goal by incarnating as the personality known as Jesus, who became victorious over the death of the physical body by laying aside the ego, accepting the crucifixion of the body in order to return to God. Jesus created a pattern for humans to follow. Through the acts of leading a perfect life and becoming unjustly killed, this reversed the negative karma (i.e., the law of God, an eye for an eye) which came from Jesus' first incarnation as Adam.
At present, humanity is in a state of great spiritual darkness - the darkness which precedes dawn. Humanity developed a level of skepticism that reached a point where it forced humans to make conclusions that they knew was intuitively wrong. At the same time, humanity continued their investigation of natural phenomena to the point where conscious awareness disproved all the higher knowledge that souls had in the beginning. The free will of humanity is discovering that all roads to higher knowledge is leading toward the same destination and conclusions. Scientific, theological, and philosophical knowledge, which has no desire to join forces, are approaching a point of merger. Skepticism faces destruction by its own hand.
Humanity is at all times the total of what they have been and done, what they have fought and defended, and what they have hated and loved. In the three-dimensional consciousness of every human, in every atom of the human body, is a reflection of the soul and a crystallization of their individuality. Their emotional and nervous structures, their mental abilities, aptitudes, aversions, preferences, fears, follies, ambitions, and character, are the sum of what humans have done with their free will. This makes every personality, as the earthly "cloak" of an individuality, is different from every other personality.
The law of karma, which is Earth's law of cause and effect ("of reaping what one sows") also makes humans different from one another in their joys and sorrows, in their handicaps, their strengths, their weaknesses, their virtues and vices, their appreciation of beauty, and their comprehension of truth. Transgressions that humans make in life must be corrected in life, if not in the same life, then in a future incarnation. The Earth's natural law, not the law humanity or God, demands an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
This same law applies to groups of people, as they act together. There is karma for families, for tribes, for races, and for nations. For example, when a nation of individuals started a war in a previous life and are reincarnated, a war will be committed upon that nation. Only when such a nation is defeated in humility by a nation with justice and mercy, will the karma of war be lifted from the defeated nation.
Every person's life is shaped to some extent by karma: their own, their associates, their loved ones, their nation, their race, and the entire world itself. But karma is not greater than free will. It is what a person does with these influences and urges, how they react to them, which makes the difference in their soul development. Because of karma, some things are more probable than others, but as long as there exists free will, anything is possible.
Thus free will and predestination coexist within human beings. Their past experiences limit them in probability and incline them in certain directions, but free will can always "draw the sword from the stone." The combination of free will and predestination means that humans freely choose their own predetermined destiny to return to God.
No soul incarnates without having a general plan for the life to be experienced. The personality that a person expresses in life is only one of the many personalities (i.e., facets of the soul) that a person could express. The mission of every soul is to work on one or several facets of the soul's karma (which can be thought of as the soul's memory of its prior actions). A soul does not choose a mission that is more than it can handle or that is too much for the personality assigned to or chosen by the soul. Some souls can freely choose their own conditions in which to be born and complete their missions. Other souls who have made too many mistakes in past lives and who have become dangerously influenced by worldly desires, are incarnated into conditions chosen by law of karma at a time and under circumstances that are best suited to help them with their karmic debt. Their mission is seldom perfectly fulfilled because of the such a soul's large amount of negative karma. Their mission is sometimes badly neglected.
The circumstances and conditions that a soul chooses to incarnate into is usually made at conception, when a channel for a soul's expression is opened by the parents. When this occurs, a pattern is made by the mingling of the soul patterns of the parents. This sets up certain karmic conditions. A soul whose own karma approximates these karmic conditions will be attracted to the opportunity presented. Since the karmic pattern created by the parents will not be exactly the same the incarnating soul's own karma, the soul must take on some of the karma of the parents.
Conditions other than the created pattern are conditions that the soul must consider when choosing a body to be born with. Such conditions include: the future of the incarnated person's life, former associations with the parents, the incarnation of souls that it wishes to incarnate with, live with, and with whom the soul will have problems to work out with. In some cases the parents are the only reason for a some souls to incarnate. Such a child will be devoted to them and remain close to them. The child then completes its mission by dying so that the child's death can teach the parents very valuable lessons in life and of spirit. In other cases, the parents are only used as a means for which the child can leave home and go about its business in completing its mission.
The soul may actually occupy a fetus as early as three months after conception or even as late as a month after birth. In the latter case, the soul hovers over the infants body since birth to decide whether or not to occupy it. Once the decision is made and the occupation completed, the separation between the conscious mind (i.e., personality) and subconscious mind (i.e., the soul) takes place and the soul record (i.e., memory) of the child begins. The fact that some babies are miscarried does not mean that it was refused as a vehicle for a soul. Just the opposite is true. The opportunity to incarnate was taken away from the soul due to natural forces and this made the occupation of that body impossible.
The personality is a facet of the soul's individuality experienced in three-dimensional consciousness (i.e., body, soul, spirit). The other facets of the soul remains in shadow - in the background. It gives tone to the personality through its urges, appreciations, tastes, avocations, and intuition.