It evolved through the ages as people started to wonder about life after death and what would happen to them, the spirit, and what was it all for. You know James, all the usual things you naturally wonder about at some stage in your life.
From your understanding of The Urantia Book, before Mary’s and my coming, when people died, their spirit sort of went into limbo, they ‘remained asleep’, waiting for the next spiritual age to commence which mostly was a long time in coming. Then when the next age began all such ‘sleeping survivors’ awakened to begin their new spiritual lives in the mansion worlds. So unlike now when you die with everyone automatically almost immediately awakening in the mansion worlds, which has come about because of Mary’s and my coming, those long ago people might not have woken up for tens of thousands of years. So the people they had left behind didn’t have any direct contact with them, they sought to speak to them in spirit but got no reply, with only other spirits from previous ages wishing to communicate with them, but of whom they were mostly scared and suspicious of.
And then coupled with that, you had spirits who were not from Earth, members of the gang of Evil Ones who directly brought about humanity’s rebellion and fall from grace, communicating such nefarious ideas, notions and beliefs as reincarnation as ways to keep the masses under their control. For what more insidious belief than to tell everyone they are confined to the Earth forevermore, that they will keep coming back to it over and over again, with the carrot dangling at the end: that if you are good and work through all your wrongdoing, all your karma, then you’ll be able to stop the reincarnation process being one of the celebrated and all-powerful spirits, who supposedly is at-one with God.
It was yet another ploy, like all the religious beliefs, to keep people denying themselves, that being the truth of themselves, by denying their bad feelings. And so many people and mind spirits look to the belief as a way to make them feel better about themselves, instead of seeking the truth of their evilness and personality denial, allowing themselves to feel all their bad feelings and strive to uncover the truth of them.
And as you’ve discovered for yourself James, when one starts to heal ones childhood repression, then one knows that all that ails you, all your wrongdoing, all your evilness, your whole negative state, is ONLY a product of this life, of your relationship with your parents. However until such people who believe in such falsities choose to look to the truth of their feelings and want to stop being controlled by their mind, such beliefs will remain, all because they give one a simplistic way of denying oneself whilst deluding oneself that one is spiritually growing. But as I’ve said before, you can’t grow in truth with and through beliefs, that is all of the mind. You can ONLY grow in truth with and through your feelings, and not feelings that are being controlled by your wayward mind.