Groups like the Theosophical Society have been teaching a very advanced understanding of reincarnation for many years, and you can learn a great deal from them. However, my personal opinion is that, like the peanut butter with a certain percentage of allowable insect parts per million, if you absorb their teachings uncritically, depending on the writer you may be absorbing a certain small amount of errors. This would be true for my articles also, as it is for any doctrines or teachings given by people who do not have the level of spiritual development of the genuine saints and masters. Too much is lost in the translation, even when you faithfully try to paraphrase the masters' teachings and convey what you understand of the meaning. There seems to be the underlying assumption in Theosophy that these direct teachings can, in fact, be shaped into a doctrinal system and still have the same authority and transformative value (this is a popular assumption). I personally prefer to clearly demarcate which is my interpretation, and which is the master's direct teaching--also what I know from my own experience*, vs what I know second-hand from reading. If anyone expresses enough curiosity about what I write, I immediately refer them to the source so they can get the information--and the contact--first-hand.

There is also the separate matter of determining which spiritual masters are genuine, and then determining their level of attainment.

I can give a short list of spiritual masters whose teachings I believe can be safely absorbed without concern about introducing conceptual errors (except, of course, errors borne of one's own limitations). This would be a partial list, not exclusive. These masters are all publicly known and I encourage you to investigate each one's life and teachings. Bear in mind it is the responsibility of each person to determine these things for themselves, using their best intuition (including intuition from previous-life experience) and intellectual understanding.

My list of (contemporary) sources who teach from direct knowledge would include:

Meher Baba (my Guru)
Sri Ramakrishna, and his disciple, Swami Vivekananda
Sri Aurobindo
Ramana Maharshi
Inayat Khan (who seems to have taught around reincarnation instead of mentioning it directly, except for a very few references toward the back of a couple of his books, probably because it has such opposition from Islamic orthodoxy; or, as has been suggested to me, because he was concerned that knowledge of reincarnation would send people down a side-track).

It would be difficult to describe the difference between reading and absorbing these genuine masters' teachings, and reading philosophical discourses by intelligent people who have studied sincerely, and yet who do not have spiritual illumination or Realization. But there is a profound difference--the former's teachings are like windows leading to vast expanses of intuitive understanding, layer upon layer upon layer. The second-hand interpretations can't pierce your soul this way. I can't describe it better than that, you have to experience it for yourself.

--Stephen S.

*By experience I mean, not occasional experiences, as many people have had, nor even regular experience of the astral plane, which some small percentage of people have, but rather direct and continuous experience of the higher spiritual planes of existence, which is rare, and in the case of Realized masters, direct and continuous experience of God-Realization, which only a very tiny portion of people on the planet at any given time have. Thus I don't mean to imply that the Theosophical writers and others don't have experiences, but rather that neither they nor I have the type of experience I'm talking about here. Neither do beings on the astral plane whose teachings may be channeled by mediums, and who may or may not claim to be masters of this calibre. I have a serious question as to whether any genuine masters would ever teach through mediumistic channeling. In any case, I would recommend sticking to teachers whose lives one can verify, because beings on the astral plane (where we all go after death), having access to a bit more clarity and resources than we do here, can sound erudite and claim to be anybody, but their teaching is still not without those "insect parts per million".