I was intrigued by this quote, but being a little suspicious of the form of expression chose to try to ‘look it up’ and it seems that it is one of those ‘quotes’ that has taken on a life of its own but probably never emanated form the claimed source… (rather from a modified part of fictional/scripted conversation created for a cinematic version of play that was about Tesla: (i.e. “Parts of the quote do, however, appear in a 2001 film, Tesla or the Adaptation of an Angel (Tesla ili prilagodjavanje andjela), which featured a fictional interview between the inventor and a journalist from a non-existent US magazine named Immortality.” ref: https://www.aap.com.au/nikola-teslas-death-and-light-quote-dims-under-closer-scrutiny/)
Nonetheless — the interesting concepts alluded to in the quote relate to something that I have tried to articulate some thoughts on before — in threads of conversation in a Pantheist group on fb. For it seems to me that, even if one is not inclined to accept a simplistic notion of ‘reincarnation’, it is not too challenging to realize and accept that every molecule/every atom that plays its part in some material aspect of the world we live in today has undoubtedly been ‘recycled’ through numerous forms over the eons since the world cooled and life emerged.
There is also the well-known notion that ‘we are all stardust’, or as Carl Sagan put it “We’re made of star stuff”… in that the very planet itself and all that now exists hereupon is theorized to have formed as an accretion of various particulates (carbon, nitrogen and oxygen — the building blocks of our human bodies — along with other heavier elements) that probably originated in the hearts of stars that exploded over 4.5 billion years ago…. Since then –barring some additional ‘bits and pieces’ added to the mix through the arrival or meteors/asteroids that made it through the atmosphere to earth over the millennia– it has basically been the same material being recycled endlessly in the form of minerals, plants, animals and through evolution (and thereafter our consumption of the same materials) that forged our own human cellular form…
The part of this amazing process that then surely evokes the most thought, or possibly controversy, is whether or not there is another ‘thing’ that is not ‘of matter’ and therefore does not get constantly recycled in the same way… this being the idea of Spirit or Soul… My own philosophical cogitation on this matter (or should that be ‘non-matter’? 🙂 ) is a work in progress, as I am torn as to whether or not our ‘Soul’ (if such a thing exists) remains ‘intact’ as an ethereal representation of ‘self’ or ‘individual’… or whether, as part of their development, Souls simply return to Source after the material body passes… and then (as it if it were a drop of water returning to an Ocean) some ‘aspect’ or ‘echo’ of that Soul might sooner or later contribute to the formation of a new Spirit that enters into communion with a future mortal, incarnate form, when ‘That which causes things to be’ leads to such a link being created.
Whilst I suspect that most people might prefer the idea (IF they are not Atheist — and do believe in the concept of Spirit or Soul) that somehow we retain a kind of spiritual ‘individuality’ after death… I am, personally, not so sure… It seems more logical/likely (to me) that our ‘Spiritual essence’ returns — with its lifetime of ‘experiences, good, bad and indifferent’ having imprinted something upon it like the supposed frequencies that can imprint their energy upon water molecules — and in its own way this makes some small contribution to the One Source of all universal energy (that some like to think of/refer to as God). The sharing of our own personal ‘droplet’ of spiritual energy then ‘informs’ the whole Infinite Ocean… and in this way, those who come after us, have the potential to build on the subtle evolution in The Source that inevitably takes place… AND inherently this means that not only does all the molecular matter that made up our physical form, during our lifetime, get reused and experience a kind of ‘reincarnation’ (over and over again throughout the remaining time the Earth has to exist), but also our ‘spiritual energy’ is re-birthed but in a recombined/evolved form, to play its part in the individual ‘Soul’s Journey’ of potentially innumerable members of future generations to come…
But of course this is just my current mode of prognostication on such matters… and in some ways it does concur with the ideas in Tesla’s ‘imagined’ conversation, for in a sense Death cannot exist…only recycling and rebirth! ??