In the invisible worlds . . . men or women, young or old, are no more than centres of life radiating different qualities of energy which they have assimilated during their successive incarnations. (Yram 198)PAPOBEr • Yram

A person is exactly the same spiritually the moment after he has “died” as he was the moment before. (Borgia 186)LWUchanneled • modern • Benson

The loss of the physical body makes no difference whatever in the character or intellect of the person. (Leadbeater 28)APclairvoyant • Theosophy • Leadbeater

After death, man is possessed of every sense, and of all the memory, thought, and affection that he had in the world, leaving nothing behind except his earthly body. . . .

A man’s spirit enjoys every sense, both outer and inner, that he enjoyed in the world; he sees as before, he hears and speaks as before, smells and tastes, and when touched, he feels the touch as before; he also longs, desires, craves, thinks, reflects, is stirred, loves, wills, as before; and one who takes delight in studies, reads and writes as before. In a word, when man passes from one life into the other . . . it is like passing from one place into another. (Swedenborg 354)H&HOBEr • Christianity • Swedenborg

AD (channeled): Your personality - your likes and dislikes, your hopes, your fears - are still attached to you.

I see people come over. They arrive and have high hopes that everything is going to be different for them. However, nothing can be different for them because they have brought with them what they are. WFBchanneled • modern • Taylor

People arrive here with the same psychological and emotional nature they had when they died, although shortcomings and imbalances can be overcome through rapid learning. APOWSITC/EVP researcher • modern • Macy

Case 8:

S: Most of us are still far from perfect beings in the spirit world. The essential purpose of reincarnation is self-improvement. (Newton 41-42)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

I am the William James that was, but I am no longer William James in the same way that the adult is not the child. (Roberts 111)

I feel myself growing out of myself in a certain fashion. My adopted characteristics are becoming too small and cramped to contain my new growth and development, and I will move on most certainly to larger psychological quarters. It is not only the physical body we outlive, but the psychological house we have chosen. First after death we add new rooms and suites to accommodate out greater experience, but it is soon obvious that the entire structure has had its day. We must move out of it completely. (Roberts 159)AJoaAPchanneled • modern • James

In life, we are curious about what happens afterwards. After death, earth life is such a small arena of activity that we wonder how it can contain such depths and dimensions of action and meaning. I used to wonder at the hidden microscopic life that teemed in a puddle. . . . So now earth life seems incredibly small in that respect, yet amazingly active, packed with events as a puddle with drops of water, each seemingly separate yet each connected. I wonder that I ever put myself into that context. At the same time, that experience added immeasurably to my existence. . . .

The dead soon learn, however, that the mind itself is a vast threshold, reaching into infinite depths of experience. The experienced self is small as a tremulous gnat by contrast. (Roberts 156-157)AJoaAPchanneled • modern • James

[Whitton] regressed subjects to the interim between lives. . . . When individuals were in the between-life realm, they entered an unusual state of consciousness in which they were acutely self-aware and had a heightened moral and ethical sense. In addition, they no longer possessed the ability to rationalize away any of their faults and misdeeds, and saw themselves with total honesty. (Talbot 215)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

After-death mentation was reported to be quick, clear, and unfettered by the constraints imposed by the past-life personality, especially ego defense mechanisms. Participants felt they tapped into a broader source of knowledge that was somehow intuitively apprehended. (Wade 44)

Souls lose most of their negative emotional baggage when they shed their bodies. Although it is true we may carry the imprint of some emotional trauma from a past life into the next one, this condition is in a state of abeyance until we return to a new body. Also, a great deal of negative energy is expelled during the early stages of our return to the spirit world, especially after deprogramming during orientation.

When a soul once again returns to a pure energy state in the spirit world, it no longer feels hate, anger, envy, jealousy, and the like. It has come to Earth to experience these sorts of emotions and learn from them. . . .

Nevertheless, I have found two sorts of negative emotions that exist within souls, both of which involve a form of sadness. One of them I would call karmic guilt for making very poor choices, especially when others were hurt by these actions. . . . The other form of sadness for souls . . . comes from a longing to reunite with the Source of their existence. . . .

Their positive affections also undergo alterations. For instance, souls feel great love but this love places no conditions upon others for reciprocity because it is given freely. (Newton 43-44)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Memories of other lives lie piled up in my mind like books still to be read . . . and while I am curious, I am as yet too engrossed in the studies that I still identify as my own. I identify myself to myself as William James still. . . .

Therefore I can say that other lives of mine are waiting to be reviewed, studied, and explored as if they were journeys taken by me in other lands. . . . I realize, nevertheless, that some of those “other selves” may well consider my life as belonging to them and they may well explore the life of William James from their own standpoints. (Roberts 157)AJoaAPchanneled • modern • James

Walsch: “Will I know in the afterlife who I was?”

Yes . . . and who you have ever been. It will all be opened onto you—because then it will profit you to know. (Walsch 183)CWG1channeled • modern • Walsch

After death, the entire memory of the individual’s past lives is restored and he or she may even seek out friends and relatives of a former past life. (Kubis and Macy 53)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

Subject: Usually a handful of souls will come that you have had close karmic connections with in former lifetimes. . . . They will be there to greet you. . . . Your memory starts opening up to your past incarnations. . . . So you’ll recognize those souls. First, initially in the relationship you knew them in the life you just left. Then you’ll start remembering other relationships where you’ve known them. That’s part of the process of remembering all of your karma NOTE: lessons while you’re on that plane, so you can understand what you’ve just completed and what you still need to work out when you return to Earth again. (Cannon 19-20)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

You will become aware of your other reincarnational selves, for example. There will be emotional ties with other personalities whom you have known in past lives, and some of these may supersede your relationships in the immediately past life. (Roberts 149)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

There is an in-between stage of relative indecision, a midplane of existence; a rest area, comparatively speaking. . . .

Before the time of choosing NOTE: a new incarnation, however, there is a period of self-examination, and your full “history” becomes available to you. You understand the nature of the entity NOTE: the reincarnating self, and you are advised by other portions of that entity, more “advanced” than yourself. (Roberts 149)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

The final result of the life is known only when in that process of withdrawal the consciousness is once more centred in the ego NOTE: the reincarnating self. . . . At that time also a glimpse of the life as a whole is obtained; the soul has for a moment a flash of clearer consciousness, in which he sees the results of the life just completed. (Leadbeater 101-102)DPclairvoyant • Theosophy • Leadbeater

Subject: I would call it the Book of Life—a record of what you have done. . . . Everybody can go to it and refer through it. You turn the pages, and if I’m looking in it then it reflects what I look for. If another looks in it, then it reflects what they look for. (Cannon 47)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

Dr. Peebles: Self is spontaneously debriefed by self, and that can be very painful if the soul has left a lot of unfinished business on the other side, has come to the spirit side with very rigid attitudes, and so forth. . . .

As we have your ear, you will see us smiling, you will see us happy, you will see us embracing you, you will see us liking you—not just loving you but liking you—as you are, not as you could be. . . . The pains and challenges of life on Earth are looked at in a very different light over here, and sometimes it takes the returning spirit a while to find that light. . . .

The counseling is to forgive yourself—to lighten up, and not take yourself and life too seriously. (Pendleton 102-103)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

The Inspec: (Our ability and knowledge seem without limit, yet we know at this point such is valid only within the energy systems of our experience. We can create time as we wish or the need arises, reshaping and modifying within the percept NOTE: understanding itself. . . . We can create, enhance, alter, modulate, or eradicate any percept within the energy fields of our experience. We can transform any such energy fields one into another or others except for that which we are. We cannot create or comprehend our prime energy until we are complete. . . .

(We can and do monitor, supplement, and enhance the flow of the human learning experience, as well as other learning experiences of similar content throughout time-space. This we perform continuously at all levels of human awareness so as to prepare properly those entraining units of our prime energy for the entry and meld into the totality that we are becoming. It is the essence of our growth to do so. Such assistance and preparation is forthcoming from us only by request from one or more levels of consciousness within the entraining unit NOTE: we must ask for help from our reincarnating self before it can be given. Thereafter, a bonding is in effect through which many forms of communication pass between us until the ultimate transformation occurs.

(We know who we are, and one I laughs and we all laugh at the name this I had given us. We are an Inspec, just one. There are many others around us.) (Monroe 122)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

I am aware of a different kind of experience, not linear, and can focus upon and react to an infinite variety of simultaneous events. . . . This ability . . . is a basic characteristic of each whole self or entity NOTE: reincarnating self. (Roberts 14)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

John: “The same way that all of your childhood events create your adult personality, yet this is not the sum total of your being, so in turn the spirit NOTE: reincarnating self, which is the sum total of all of your past lives and all of your future potentials on the earth plane, is still not the whole essence, the true self, or the true nature. It is but the soul’s sojourn through the physical.” (Ryerson and Harolde 157)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde

I returned to my I-There NOTE: reincarnating self for a final question session. . . .

There they were, thousands upon thousands of lines, each glowing with energy, extending outward in many dimensions from where I was. . . . Some lines were bright, some dim, but each ended in what seemed a cluster of radiation . . . another I-There. How could I have missed such a connection. . . .?

You did not miss it. You merely perceived them in another way. These are the sum of all the personalities we have ever been, connecting with those we think of and those who think of us. The bright ones are those associated with you in this lifetime. . . .

You understand that these are not all restraining influences, by no means. When we go, all the love connections will either go with us or will help us on our way. (Monroe 191-193)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

We “share essence” with [our other reincarnational selves]. . . . Those who believe in reincarnation and those who don’t are both right. . . . Although in one sense we are not our other reincarnational selves, in another sense we are all that is contained within our essence NOTE: reincarnating self. (Hoodwin 318-319)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

A portion of you has lived many lives upon this planet, but the “you” that you know is freshly here. . . . The soul NOTE: reincarnating self, or this greater personage, does not simply send out an old self in new clothes time and time again. (Roberts 473)

Each Seth NOTE: incarnation would be completely independent, however, and each appearance would signify the creation of a new personality—not simply a new version of an old one.

Each would be inherently aware of its own potentials and “background,” but each would tune in to a particular point of that so-called background. . . .

Because you are usually so worried about preserving what you think of as your identity, we use terms like reincarnational selves or counterparts. (Roberts 617)

You are not any of those past selves, even though they are a part of the history of your being. They are themselves in their own space and time. They exist simultaneously with your own life. . . .

Your present existence, however, is highly related to those other levels of selfhood. . . . Everything that you do affects those other realms of selfhood. . . .

You are as different from those reincarnational selves, therefore, as you are from your parents, though you share certain backgrounds and characteristics. (Roberts 500-501)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

Alfred MacPherson: “How much of a past-life personality do you bring in with you? Very little, if at all.” (Ryerson and Harolde 248)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde

The experience of any given unit, constantly changing, affects all other units. . . . These units contain within themselves, in your terms, all “latent” identities, but not in a predetermined fashion. . . . Selves may be quite independent within the framework of their own reality, while still being a part of a larger reality in which their independence works not only for their own benefit, but for the sake of a greater structure. (Roberts 48)URchanneled • modern • Seth

Beyond the barrier there were hundreds and hundreds of what appeared to be waving beams of multicolored light. Uncertainly, I reached out and touched the nearest one. A rich male voice rang in my mind. . . .

Every beam of “light” was one of me, one of my I-There NOTE: reincarnating self personalities complete with a different life experience. Lodged within my I-There was a corresponding life pattern of each personality in great detail. . . . Each is a conscious, sentient being with an individual awareness, mind, and memory. (Monroe 151-152)

All I had to do was phase in gently, pass through the broken barrier, and I was inside, in the dome of light beams, in the heart of my I-There NOTE: reincarnating self. . . .

You are the total of what I have been, whatever or however that was.

The focal point, the tip of the pyramid of you and more, including you as you are now. . . .

We are highly organized. You know the memory layer when you moved in?

I do.

It’s neatly set up in serial form, and also by category. So are all the other existence patterns we’ve been through. You can look up what you want immediately. . . .

Consider all that fear stuff that bothers you. That’s easily taken care of. We convert it faster than you bring it in. . . .

We made the decision to become human again. We selected the time and place and organized the DNA mix—elements from the physical and elements from us. . . .

I was a court jester in France, in the ninth century. I was a good talker. That’s why I was chosen to meet with you. . . .

It’s your ride—you’re in charge. We’re not much more than a cabin of screaming passengers . . . shouting advice. (Monroe 163-164, 166, 168-169)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Within the personality, however, in the most secret recesses, is the condensed knowledge that resides in the . . . whole. (Roberts 36)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

I’m no more than a surrogate of you. . . .

When you began this lifetime, yes, you were. As you grew in experience, you became a brand-new personality. The mix you started with has been gradually melding into a whole. . . . (Monroe 171)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Any given year has its own variations. . . .

You could choose to be born five “times” in 1940, and each existence would be entirely separate, as you probed into the probable realities existing for you in the variations of that period. (Roberts 511)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

Dr. Peebles: It is possible for the soul to live two or three times in the same earthly time. . . .

This doesn’t happen consistently for everyone, but in some it does happen . . . with oh, advanced students, you might say. (Pendleton 113-114)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

I have an idea that there’s another one being human here at this time—another one out of this I-There NOTE: reincarnating self of ours. . . .

That is your reserve or substitute, you might say. A backup. But you are first in line.

This other . . . is it—she—female?

She is. . . .

She would seem like a long-lost sister. (Monroe 174)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Try to realize that this must be so—if you are an immortal soul—that this present personality is but one of many you have similarly used back through the ages,—but that these personalities were not you. They were only characters you assumed for the purpose of accomplishing what you planned to do. (Benner 240)WttKchanneled • New Thought • Benner

Since regressed subjects typically suffer acutely at the time of death, usually with real-time symptoms physically obvious to the therapist, their passage from experiencing self within the body of the past-life personality to an exterior locus marked the immediate cessation of the physical pain they were feeling. Furthermore, emotional involvement and self-identification with the deceased personality also diminished as the point of view shifted from that of actor to observer. . . .

The relief from physical sensation was coupled with a sense of emotional peace. (Wade 38-39)

The experienced personality shift reduced the former persona to a subpersonality wholly owned, both as an object and a former state, by the more complete after-death self. In the after-death mode, regression subjects experienced their deceased personality as a rather immature, unrefined version of themselves. They identified with the deceased personality to the extent of accepting it as a part of themselves formerly known subjectively yet now viewed objectively. . . .

The after-death self was characterized by a lack of ego investment in the past-life personality, which pierced the defense mechanisms of the defunct persona. In the after-death mode, subjects could see their former self with great objectivity. Yet this unblinking assessment was not judgmental in a harsh way, but accepting of the deceased’s foibles. The post-death self took full responsibility for having been what was now viewed as a rather pathetic person. . . .

. . . Although these assessments were characterized by acceptance, they were often accompanied by feelings of remorse or regret. The after-death self had a distinctly broader perspective on life than the regressed personality had had while it was alive, a feature that does not appear in the OBE phase of NDEs.

Self-identification

Regressed Post-Death Self: Two selves; after-death self considers regressed personality as a lesser subpersonality.

NDE Post-Death Self: Continuation of same self after death.
 

Point of View

Regressed Post-Death Self: Assessor of regressed personality.

NDE Post-Death Self: Actor enmeshed in here-and-now.
 

Context

Regressed Post-Death Self: Beyond and outside of biographical life; lessons or opportunities available given the circumstances of that life; summary or overarching view of themes, few specific acts.

NDE Post-Death Self: Immediate life events; during life review, opportunities are seen as used or wasted, but as specific acts, from which themes may be deduced.
 

Personality Traits

Regressed Post-Death Self: Detached intellect; more mature than in life . . . self but little ego.

NDE Post-Death Self: Detached intellect; same maturity as in life. . . . Some are still emotionally attached, disturbed to be dead. (Wade 45)

The omniscience, wisdom, and broadened perspective displayed by the regressed post-death self is in marked contrast to the concern with immediate events displayed during the OBE portion of NDEs. (Wade 49)JoNDE-JWresearcher • modern • Wade

The ego NOTE: reincarnating self is himself a developing entity, and . . . in the case of most of us he is scarcely more than a germ of what he is to be one day. (Leadbeater 14)Dclairvoyant • Theosophy • Leadbeater

According to . . . reincarnation, those fruits of experience which we have transformed into enduring qualities mark the growth or evolution of the individual self. These are retained from life to life within the casual body NOTE: reincarnating self which becomes a composite of the highest qualities of the Self; insight, intuition or direct knowing, creativity, intentionality, aspiration to God or the Good, and the purest forms of love and compassion. (Karagulla and Kunz 65-66)C&HEFclairvoyant • modern • Karagulla & Kunz

Every possible situation is here, every emotion. There is nothing you can encounter in an Earth life that isn’t stored here . . . in fifty different ways. (Monroe 173)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Now besides this physical genetic structure, there is an inner bank of psychic information that in your terms would contain the “past” history—the reincarnational history—of the individual. This provides an overall reservoir of psychic characteristics, leanings, abilities, knowledge, that is as much a part of the individual’s heritage as the genetic structure is a part of the physical heritage. (Roberts 271)DEVF1channeled • modern • Seth

Your experiences are your own. Through you they become a part of the experience of the greater identity, but its reality also “originally” gave you your physical existence, as you gave your children physical life. . . .

Your individual experience then becomes a part of your own greater personage, but at the same time you unconsciously draw upon the knowledge of that personage and use it for your purposes. . . . You are unconsciously aware of the experiences of “your” counterparts NOTE: incarnations, as they are of yours, and you use that information to round out your own. (Roberts 472)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

So-called present time is thickened, then, by a psychological realization on deep levels of the psyche that all events are interrelated, and that the reincarnational experiences of any given individual provide a rich source of experience from which each person at least unconsciously draws. (Roberts 428)DEVF2channeled • modern • Seth

Acharya: The causal body NOTE: reincarnating self changes every life merely by the addition to it of the experience the man has accumulated during his last incarnation: for this reason we sometimes refer to it as the reservoir of knowledge. An evolved man can tap this reservoir at will and draw down to the physical level the experiences of his past lives; this enables him to avoid having to learn certain things every time he has a new physical brain, for, in itself, the brain has no memory of past experiences. . . .

This ego, or individuality, overshadows and guides that personality to the best of his ability, within the limits allowed by the free will which is granted to all men. (Richelieu 185)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu

The grasp which the ego NOTE: reincarnating self has of his various instruments NOTE: incarnations, and, therefore, his influence over them, is naturally small in his earlier stages. Neither his mind nor his passions are thoroughly under his control; indeed, the average man . . . allows himself to be swept hither and thither just as his lower thoughts or desires suggest. Consequently, in sleep the different parts of the mechanism which we have mentioned are very apt to act almost entirely on their own account without reference to him. (Leadbeater 17)Dclairvoyant • Theosophy • Leadbeater

When I phased over into the I-There NOTE: reincarnating self of me, finding each [personality] required merely the thought of that pattern in my present life activity. Some of them were familiar, as I knew of them as driving forces in my present life experience. (Monroe 152)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

We can show you a sample of the support you have here, in our own cluster. . . .

Thousands of hands reaching out to touch me . . . eyes staring at me with joy and hope . . . overwhelming radiance I know as love sweeping over me and into every part of my being . . . all of these I am . . . we are. . . .

Is there more?

More than ten thousand times more. All the other clusters you saw that are bonded to us. (Monroe 196-197)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Acharya: When he returns to this plane he comes as a child without possessions other than the experience gained in his previous lives, experience stored by his higher self in the reservoir of knowledge which, as he gradually evolves, he is more and more able to bring down to the physical level. (Richelieu 23)

Acharya: The lessons he learnt from these pictures of the past life and built into the structure of his permanent atom—that reservoir of knowledge which contains the essence of his experiences in all his past lives—and when the time comes, in a future life, for him to make decisions on similar problems, the voice of conscience, which is the warning sent to him by the ego . . . ensures that similar mistakes are not made a second time. (Richelieu 186-187)

Acharya: A man who has a sensitive conscience and who listens to it, must be an old soul, for he could not have an efficient conscience unless he had much experience in the past lives in which his conscience, or reservoir of knowledge, was built up. (Richelieu 13)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu

Subject: If the lessons you were learning were finished then there would be a casting-off of the experiences which taught those lessons, and an assuming of new experiences to learn the more advanced lessons. (Cannon 22)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

“Time is your name for the motion of consciousness. Every possible event that can happen in space and time happens now, at once, simultaneous. There is no past, there is no future, only now. . . .”

We looked. Below us, underwater, turned those endless paths on the ocean floor.

“The pattern?” said Leslie. “Under the water? Oh! Our choices! The pattern represents the paths we took, the turns we made! And every possible other turn we could have made, that we have made in. . . .”

“. . . parallel lifetimes?” I asked, watching pieces fall together. “Alternate lifetimes!”

The pattern sprawled majestically below us; we goggled down in wonder.

“We fly up high,” I said, trembling with insight, “and we have perspective! We see every choice and fork and crossroad. But the lower we fly, the more we lose perspective. And when we land, our perspective on all the other choices is gone! We focus on detail: daily, hourly, minute-ly detail, alternate lifetimes forgotten!” . . .

“Nothing in spacetime is really there,” [Pye] said. “The pattern is a visual aid you’ve built, it’s your way of understanding simultaneous lifetimes. It’s a metaphor of flight because you love flying. When you land, your seaplane floats above the pattern, and you’re observers, you’re ghosts in your alternate worlds. You can learn from your other aspects without taking their surroundings for real. When you’ve learned what you need to learn, you remember your seaplane, push the throttle forward and you’re swept into the air, back with your grand perspective. . . .

“There are as many metaphors for lives in spacetime as there are disciplines that fascinate you. . . . If you loved photography, your metaphor could have turned on levels of focus. Focus makes one point sharp and everything else a blur. We focus on one lifetime and we think that’s all there is. But all those other aspects, the misty ones we take for dreams and wishes and might-have-beens, they’re as real as any other. We choose our focus.” (Bach 46, 48-49)

“That whole pattern is us?” said Leslie, dumbfounded. “As far as we see, as far as we fly, the pattern is our choices?”

[Pye] nodded. . . .

“What about everybody else, Pye? How many lives can there be in one universe?”

She looked at me puzzled, as if she didn’t understand my question. “How many lives in the universe, Richard?” she asked. “One.” (Bach 52)Owisdom • modern • Bach

The reincarnational structure is a psychological one. It can not be understood in any other terms. . . .

Reincarnational lives are indeed alternate presents. . . . NOTE: They are presents because a consciousness is focused there.

Because time is open-ended . . . you can also affect what you would think of as past reincarnational selves, and at times react in and to their environment. You would usually do this in a dream state. . . .

Strong emotional associations can often trigger such responses. (Roberts 393-394)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

I say for example that I am aware of their past and future actions and thoughts, and yet what I am aware of, actually, are ever-shifting and changing patterns, both in the future and in the past.

Some of the events that I see connected very clearly with these persons in the future may not, in your physical system, occur. They exist as probabilities, as potentials, actualized in thoughts but not turned into definite physical form. I told you that no events were predetermined. I would have to tune into a future date, in your terms, and probe it with all of its ramifications in order to ascertain which of the probable actions I saw in your earlier would be actualized in your later. (Roberts 297-298)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

There is only One Soul. Yet what you call the individuated soul is huge, hovering over, in, and through hundreds of physical forms. . . .

Some of the physical forms enveloped by your soul are “living now,” in your understanding. Others individuated in forms that are now what you would call “dead.” And some have enveloped forms that live in what you call the “future.” It’s all happening right now, of course. . . .

Some of these are the “other lives” you’ve lived “before.” And some are not. And other parts of your soul are enveloping bodies that will be alive in what you call your future. And still others are embodied in different forms living on your planet right now. (Walsch 196-197)CWG3channeled • modern • Walsch

You are multipersons. You exist in many times and places at once. . . . Your inner reality straddles their reality, while it also serves as a psychic world in which they can grow. . . .

All directions taken . . . are good. . . . In your terms, it may seem as if there are progressions, or consecutive steps of development, in which more mature comprehensive selves will emerge. You are a part of those selves now. . . .

There are, then, stratas of consciousness existing at once. The ones you are not aware of yet seem more progressed, developed than your own. . . . You can know them as you begin to stretch your concepts of personhood and awareness. In terms of time you have many bodies, as you are born and reborn in earth experience. (Roberts 51)URchanneled • modern • Seth

The soul is often compared to the Sun; its various incarnations are like the planets. From the perspective of a planet, all the other planets are either ahead of it or behind it in their orbits. But when the soul remembers its True Nature, these other lifetimes can be experienced simultaneously from its other-dimensional perspective. (MSI 340-341)Ewisdom • modern, Hindu • Isham

You are closer to some counterparts NOTE: incarnations than others. . . .

Telepathic messages flash more quickly from one counterpart to another. (Roberts 472-473)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

As I worked with one woman for a year on merely 26 lives, they began to blur together and I started to have difficulty distinguishing them from each other. I could see how they each influenced the other and how they were components of the whole integrated personality. (Cannon 46-47)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

The “structure” of earthly tuned consciousness formed the phenomena of “the self.”

What was needed was a highly focused, precisely tuned physical self that could operate efficiently in a space and time scheme. . . . A self, however, that in one way or another must be supported by realms of information and knowledge of a kind that was basically independent of time and space. A knowledge indispensable, and yet a knowledge that could not be allowed to distract the physical focus. . . .

You could never move as quickly as you do if you had to consciously work all the muscles involved in motion—or in speech, or in any such bodily performance. You certainly could not communicate on such a physical level if you first had to be aware of all of speech’s mechanisms, working them consciously before a word was uttered. Yet you had to have that kind of knowledge, and you had to have it in a way that did not intrude upon your conscious thoughts.

Basically there are no real divisions to the self, but for the sake of explanation we must speak of them in those terms. (Roberts 197)DEVF1channeled • modern • Seth

In the materialization of personality through various reincarnations only the ego NOTE: physical self and layers of personal subconscious NOTE: likely referring to the astral/dream self adapt new characteristics. Other portions retain their experience, identity, and knowledge. The ego, in fact, receives much of its stability because of this retention. Were it not for experiences in other lives on the part of deeper layers of the self, the ego would find it almost impossible to relate to other individuals, and the cohesive nature of society would not exist. (Roberts 305)SD&Pchanneled • modern • Seth

Because your greater identity is aware of its probable existences, you are in matter and out of it at the same time—in time and out of it.

You have a greater identity outside of your context, yet a part of it is inside your context, as you. (Roberts 43)URchanneled • modern • Seth

The private oracle is the voice of the inner multidimensional self NOTE: reincarnating self—the part of each person not fully contained in his or her personhood, the part of the unknown self-structure out of which personhood, with its physical alliance, springs. Basically that portion of the psyche is outside of space and time, while enabling you to operate in it. . . .

Because of its position it has great powers of communication, both as a receiver and as a sender. (Roberts 210)URchanneled • modern • Seth

The ego NOTE: physical self chooses channels of reception with great discrimination, and again, it censors anything which it feels is a threat to its dominance. . . . The ego . . . cannot make swift decisions as can the intuitive self. Therefore, it perceives events almost in slow motion. (Roberts 272)SD&Pchanneled • modern • Seth

Were it not for the experience of this probable self, and for its information given via the dreaming self to the subconscious, then it would be most difficult for the ego NOTE: physical self to come to any clear decision in daily life. . . .

This probable self has operated in each reincarnation . . . and has at its command literally millions of probable situations and conditions upon which to make value judgements. Of itself, however, it does not make the decision as to whether or not a particular event will be made physical. It merely passes on the information that it has received through experience. . . .

The subconscious makes its own judgements and passes these on with the data. Then the ego makes its decision. . . . On occasion, when an unwise decision is made by the ego, the subconscious will change it. (Roberts 304)SD&Pchanneled • modern • Seth

Space and time continually expand, and all probabilities of any given action are actualized in one reality or another. (Roberts 443)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

Is it possible that our unconscious mind is not only aware of the rough outline of our destiny, but actually steers us toward its fulfillment? . . . In a statistical study of 28 serious U.S. railroad accidents, parapsychologist William Cox found that significantly fewer people took trains on accident days than on the same day in previous weeks.

Cox’s finding suggests that we all may be constantly unconsciously precognizing the future and making decisions based on that information: some of us opting to avoid mishap, and perhaps some . . . choosing to experience negative situations to fulfill other unconscious designs and purposes. (Talbot 216)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

The private psyche contains within it hints and glimpses of other alternate realities. These operate as secondary codes, so to speak, beneath the existence that you officially recognize. Such secondary systems can tell you much about the potentials of human reality, those that are latent but can at any time be “raised” to primary importance. . . .

Those paths are latent or secondary, however, within your own private and mass experience. They reside within you, presenting you with alternate realities that you may or may not choose privately or en masse, as you prefer. (Roberts 300-301)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

Studies have shown that one and a half seconds before we “decide” to move one of our muscles, such as lift a finger, our brain has already started to generate the signals necessary to accomplish the movement. Again, who is making the decision, the conscious mind or the unconscious mind?

The human energy field responds to stimuli even before the brain does. (Talbot 192)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

Personalities are not static things. . . . They are not as nicely nor as nearly packaged out, one to a body, as your psychologists believe. They constantly change. They grow. They make decisions. They use the physical body fully, or they partially depart according to their own inner needs and development.

When psychic gestalts are formed they are not static. They make different alliances until they find their place in the whole identity that serves their purposes. (Roberts 719)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

In the future . . . the ego NOTE: physical self and intellect will expand to contain, use and appreciate all the other portions of the self which they now mistrust. Individual identity will expand to include a greater variety of impulses and stimuli NOTE: higher sense perception. The ego will become more of an organizer, in general, letting in, literally, a barrage of experiences and forming them into meaningful patterns. Now it fears such experiences because it is not certain of its strength or of its ability to organize them. (Roberts 272)

Jane: “One night, Rob asked Seth how our own egos had changed as a result of our sessions.” . . .

The ego NOTE: physical self becomes more like the inner ego and less like its old self. . . . It accepts large portions of reality that it previously denied. . . . It has changed chemically and electromagnetically. Now it is far more open to inner data. Once this freedom is achieved, the ego can never return to its old state. . . .

The next step is taken when identity is able to include within itself the intimate knowledge of all incarnations. (Roberts 310-311)SD&Pchanneled • modern • Seth

Consciousness is able to hold its own sense of identity by accepting one probability, one physical life . . . and maintaining its identity through a lifetime. . . . The consciousness also learns to handle alternate moments as it “matures.” As it does so mature it forms a new, larger framework of identity. (Roberts 30)

They begin a process in which other neurological pulses are to some degree recognized. . . .

In the beginning the glimpses may be very brief, and the sense experience misty. (Roberts 81)

You should also experience an acceleration of consciousness . . . as you read it, a growing sense of familiarity. (Roberts 78)URchanneled • modern • Seth

The evolution of consciousness cannot be compared to memory which becomes enriched by a greater store of material. . . . Consciousness expands like the horizon of the observer as he mounts further and further from the ground. Each new stage of consciousness synthesizes the others into a superior state which is the key to the one which preceded it, and so on, until we attain the First Cause NOTE: the Source. (Yram 134)PAPOBEr • Yram

There are other layers of awareness beneath this one, but here there is a much greater tendency for one to merge into the other. In the next level, for example, communication is possible with various kinds of consciousness that have never been physically manifested. (Roberts 281)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Timestream scientists say of the Beings of Light: “The difference between a higher spirit being and a human can best be visualized like this: a human is one personality; a higher being incorporates the attributes and knowledge of many human personalities in one being. Some of them are very close to the principle [God] the source and the center, and are far from the ‘existence of man.’” (Kubis and Macy 88)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

Group Entity: “Entity is now focused. The entity speaking is a focus of the collective consciousness of individuals present and that which you hold in common. The entity is a common revelation.” (Ryerson and Harolde 273)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde

This journey involves incremental steps of reunification. . . . Consecutively larger groups . . . reunite, until everything is reunited back into the Tao NOTE: the Source. (Hoodwin 90)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

Your own identity sends out strands of itself constantly, then. These mix psychically with other strands. . . .

Ruburt is connected with me in that manner. He is also connected with any ant in the back yard in the same way. Yet I retain my identity, the ant retains its identity, and Ruburt retains his. (Roberts 483)

The spirit . . . looked momentarily and with permission through another’s picture of reality. . . .

Your own private identities do not need fences. They are themselves. They can combine and unite with others, yet retain their uniqueness and experience. . . .

You can disperse your own characteristics into another and they can disperse theirs into you, with your consent and theirs, to form new aspects of reality and to cast new light on combined purposes and challenges. (Roberts 494-495)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

Angels (channeled): When they are ready, they will visit other environments and commune with other beings they find there. They merge their emotions and thoughts—their energies—one with another.

In this merging they weave a mystic tapestry of ever-changing colors, light, and sound, enriching the whole through freely shared experiences. Though each soul retains its individuality, its own unique texture and hue, it blends joyfully and smoothly with other souls to make a whole that is much greater than any single part could ever be. This tapestry of love is at the very Heart of God. Though God has many faces, He is One Essence, and that Essence is Love—pure, powerful, absolutely unconditional. (Fairchilde 57)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

You are not fated to dissolve into All That Is NOTE: the Source. The aspects of your personality as you presently understand them will be retained. All That Is is the creator of individuality, not the means of its destruction.

My own “previous” personalities are not dissolved into me any more than your “past” personalities. All are living and vital. All go their own way. Your “future” personalities are as real as your past ones. (Roberts 363)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

You shall live forever, in one dimension of being or another, and you shall always know yourself as yourself except in the sense that your “self” is always changing into higher deductions of experience. (You experience this same relativity of self in the present life as you “grow” from infancy into maturity and beyond; the thirty-year-old is not the exact same self as self was experienced at six months or six years or even at twenty-nine years—but the deduction of experience continues to modify the perception of self into an ever-unfolding identification with self.) (Pendleton 60)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

Reincarnational selves NOTE: incarnations are reabsorbed back into the essence NOTE: reincarnating self after the death of the body and continue to have an independent existence. . . . Each reincarnational self is like a subpersonality of the essence that continues to develop under the “umbrella” of the essence. . . .

Those needing healing or resolution call out for our attention when we are in a position to offer it. . . . Once we experience the necessary healing and resolution, they can integrate into our essence. . . . The fruits of their lessons become available to the whole self. They also continue to develop and grow, while remaining part of our essence. . . . They go on to become creators by expanding our essence. . . .

Michael: Your essence integrates your personality. . . . Integration is a gradual process. In some cases, personality elements from lifetimes thousands of years ago are still not integrated. (Hoodwin 317-318)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

I hope to have each of my previous personalities speak for themselves, for they should tell their own story. . . . These personalities still exist and are independent. While what I am once seemed to be contained within those personalities, I was but the seed for them. . . .

They coexist with me, but at another layer of reality.

In several lives I was consciously aware of my “past existences.” . . .

It was always a lesson between lives to trace the thoughts and events that “led to a given demise.” . . .

If I choose, in your terms I can relive any portion of those existences, but those personalities go their own way. (Roberts 353-354)

In my particular case, I am so unfocused on my own reincarnational selves NOTE: incarnations, and they have gone so far on their own, that I have little feeling of immediacy. (Roberts 392)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

John has often said that there’s no such thing as a hierarchy in Spirit. We don’t have to complete certain assignments before moving on to the next level of progression. It doesn’t work that way. (Ryerson and Harolde 40)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde

If they have learned everything they needed to learn, they will move up into a higher plane, or higher state of consciousness; for that is what the planes really are: states of consciousness. (Kubis and Macy 18)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

Progress in the early stages of soul evolution is slow to an extent scarcely realized by most students. . . . As faculties develop, growth quickens at an ever increasing rate. (Besant 44)Kclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

Walsch: “Does it at least get any easier?” . . .

It is so much easier for you now than it was three lifetimes ago. . . . The more you remember, the more you are able to experience, the more you know. . . . And the more you know, the more you remember. It is a circle. So yes, it gets easier, it gets better, it becomes even more joyful. . . .

Your joys are now increasingly available without pain. That, too, is a very good sign.

You are learning (remembering how) to love without pain; to let go without pain; to create without pain; to even cry without pain. (Walsch 157-158)CWG1channeled • modern • Walsch

One of the clear indications that souls are coming out of novice status is when they leave their spiritual existence of relative isolation. They are removed from small family cocoons with other novices and placed in a larger group of beginner souls. . . .

For the younger souls, the first realization that they are part of a substantial group of spirits brings delight. Generally, I find this important spiritual event has occurred by the end of a fifth life on Earth. (Newton 127-128)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

There are two types of beginner souls: souls who are truly young in terms of exposure to an existence out of the spirit world, and souls who have been reincarnating on Earth for a long period of relative time, but still remain immature. I find beginner souls of both types in Levels I and II.

I believe almost three-quarters of all souls who inhabit human bodies on Earth today are still in the early stages of development. . . .

I have had many cases where a client has been incarnating for up to 30,000 years on Earth and is still in the lower levels of I and II. (Newton 123-124)

Less developed souls are inclined to surrender their will to the controlling aspects of human society, with a socio-economic structure which causes a large proportion of people to be subordinate to others. The inexperienced soul tends to be stifled by a lack of independent thinking. They also lean towards being self-centered and don’t easily accept others for who they are. (Newton 127)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Once our souls advance past Level II into the intermediate ranges of development, group cluster activity is considerably reduced. . . . They have acquired the maturity and experience for operating more independently. These souls are also reducing the number of their incarnations. . . .

The relationship we have with our guides now changes from teacher-student to one of colleagues working together. Since our old guides have acquired new student groups, it is now our turn to develop teaching skills which will eventually qualify us for the responsibilities of being a guide to someone else. . . .

Despite their high standards of morality and conduct, entities who have reached the intermediate levels of maturity are modest about their achievements. . . . I notice more composure with clients in this stage and above. I see trust rather than suspicion toward the motives of others on both a conscious and subconscious level. These people demonstrate a forward-looking attitude of faith and confidence for the future of humanity, which encourages those around them. . . .

I began by regressing the subject rapidly through a series of early lives. . . . My subject worked to uplift people from fear, while remaining non-aligned to opposing factions. . . . Frequently the outsider, always an explorer searching for truth across many lands, this soul continued to seek a rational meaning to life while giving aid to those he met along the way. . . .

The intermediate levels are trial periods for potential teachers. . . .

Not everyone is suited for teaching, but this does not keep us from becoming an advanced soul. (Newton 145-147, 150)

By the time we reach Level V, our soul aptitudes are well known in the spirit world. We are given occupational duties commensurate with our abilities. (Newton 150)

In most cases, Level V’s are here as incarnated guides. . . .

It is more usual for the advanced soul to go about their good works in a quiet, unassuming manner. . . . Level V’s are also practical, and so they are likely to be found working in a cultural mainstream which allows them to influence people and events. . . . Having extrasensory impressions—including psychic talent—does not necessarily denote an advanced soul.

The mark of an advanced spirit is one who has patience with society and shows extraordinary coping skills. Most prominent is their exceptional insight. . . . The advanced soul radiates composure, kindness, and understanding toward others. . . .

The individual I have chosen to represent the Level V soul is a woman in her mid-thirties. . . . I felt she was looking into rather than at me. . . .

She rapidly entered into a deep trance and made instant contact with her inner self. (Newton 169-170)

If I see someone with an evenness of mood, whose interests and abilities are solidly in focus and directed toward helping human progress, I suspect an advanced soul at work. These are souls who seek personal truths beyond the demands of ego. (Newton 248)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

To be such a guide requires great discipline and training. . . .

I had spent many lifetimes acting as a guide under the tutorship of another in my daily sleep states. (Roberts 126)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Service, always service. That is the motto for everyone here. New arrivals quickly pick up the joy of being able to help others. Everyone works, if you can really call it such, to get balanced and energetically fit, in order to play a productive role.

We are so enfolded in the serenity and joy, our souls long to help others find the same thing. (Starnes 44)

Many here, like the Lady, act as escorts and guides for the new arrivals. . . . The Escorts never interfere; but they stand by in case the neophyte oversteps their present ability to remain centered. They may suggest, but never insist their assignee do any particular thing. Whenever I’m in doubt, the Lady instantly appears. (Starnes 45)LFSchanneled • modern • James

Case 16

Dr. N: Are you allowed to visit these other buildings where souls study?

S: There is one which we go to regularly. . . . A place for the newer ones. We help them when their teacher is gone. It’s nice to be needed. . . . The teachers are . . . so much further along . . . this group appreciates our assistance because we can relate to them easily. (Newton 95)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Subject: When you get to the level where you can guide an individual person on the physical plane . . . that doesn’t mean that you’ve stopped all your growing because someone more advanced than you is still helping you with your growing. (Cannon 138)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

The length of time people live on the astral plane spans a few weeks to hundreds of years. Then, if there is more to learn, they reincarnate (accept another body) on Earth, or perhaps on another inhabited planet. If they have learned everything they needed to learn, they will move up into a higher plane, or higher state of consciousness; for that is what the planes really are: states of consciousness. (Kubis and Macy 18)

Life is safe and secure here, free of any misery and suffering. And some people have lived here for hundreds of years without reincarnating. But gradually, each person becomes aware of the things he did not finish or learn on Earth and the time comes when a person wants to progress, to learn new things. . . . Whatever one did not learn on Earth, whatever life lessons one evaded, those things will hold one back from progressing to higher planes of existence. (Kubis and Macy 52)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

Ordinarily a soul spends the few years of life in his mortal body and then retires and lives in his soul body for centuries before reincarnating again. But of course it depends on the soul. (Benner 241)WttKchanneled • New Thought • Benner

There is no time schedule, and yet it is very unusual for an individual to wait for anything over three centuries between lives, for this makes the orientation very difficult, and the emotional ties with earth have become weak. (Roberts 151-152)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

The higher the advancement of a soul, the greater the time between its incarnations; and vice versa. There are special cases, however, such as the call to duty on the part of a high soul, or a strong attraction to another, or others, approaching reincarnation. (Panchadasi 50)AWunknown • New Thought (Theosophy) • Atkinson

On average, a person waits about seventy years after death before reincarnating. . . .

Generally, younger souls reincarnate more quickly, whereas older souls become increasingly specific in their needs and tend to take more time setting up their lifetimes. . . .

Michael: Until souls have adequate practical experience on the physical plane, they may bite off more than they can chew. There are also souls who, upon death, rush into the next available body, without adequately examining what they are getting into. . . .

Also, events do not always happen as expected. (Hoodwin 325-326)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

When the soul has lived out its devachanic NOTE: upper astral plane life, and has assimilated all that it can of the material gathered during its last period on earth, it begins to be drawn again towards earth by the links of desire that bind it to material existence. . . .

The soul steps over the threshold of devachan into what has been called the plane of reincarnation, bringing with it the result, small or great, of its devachanic work. . . . It issues from devachan clothed only in that body of the soul that endures and grows. (Besant 44-45)Kclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the Ego NOTE: reincarnating self is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increased experience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan NOTE: the upper astral plane along the lines of abstract thought. (Besant 77-78)DAclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

Salter: “Nobody is forced to return. To many, the process is like an inner voice that reminds them of their duties and lessons that are still waiting for them on Earth. They may delay these tasks for many years, but know they cannot avoid them forever.”

She goes on to say that some people meet with “more spiritually evolved beings,” who tell them when it is time for the person to return to Earth. Still other people do not need a committee of guides, but they rely on their own inner voice that tells them what they need to finish on Earth. (Kubis and Macy 78)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

[Attachments] reach such magnitude as to be virtually impossible to achieve and experience in a single physical human lifetime. The results are a compulsive need to reenter and recycle to complete that which had been begun, to perform the purpose for which there had not been “time,” to repay imagined “debts”—the list becomes endless. (Monroe 251-252)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Out of the knowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for the next. (Besant 65)DAclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

[Whitton] regressed subjects to the interim between lives, a dazzling, light-filled realm in which there was “no such thing as time or space as we know it.” According to his subjects, part of the purpose of this realm was to allow them to plan their next life, to literally sketch out the important events and circumstances that would befall them in the future. . . .

When subjects planned their next life, they did so with a sense of moral obligation. They would choose to be reborn with people whom they had wronged in a previous life so they would have the opportunity to make amends for their actions. They planned pleasant encounters with “soul mates,” individuals with whom they had built a loving and mutually beneficial relationship over many lifetimes; and they scheduled “accidental” events to fulfill still other lessons and purposes. (Talbot 215-216)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

There comes that time when the soul must once again leave the sanctuary of the spirit world for another trip to Earth. This decision is not an easy one. Souls must prepare to leave a world of total wisdom, where they exist in a blissful state of freedom, for the physical and mental demands of a human body. . . .

Once back in the spirit world, souls have misgivings about even temporarily leaving a world of self-understanding, comradeship, and compassion to go to a planetary environment of uncertainty and fear brought about by aggressive, competing humans. . . .

While our spiritual environment is hard to leave, as souls we also remember the physical pleasures of life on Earth with fondness and even nostalgia. . . . Our mistakes and achievements have all been evaluated with an eye toward the best course of future endeavors. The soul must now assimilate all this information and take purposeful action based upon three primary decisions:

• Am I ready for a new physical life?
• What specific lessons do I want to undertake to advance my learning and development?
• Where should I go, and who shall I be in my next life for the best opportunity to work on my goals?

If the soul chooses one extreme, somewhere down the line this will be counterbalanced by an opposite choice to even-out development. . . . A rich man sooner or later must become a beggar for his soul to develop adequately.

By surviving different challenges our soul identity is strengthened. . . . The real lessons of life are learned by recognizing and coming to terms with being human. . . . It is how we stand up to failure and duress which really marks our progress in life. Sometimes one of the most important lessons is to learn to just let go of the past.

While souls carefully consider the physical attributes of an Earth body in a variety of cultural settings, they give much more attention to the psychological aspects of human life. This decision is the most vital part of the entire selection process for the soul. Before entering the place of life selection, it is to a soul’s advantage to ponder the factors of heredity and environment which affect how a biological life form will function. . . . A soul’s spiritual energy has a fluctuating influence on whether the temperament of its human host will be extroverted or introverted, rationalistic or idealistic, emotionally or analytically dominated. . . .

When souls are called to the place of life selection the guesswork is over. Now they must match their spiritual identity against a mortal being. (Newton 230)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

[The mould of the Etheric Double NOTE: the etheric body] is guided . . . to the country, the race, the family, the social surroundings, which afford the most suitable field for the working out of the karma NOTE: lessons allotted to the particular life-span in question. . . . It is placed where the Ego NOTE: reincarnating self may come into relations with some of such Egos, with whom it has been related in its past, as are present in, or are coming into, incarnation during its own life-period. A country is chosen where the religious, political and social conditions can be found which are suitable to some of its capacities, and afford the field for the occurrence of some of the effects it has generated. . . . A family is found in which physical heredity has evolved the kind of physical materials which, built into the etheric double, will adapt themselves to its constitution. . . . The web of a man’s destiny may indeed be composed of threads that to us are innumerable, and that may need to be woven into a pattern of to us inconceivable complexity. (Besant 49-51)Kclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

Some, for example, choose to isolate various characteristics in a given life, and work on these almost exclusively, basing a given existence upon, say, one main theme. As seen from a physical viewpoint, such a personality would appear very one-sided, and far from a well-developed individual.

In one life the intellect may purposely be very high, and those powers of the mind carried as far as the individual can take them. These abilities are then studied thoroughly by the entire personality, both the benefits and the detrimental aspects of the intellect weighed carefully. Through experience in another life this same kind of individual might specialize in emotional development, and purposely underplay intellectual abilities. . . .

Through denying themselves, say, intellectual development in a given life, personalities also learn the value and purpose of that which they do not possess. The desire for it is then born within them. . . .

Some will choose progression at an easier rate and in a more balanced manner. They will help keep all the strands of personality working at once, so to speak, and even meet again and again people they have known in other lives. They will work out problems at a rather easy rate, rather than in, say, an explosive way. They will pace themselves as dancers do.

In this time of rest and choosing, all counsel is given. . . .

There are different depths to be probed in reincarnational existences. Some choose to “go all the way.” These personalities specialize in physical existence, and their knowledge of this system is most comprehensive. For these there is a movement through each of your racial types—a requirement that is not laid upon most. There is intensive preoccupation with historical periods. Many of these personalities live comparatively short live, but very intense ones, and they experience more lives than most other individuals. They return, in other words, in as many historical times as possible, finally helping to shape the world as you know it. . . .

In one way or another you are all travelers before you begin even your first reincarnational cycle. . . . You do not have the same backgrounds, necessarily, when you enter the physical system of reality. . . .

You are learning to be as completely as possible. . . .

Many personalities have extraordinary talents along specific lines, and these may show up again and again in succeeding existences. . . . Throughout the reincarnational cycle, with some there will be a very noticeable line of continuity. . . .

A portion of the whole self focuses in reincarnational cycles and handles developments there. (Roberts 151-154)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Michael: When you embark on something new, you usually feel excited anticipation about it. This is certainly true of your essence NOTE: reincarnating self. You usually have no hesitation about doing so. At this point, any and all experiences look interesting, so you dive in. (Hoodwin 341)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

Dr. Peebles: Elizabeth, you are a beautiful spirit; you came to the planet Earth as a search for the great creativity of God, the beauty of the divine. Similarly, you came into this life through the doorway of beauty. The planet Earth appeared to you to be a great rainbow of experience and of color. You came forward from other places in the universe in a great love affair; there was no hesitation whatsoever; you said, “Look at that beautiful blue place. I want to be part of that.” (Pendleton 79)

Dr. Peebles: Michael, you came into the planet Earth as a pioneer, as an adventurer, you came to the planet Earth from other regions of space and time merely out of curiosity. . . . Because that was just your drive, just curiosity, to explore the unknown—which we send you accolades for—your ability to seek the unknown, where so many fear it. . . .

You couldn’t wait to go somewhere you hadn’t been. . . . As quickly as you could, you spent no time in the spirit; you’d die, you’d leave the body; with your next breath you’d be in some woman’s womb again as a child. (Pendleton 82)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

After another immeasurable interval, a second question arose: Why would one ever leave this Clear Light? As if in response to the query, a bubble appeared, floating through the brightness. . . . Within this bubble there stretched a rainbow, which revealed itself as the entire structure of Being—all the planes, all the souls, all the sentient beings, civilizations, and galaxies. The whole structure was totally insubstantial. The bubble, unstable as it floated, changed shape constantly, looking as if it might burst at any moment. Its delicacy was poignant. And the seamless brightness of the One shone directly through this transparent bubble of Being. Then a current of loving concern welled up, concern for the beings on these various planets and planes of rainbow light. That concern became more and more intense, building to a climax. Suddenly I found myself once more in the golden realm, understanding that I had been taken back through the membrane into this floating bubble which is Being.

My sense of individuality reawakened as soon as I perceived the golden light. Yet I knew that I had been returned to Being not by attachment to my individuality but through commitment to all life. (Hixon 107-108)CHresearcher • modern • Hixon

Subject: After learning what [the spirit] needs for its next lifetime, it consults with the spiritual masters and starts preparing for its next incarnation. It consults with the spiritual masters to see what kind of situation would be best for the spirit to come back into. There is also consultation about which souls would be best for it to interact with for the benefit of all. (Cannon 20)

Dolores: The teachers and masters that help you figure all this out, is their decision more important than yours?

Subject: It’s not that it is more important. Many times they are viewing it from a different angle of perspective. They view it from their experience and they will share their wisdom. Most times their judgment is sound and you will pay to see it from that perspective also, and in this way you learn.

Dolores: In other words, they see things you don’t.

Subject: Yes, because they are standing back from the situation, so to speak. . . .

It’s generally done by a consensus of opinion between the person and their spiritual masters. They won’t like many aspects of the life in particular, but the majority of the life will be something they can handle. And these extra things they’re not too fond of are looked upon as spiritual challenges, something for them to accomplish and to work for. (Cannon 56-57)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

One client who was in a very destructive marriage where her husband would hurt her physically was unable to leave the marriage until she reexperienced about 15 past lifetimes where she had been physically abused by men in some form or another. She saw the continuation of her pattern of dependency in which she thought that men have all the power (and also all the responsibility). She saw that she lived out her belief in situations that proved men did have more power than she on the physical level. (Brennan 246)HoLclairvoyant • modern • Brennan

Although a person’s material conditions can vary greatly from one life to the next, their moral conduct, interests, aptitudes, and attitudes remain the same. Individuals who were criminals in their previous existence, tend to be drawn to criminal behavior again; people who were generous and kind, continue to be generous, kind, and so on. (Talbot 218)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

If you hate another person, that hate may bind you to him through as many lives as you allow the hate to consume you. You draw to yourself in this existence and in all others those qualities upon which you concentrate your attention. (Roberts 171)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Jonathon (channeled): I know that life can be filled with pain and confusion, sorrow and despair, where you are, for I remember this. However, those difficulties are seen from this perspective as great and precious jewels, for they create a quickening in the evolution of the soul, and this holds a universal value beyond all measure. (Fairchilde 89-90)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

[Whitton] regressed subjects to the interim between lives. . . .

A woman who had been raped when she was thirty-seven revealed that she had actually planned the event before she had come into this incarnation. As she explained, it had been necessary for her to experience a tragedy at that age in order to force her to change her “entire soul complexion” and thus break through to a deeper and more positive understanding of the meaning of life. (Talbot 215-216)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

Certain individuals can and do choose life experiences that involve great tragedies. Yet those tragic lives are used as a focus point that actually brings into experience, through comparison, the great vitality and thrust of being. . . .

Many follow dangerous professions. It is fashionable to suppose that these people have a death wish. Instead, many of them have an intensified life wish, so to speak. Certainly it seems destructive to others. To those people, however, the additional excitement is worth the risk. The risk, in fact, gives them an intensified version of life. (Roberts 574)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

Ridley asked for a life where he would be given a potent challenge toward acquiring humility rather than have this lesson strung out over many lives. He was warned that accelerated lives can be very rough. Ridley said he was ready. (Newton 374)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

It is not out of the ordinary for me to see someone who has skated through an unchallenging life overloading themselves with turmoil in the next one to catch up with their learning goals. (Newton 221-222)

A difficult barrier to discovering our identity [is] that of childhood trauma. (Newton 231)

It is difficult to tell a newly-injured person trying to cope with physical disablement that he or she has an opportunity to advance at a faster rate than those of us with healthy bodies and minds. This knowledge must come through self-discovery. . . . The effort necessary to overcome a body impediment does accelerate advancement. (Newton 222)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Souls who unite with people that develop early personality disorders deliberately set themselves up for a difficult life. (Newton 231)

Most individuals do not choose one “happy” life after another, always ensconced in a capable body, endowed by nature or heritage with all of the gifts most people seem to think they desire. . . .

They choose various lives in such a fashion that all of their abilities and capacities can be best developed, and in such a way that their world is also enriched. Some people will choose “defective” bodies purposely in order to focus more intensely in other areas. They want a different kind of focus. . . . Such people will be embarked upon subjective issues and questions also that might not be considered otherwise. (Roberts 325)

The idiot is often able to experience in his or her own reality a freer, more generous, more faithful flow of emotional stages. (Roberts 316)DEVF2channeled • modern • Seth

Some individuals always choose to be born as a part of some group—reborn, in other words, with past contemporaries, while others, disdaining such endeavors, return in much more isolated positions. (Roberts 176)

There are those who are simply loners, who reincarnate without any great feeling for earth’s historical periods. There are others who like to return when their contemporaries from some particular past historical time return again, and therefore there are group patterns that involve reincarnational cycles in which many, but not all, are involved.

You [Tito], for example, did not operate within a cycle in those terms. There are personal cycles of course, in which families may reincarnate, taking different relationships to each other, and you have been involved in several of these. (Roberts 152)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

The relationships for the next life have to be settled upon, and this involves telepathic communication with all those who will be involved. (Roberts 152)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Subject: There is a group of us gathered together. You could call it a sort of discussion and planning group. The majority of us here have been linked karmically in our past lives. There is one here who is our main guide for the group in general, and our individual guides are nearby. We are discussing and planning what karmic problems we will be working on during this next upcoming life. . . . And we are discussing and planning how our lives and our karmas NOTE: lessons interweave and interrelate and what we hope to work out. . . .

These planning conferences are kind of rare and when an opportunity comes to have them, we do. Because usually one or the other in the group is on the earthly plane. But occasionally it overlaps to where all of us are on the spiritual plane at the same time, and we get together to coordinate things, so to speak. . . .

We could communicate with their subconscious if need be, but it is not as clear a communication. . . .

We discuss how we are going to interact with each other. We have our free will on such things from the physical viewpoint when we get there. (Cannon 181, 183-184)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

Souls returning from the place of life selection must not only sort out the best choice of who they are going to be in their next life, but coordinate this decision with other players in the coming drama. . . . Script change (the results of free will) can be made while the play is in progress. (Newton 249)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

We also chose to come with certain others because of the work we would do together. Some of us wanted to unite in a cause to change certain things on earth, and we could best do it with certain circumstances brought about by selected parents or others. . . . We understood the influence we would have upon each other in this life and the physical and behavioral attributes we would receive from our families. (Eadie 92-93)EbtLNDEr • modern • Eadie

Love “has its roots in eternity”, and those to whom on earth we are strongly drawn are the Egos NOTE: reincarnating selves we have loved in past earth-lives and dwelt with in Devachan NOTE: the upper astral: coming back to earth, these enduring bonds of love draw us together yet again, and add to the strength and beauty of the tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and the strong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experience of their well-nigh illimitable past. (Besant 76)DAclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

Those who weave bonds of close affection in one life tend to be drawn together again as members of the same family. Sometimes these ties recur very persistently life after life, and the destinies of two individuals are very intimately interwoven in successive incarnations. Sometimes, in consequence of the different lengths of the devachans NOTE: the higher astral planes necessitated by differences of intellectual and spiritual activity during the earth-lives spent together—members of a family may be scattered and may not meet again until after several incarnations. (Besant 78)Kclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

Twins, incidentally, almost always involve very deep, abiding psychic relationships of a strong, sometimes obsessive nature. I am speaking now of identical twins. (Roberts 182)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Subject: In one life a person might be your mate, in another life one of your parents, and in another life a child or a good friend. . . . Then eventually, when we all reach the ultimate (the source), the connections have developed to the point that, if the desire is there, we can form an entity greater than ourselves with all of us being part of it. (Cannon 186)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

The same people weave in and out of our lifetimes, reappearing over and over again to finish business from the past. We come back to replay the same themes, switching roles and changing gender from life to life. . . .

A former husband can now be a beloved daughter, or a former loyal friend can be your mother. Generally, if there was a positive relationship in the past, it continues to be good in the present. . . . Love survives, even thought the roles may change. . . .

[Dr. Woolger’s] patients come to therapy burdened with serious relationship problems. When regressed, they often describe feuds and vindictive squabbles spanning many centuries and many lifetimes. Old scores between parent and child, master and slave, victim and victimizer, siblings, spouses, lovers—the list is endless—are reenergized and replayed in the present life. Dr. Woolger gives one case where a father and daughter flipflopped through six different lives, and another where bitter reprisals between a trio—mother, daughter, and granddaughter in this life—could be traced through eight past lives. (Bowman 64)

Three-year-old Michael Wright of Texas amazed his mother with specific details of a fatal automobile accident that he claimed had killed him. The life he remembered was of his mother’s high school boyfriend, who no one in the family ever mentioned. The boyfriend had died in an automobile accident—precisely as little Michael had described. (Bowman 93)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Jonathon (channeled): My brother and I have direct and deep soul connections with our parents that span many lifetimes. We are all a part of the same soul group. We share similar paths, similar life lessons—our individual experiences complement and enhance the soul development of the other members of our spirit family. We have been many things to each other. We have all played many roles to help the others learn and grow in awareness. (Fairchilde 87)

[The souls serving as guardians] communicate—as do the angelic messengers—through intuitive knowings, through dreams. (Fairchilde 21)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

Jonathon (channeled): Due to certain circumstances, all souls in a group do not always choose to incarnate at the same time. In these instances, those who choose not to take a body serve as guides in spirit for those who are experiencing physical existence. (Fairchilde 87)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

We’ve all been guides and teachers to our own guides and teachers when they were physically incarnate. It’s a constant process of give-and-take. (Ryerson and Harolde 44)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde

The issue of how to find soulmates and other important people in their lives is of paramount concern with many clients who come to me. . . . I am told the activity here is like cramming for a final exam. As a result, my subjects also use the term prep-class to describe this aspect of spiritual reinforcement that occurs just before their souls embark on the passage back to Earth. . . .

For many of us, our nearest and dearest soulmate is our spouse. Yet . . . souls of consequence in our lives may also be other family members or a close friend. The amount of time they are with us on Earth can be long or short. What matters is the impact they have on us while here. . . .

Soulmates are designated companions to help you and themselves accomplish mutual goals which can best be achieved by supporting each other in various situations. (Newton 249-250)

There is one main course of life we choose in advance, but alternatives always exist and we learn from them, too. (Newton 259)

Souls consider when and where they want to go on Earth before making a decision on who they will be in their new life. . . .

We start by having the opportunity of viewing how we might fit into certain environments in future time segments. Then our attention is directed to people living in these places. . . . A soul is largely influenced by cultural conditions and events, as well as by the participants in these events, during a span of chronological time. (Newton 206)

Aside from the comfortable familiarity of culture in a soul’s choice, we must also factor in the affinity many spirits have for deserts, mountains, or the sea. Souls may also have a preference for rural or urban living. (Newton 219)

The earth also goes through a process of growth. When I was going through a trying period in a lifetime, the consciousness of the whole country I lived in was going through similar growth stages. . . .

During the Golden Age of Greece, the earth was at a very high level of energy. During these lighter periods of history, the soul grows in the finer, sensitive points. Many souls come in at the same moment in time for similar growth patterns. . . .

After a high experience, the soul might come back into an earth area of its lowest-vibrating energies in order to bring all parts of itself into higher energies.

It works in rhythmic patterns. A soul can fluctuate back and forth from its lowest to its highest energy levels. And it would come into those points of earth time where the needed energy levels exist. . . .

The higher the vibratory level, the greater the responsibility. This is a universal principle. (McKnight 129-131)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight

I rarely see souls repeating the same genetic choices in past-lives because this would inhibit growth and opportunity. . . .

Our deliberations over body alternatives actually begin before we go to the place of life selection. Souls do this in order to adequately prepare themselves for viewing certain people in different cultural settings on Earth. . . .

The freedom of choice we have with these bodies is based far more on psychological elements than from the estimated 100,000 genes inherited by each human being. (Newton 219, 221, 223)

In one life an overly cautious, low-energy soul might be disposed to blending with a quiet, rather subdued human host. The same soul, encouraged to take greater risks in another life, could choose to work more in opposition to it’s [sic] natural character by melding with a temperamentally high-strung, aggressive body-type on Earth. . . .

Sometimes a negative trait is selected by an otherwise developed soul for special attention in a certain body. (Newton 247)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Most of my subjects select the bodies of one gender over another 75 percent of the time. This pattern is true of all but the advanced souls, who maintain more of a balance in choosing to be men and women. (Newton 66)

The entire reincarnational framework must involve both sexual experiences. . . .

If in one life, for example, you hated women, you may very well be a woman in the next life. Only in this way, you see, would you be able to relate to the experience of womanhood, and then as a woman face those attitudes that you yourself had against women in the past. (Roberts 179-180)

An overly strong identification with the sexual characteristics can also hold back progress. If an individual considers identity strongly in terms of male or female identity, then such a person may refuse to accept the fact of the sexual changes that occur in reincarnational existences. This kind of sexual identification, however, also impedes personality development during physical life. (Roberts 160)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

When we enter the space of life selection, we are full of hope, promise, and lofty expectations. Here souls are virtually alone, with their guides out of sight, while evaluating new life options. This hectic, stimulating place is described as being much larger than other spiritual study areas. . . .

Most love to talk about the place of life selection. . . . I am told it resembles a movie theater which allows souls to see themselves in the future, playing different roles in various settings. (Newton 206-207)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

It does seem to me that more people elect to enter the screens of the Ring during life selection than with the screens in the other learning centers. They want to actually experience snippets of future events in certain bodies before making any final decisions. (Newton 356)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

In the life selection room, just before Jamona’s current life, there were three body choices. . . .

We are not coached during these selections but the older souls know there is often one tempting choice which would not test us very much. (Newton 364)

All my subjects feel what they are seeing has been edited for their benefit and that they have less control over what they can watch than, say, in the library. . . . The key viewing years of a new life seem to be between eight and twenty, when the first major forks in life begin to emerge. Many people tell me they are shown certain years in great detail while other parts of their future life are completely left out. (Newton 356)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Subject: Everything’s perfectly clear to everybody, so it’s not a matter of telling anyone what to do because it’s apparent to you and everyone else what needs you have and what you can and will do. . . . When it’s time for you to go back and re-enter the physical plane, that’s when the general council comes in and determines where you fit in the pattern. And that determines when and where and to who you are born on the physical plane. (Cannon 139)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

Amnesia is imposed upon us when we come into a current life. . . . The same condition holds true for souls examining future lives. (Newton 213)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Because parallel realities are superimposed upon one another, they too can be seen as possibilities for physical lives. . . .

[Souls] may not clearly see significant events too far into the future because the further away these souls get from present probabilities, the higher the incidence of possible alternative realities which cloud their images. . . . A soul’s own past lives are more easily identified. This is because a single reality, with a definite course of action, was previously established to train this soul, and thus is firmly imprinted on his memory. . . .

If everything was preordained, there would be no purpose or justice to our struggle. . . . The purpose of reincarnation is the exercise of free will. . . .

We are masters of our destiny. (Newton 212-214)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Brit had recently returned to the spirit world from a small farming village in England where she killed herself in 1860, at age sixteen. . . . Brit drowned herself in a local pond because she was two months pregnant and unmarried. Her lover, Thomas, had been killed the week before in a fall off a thatched roof he was repairing. I learned the two were deeply in love and intended to marry. . . .

When Brit crossed over after killing herself, her guide, Likiko, and the soul of Thomas were there to comfort her for a while. Soon she was alone with Likiko in a beautiful garden setting. Brit sensed the disappointment in Likiko’s manner and she expected to be scolded for her lack of courage. Angrily, she asked her guide why the life didn’t go as planned in the beginning. She had not seen the possibility of suicide before her incarnation. Brit thought she was supposed to marry Thomas, have children and live happily in her village to old age. . . . Likiko explained that Thomas’ death was one of the alternatives in this life cycle and that she had the freedom to make better choices than killing herself.

Brit learned that for Thomas, his choice to go up on a high, steep and dangerously slippery roof was a probable one—more probable because his soul mind had already considered this “accident” as a test for her. Later, I was to learn Thomas came very close to not accepting the roof job because of “internal forces pulling him the other way.”

In the place of life selection, our souls preview the life span of more than one human being within the same time cycle. When we leave this area, most souls are inclined toward one leading candidate presented to us for soul occupation. However, our spiritual advisors give us ample opportunity to reflect upon all we have seen in the future before making a final decision. (Newton 221)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

The great guru Ramakrishna Ananda, who is still alive on Earth, points out that millions of souls are waiting to be born on Earth, to have the Earth experience necessary for their spiritual development and he often says to his devotees: “Congratulations! You have a body! They’re hard to get!” . . .

The waiting soul may have to wait what is equivalent to several lifetimes on Earth to finally get a suitable body which will enable the soul to have a life which will give it the particular experience it needs. (Kubis and Macy 80)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

At your birth . . . you are quite aware on unconscious levels of those conditions that you will meet. You have chosen them and projected them ahead of you. . . .

The conditions, however, while “set” in one fashion, are highly plastic in another. . . . [Ruburt at age 12] had already become aware of the overall interests and concerns that would dominate his future life, although the particular course of it had not been chosen. (Roberts 5)URchanneled • modern • Seth

In the greater framework of reincarnational existences you choose your roles, or your lives, but the lines that you speak, the situations that you meet, are not predetermined. (Roberts 272)DEVF1channeled • modern • Seth

Before incarnating, we usually plan each lifetime in detail. Its centerpiece, the most important thing we want to accomplish, is our “life task.” We usually begin working directly on our life task (or tasks—we can have more than one) . . . in our middle to late thirties. . . .

Not everything in our lives is planned out ahead of time. Plans are usually made, but they are flexible frameworks within which we create our lives. . . .

Our life plan provides us with a framework, but we must continually build upon it. (Hoodwin 234-235)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

We knew many of the challenges in advance of our life and chose them for good reasons. . . .

More important than the events that test us in life is our reaction to these events and how we handle the consequences. . . . My cases have shown we will be given the opportunity to review all the major alternatives after the life is over. . . .

I had a client. . . . His name was John and he lived in a small community near Gettysburg. Although just sixteen, John and his sweetheart, Rose, had begun to talk of marriage in the future. . . . A Union officer rode into John’s area looking for a young non-combatant who could ride a horse well to deliver dispatches. . . . John was a fine horseman and he impulsively agreed to ride for the Union because “I did not want to miss out on a chance for the grand adventure”. . . . John was killed the next day. . . .

Upon returning to his spirit group, John was met by Rose—that portion of her essence she had not taken to Earth. At the moment Rose saw John she cried out, “Why are you back here? We were supposed to be married!” These soulmates quickly realized that John had abruptly chosen a path that deviated from his probable life. Even so, each path has karmic benefits NOTE: lessons of some sort, as was the case with John’s brief Army experience.

I asked this client if he had been shown scenes in the screening room of what was going to happen at Gettysburg. He replied, “No, I accepted what they showed me up to the age of sixteen because I knew they had good reasons to reveal only what I needed to know before that life.” (Newton 372-373)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Dr. Peebles: More often, in the desire for abortion, it is the rule rather than the exception that there is agreement there—a real agreement, not implied—between the incarnating spirit and the mother, a change of mind—or an intention in the first place merely to experience some time in the womb, for reasons that are individual. . . .

To leave life before it starts, as a baby, really is no different from leaving life after ninety years in the body, for from our awareness—and from the larger perspective—life is eternal. (Pendleton 111-112)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

The Luxembourg Lab asked Salter if any of the women at Timestream had had abortions during their Earth life. Salter replied:

“Yes, but it is not a topic of importance here anymore, such as on Earth. Here the emotions and feelings of guilt that arose on Earth about abortion are not playing a role anymore.”

She went on to say that it’s important to remember that we are eternal creatures, literally millions of years old, and that for an aborted fetus, generally, the period of being in the womb is only a short time. An abortion takes only a few minutes and is painful for only a moment.

To an aborted fetus, its memory of that painful time is as fleeting as a dark part of a dream. No one can extinguish the life of a soul. (Kubis and Macy 79)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

When souls return for a short life to help someone else rather than work on their own issues, because there isn’t time, some call this “a filler life.” . . .

Spirits do not routinely see their deaths in future lives. If souls choose a life where their death will be premature, they often see it in the place of life selection. I have found that souls essentially volunteer in advance for bodies who will have sudden fatal illnesses, are to be killed by someone, or come to an abrupt end of life with many others from a catastrophic event. . . . Every soul has a motive for the events in which it chooses to participate. One client told me his last life was planned in advance to end at seven years of age as an American Indian boy. He said, “I was looking for a short-burst lesson in humility and this life as a mistreated, starving half-breed was enough.” (Newton 220)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Dr. Peebles: It is not a great tragedy when one leaves before they have lived, because they are still living, first of all, and they were living before it, and because in that two years they lived, sometimes they’ve lived more than someone who’s lived sixty years; they were more present. (Pendleton 46)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

Angels (channeled): Remember not to be sad for the child who has to leave the planet early, because it is not that difficult for them. (Fairchilde 81)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

Parents who have lost a child ask, “Will I know my baby when I pass over? . . .”

The child will be waiting for the parents when they pass on. The child will introduce itself to the parents. Recognition will then be immediate, regardless of the age of the child. Many times the parents have had contact with their child while in the sleep state. Even if they don’t remember this while on earth, the memories will come back to them in spirit.

When the soul of a child reincarnates before the passing of its parents, they are told where the child is and why the child’s soul had to return to earth at that specific time. (Browne 18-19)RotOSclairvoyant • modern • Browne

Little Mandy remembered being her sister who had died as a baby of a congenital heart disease. The death had wracked the family with grief, but Mandy’s only problem with dying, she told her parents now, was that she didn’t like it when everyone had cried so much for her. (Bowman 127)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Parents [who] have lost a child at an early age . . . [may] find them returning in the body of their next offspring. (Viney 255)SDresearcher • modern • Viney

What is even more common in my experience, are the souls of young children who die soon after birth and then return to the same parents as the soul of their next baby. (Newton 219)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

The manasic principle NOTE: reincarnating self sends down a portion of itself into the lower world of physical life at each incarnation, and expects to be able to withdraw it again at the end of the life, enriched by all its varied experiences. (Leadbeater 34)APclairvoyant • Theosophy • Leadbeater

The whole self or entity NOTE: reincarnating self or soul can never be completely materialized in three-dimensional form. A part of it can be projected into that dimension however, extending so many years in time, taking up so much space, and so forth. (Roberts 313)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Subject: “Coming to Earth is about traveling away from our home to a foreign land. Some things seem familiar but most are strange until we get used to them, especially conditions which are unforgiving. Our real home is a place of absolute peace, total acceptance and complete love. As souls separated from our home we can no longer assume these beautiful features will be present around us.” (Newton 401)

I will pick up the dialogue with Kanno when he meets his guide, Phinus.

Some souls cycle back into the earth for more intense growth; some souls cycle into other galaxies or dimensions. Souls are attracted to the areas where they can receive the greatest levels of growth.

The earth level is a very intense level of growth. In the time-space zone of the earth, friction sets up faster growth levels within souls. Lessons are often learned rapidly. (McKnight 272)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight

Monroe’s reincarnating self: The graduate from the human experience is very respected elsewhere. (Monroe 24)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Those who come here are courageous, because we are willing to experiment in a world that is so confining when compared to the entire universe. The spirits say that everyone who is here should hold himself in high esteem. (Brinkley 102)SBtLNDEr • modern • Brinkley

Subject: “On Earth we must learn to cope with intolerance, anger and sadness while searching for joy and love. We must not lose our integrity along the way, sacrificing goodness for survival and acquiring attitudes either superior or inferior to those around us. We know that living in an imperfect world will help us to appreciate the true meaning of perfection.” (Newton 401)

Ranier opened. (Events like this don’t happen often enough and I lose the rote NOTE: memory.)

BB blanked. (Lose the rote! Impossible. Nobody does that.)

Ranier indicated the massive bands of living forms NOTE: the astral. (They did, all of em. . . . They forgot who they were.) (Monroe 133)

Red: (Take this pre-brief rote and focus through it all the way. . . .)

• For duration of human sojourn, firm agreement that time-space exists, has reality. Agreement of reality of particular entry point and its environs, of time indicated at entry point. . . .

• In order for learning system to function at maximum efficiency, temporary blanking of pre-entry activity is essential. (Monroe 137)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

A number of more advanced subjects have stated that there is a growing movement in the spirit world to “change the game rules on Earth”. These people say their souls had less amnesia about Self and the interlife when they lived in earlier cultures. It seems in the last few thousand years there has been tighter blocking, on a conscious level, of our immortal memories. This has been a contributing factor in the loss of faith in our capacity for self-transcendence. . . . I am told large numbers of souls who have had more frequent incarnations in recent centuries on Earth are opting, when they get the chance, for less stressful worlds. There are enlightened places where amnesia is greatly reduced without causing homesickness for the spirit world. As we approach the next millennium, the masters who direct Earth’s destiny appear to be making changes to permit more information and understanding of who we are and why we are here to come into our lives. (Newton 276)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

A baby-sitter of a young child named Allen observes him playing with and talking to one such friend. She walks over to him, kneels down beside him, and asks, “Allen, who are you playing with?” . . . [He] finally says, “My baby sister. She hasn’t come yet, but she will, and her name is Fiona.” (Widdison 55)EtS-HW • modern • Widdison

Adult [NDE] experiencers will occasionally be met in death by the children they will eventually father or mother. . . . Children, however, even infants, were invariably greeted during their death episode by any siblings who died before they did. These siblings told them how they passed over, whether from stillbirth, death shortly after birth, miscarriage, or because of an abortion when they were but a fetus. Future siblings sometimes appeared as well, introducing themselves and giving the names they would someday have. (Atwater 14)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater

I was blessed with the gift of meeting the unborn souls of five of our children before they were born into our family. . . .

In one of my pregnancies, I had a very sorrowful and traumatic miscarriage. I felt particularly bonded to this female soul, because even before I conceived, her loving presence had entered my dreams on several occasions. When she appeared, I saw her as a young woman with beautiful brown hair and brown eyes. I received the impression that she was fearful of coming to Earth, and this is probably why I lost her. . . .

One afternoon, I heard Becky’s joyful cooing sounds as usual. . . . I went to see if she was okay. . . . I felt an unusual sensation, a feeling that I was entering “sacred ground.” I walked into her room ever so slowly and sensed a holy male presence hovering above her crib. I could tell that Becky was telepathically communicating with this being by the way she was looking upward in the direction of the presence above her crib. Her face was radiant, and she was making babbling sounds and excitedly kicking her feet. I received an inner knowledge that this was the spirit of my unborn son—Becky’s future brother. I heard with my spiritual ears, “Tell mother I need to come soon.”

. . . During the last part of the pregnancy. . . . I was deeply reflecting on the wonderful experiences we’d already had with our child-to-be, Matthew. While absorbed in these thoughts, Matthew appeared before me, not in his baby form but as a handsome tall man with blond hair, broad shoulders, and olive skin. He looked radiant. Telepathically, he thanked me for the sacrifices I’d gone through during pregnancy to allow his spirit to come to Earth and be housed in a mortal body. (Hinze 43-46)EtS-SBH • modern • Hinze & Hinze

This is one of many stories that I’ve heard of children who tell of hovering near their parents long before conception. . . . [Judy’s] two-year-old, Jessica, had asked for the first time why mommy was always in a wheelchair. . . . Judy described the car accident that had left her crippled. Then Jessica said:

“I was there. . . . I was just sitting there watching . . . until the car that went ‘URRR, URR’ came and got you.” . . .

A couple weeks later. . . . Jessica, out of the blue, came into the room and said, “When you had your wreck, the little red car threw you out and you hurt yourself.”

“Oh,” I answered her, “I was thrown out of the car, yes, but I don’t remember a red car.”

Yes, I do remember now. Yes, yes! That car was a little red Volkswagen! (Bowman 186-187)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

As I bring the soul consciousness of my subjects nearer to the moment of their exit from the spirit world, most become quietly introspective, while others engage in light bantering with their friends. . . . This is the last chance for souls to enjoy . . . knowing just who they are before they must adapt to a new body. (Newton 263)

All my subjects tell me the transition of their souls from the spirit world to the mind of a baby is relatively more rapid than the passage back. (Newton 266)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Around the planet were rings of haze, gigantic thick rings, of indeterminate number. Demarcation between them was vague as wisps and tendrils reached from one to the other. Except the ring nearly touching the planet itself. It appeared isolated. With this exception, the others were flowing rapidly through portals in the Entry Station. . . .

BB focused tightly on a band in the center. . . . The band was composed of forms, living forms! He opened slightly, focused, one band after another. They were all the same. Thousands—no, millions, maybe billions of living forms.

(Your friend’s in there. . . .)

(All those living forms. . . .)

(Repeaters . . . they want to go through another experience as human.) (Monroe 130-131)

[Ranier and BB] remained half closed, focusing on the stream of forms passing through the portal. . . .

Looming through the haze was a large vertical slot, vibrating with a vivid energy. (Monroe 133, 140)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

For purposes of actual incarnation into our universe and other dimensions my subjects tell me there are space-time tunnels, or channels, available near their group centers. . . .

People say these portals are symbolized by a line of huge archways for passage similar to a large train station. (Newton 218)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Acharya: Although we all enjoy our time lived at the egoic NOTE: the reincarnating self’s level, we have to leave it again. . . . We all want to leave when our time comes, for we feel within us the desire for further expression and experience. . . .

The naked ego must clothe himself once again—in other words obtain three new bodies through which he can function on the planes of consciousness applicable to them. . . . The matter that is drawn round him takes the form of his last mental body—the one he dropped at the end of his sojourn at the mental level—with one small difference; it is a better mental vehicle of consciousness than the last one, because it includes in it the result of his mental efforts in his past incarnation. . . .

He turns his attention to the astral atom and vivifies that. . . . This new body contains within it the results of the work he did during the years he lived under the astral plane conditions. . . . The new astral body is much more sensitive than the old one, that is to say, it is able to register emotions more strongly than its predecessor.

He must next have a physical body (his overcoat). This is acquired through the medium of being born in the normal way into a family in the world. The body is not necessarily a better type than that of the previous incarnation—much depends on the lessons which have to be learned in the new life. (Richelieu 187-189)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu

The soul, working as mind, creates a mental image. . . . This mental image remains attached to its creator, part of the content of his consciousness: it is a living, vibrating form of subtle matter. . . . It cannot be separated from him; he carries it with him during his earthly life, carries it with him through the gateway of death, carries it with him in the regions beyond death; and if, during his upward travelling through those regions, he himself passes into air too rarified for it to endure, he leaves behind the denser matter built into it, carrying on the mental matrix, the essential form; on his return to the grosser region the matter of that plane is again built into the mental matrix, and the appropriate denser form is reproduced. This mental image may remain sleeping, as it were, for long periods, but it may be re-awakened. (Besant 21-22)

On the return of the Ego NOTE: reincarnating self towards earth-life, these latent images will be thrown outward and will attract to themselves the appropriate kamic NOTE: astral/emotional/desire materials. (Besant 35)Kclairvoyant • Theosophy • Besant

The reincarnating personality is aware, therefore, when the conception for which it has been waiting takes place. And while it may or may not choose to enter at this point, it is drawn irresistibly to that time and point in space and flesh. (Roberts 195)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Each soul has its own preferences about when and how they wish to enter the fetus. (Newton 391)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

They may enter the body while it is still in the womb and go through the actual birth if they wish to experience this. They may also remain outside of the baby’s body but in close proximity to the mother and merely watch. They have freedom during this time to still go back and forth to the spirit planes as they are not totally tied to the baby yet. (Cannon 215)

As she talked, her voice sounded tired and her responses began to dull. She no longer had any interest in answering or couldn’t remember the answers to the questions. I have witnessed this before sometimes when the entity entered a baby’s body. When they were cut off from the other side, the knowledge was also cut off. They were no longer thinking in spiritual terms but were becoming involved in the physical. (Cannon 221)

[Helen Wambach] regressed more than 750 people and then had them describe their experience of fetal life. Eighty-nine percent of her subjects reported having two separate, simultaneous sources of awareness. They did not identify with the growing fetus or its stream of consciousness, although they accepted that the fetus was “theirs.” Instead, they identified themselves with a nonphysical source of consciousness, and tended not to become involved with “their fetus” until six months after conception. In fact many were extremely reluctant to join “their consciousness” with the fetus. Wambach’s subjects characterized themselves as disembodied minds hovering around the fetus and mother, being “in and out” of the fetus and having a telepathic knowledge of the mother’s emotions throughout pregnancy and birth.

One-third of Wambach’s subjects said they did not come into the fetus or join their consciousness with that of the fetus until just before or during birth; 12 percent stated they attached to the fetus about the beginning of the third trimester, which interestingly is when brain activity is first observed; and only 11 percent reported prior attachment to the fetus. The rest joined within a day or two after birth. (Wade 260)JoNDE-JWresearcher • modern • Wade

Linda: When does the soul enter the fetus?

Dr. Peebles: Well, it can be anywhere from as early as six weeks. . . . The greatest frequency is three months to fourteen weeks. . . . Sometimes it’s not uncommon for it to be around the . . . sixth month. . . . It’s most commonly between twelve and fourteen weeks to six months, occasional exceptions in both directions. (Pendleton 109)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

The reincarnating personality enters the new fetus according to its own inclinations. . . .

The process is gradual, individual, and determined by experience in other lives. . . .

Various methods of entry are adopted. If there is a strong relationship between the parents and child-to-be, then the personality may enter at the point of conception if he is extremely anxious to rejoin them. Even here, however, large portions of self-awareness continue to operate in the between-life dimension.

In the beginning, the womb state under these conditions is a dream-like one. . . . Gradually the situation reverses, until it becomes more difficult to retain clear concentration in the between-life situation.(Roberts 194)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Dr. Peebles: It is often with hesitation and fear—and trepidation, on occasion but not always—that a spirit enters—approaches the womb, and prepares to enter the womb. But then the warmth and the nurturing of the womb is so overwhelming that peace comes into the child, temporarily . . . but just previous to that, the . . . ending of the spirit experience . . . is the greater challenge. (Pendleton 99)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

Subjects ascribed their reluctance to join with the fetus to negative feelings about being born. Approximately 68 percent expressed antipathy and anxiety about being embodied. Their attitude was resigned toward physical life as an unpleasant duty they had to perform in response to an unidentified imperative. (Wade 260)

At some point during the pregnancy or perinatal period, the transcendent source becomes “stuck” to its body with less freedom to dissociate its quasi-independent selfhood from that of the fetus. For the majority of people, this joining coincides with the period when measurable brain wave activity commences. (Wade 262)JoNDE-JWresearcher • modern • Wade

Now there are some who resist the new existence, even though they chose it, as long as possible. To some extent they must be present at birth, but they can still escape any full identification with the born infant. They hover within and about the form, but half reluctantly. (Roberts 198)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

When the personality attaches itself at conception, there is almost without exception strong past-life connections between parents and child, or there is an unceasing and almost obsessional desire to return to the earthly situation—either for a specific purpose, or because the reincarnating personality is presently obsessed with earthly existence. . . .

Some personalities are drawn to enter at conception as a result of seemingly less worthy motives—greed, for example, or an obsessional desire that is partially composed of unresolved problems. (Roberts 194-195)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Regression records also demonstrate . . . knowledge of the unspoken thoughts of others, especially the parents. (Wade 256)JoNDE-JWresearcher • modern • Wade

Dr. Peebles: The soul, however, is hovering . . . and . . . leaves the body frequently after totally embracing the physical body. The soul is never fully inside the physical body while in the womb. . . . Between the third and sixth month, there is . . . oh, you might say, seventy-five percent inhabitation. You see? Nothing at all before that, just a hovering. . . .

Merely ask yourself how often is it true that you just don’t want to wake up in the morning. . . .

That hesitation is in the mind of the incoming spirit but recorded within the physical experience of the womb of Mommy. (Pendleton 109-111)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

There is no one point when “the full awareness of the soul enters into the flesh.” The process is gradual. (Roberts 529)UR2channeled • modern • Seth

There is an ego of a kind relegated to the brain which experiences the external world through the senses governing action and reaction. It is this functional organism—created before the soul arrived—that the soul must join in a mother. . . .

Subject: “No two brains are constructed in precisely the same way. When I initially enter the womb of my mother, I touch the brain gently. I flow in . . . seeking . . . probing . . . searching. It is like osmosis. I know immediately if this brain is going to be smooth or rough sailing for our mutual communication. . . .” (Newton 385-386)

John: “Various karmic patterns stored within the physical body have the capacity upon the level of the soul to shape the physical body after the fourth month of conception. . . . This often determines the shape of the physical body. . . . Ultimately, however, the soul shapes the physical body through its reflection of the personality.” (Ryerson and Harolde 153)SCchanneled • modern • Ryerson & Harolde

Instantly Carter Mills’s whole life began to play out, starting at birth. He relived being a tiny spark of light traveling to earth as soon as egg and sperm met and entering his mother’s womb. In mere seconds he had to choose hair color and eyes out of the genetic material available to him and any genes that might give him the body he would need. He bypassed the gene for clubfootedness, then watched from a soul’s perspective as cells subdivided. (Atwater 73)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater

We NOTE: his reincarnating self made the decision to become human again. We selected the time and place and organized the DNA mix—elements from the physical and elements from us. (Monroe 166)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Jonathon (channeled): My soul’s body is made of light, perfect and whole and ageless, as is yours. Yet, when I am born into your world, my spirit will fill the immature form of a newborn child. . . . Even now I am molding that physical temple. . . . I am developing certain traits and abilities in the physical form, which will help me to achieve my Destiny. This is a major task for every soul prior to incarnation. Each spirit is drawn to its mother at the point of conception—sometimes even before conception occurs. That spirit then guides the development of the fetus. . . . The body is an outgrowth, a projection of the soul, a reflection of what the soul requires of a physical body in order to learn its particular lessons, to fulfill its unique destiny. (Fairchilde 88-89)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

Each essence NOTE: reincarnating self has had its own unique history and experiences that have shaped it. Beyond that, the spark behind each essence brings its experiences from other planets in previous cycles, and from other universal experiences. (Hoodwin 257)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

There are subtle variations between their soul identity and all that is manifested by the human personalities of many host bodies. . . . Our constant soul-self seems to be a governing agent of human temperament, but we may express ourselves differently with each body. . . .

Souls both give and receive mental gifts in life through a symbiosis of human brain cells and intelligent energy. Deep feelings generated by an eternal consciousness are conjoined with human emotion in the expression of one personality, which is as it should be. . . .

We have seen how a soul selects the person with whom it wishes to associate in a given life. This does not mean that it has absolute control over that body. (Newton 247)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

The personality, for its own reasons, may decide upon choosing a body that is not aesthetically pleasing. He may never relate to it, and while the existence will serve what purposes he had in mind, there will always be a basic sensed distance between the body and the personality within it. (Roberts 197)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Birth is much more of a shock than death. (Roberts 16)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

The shock of birth has several consequences, however, that usually draw the personality full blast, so to speak, into physical reality. . . .

[New] stimuli [are] introduced with a rapidity that the body consciousness has never to that point experienced.

[The body consciousness] greatly needs a stabilizing factor. Previously the body consciousness has been enriched and supported by deep biological and telepathic identification with the mother. The communication of the living cells is far more profound than you imagine. The identification is almost complete before birth as far as body consciousness alone is concerned.

Until the new personality enters, the fetus regards itself as a part of the organism of the mother. This support is suddenly denied at birth. . . . [The new personality] comforts the new organism. . . .

When [the new personality] enters at the point of birth, it is fairly independent, not yet identified with the form it has entered, and acting in a supportive role.(Roberts 195-196)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Dr. Peebles: The total, complete action of oneness takes place in the first breath upon birth. (Pendleton 109)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

My subjects say if they were to compare the moment of birth with that of death, the physical shock of being born is much greater. (Newton 266)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

[Regressed subjects] do not like to be within the developing fetus; it is a cramped, uncomfortable feeling. They have the sensation of feeling warm but being in the dark. They can also describe all the emotions that the mother-to-be is experiencing. . . .

It is very strange to watch someone go through the actual birth process NOTE: in hypnotic regressions. . . . They do not see anything until they come out into the bright light. . . . They are aware of everyone’s thoughts and they don’t like being separated from the mother. Their first cries are in frustration at being unable to communicate with these strange creatures in this new environment. Then softly a wave of forgetfulness seems to sweep over them as their responses dull and the memories of the other planes and other existences fade away. (Cannon 233-234)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

When you are born, then, you are already “conditioned” to perceive reality in a particular manner, and to interpret experience in a very limited but intense range. (Roberts 36)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

The strict orientation of physical consciousness, again, is largely learned—consciousness being infinitely adaptable—so the infant learns to focus its awareness through the nervous system, pinpointing events in time and space. (Roberts 107)AJoaAPchanneled • modern • James

During the period following birth the infant still retains the impressions and memories of its preceding life. It is not yet aware of its new state, but still lives in its previous consciousness and remains in contact with the spiritual world and perceives the impressions of that world quite clearly. Little by little those impressions blur and fade away, and around the age of six months the infant begins gradually to forget who he or she was. (Elahi 89)PoPwisdom • Iranian • Elahi

Dvivedagana: “In early childhood, our dreams consist of the impressions of a former world, later on they are filled with the impressions of our senses, and in old age they contain visions of a world to come.” (Van de Castle 60)ODMresearcher • modern • Van de Castle

The soul leaves the baby’s body continually for long periods of time when the baby is little. . . . It continues until the child has reached the age of around two years old. The soul is usually conversing with the masters at the school during this time and making last-minute decisions. . . . So in this way the body can be separate and continue to exist for periods of time without the life force within it. (Cannon 221)

When the soul gets over the initial shock of being attached to a body once more, it begins to increase its tolerance for that. It stays with it more.

At the same time, the part of you called your mind moves into forgetfulness—just as it was designed to do. Even the soul’s flights out of the body, taken now on a less-frequent, but still usually daily, basis do not always bring the mind back to remembrance. (Walsch 160)CWG3channeled • modern • Walsch

In the early days of infancy, there is not a steady focus of the personality in the body in any case. (Roberts 195)

The newly entered personality, as a consciousness, flickers, in that there is a while before stabilization takes place. When the child, particularly the young child, is sleeping, for example, the personality often simply vacates the body. Gradually the identification with the between-life situation dwindles until nearly full focus resides in the physical body. (Roberts 196)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Acharya: It is as if children are the only really natural beings in the human world—the only people who understand enjoyment. . . .

Having so recently returned to earth they are as yet so near to the truly glorious life of the heaven-world that they still retain some touch with life at its highest, life that is one with the nature kingdom, the land of fairies, the land of beauties untold and undreamed of by the material beings we all seem to become when we grow up. (Richelieu 33)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu

Kids are tuned to different harmonics than adults. Concepts of either life or death leave them with puzzled faces. “I don’t end or begin anywhere,” a youngster once told me. “I just reach out and catch the next wave that goes by and hop a ride. That’s how I got here.”

This child, like other young experiencers, speaks in the language of “other worlds,” one that is less verbal and more akin to synesthesia (multiple sensing). The ability enables them to perceive what we call “reality” as consisting of layered realms unrestricted by physical boundaries. Hence, they easily giggle with angels, play with ghosts, and pre-experience the future. (Atwater 9-10)VS-PMHANDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater

Angels (channeled): [Children] are naturally unafraid of the unknown. Whatever fear they do experience, they pick up by merging with the adults who are designated their caregivers on Earth. (Fairchilde 84)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

When six-and-a-half-year-old Katie Thronson got off the school bus, she was beautiful, healthy, and happy. Soon she was drawing and, holding her picture, she bounced to her mother’s side and said, “Mommy, am I going to die?” “No,” her surprised mother replied. “Never?” “No, Katie, you’re not going to die.” Three days later Katie died of a cerebral hernia. (Atwater 193)BtLNDEr, researcher • modern • Atwater

Children are experienced souls in little bodies. . . . They have more available to them, and more to offer us, than we ever thought possible before. . . .

We have to rethink our roles as all-knowing parents and enter into a new relationship with our children, one of mutual respect and learning. . . .

Your child in this life could have been your parent, wife, brother, teacher, persecutor, rival, or lover in the past. On the soul level you are both equal. (Bowman 295-296)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Dr. Peebles: This would be part of a new relationship between the child and the parent—where parents see themselves instead as host and hostess for another being who will create its own life rather than mother and father who must form the child as clay. . . .

It is to support the child, its desire to learn, to understand its own pathway. . . .

And your challenge as the child is to accept responsibility as you grow into your maturing years. (Pendleton 100)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

The process of incarnation takes a lifetime. . . . Incarnation is organic soul movement in which higher, finer vibrations or soul aspects are continually radiated downward through the finer auric bodies into the more dense ones and then finally into the physical body. . . .

Each major stage of life corresponds with new and higher vibrations and the activation of different chakras. . . .

The process of incarnating is directed by the higher self. This life pattern, is held in the seventh layer of the aura, the ketheric template level. It is a dynamic template which is constantly changing as the individual makes free-will choices. (Brennan 61)HoLclairvoyant • modern • Brennan

Through the earlier part of that little fragment of existence on the physical plane which we call his life, the outward force is still strong, but at about the middle of it, in ordinary cases, that force becomes exhausted, and the great inward sweep begins.

Not that there is any sudden or violent change, for this is not an angle, but still part of the curve of the same circle. (Leadbeater 100-101)DPclairvoyant • Theosophy • Leadbeater

When subjects are placed in trance, their brain waves slow from the Beta wake state and continue to change vibration down past the meditative Alpha stage into various levels within the Theta range. Theta is hypnosis—not sleep. When we sleep we go to the final Delta state. . . . In Theta, however, the conscious mind is not unconscious, so we are able to receive as well as send messages with all memory channels open. (Newton 4)

In trance, the average subject tends to let his or her soul-mind wander while watching interesting scenes unfold. My clients often want me to stop talking so they can detach from reporting what they see and just enjoy their past experiences as souls. (Newton 6)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Over long periods of experimentation, I have come to realize that having a client in the normal alpha state of hypnosis is not adequate enough to reach the superconscious state of the soul mind. For this I must take the subject into the deeper theta ranges of hypnosis. (Newton 9)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Whilst under a deep trance, patients’ minds can be so completely taken back to a very early age, that their handwriting will conform to samples taken from old school books.

Electroencephalographic studies . . . have shown that past-life memories occur when the brain level measures 8.3 cycles per second. . . . When the subconscious state is altered—when the conscious mind is invited to intervene—the pattern alters immediately. (Viney 280)SDresearcher • modern • Viney

When individuals are hypnotized, they often remember what appear to be memories of previous existences. . . . Over 90 percent of all hypnotizable individuals are able to recall these apparent memories. (Talbot 213)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

People in hypnosis display a sense of awe as they report floating toward their destinations in the spirit world. (Newton 134)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Children go in and out of trance more easily and more often than adults. . . . Some psychologists believe that the brightest and most creative children are those who stare frequently, without interruption. (Bowman 75)

Parents told me so often, “We were riding in the car when my child began to tell me about his past life.” . . .

The motion of the car lulls children into a trance state. . . .

Other children speak of their memories while in the bath or just before bedtime. . . . The motion of a rocking chair or a swing can sway a child into an altered state of consciousness as easily as the proverbial hypnotist’s watch.

Children can also go into a mild trance while engaged in any creative activity like drawing, painting, or playing make-believe. (Bowman 213-214)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Half of [Dr. Wambach’s] subjects, she noticed, reported at least one life in which they had died as very young children. This mirrored the historical fact that in primitive societies nearly 50 percent of children died before reaching the age of five. . . .

She had 1,088 completed questionnaires. . . .

Male and female: the subjects reported an almost even split between the two sexes, with 50.3 percent male and 49.7 percent female across all the time periods. This result came despite the fact that 78 percent of her subjects were women and that most subjects switched gender . . . from lifetime to lifetime.

Rich and poor: Not one of her subjects remembered being a known historical personality or anyone worthy of even a good fantasy. . . . Most lives were dreary, ordinary, and hard. The primary occupation, in almost every time period was farming and gathering food. . . .

For all time periods, the upper classes were never more than 10 percent of her sample; middle classes (the craftsmen and merchants) fluctuated between 20 and 34 percent; the lower classes (peasants, primitives, soldiers, and slaves) were never less than 60 percent. During the bleak periods of history, when civilization was at an ebb, the proportion of desperately poor rose to as high as 80 percent.

Race and geography: Even though almost all of Wambach’s regression subjects were middle-class Caucasians, most of them remembered at least one life as a member of another race—African, Asian, or Indian. And the fluctuations in the numbers and locations of the different races accurately reflected the shifting densities of population through history and across the globe.

Many of the white subjects who remembered previous lives in the twentieth century reported that they were black or Asian in their most immediate past life. This rules out genetic memory as an explanation for the phenomenon.

Food: The majority of subjects reported eating bland foods, like gruel made from cereal grains, roots and berries gathered by the primitives, and an occasional tree fruit or vegetable. Meat was rare—beef wasn’t mentioned at all until 1500—and many of the subjects reported tasting spoiled food. . . .

As an example of the high degree of detail, Dr. Wambach’s results trace the evolution of eating utensils from crude spoons and scoopers to the three-pronged fork, which first appeared in her surveys around 1500, and then to the modern four-pronged fork, which first appeared around 1800. The majority of her subjects, however, reported eating with their fingers. . . .

Many of the subjects were under thirty years of age when they died, which matches what we know of the average life span through history. (Bowman 50-53)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

One unusual feature was the ability the memories had to explain a wide range of seemingly unrelated events and experiences in the subjects’ current lives. . . .

Many of the subjects . . . gave uncannily accurate historical details about the times in which they had lived. . . . While reliving an apparent past life as a Viking, one man, a thirty-seven year-old behavioral scientist, shouted words that linguistic authorities later identified as Old Norse. After being regressed to an ancient Persian lifetime, the same man began to write in a spidery, Arabic-style script that an expert in Near Eastern languages identified as an authentic representation of Sassanid Pahlavi, a long extinct Mesopotamian tongue that flourished between A.D. 226 and 651. (Talbot 215)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

The deceased exhibit the same detailed and accurate perceptions as do prenatal subjects. (Wade 265)

Witnessing these kids go through past life deaths inspired me every time. . . . I could feel a palpable shift of the energy in the room. At times I was sure that I saw light around the children as they lay there in absolute peace. I waited for these moments, these energetic peaks, to ask what they had learned from the lifetime they had just remembered. Each time the children delivered a gem of insight, more wise and mature than their few years of worldly experience could possibly render. It was in these moments that I was aware of being in the presence of wise and experienced souls. (Bowman 119)

Half the children in the Harrison cases remembered how they died. Most were matter-of-fact about their deaths, and they talked about dying calmly, without sadness or fear. (Bowman 127)

These children . . . could be very experienced souls, only in little bodies. (Bowman 141)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

The phenomenology of this physically transcendent source of consciousness is somewhat different from “normal” consciousness. . . . The sequence of discreet events is often confused, and subjects report a sense of timelessness. . . . The portions of records in the physically-transcendent voice, describing perception from the external vantage point, seem rather devoid of emotion, even when the subject is viewing highly evocative events; when, however, the vantage point shifts to inside the fetal body, emotions are strong. . . .

The perception . . . is of a timeless present. (Wade 261)

These early impressions seem to involve an out-of-body vantage point. . . . Switches in vantage point occur in virtually all records. Very young children do not seem bothered by the dual vantage point, but older subjects may express puzzlement even under hypnosis. . . .

“I keep looking through the nursery window. It’s weird. I can’t be on both sides of the window? I’m looking at the baby; it’s me.” (Chamberlain, 1988a, P.187-188) (Wade 254)JoNDE-JWresearcher • modern • Wade

Some children who remember their past lives and deaths also have knowledge of what happened to them immediately after they died. Occasionally they speak from the perspective of an omniscient observer outside the body they just left behind, still seeing and hearing what is going on around them. (Bowman 186)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

According to Stevenson, spontaneous past-life recall is relatively common among children, so common that the number of cases that seem worth considering far exceeds his staff’s ability to investigate them. Generally children are between the ages of two and four when they start talking about their “other life,” and frequently they remember dozens of particulars; including their name, the names of family members and friends, where they lived, what their house looked like, what they did for a living, how they died, and even obscure information such as where they hid money before they died and, in cases involving murder, sometimes even who killed them.

Indeed, frequently their memories are so detailed, Stevenson is able to track down the identity of their previous personality and verify virtually everything they have said. He has even taken children to the area in which their past incarnation lived, and watched as they navigated effortlessly through strange neighborhoods and correctly identified their former house, belongings, and past-life relatives and friends. (Talbot 217)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

Most of the memories appear for the first time when the child is between the ages of two and five. This pattern is universal, occurring in every country and culture. . . . Some children talk of their memories as soon as they can put words together. (Bowman 109-110)

Children haven’t lived through enough years and experiences to layer over and thoroughly embed these issues into their personalities. Very young children, especially, don’t have the additional layers of belief and cultural conditioning glazing over their memories, obstructing their own awareness. (Bowman 71)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Generally, the memories begin to fade around school age, between five and eight. They recede into the unconscious, fading like a dream in the morning. After they have faded, the child will typically deny he ever had them. In a small number of rare cases the memories remain intact into adulthood. (Bowman 110)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Subject: One does not lose the memories at birth. Children still have them. . . . We, as adults, silence them in many ways whether it is intended or not. But the memories grow quieter as one grows older because of these outside influences, more so than anything in the entity. (Cannon 224)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

There are some fascinating patterns that come out of Stevenson’s reincarnation research. For example, it is generally preschool children that make these claims, and once they start school they talk less and less about it and may finally forget these memories. That makes sense, because school is not simply an education, but also an indoctrination into the belief systems and limitations of their particular culture. (Tart 187)BMSresearchers • modern • Tart

Angels (channeled): It is the attachment to your reality that quickly follows this forgetting—attachment to people, places, and things, and to individual identity—that creates a resistance to the change which you call death, no matter the duration of time spent on the Earth plane. These attachments become a source of security and create a false sense of well-being. Any reality that does not include the object or idea to which the soul is attached then becomes a terrifying place, unknown and therefore fraught with danger, to be avoided at all costs. (Fairchilde 83)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to function in the everyday world if you had the memories of countless past lives constantly bombarding you? You would never be able to concentrate on the lessons you have to work out during this lifetime. Sometimes when you’re a young child you remember your past connections because you’re still close to it. But then the memories you get in future years bury these memories and you forget, although they’re still there in your subconscious. (Cannon 43)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

Dr. Peebles: Many souls of their own desire really don’t want to think too much about the spirit. There’s a certain self-imposed closure in the mind . . . for that would be a distraction; for some people would want to leave Earth several times every year and return to the spirit. (Pendleton 99)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

The old man is not the child he will be when he is reborn, and yet there is between them a causal nexus although not identity of personality. . . . Between the child of the new birth and the old man there is . . . a more or less complete break in the continuity of memory in the sangsaric (or mundane) NOTE: physically-oriented consciousness, but not in the subconsciousness. (Evans-Wentz 4)TYSDwisdom • Tibetan • Dvagpo-Lharje

Angels (channeled): The spirit of a child, although it is ageless and ancient and very wise, is also innocent. It has come to its incarnation through a process of cleansing and rebalancing and harmonizing. It has released the dross it may have accumulated as a result of its experiences in previous incarnations, so that only the wisdom and skills gained from those experiences remain.

The soul then transfers this wisdom, these perfected abilities and skills, into the cellular memory of the physical body that it chooses to inhabit. It carefully selects its parents according to soul affinity, as well as genetic potentials, so that it will have every available opportunity to complete its destiny.

The spirit is always pure and innocent and clear. However, there may be times when the soul experiences of a previous life are not fully resolved. That soul may then need more time to work on a particular issue so that it may transmute accumulated, unresolved emotions into wisdom through a learning process. In these instances, those emotions, wounds, and darkness that remain in the soul’s memory are carried into the next incarnation in order to balance the imbalances from which these emotions arise. Sometimes this is the only way in which the soul can fully heal.

So, as unresolved attachments and emotions of the previous incarnation begin to surface in the soul’s consciousness, the very cells of the still developing physical body will mirror those memories. These patterns are programmed into the subconscious and can sometime manifest as physical or emotional imbalances and difficulties to serve as a reminder of the work that the soul has to do. Some of these imbalances may take form in the body while it is still developing in the womb. Others may not appear until later in life, when circumstances may trigger deep memories of similar experiences in other lifetimes. (Fairchilde 91-92)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

Dr. Stevenson speculates . . . “The intensity of an experience such as a violent death can in some way strengthen or ‘fixate’ memories so that they are more readily preserved in consciousness.” . . .

A part of the child is still “back there” with one foot in the past life, stuck in the web of unresolved feelings, still attached to a life left behind unexpectedly. (Bowman 110-111)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Each inner self, adopting a new body, imposes upon it and upon its entire genetic makeup, memory of the past physical forms in which it has been involved. Now the present characteristics usually overshadow the past ones. They are dominant, but the other characteristic are latent and present, built into the pattern. . . .

There are presently invisible layers within the body, the topmost layer that you see representing, of course, the present physical form. But enmeshed within this there are what amount to invisible layers, “shadow,” latent layers that represent previous physical images that have belonged to the personality. . . .

They are connected electromagnetically to the atomic structure of the present body. To your way of thinking, they would be unfocused. . . . The body does not only carry memory biologically of its own past condition in this life therefore, but indelibly with it, even physically, are the memories of the other bodies that the personality has formed in previous reincarnations. (Roberts 187-188)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Your conscious intents and purposes act as the triggers that activate whatever genetic or reincarnational aspects that you need.

The state of dreaming provides the connecting links between these systems of consciousness. (Roberts 326)DEVF2channeled • modern • Seth

[Past life memories] sometimes ripple just below the surface of consciousness to influence a person’s present life. (Bowman 24)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Past lives that relate to our current one are present in our aura like folders from our files open on our desk—we are drawing from them, so the information is “right there” to be read. (Hoodwin 31)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

When you are ill, in the dream state you often have experiences in which you seem to be someone else with an entirely healthy body. Often such a dream is therapeutic. An “older” reincarnational body has come to your aid, from which you draw strength through the memory of its health. (Roberts 188)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Dr. Stevenson records . . . traits, skills, phobias, and preferences that are out of place for a child’s natural family, but that match the life of the previous personality. . . .

For example, children in India who remember a past life in a higher class may scold their lower-class parents for having uncouth habits and lifestyle, and they may refuse to eat the food of inferiors. Bishen Chand acted exactly like the spoiled rich man he remembered being. He contemptuously rebuked his parents for their poverty, demanded better food, and rejected the cheap clothes he was given, saying that they weren’t good enough for his servants. On the other hand, some children who remember being from a lower caste than their parents may display the coarseness and survival instincts of the desperately poor and habits offensive to the new family. Some are grateful for their improved station and show great pleasure in eating good food and owning nice clothes. (Bowman 102)

[Stevenson] describes a young boy in India who reprimanded a woman he recognized as his former wife for wearing the white sari customarily worn by widows, rather than the colored sari of his wife. It would normally be a serious social offense for a small boy to make such a comment to an older woman. (Bowman 103)

Fiona saw herself as a young girl in a hot, sunny landscape with clay buildings. She was an orphan who stayed alive by stealing food and hiding in whatever shelter she could find at night. Her survival depended on her stealth and speed. She said that she died young, killed for stealing food. Still in a trance, she did not seem to be sad or troubled by her untimely death. . . .

She is fanatical about scouring the refrigerator for leftovers, because she can’t stand to see any food wasted. (Bowman 115)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

As John talked about his life, I suddenly saw him in a past life sometime around the era of Genghis Khan. The scene was in a battle where he was lustfully killing a soldier from the “other army” with a hand weapon. He had a rod with a chain, and on the end of the chain was a metal ball with spikes with which he impaled his enemy’s head. At the same time this happened, the enemy was plunging a lance into John’s solar plexus. Both were killed in this interaction. This experience left him with the belief that any lusty, powerful expression of the life-force energy leads to injury and death. . . .

He had been born with [scoliosis] and had never had an operation to straighten his spine. . . .

Once a lot of the stagnated energy from the second and fourth auric levels had been cleared. . . . I found the lance embedded in his solar plexus on the fifth energy level, or etheric template level. The handle of the lance was completely embedded within the auric field and curled into a spiral. To remove it, first I had to straighten the handle and then yank out the lance. (Brennan 247,249)HoLclairvoyant • modern • Brennan

Abilities from past lives are at your disposal for your present use. (Roberts 176)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Prodigies are literally remembering skills they honed in a past life. . . .

Michael and Alan were four years old. . . .

Tara Fleming: “Michael’s preschool teacher told me that he was drawing at the level of a talented twelve-year old. . . . Michael said, ‘I’m so glad I remember my art, Mom. I was so worried I wouldn’t remember. It’s coming back all at once. I was so worried that I’d forgotten it.’ . . .

“He approaches his work like a seasoned professional. . . . While most kids his age are drawing stick figures, Michael is drawing with perspective and shading.” (Bowman 199)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Phobias appeared before they expressed any conscious memories of their past lives. (Bowman 110)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

A disproportionately high number of reborn children recalled violent deaths and in these cases the children’s memories were more often likely to centre on the events immediately preceding their former self’s last moments. (Viney 243) (Viney 274)SDresearcher • modern • Viney

10 percent of the subjects reported highly charged negative emotions surrounding the death. Each of these subjects had died violently or suddenly, in an accident or a war, or in great fear. (Bowman 54)

Dr. Stevenson found that 72 percent of the children remembered how they died, and more than half of these died violently. . . . Far fewer children in his cases could remember their past life names. (Bowman 110)

In the weeks after the group regression, some of the subjects reported to her that their lifelong phobias had disappeared. These phobias were always related to the mode of death they had experienced in their past lives: a fear of water disappeared when the subject remembered drowning; another subject lost his fear of horses when remembering a death caused by a horse; and a woman with recurring dizzy spells and an irrational urge to run found these were eradicated after she remembered being pursued by angry townspeople and chased over a cliff to her death. (Bowman 54)

The death experience, [Dr. Fiore] found, was the event most responsible for the person’s symptoms and problems. (Bowman 57)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Cowan came to the conclusion that many psychic disorders such as fears, complexes, and phobias have their root cause in the inherited memories of traumatic incidents from previous existences (Viney 270)

[Fiore] believes obesity, for instance, is more often than not the result of the oppressed memories of a person who starved in a previous incarnation, whilst migraine sufferers may be the reincarnated souls of persons who suffered scalping or other serious head wounds. One teenage insomniac whom Dr Fiore treated, recalled under hypnotism his former life as an American GI which ended when he was bayoneted to death while sleeping on a beach during the Pacific War. (Viney 274)SDresearcher • modern • Viney

A traumatic experience in a past life such as being in war—and especially a traumatic death—can cause a phobia is the present life. (Bowman 9)

Shamlinie was terrified of water. . . . At the same time she had a severe phobia of buses. . . .

Soon after Shamlinie began talking, she told her parents that she had lived before, and gave full details of her life in a village not far away called Galtudawa. She also described how she had died. One morning she was on her way to buy some bread. Because the ground was flooded from heavy rains, she walked on the raised part of the road reserved for vehicles. A bus passed too close, splashing water on her and throwing her into a flooded paddy field. . . . After that, she said, she fell into a long sleep. (Bowman 104)

On New Year’s Eve [Chase] went to his first-ever slumber party. . . . The kids were entertained with Ninja games, karate videos, and the favorite Ninja Turtle food—pizza. Chase appeared to be having a great time . . . but late in the night he became upset and couldn’t sleep. . . . At dawn [Brit] put him in the car and brought an exhausted and tearful Chase home. . . .

After that night, Chase had anxiety attacks every evening at bedtime . . . for six long weeks.

I waited until bedtime when his anxiety started. . . . I decided to use the sick feeling in his stomach as a bridge back to the past. . . . [Chase] said that it felt like an emptiness, a spinning that would start in his stomach, travel to his throat, and flow back to his stomach. . . . He said that it was not a sick feeling, but a feeling of emptiness. . . .

Chase saw an image of himself as an adult manacled in a dungeon, in what he described as “castle times.” It was dark, and he was alone. His arms were stretched tightly above him, and they hurt. . . .

I suggested that he go back to an earlier time. . . . He saw himself in a village square crowded with many people—a marketplace. He was planing a theft. He saw his hand reaching for something, when he was suddenly apprehended. . . .

“I feel guilty about what I did—sorry. It was a waste of a life to end up like this. I feel that sadness and guilt in my stomach. I can’t sleep hanging in this position. I die here.” . . .

He said that he had been having fun at the slumber party seeing how late he could stay up, when suddenly he became anxious and scared about not being able to sleep. . . . He said that the slumber party was “dark and unfamiliar like the dungeon.” . . .

Chase gave me a hug and said he felt better now. He was able to sleep soundly that night and was not bothered by the anxiety or sick feeling again. (Bowman 121-122)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Maureen explained that whenever she drove down Highway 1, south of San Francisco, she would inexplicably get very nervous and apprehensive at a certain section on the coast road. Now she knew why. I hoped my deprogramming of her death scene in 1923 would also clear up the recurring nightmares of sudden death. A month later Maureen wrote and confirmed this nightmare was finally gone. . . .

Dale told me that one of the reasons he left the area where he was born was because he felt uncomfortable driving around San Francisco. . . . Some people do carry physical and emotional body imprints from one life to the next. (Newton 272)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

Being hanged for speaking out against the authorities could result in a chronic neck pain and a fear of speaking in public. . . .

Physical symptoms can be caused not only through wounds to the flesh, but by penetrating blows to the psyche as well: headaches can come from intolerable mental choices, sinusitis from a failure to grieve, back troubles from carrying too much guilt. (Bowman 63)

In 35 percent of [Stevenson’s] verified cases, the children had birthmarks or birth defects that matched wounds from their previous lives. . . .

One of the stories . . . is of an Indian boy who remembered being killed by a shotgun blast to his chest. On this boy’s chest was an array of birthmarks that matched the pattern and location (verified by autopsy report) of the fatal wounds.

Another shotgun victim was hit at point-blank range in the right side of the head (confirmed from the hospital report). The Turkish boy who remembered this life was born with “a diminished and malformed ear . . . and underdevelopment of the right side of his face.

One woman had three separate linear scarlike birthmarks on her back. As a child, she remembered the life of a woman who was killed by three blows to her back with an ax.

Another boy in India was born with stubs for fingers on only his right hand—an extremely rare condition. He remembered the life of a boy who had his fingers cut off by the blades of a fodder chopping machine.

The birthmarks in most of Dr. Stevenson’s cases . . . are distinct, large, and notable marks, “likely to be puckered and scarlike, sometimes depressed a little below the surrounding skin, areas of hairlessness, areas of markedly diminished pigmentations, or port-wine stains.” The same is true of birth defects. . . . They, too, are unusual and rare specimens. . . .

Nine of these cases involve bullet wounds where not only do the marks match the exact site of entry and exit, but the mark corresponding to the entry wound is small and round, and the mark corresponding to the exit wound is large and irregular. (Bowman 106-108)

[Dominic] had a birthmark: a scar on his right thigh. . . .

As an infant, Dominic was so terrified of being immersed in water that he screamed hysterically. . . . One day, around the time he was learning his first words, his grandmother, who had never mentioned the scar before, touched it gently. Dominic explained to the astonished woman, “Man on boat did that with big knife. Lots of blood everywhere. All covered with blood.” He said he fell in the water and “got drowned.” (Bowman 127-128)

The Pollack family in England suffered an unthinkable tragedy when their two daughters, eleven-year-old Joanna and six-year-old Jacqueline, both died in the same accident. . . .

For years before the accident, their father . . . had prayed to God asking for proof of reincarnation. Now he prayed that God would send his daughters back to him.

Within a year his wife, Florence, became pregnant. John assured her that their two daughters were returning to their family as twins. John persisted in this belief, contradicting their gynecologist who maintained that only one baby was growing in Florence’s womb. . . . Florence gave birth to identical twin girls; they named the twins Elizabeth and Laura.

Immediately they noticed that Elizabeth, but not Laura, had two birthmarks—a white line on her forehead and a brown birthmark on her waist—that matched the size, shape, and location of a scar and a congenital birthmark that had been on Jacqueline’s forehead and waist. This is remarkable because identical twins, if they share identical genetic material . . . will have identical birthmarks too. . . .

When the girls were old enough to talk, they remembered details of their deceased sisters. (Children Who Remember Previous Lives, Dr. Stevenson) (Bowman 290-291)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

A person’s previous incarnation can apparently affect the very shape and structure of their current physical body. [Stevenson] has discovered, for example, that Burmese children who remember previous lives as British or American Air Force pilots shot down over Burma during World War II, all have fairer hair and complexions than their siblings. . . .

Distinctive facial features, foot deformities, and other characteristics have carried over from one life to the next. Most numerous among these are physical injuries carrying over as scars or birthmarks. In one case, a boy who remembered being murdered in his former life by having his throat slit, still had a long reddish mark resembling a scar across his neck. In another, a boy who remembered committing suicide by shooting himself in the head in his past incarnation, still had two scarlike birthmarks that lined up perfectly along the bullet’s trajectory, one where the bullet had entered and one where it had exited. And, in another, a body had a birthmark resembling a surgical scar, complete with a line of red marks resembling stitch wounds, in the exact location where his previous personality had had surgery. . . .

[Stevenson] states, “It seems to me that the imprint of wounds on the previous personality must be carried between lives on some kind of an extended body which in turn acts as a template for the production on a new physical body of birthmarks and deformities that correspond to the wounds on the body of the previous personality.” . . .

The human energy field is a holographic template that guides the form and structure of the physical body. (Talbot 218-219)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

[Dr. Fiore] found that some lifelong problems could be traced . . . to events in the first few months of life, during the birth experience, or in the womb. . . . When Dr. Fiore’s patients recalled these very early experiences, their chronic emotional problems, such as guilt, or their physical symptoms, such as headaches or asthma, disappeared. . . .

One day, Dr. Fiore stumbled upon something even more extraordinary. While using hypnotic age regression to discover the source of a patient’s crippling sexual inhibitions, she gave the suggestion that he go back to the source of his problem. She was totally unprepared for his reply.

He said, “Two or three lifetimes ago, I was a Catholic priest.” Then he gave a vivid and emotional description of his life and sexual attitudes as a seventeenth-century Italian priest. . . . The next time she saw him he reported . . . that he was . . . healed of his sexual problems. . . .

Despite [Dr. Fiore’s] beliefs or the beliefs of her patients, past life stories healed. (Bowman 56)

Because we generally don’t accept reincarnation in our culture, conscientious parents often blame themselves and their parenting mistakes for any and all mental or behavioral problems their young children my have. (Bowman 235)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

One unusual feature was the ability the memories had to explain a wide range of seemingly unrelated events and experiences in the subjects’ current lives. . . .

Many of the subjects also experienced profound psychological and physical healings as a result of the traumatic past-life memories they unearthed. (Talbot 215)HUscientific, researcher • modern • Talbot

Instantaneous cures . . . coincide with the liberation of a suppressed past-life memory. . . .

[Netherton] began to use regression regularly in his own practice. As Netherton believes that his patients must relive the most traumatic moments from their previous lives . . . a visit to his surgery on a typical day will find men and women screaming, weeping, or moaning, in foreign languages or in voices inappropriate to their sex. (Viney 275)SDresearcher • modern • Viney

By tracing this transition from past life death to rebirth, she may come to understand for the first time that the past life is over, that she is now in a new lifetime. This could be just the understanding she needs to help her let go of the past and ground herself in present reality. (Bowman 229)

Young children sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between past life events and the present. Sometimes events and feelings of the past are as vivid and real as anything that happened recently. . . .

Colleen: “I then explained to him that he was hit by the truck in a different life, not this life. I told him he had a different body then and that he had a different mommy too. I thought that I’d get another blank look. . . .

“But . . . his eyes lit up with surprise and he said, ‘Really, that was a different body? I had a different mommy?’

“He was happy for the first time in a long time. . . . The sparkle came back to his eyes. . . .

“He’s back to being full of happy mischief. . . .

“Blake’s physical symptoms have completely disappeared.” (Bowman 149-151)

Some children . . . need our help in clarifying the difference between what happened in the past and what is true now in the present. . . .

Both past and present lifetimes merge in their awareness. . . .

Some children still have one foot in the past and jump back and forth between lifetimes; they are blatantly confused about which life they are in. This is more likely to be true for very young children because they are closer on the continuum of memory to their past life. . . .

We can help children complete the transition by telling them, “You are now safe in a new body. You are now in a different life.” (Bowman 240-241)

Sagiv’s story where he remembers being shot:

Elona: “‘I was shot and killed. . . . Burglars. They didn’t mean to. I wasn’t doing anything. He just shot me for no reason. I was at the top of the stairs. First they shot my mother, and she was on the floor. And then they shot me.”

“Then he looked at me, and in a loud an angry voice, he blasted, ‘You didn’t save me!’ He was really angry at me and started getting excited. Again he shouted, ‘You didn’t save me!’

“This floored me. I assured him, in a calm and authoritative voice, ‘It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It was a different time. It was a different mother, someone I don’t even know.’

“He seemed to accept this immediately, then proceeded to tell me what happened next. He said, ‘Well, then I died. I was dead, but I grew up—you know what I mean. I stayed there until I came back to be a baby again.’ And then his eyebrows went up, his face lit up, and he said, ‘And then I chose you and Abba!’ He said this like suddenly it all made perfect sense to him.”

A week later Elona brought up the memory again. This time, though, when Sagiv told his story, he was not emotional about it—his catharsis was complete, his anger was spent.

Elona: “It was after this that I noticed a huge change in Sagiv, especially in the way he related to me. He had never been a warm child. Since he was born, something was missing. He was never a cuddly baby. . . .

Immediately after he told me the story, he changed. . . . It hit me like a bomb! Sagiv moved himself onto my lap, put his arms around me, and said, “I love you, Mommy.” He became very cuddly and started hugging me. . . .

Looking back, I could see that he held me responsible for whatever had happened to him before in that other life.” (Bowman 238-239)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

Sometimes, as the story unfolds, a change in verb tense will reflect where the child is in the process of remembering and reveal how much she has let go of the past. (Bowman 229)

[Baby Natalie’s] verb tenses flip back and forth, revealing that she is confused about time and reality. . . .

She had the catharsis by herself, in her car seat. Then she was free of it. A few weeks later. . . . Natalie told the family friend about her memory and referred to it in the past tense and in third person. She was no longer emotional about it, she was no longer troubled. (Bowman 241, 245)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

In Chase’s case, a catharsis was not necessary for his fear of loud noises and his eczema to be cured. Awareness and understanding were all he needed. . . . The process was gentle and not highly emotional. Apparently it wasn’t time for Chase to see his death in that lifetime. He went just so far, and the memory faded.

But as it turned out, his story was still incomplete. The unsettled emotions of his war experience continued to reside in him, and three years later they were triggered by the immediate reality of the war in the Persian Gulf. His sadness about leaving his family surfaced along with the rest of his story, including his death on the battlefield. He finally had closure on that life when he experienced his death and moved into the after-death state. He gained the detachment he needed to resolve his feelings and leave that lifetime behind. (Bowman 71)CPLresearcher • modern • Bowman

In our society there is an expectation that people who commit suicide will be severely punished in the afterlife. (Sutherland 62-63)WtLresearcher • modern • Sutherland

Acharya: You do not solve your difficulties by running away from them, but merely postpone their solution for a future life. . . . A group of circumstances will again arise, forming exactly the same obstacles and difficulties from which he now runs away. . . . Extreme remorse usually follows an act of suicide, and within a very short time of their arrival in the astral word, the majority of suicides would give anything to undo their action. (Richelieu 147)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu

Often the souls that chose to leave their bodies because of physical pain rather than emotional pain are very compassionate beings. . . . However, they often will go to a type of ‘hospital’ situation where they recuperate for a period of time, if the illness has put a strain on their various energy bodies. . . .

The body is an entity in and of itself; to destroy your life form before it has had a chance to drop off naturally can often set you back in your growth process. Frequently a soul comes back into a very similar situation until it has learned the lesson for which it came before. (McKnight 273-274)CJOBEr • modern • McKnight

Subject: A suicide must face the same situation and problem again until they learn an acceptable way of solving it. (Cannon 129)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

Angels (channeled): What you call “suicide”—the deliberate termination of your own life—disrupts a pattern that was set forth and agreed upon by you as your chosen destiny. . . .

If a soul comes into this life with a destiny that it has chosen for the good of the whole as well as itself, and then chooses to deny that destiny through the act of suicide, there will be an opportunity created to come back and fulfill that destiny—an opportunity to balance the imbalance created by inappropriate action. (Fairchilde 65, 67)VftAchanneled • modern • Fairchilde

[The great majority] require up to several hundred in-human lifetimes and thousands of earth year cycles to complete the process. (Monroe 242)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

There must be a tremendous amount of experience stored in here, in you . . . in us. How many lifetimes are there?

A thousand perhaps, or more. We stopped counting long ago. (Monroe 173)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

Primary cluster groups began their existence together and remain closely associated through hundreds of incarnations. I have had souls who were with their primary groups for some 50,000 years before they were ready to move on to the intermediate levels, while a much smaller percentage have achieved this state of development within 5,000 years. (Newton 320-321)DoShypnosis • modern • Newton

John: Each lifetime teaches you a different quality that you need to learn in your quest for perfection. You don’t have just several lifetimes. Some people go for three, four, five, six hundred. (Cannon 84)BDLhypnosis • modern • Cannon

You [Walsch] have had 647 past lives. This is your 648th. (Walsch 204)CWG1channeled • modern • Walsch

What you call the individuated soul is huge, hovering over, in, and through hundreds of physical forms. . . .

Some of these are the “other lives” you’ve lived “before.” . . . And other parts of your soul are enveloping bodies that will be alive in what you call your future. (Walsch 196-197)CWG3channeled • modern • Walsch

The Inspec NOTE: Monroe’s reincarnating self: (You are still incomplete. There are parts of you yet to be transformed, including that visiting portion so filled with curiosity. Each of us is incomplete. That is why we remain at this point, to reach back and gather additional and remaining parts of us until we are complete.)

(Our curiosity desires the effect of completion.)

(We move into the creative return flow again, the waveform that brought you here. When we do so, we leave this reality. . . .)

(Continue to what destination?)

(We believe it to be the source of the radiation, the creative emission and return. Communication is closed with those who have continued.) (Monroe 122-123)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

We’re not much more than a cabin of screaming passengers hoping we’ll find it and shouting advice.

Find what?

The way out. Escape velocity. . . .

You are the best chance we ever had. We shall support and help you all the way. . . . Encouraging you to think what you call “out-of-body” finally worked.

Did you do that?

You remember those dreams beforehand? How you were trying to fly an airplane off the ground but there were always wires overhead?

I do—very clearly.

Those were practice sessions we had when you came here during sleep. . . .

There must be a tremendous amount of experience stored in here, in you . . . in us. How many lifetimes are there?

A thousand perhaps, or more. We stopped counting long ago. Every possible situation is here, every emotion. There is nothing you can encounter in an Earth life that isn’t stored here . . . in fifty different ways.

Then what am I doing, going through it all over again?

To find one final piece. And you are very close. When you have it, we lift off. We shall be gone. . . .

Why did I finally respond to your help?

It was a combination of things: more curiosity, less fear, no heavy indoctrination. . . .

It is impossible to describe the sum of the love energy distilled from more than a thousand lifetimes. (Monroe 169-170, 173, 175-176)

Are all of us here?

There are some still locked into one of the belief systems and others who will be in and out of being human during the next thousand years or so, but when you give the word we shall all be assembled. (Monroe 193)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

The pattern of human passage through this particular [outer] ring NOTE: mid-upper astral is most fascinating, again from the external view. It is composed of energy in human experiential form moving in two directions, both inward and outward. The inward flow is composed of fresh energy from the NPR NOTE: Nonphysical Reality area first encountering the HTSI NOTE: Human Time-Space Illusion field, becoming more and more attracted by it through a series of in-human existences, passing through this particular ring more rapidly once the null point is crossed. From that point inward, the movement accelerates to the inner edge of the ring and through it, terminating usually in the lowest of the inner rings NOTE: the lower astral.

The outward flow, after release from or skirting the innermost rings, commences the haphazard-seeming yet meticulous path through this largest of the rings NOTE: the mid-astral. . . . The two routes both emerge at the outer edge of the ring and lead to the outermost ring NOTE: the higher astral. (Monroe 242)FJOBEr • modern • Monroe

We cycle off not when we’re perfect, according to some definition, but when we feel finished.

Michael: Cycling off is the essence NOTE: reincarnating self deciding that it is finished with school on the physical plane. (Hoodwin 343)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

Monroe’s reincarnating self: You reach a point where you recognize that you can no longer return to being human. . . . You do not need to do so. (Monroe 30-31)UJOBEr • modern • Monroe

The Technician says: “When a man [or a woman] has experienced all facets of Earthly life, grief, joy, happiness, pain, suffering and exhaustion, when all search for knowledge was satisfied and he explored all corners of the Earth, when the wheel of life comes to a conclusion after many incarnations, then the time has come to look for new horizons.”

The new horizons of which the Technician speaks is the next plane of existence, the fourth plane (or higher astral plane NOTE: home of the reincarnating self) and those above—planes which offer a more spiritualized expression of life. As the Technician says, “When man [or a woman] reaches the fourth plane . . . the person is freed from the law of reincarnation.” (Kubis and Macy 81)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

The guidelines for closing the entrance to another birth:

The best method is to abandon the emotions such as desire, anger, or jealousy. (Rinpoche 296)TBoLDwisdom • Tibetan • Rinpoche

Buddha spoke of a multi-dimensional world that was a wheel—“the wheel of life.” Man passed from the physical world to the astral plane, returning again to Earth to fulfill the desires he still had. If you wanted to “get off the wheel” you had to desire nothing. (Kubis and Macy 75)CBtLITC, OBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Kubis & Macy

In drawing personality away from the limiting influence of personal acts, we avoid the law of reincarnation with all its consequences. (Yram 91)PAPOBEr • Yram

Awareness of the One Life ends the endless round of rebirth again into a struggling skin. . . . In the Hindu-Buddhist concept this ends maya, the illusion of the isolated, package self. Regeneration expands the self into a total relationship with and interdependence with others. (Van Dusen 227)RtURresearcher • modern • Dusen

The time of choosing is somewhat more complicated if the last reincarnational cycle, in your terms, is completed. . . .

At the end of the reincarnational cycle you understand quite thoroughly that you, the basic identity, the inner core of your being, is more than the sum of your reincarnational personalities. . . .

These reincarnational personalities continue to develop, but they also understand that their main identity is also yours.

When the cycle is finished, therefore, you have complete knowledge of your past lives. The information, experience, and abilities are at your fingertips. . . . Your reality exists not only in terms of reincarnational existences but also in the probable realities mentioned earlier.

When the time of choosing comes, therefore, the choices available are far more diverse than those offered or possible to personalities who must still reincarnate. (Roberts 165-166)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Starnes: “James reported that he was in a beautiful place which is known as the Third Heaven. That is the spiritual plane, or heaven from which the soul no longer has need to re-enter this great university of life called planet earth.” (Starnes 13)

When the question was asked if we would be returning to earth, our teacher said, “No, beloved ones. Your path leads upward to more heavenly realms. Your earthly service now will be as guides and guardians. And only if you insist, will you return to form and matter.” (Starnes 48)LFSchanneled • modern • James

There is always the opportunity to teach if you have the inclination and the capabilities. . . .

Such a teacher must be able to instruct various portions of one entity NOTE: reincarnating self, in your terms, at the same time. Say, for example, a particular entity has reincarnations in the fourteenth century, [in] 3 B.C., in the year A.D. 260, and in the time of Atlantis. A teacher would simultaneously be in contact with these various personalities, communicating with them in terms that they could understand. Such communication demands a complete knowledge of the root assumptions of such eras, and of the general philosophical and scientific climate of thought at the time.

The entity might well be exploring several probable systems too, and these personalities would also have to be reached and contacted. The amount of knowledge and training necessary makes such a teaching communicator-career extremely demanding, but it is one of the courses available. The process of learning such information necessarily adds to the development and abilities of the teacher. A delicate manipulation of energy is required, and a constant travel through dimensions. Once such a choice is made, training immediately begins, always under the leadership of a practical expert. The vocation, for it is a vocation, leads such a teacher even into other realms of reality than those he previously knew existed. (Roberts 166)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Others, finished with reincarnations and of a different overall nature, may begin the long journey leading toward the vocation of a creator. . . .

The creators begin to experiment with dimensions of actuality, imparting knowledge in as many forms as possible—and I do not mean physical forms. What you would call time is manipulated as an artist would manipulate pigment. What you would call space is gathered together in different ways. . . .

One of their main preoccupations is to create beauty that impinges itself in as many various dimensions of reality as possible. . . .

These creators, however, are also involved in inspiring those in all levels of reality available to them. . . . Inspiration in your system is often the work of such creators.

These “art forms” are often symbolic representations of the nature of reality. . . .

In your terms they may be living dramas. They will always be psychic structures, however, existing apart from any given system of reality, but at least partially perceived by many. Some exist in what you might term the astral plane, and you perceive them in visits during the sleep state. (Roberts 166-167)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

There are also those who choose to be healers, and of course this involves far more than healing as you are familiar with it. These healers must be able to work with all levels of the entity’s NOTE: reincarnating self’s experience, directly helping those personalities that are a part of it. Again, this involves a manipulation through reincarnational patterns, and here again, great diversification. . . .

The healing involved is always psychic and spiritual, and these healers are available to help each personality in your system as you know it, in your present time, and in other systems. (Roberts 168)SSchanneled • modern • Seth

Dr. Peebles: Many, many souls have come to the planet Earth and have left it, finished, done, enlightened, and are in other spheres of growth and living. New souls come—new to the planet Earth—all the time. (Pendleton 43)TDAchanneled • modern • Pendleton

Acharya: When man has conquered the human kingdom, his evolution does not come to a sudden end, but goes on upwards, ever upwards, until at last it reaches the source from which it spring. . . . The goal of life is experience. (Richelieu 3)ASJOBEr • modern (Theosophy) • Richelieu

Vince: “And after one finishes his rounds of incarnation on the physical plane?”

Heyoan: “Then enlightenment goes on in another way. . . . There are an infinite number of stages. For if you were to be carried from one level of reality to the next to the next, you would go into an infinite space. At this point you can only go to a certain height because your perception ability is not that broad. The more enlightened one gets, the broader the perception. There is really no end to it. . . .

“As the darkness fades, the transformation process becomes one of creativity rather than of healing.” (Brennan 263)HoLclairvoyant • modern • Brennan

There is no conceivable state of finality like that of an eternal paradise. . . . There is no conceivable end of evolution. . . . The Cosmos itself is eternally subject to rebirths and redyings, of which the One Mind NOTE: the Source is the Dreamer, the Source, and the Sustainer. (Evans-Wentz 7)TYSDwisdom • Tibetan • Dvagpo-Lharje

The Tao NOTE: the Source consists of an infinite number of sparks, or units of consciousness, that are at once wholly unified and individual, like the cells in our body. Some of these sparks are purely potential, and others have experienced various degrees and kinds of realization in the universe and in the Tao itself. . . . [The Tao] created the universe to be its “workshop,” a place where it could manifest and further know itself. . . . [Love] is the animating force, the fundamental impulse, in all creation. Our spark, being part of the Tao, shares in the Tao’s creativity. When we created our essence, we cast or extended ourselves from the Tao into the universe in order to expand the Tao. We explore, experience, and create in order to actualize more of the Tao’s potential and bring back to it a wealth of new knowledge about itself. Since the Tao’s nature is love, what we are really about, ultimately, is expanding love. . . .

When we are cast from the Tao, we become a “fragment.” During the middle of our time on the physical plane, we are at our most fragmented or individual. After that, our journey back to being fully focused in the Tao, which is the experience of total oneness, begins. . . .

I call the big “loop” to and from the Tao a “grand cycle.” . . . It is like taking a journey around the world and returning home with a much expanded awareness. . . . In casting from the Tao, we never actually leave it. (Hoodwin 89-90)

Michael: The Tao NOTE: the Source . . . [is] extending parts of itself into the dimensional universe. (Hoodwin 341)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin

There is only life dancing outwardly, then back to the Source, then once again moving back into physical expression. No beginning. No ending. Ever! Only life, learning, growing, changing until, at last, the soul knows it is immortal and Everlasting! (Starnes 83)LFSchanneled • modern • James

Case 23:

Dr. N: How do you see yourself relating to the oneness of creation? . . .

S: By sensations of movement NOTE: the flow. In the beginning there is an outward migration of our soul energy from the source. Afterward, our lives are spent moving inward . . . toward cohesion and the uniting. . . . There is an explosive release . . . then a returning . . . yes, the source pulsates.

Dr. N: And you are moving toward the center of this energy source?

S: There really is no center. The source is all around us as if we were . . . inside a beating heart. . . . When I was thrust outward I was a child. Now I’m being drawn back as my adolescence fades. . . .

Dr. N: Back where?

S: Further inside the source. . . . It’s as if souls are all part of a massive electrical explosion which produces . . . a halo effect. In this . . . circular halo is a dark purple light which flares out . . . lightening to a whiteness at the edges. Our awareness begins at the edges of brilliant light and as we grow . . . we become more engulfed in the darker light. . . . The dark light is itself a . . . covering, beyond which we feel an intense warmth . . . full of a knowing presence which is everywhere for us and . . . alive!

Dr. N: What was it like when you were first aware of your identity as a soul after being pushed out to the rim of this halo?

S: To be . . . is the same as watching the first flower of spring open and the flower is you. And, as it opens more, you become aware of other flowers in a glorious field and there is . . . unbounded joy. (Newton 197-198)JoShypnosis • modern • Newton

The Cosmic Wheel simply describes the ultimate reality, or what you might call the cosmology of the universe.

It is the cycle of life, or what I sometimes term The Process. It is a picture phrase describing the no-beginning-and-no-end nature of things; the continually connected path to and from the all of everything, on which the soul joyfully journeys throughout eternity. (Walsch 55)

When you arrive at the highest state, you experience it fully, then you decide what next you choose to experience, and where in the Realm of Relativity you choose to go in order to experience it.

You may wish to again experience yourself becoming your Self—it is a grand experience, indeed—and so you may start all over again on the Cosmic Wheel. (Walsch 55)

You can move to any place on the Cosmic Wheel. You may “come back” as anything you wish, or in any other dimension, reality, solar system, or civilization you choose. Some of those who have reached the place of total union with the Divine have even chosen to “come back” as enlightened masters. (Walsch 102-103)CWG3channeled • modern • Walsch

Each lifetime puts a “ring” of experience “around” our essence NOTE: reincarnating self, and each grand cycle puts one around our spark NOTE: our innermost individuality. When this cycle NOTE: of reincarnation is complete, it will be fully integrated into our spark, just as when this lifetime is complete, it will be fully integrated into our essence. The core of our spark is unchanging. It is the ultimate “I” who experiences. . . .

The more sentient cycles a spark has had, the higher its level of sentience, because it gains experience. . . .

Increased complexity does not make one superior. I know two people with eighteen previous cycles: one is a loving and “enlightened” person; the other looks like a mess. The point is not to be complex, but to expand the Tao NOTE: the Source through the expression of love through our uniqueness. . . .

The final state . . . is one of total unconditional love for everything. Michael considers this to be the ultimate goal of all sentient evolution.

Those with more previous cycles can better afford the luxury, so to speak, of studying something “nonessential.” (Hoodwin 201, 203-204)JoYSchanneled • modern • Hoodwin