Posted on 10 October 2022, 9:56

“There is so much to be studied in the bible of humanity!  By it, we know that everything has to be paid.”  So wrote Amalia Domingo Soler (1835-1909), a Spanish poet, philosopher, writer, editor, social reformer, Spiritist, and the author of Acts that Prove, recently translated into English by Yvonne Crespo Limoges and republished.  The book is about the karmic aspects of life, how suffering in one lifetime is often linked to actions in a previous lifetime.  According to Limoges, Ms. Soler, (below) is known by Spiritists as the “Grand Dame of Spiritism” and the “Chronicler of the Poor.”

“It is a collection of human incidents (usually tragic) that Ms. Soler wrote down, then asked the spirits about them,” Limoges explains.  “The language is forthright and direct. The stories were originally printed in her magazine then placed in book form known in Spanish as Hechos Que Prueban, which in English could be translated as either, “Facts that Prove” or as “Acts that Prove.” I chose the latter as more appropriate, because the chapters report actions that occurred or that people took, and then the spirits tell of the effects (consequences) of those acts, whether for good or bad.”

One of the frequent spirit communicators in the book is Father Germain, who dictated his life story (when on earth as a priest) through a medium, the result being a book which is now a Spiritist classic, in novel form – Memoirs of Father Germain.  (That very intriguing book was translated into English by Limoges’s father, Edgar Crespo.)  It is not always clear which spirit is communicating, whether Germain or another, but they offer much to ponder on, including this:  “In this period, is when man needs to know something of his life, because he now has sufficient knowledge to comprehend the advantages of goodness and the harmfulness of evil.  Therefore, since everything reaches its time, that is why we have come to awaken your attention; that is why the tables dance and why the furniture changes places, and the voices of the spirits resounded in different parts of the Earth, because it is necessary that it be understood that you are not alone in this world.”

Another communication put it this way:  “We come to give advice, to strengthen you, to teach you to know about universal harmony; to tell you that the story of your mistakes of yesterday are the causes of your misfortune today. This is the mission of the spirits near you; spurring you on to work, to cultivate your reason, and that is what will lead you to the perfect understanding of God.”

The story of Carlos and Luisa, as discussed in Chapter 11 is an especially emotional one.  The two were romantically attracted to each other in their youth, but Carlos’s mother was adamantly opposed to their relationship because she wanted her son to marry into wealth, which Luisa’s family did not have.  To please his mother, Carlos distanced himself from Luisa, but they corresponded frequently, expressing their love for each other.  Some 30 years later, when Carlos received a telegram that Luisa was dying, he rushed to her deathbed and sat by her as she took her last breath. 

As explained to Mrs. Soler by a spirit communicator, Carlos and Luisa had been linked together for many centuries by a powerful love. In their past incarnation, they were married and had a daughter who fell in love with a humble peasant.  They objected to her relationship and insisted that she marry into nobility.  The humble worker was deported and died in exile.  The daughter rejected a noble suitor and died prematurely, forgiving her parents for their blindness.  In effect, Carlos and Luisa purified themselves in the present lifetime for the suffering they caused their daughter in a past lifetime.

A lady Spiritist wrote to Amelia, informing her that a newborn child had been left at the door of her house and wondering if there was some spiritual significance to it.  Amelia asked a spirit about it and was told that in her past life the inquiring woman had belonged to nobility and was deceived and seduced by a baron.  The child was taken from her at birth to hide her dishonor and placed in an asylum.  In her remaining years, she wept for her lost son and undertook many charitable acts of helpless men in her son’s memory.  The abandoned child left on her doorstep in the present life was the child of the past life returning to her. 

In another chapter, we meet a man named Francisco Crea who was erroneously convicted of murdering a person and then spent 35 years in prison.  “Is it not true that the preceding story is horrific?” Soler asks, wondering where we can find eternal justice.  She received an answer from the spirit of Father Germain, who explained that some centuries ago, in another lifetime, the man killed his brother and was not held accountable. Thus, he served his time in a subsequent lifetime.

In still another story, Teodora Cruz wonders why her husband’s grandmother hates her so much.  Consulting with the spirits, Soler is informed that the grandmother is a rejected suitor from a prior lifetime who was dominated by violent passions. 

There are 41 other stories in which past-life activities are linked to the current life. The author offers much profound wisdom and philosophy in explaining the issues linking the lives.  Ms. Soler offers much profound wisdom and philosophy.  In the chapter on suicide, she writes: “Living without hope!...It is not living! To live without desiring is to die without agony. Living, dominated by indifference, is to anticipate the crisis of death, it is to open oneself the pit to bury our body in it; it is to become a gravedigger.”

Soler cautions against judging others based on outward appearances.  She tells the story of a homeless person who died of hunger, in spite of the fact that 31,000 pesetas were found in his bed of rags.  Having been very greedy and very much a miser in past lives, he learned the lesson of poverty in the current life, but his past hoarding remained partially with him, the result being that he needed yet another lifetime to learn the lesson of charity.

Soler refers to atheism as the most profound desperation.  “What is life without a tomorrow; the sketch of a painting, the prologue of a story, a voice without echo, a flower without aroma? On the other hand, when hope encourages us, what unlimited horizons present themselves before our eyes! The death of the one who waits, is the death of the just, as the Catholics say, sweet and tranquil.”

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Next blog post: October 24  

Dear all,
ACD explains why he became a spiritualist. This was done for Movietone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LumdsEIuLD4
ACD explains how he sat with various mediums around the world. Around 7 minutes in ACD explains Believing.
Amos thanks for the audio link. Many people explain they are famous or in the public view and therefore well known by mediums. I had a famous neighbour but did not know anything about him when we met. His wife was in stitches saying he doesn’t know anything about you. Mediums are not that interested in people just doing a service. I had to assist someone with a message recently, he asked me what it meant. I gave him my interpretation which could have been wrong.
If Michael wrote about athletes after the chat would that be a hit or was it caused by auto suggestion. (no not the belief that you are a car). When we used to award hits for proof, there was a section of answers which were unknown/unclear. Would when the article gets written be a hit? Interested in your thoughts.
I have an ACD story. My friend was told of a sherlock Homes story with two endings. It turned out to be true after much research. I said one hit was not enough, so I thought about weighing hits. Deliver the message and walk away was our motto.
Bruce
PS Thanks for the ACD stories as I feel right at home.I even dug out Ivan Cooke’s book on the return of ACD.

Dear Mike (Tymn),

Your view of the Confucius case seems entirely right to me. It is one of the most astonishing cases I have read of, involving a very rare human being, a Western expert in the very specialist matters of Chinese language (I forget his name, which was itself extremely unusual); too unlikely a set of coincidences to be accepted as the product of chance. (In this regard it resembles the Maroczy-Korchnoi chess match, another coincidence far beyond credence as mere coincidence, surely one of the strongest cases ever.)

I also think you are right to believe it is probably a case of a group soul communicating.

Eric Franklin

Dear Don,

Thanks for the news that you are OK. I hope sales of your ‘Spirituality and the Afterlife’ are frequent and increasing. The world needs to read your book. I bought a copy for my rather zealous and doctrinairely-opinioned son, and hope he is reading it and that it will, by divine management, also reach his believer friends and influence them too.

Eric Franklin

Eric…Still here—and as well as an 81-year-old (you know the routine) can be.

I seem to recall that on my very first post here I said something to the effect that the level of erudition on this site was just a bit daunting, and had delayed my daring to put in an appearance. Some years later now, I find that that opinion hasn’t changed one iota. The level of recent commentary, most notably from Amos and yourself, among others, has been just a bit beyond my ability to offer much of value. Not to worry though, the time will come…

I got a newsletter of Suzanne Giesemann today and there was mentioned an answer of Sanaya (spirit group) who said that in case of reincarnation only a part of the soul will reincarnate. The human that died goes over in the afterlife as an energy pattern and stays there.(I personally suppose in a sort of close connection with the soul). That’s why medium are able to get messages of a deceased person even if there soul reincarnated (or send a new manifestation to earth)

Michael,
Here is a voice recording of Arthur Conan Doyle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKKAWwzNE_w

Eric and Amos,

Thank you for the additional comments. As mentioned, I have not completely discounted the Conan-Doyle reading. My 20% belief factor is based on the possibility that the medium was in fact influenced by Doyle or a group soul representing Doyle and that what he had to say was partly his own subconscious thinking mixed in with some influence from the Doyle group soul. If he was a complete fraud, he was a very good actor.  The Scottish brogue was most convincing, but I guess many people are capable of changing their voice in that manner.

My next blog is again about George Valiantine, but with some new material added from White Crow’s latest reproduction of “Wisdom of the Gods.”  The comments by Madame Wellington Koo are especially interesting and support the Confucius story.  I’m at 99.9% on the Confucius story but only at 50% that it was actually Confucius. I suspect that a group soul was involved there as well.

One interesting factoid: Patience Worth, when written about is often referred to as “P.W.” Pearl Curran’s third marriage was to Robert Wyman which made her Pearl Wyman or “P.W.” for short.  Interesting eh!  - AOD

Michael,
The additional information you added concerning your reading 25 years ago provided reason for doubting the value of the reading in terms of it being communication from Conan Doyle.  One can always question a reading when the ‘medium’ has prior information about the sitter which in your case was true.  At least the ‘medium’ had enough information about you as a writer to concoct a reasonable narrative about how you might progress in writing in the future.  I would have thought that he would have focused more on your activities writing about parapsychological things in the future, considering your recent books, rather than sports-related things especially if the information was really coming from Doyle, considering his interests in spirits.

I may have mentioned before that my wife and step-daughter had visited a hypnotist several times and at one of those visits my wife was introduced to the son-in-law of the hypnotist.  He was a rough-cut motorcycle rider who apparently had some psychic abilities and he agreed to do a reading for my wife.  Now my wife and I have different last names as she kept her professional name when we married.  And as you know I have had to cloak my name in order to protect my wife’s reputation in the community as a medical provider. So, it is unlikely that the motorcycle rider knew anything about me and my interest in Patience Worth and Pearl Curran.

During my wife’s reading the medium said, “Pearl sends her regards.”  Although my wife knew of my interest in Patience and Pearl it was not something that she was thinking about or really interested in at the time; she has never been involved in anything I write about Patience Worth although she is aware of my interest in Patience and Pearl.  But, the comment “Pearl sends her regards.” was meaningful to me.

I find that kind of information from a medium evidential that he is making some kind of contact with an information bank of some kind or an entity from another reality. I can not imagine that he would know my name and my interest especially for reasons that you know.  There would be no reason to bring through that comment just for my wife. 

In your example I didn’t read anything evidential.  It seemed to be something that any creative person could say if he or she knew just a minuscule tidbit of information about the sitter especially when a larger amount of information was plastered on one of the pages of the local newspaper, enough to figure-out one or more of your interests and probably some of your personality.

I think that one could write a treatise on trance in mediumship.  Apparently ‘trances’ vary in depth from the deep trances of Leonora Piper to those mediums who are just distracted to one degree or another.  Then there are many others on a spectrum of trance, e.g. Elaine Thorpe.  I see that several of the modern mediums use a kind of scribbling on a pad of paper in front of them to distract themselves, e.g., George Anderson, Tyler Henry, Allison, Dubois. And even Pearl Curran did something similar by circling a planchet on the Ouija board. (She said that the Ouija board was just a piece of dead wood and that information came from her.)  Other mediums seem to not go into a trance at all, e.g., John Edward, Matt Fraser.  Apparently, Curran never was in a deep trance as she could answer the telephone, greet new arrivals at the sitting, and smoke a cigarette while she was dictating for Patience Worth. (I think that Jane Roberts smoked a cigarette while she was transmitting Seth.) After the disruption, Pearl Curran would return to finish the section of the story that Patience as transmitting.  My guess is that Geraldine Cummins was the same as she and Pearl Curran described a similar method of receiving communication from spirit entities as visions or voices they perceived in their “mind’s eye” and ear.  Matt Fraser reports the same thing of seeing things and hearing things whispered in his ear.

Turning over the tape is cause for doubt but considering that your medium may not have been in a deep trance like Piper, I don’t think that would disqualify him from being an authentic medium in contact with the spirit world since many good mediums are not in trance but are only slightly distracted or not distracted at all. (as suggested above)  Leslie Flint recorded his direct voice contacts but his sitters, often included George Woods and Betty Greene, both mediums themselves who were regular sitters with Leslie Flint, instrumental in the taping of Flint’s sessions and would turn over the tape for him.  So, while turning over the tape would make one suspicious of the medium, I wouldn’t take that as the only cause to discredit him.  - AOD

Dear Mike (Tymn),

I think that you are entirely justified in expressing doubt as to whether genuine mediumistic communication is sufficiently evidenced in the case you described. Given the same experience, I would doubt genuineness as strongly as you do - but fortunately, as no-one knows better than you do yourself, we have some cases of mediumship which are much better evidentially, and worthy of 98.2% doubt-free credence.

One other remark: Newton (Finn), Don (Porteous) and Keith (Parsons) are absent from the current flow of comments. I hope they are all well, and would like to them to comment again. As I have said before, the ladies amongst Mike’s readership also seem mostly absent. May we hear from you, too, ladies?

Eric Franklin

I should have better explained my doubts relative to my last comment about hearing from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but I felt it had already gone too long for a comment. 

When the medium first greeted me, he said he recognized my name from somewhere. As I wrote a regular sports column for the morning paper, one which had my name in large print with a mug shot of me, I replied that he might have seen my column in the paper. He said something like, “Oh, yes, that’s it.”  So right off the bat, he knew that I was a writer of some kind and that I wrote about sports.  Thus, the evidential aspects relative his comments in that regard have no weight.

I should also have pointed out that he was known for “channeling” Conan Doyle. So that was no surprise.  Like Sir Arthur, the medium’s first name was also Arthur, although that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The famous medium Arthur Ford also came through and communicated me.

As I mentioned in my earlier comment, I was most skeptical after the tape clicked off at 30 minutes and he had the awareness while in trance to stop and turn the tape over and make some kind of comment about the recording machine.  I have often asked those more familiar with the trance state whether a person can have such an awareness and I always get an unknowing shrug.

When his eyeballs went back in his head and his voice changed, I was impressed, but the rest of it left me skeptical.

Amos,

Thanks for the clarification on what Patience Worth had to say about reincarnation. After some 300 or so blogs on top of more than 100 articles in various publications, I have a difficult time remembering what we previously discussed.  I should have an index, but I’ve never had the time or patience to put one together.  That said, I still lean toward the group soul as explaining both Patience Worth and reincarnation, but that “leaning” is far from certainty.

Michael,
Very interesting about ACD. I was very knowledgeable on ACD from my study on his life and spiritualist writings. Also my friend Garth was in contact with ACD in the 1990-2000s via his medium wife and there were many proofs of survival. This article details that ACD came through very early with various mediums. “He has sought out
new mediums and given them messages which they did not understand, but were of vital
importance to members of his family.”://iapsop.com/psypioneer/psypioneer_v11_n4-5_apr-may_2015.pdf
I have a few friends from the other Side who amaze me with their proofs. A recent one was the simile that was used. The message was given with a simile and then a reference given to its use before. It checked out. No loss of identity in 100 years. Same simile.

My question was Did you feel you were talking to ACD? Did any part resonate strongly:
the tympans of your eardrums that they shall simultaneously awaken the memories of the things that you yourself have elected to do prenatally.  The prenatal pact is very important.  So, there will come a time where you will yourself inspired…nay, overshadowed I would think… to write how it is that an athlete can increase the effectiveness, potency and shear power of his or her performance by correctly working with the reprogram of the subconscious mind. 

For example tympans would not be common usage (apart from Eric) but more medical based. ACD was a medical doctor.
Your prenatal pact resonates with Newton’s books.
Did you write about the athlete reprogram of their subconscious mind? This is standard practice today. I worked with a psychologist for our elite sports (and military) and saw some of his techniques. It was a rebuilding exercise using simple behaviour modifications of impulses.
Thanks,
Bruce

Should be in bed. It’s 11.30pm here in Abbotsford bc. Canada but I was truly intrigued with your trance experience 25 years ago and had to write you. It’s so bizarre it must be true. Are you still skeptical after all these years and all you have experienced?  Can you confirm what was predicted for you has occurred.Any additional comments and explanations would be very welcome Michael.

Yes Michael, I think it was several years ago that we discussed Patience Worth’s “discourse” titled “No Reincarnation”.  This discourse was one of five sample discourses by Patience Worth that Dr. Prince included in his book, “ The Case of Patience Worth” which he wrote after a year or more studying, that is interviewing Pearl Curran, her family and friends about the Patience Worth case and actually attending many sessions when Patience Worth dictated her novels, poems and had hours of ”table talk” with many people who attended the dictation.

I think there are several things to consider here.  First of all Dr. Walter Franklin Prince was an Episcopalian minister which meant that he was probably decidedly Christian in his personal belief system and may not personally have believed in reincarnation (or felt he was not allowed to believe in it)  And, If Dr. Prince was the one who titled that discourse in his book “No Reincarnation” (Patience Worth did not provide titles or headings for her poems or other writings) perhaps his Christian beliefs prompted him to interpret what Patience Worth dictated as saying that there was no reincarnation.  I don’t think it is as simple as that when I read that partial discourse by Patience and having read a good portion of her other discussions and responses to questions from a multitude of sitters attending the dictation from Patience to Pearl Curran I believe there is evidence that Worth alluded to reincarnation—- but not by name—-in many of her poems and table talk comments.
 

Additionally, at the beginning of the “Discourses” section of his book, Dr. Prince stated that “None of the following five sample discourses by P.W. is given in its entirety.”  Therefore without searching out the record of that dictation one cannot know whether or not Patience Worth added any clarification to what she dictated at the opening of that discourse.  That discourse that Dr. Prince (probably) titled ”No Reincarnation” was dictated on September 3, 1923 but ten years later on August 24 1933, Patience Worth dictated a short poem which was titled “Reincarnation” (Probably titled by Max Behr and Pearl Curran) which seemed to suggest that Worth acknowledged that there was such a thing as reincarnation. That short poem goes as follows: “The revolving of the soul, the up-shooting through experience’ the labor of perfection; the supping of days that the soul be rich, the re-reflection of God taking on the new imprints of his countenance; aye, and the re-offering of the spirit as a vessel that it receive Him. “

In the discourse quoted by Dr. Prince it is only in the first paragraph that Worth actually seems to respond to the question about reincarnation which according to Prince was often asked by sitters, I suppose including Dr. Prince as he used the words, ‘we’ often asked!

Patience responded by saying:

“How may it be that flesh created may become as flesh again in like exact?  Nay, I say me, flesh is recreated of the same material, builded of the same atoms, but the honey of God is ne’er the same—-the trick of its hangin’ one ‘pon the other.  The trend o’ kennin’ may take frae this and that through kinship, but this hath naught for to do with flesh.  The bowl is and breaked may become a new bowl, fulfilling the same office; but the wine once drunk may not be drunk again. “

Now, this comment by Worth is really not very clear (at least not to me) and seems to question how can flesh become flesh again “in like exact.” It sounds like she is thinking more of resurrection rather than reincarnation since in reincarnation the new body or flesh is not the same flesh again in like exact. It is the spirit or consciousness that is the same but even it takes on a different personality in a new physical form.    She begins to ramble a bit saying “The incidents inscribe consciousness with wisdom or folly, yet man in his span through circumstance and incident becometh conscious of experience, aye, becometh ready that he may learn. “

Now from this point on in the discourse Worth talks about man’s experience on earth, experiencing the yin and yang of his experiences and saying “In all of this he is but a child learning to play a great game.  Wisdom is conscious experience.  Folly is the disregard of experience.  Consciousness is the receptivity of man to God; is the compliment of God unto His creation.  .  .  .  .  .  Experience, bein’ the rootin’ setteth man upon the roadway unto new wisdom and that wisdom is tenuous as moonlight, evasive as smoke, aye, or as mist, all-encompassing as air, sustaining as bread, inexhaustible, ever-reach, infinite.  Man may take this unto him according to his inclination. . . . I may not set this in mere wordin’.  Nay, as well dip moonlight wi’ a mug, for it may not be.”

It takes some deciphering to understand what Worth is saying but I think she is talking about man’s life on earth being one to experience as much of it as he can, the good and the bad, so that he can gain wisdom but she admits that this is all very difficult to put into words.

In summary I think that this partial discourse quoted by Dr. Prince is not very good evidence that Patience Worth actually said that there was no reincarnation, especially considering the 1933 poem titled “Reincarnation” and the many times in her poems she expressed that reuse of the old to make the new was part of God’s plan.  - AOD

For my 60th birthday 25+ years ago I was given a sitting with a local trance-voice medium.  He spoke a very local Portuguese dialect in his normal state, but when he went into trance his eyes rolled back in his head and he supposedly became Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking in a thick Scottish brogue. I’m very skeptical, about a 20% believer and 80% doubter, but for whatever it is worth, here is part of the transcript:

“Oh, we’ve got the body now and we can begin to speak.  Very well. Um, oh, oh, oh.
Doyle here. I am almost speechless, which of course in my case is rather rare.
Yet I would begin.  I think it’s only proper that we begin the way of an introduction.
I function as a spokesman for a particular counsel which I am affiliated.  Currently we are attempting to speak through the medium to get our own thoughts across all the more clearly to you.
The only reason that I mentioned that I was speechless, is not for lack of wits but rather that ... well lets put it like this…well, you and I have been related fairly recently.  I’m speaking blood relative now.  Though I tell you that it is the better part of wisdom that the exact details of such a relationship not be divulged, at least not now.  So if you don’t mind for the nonce I shall prefer to leave it in the ethers, as some say.  But do know that it all shall be revealed really, really at the proper time.

One such as you with your undying quest—- I shall call it—- to know, to experience, to be and therefore to share the truth as you understand it, can only be rewarded you see.

Would that more knew.  I wish that they would.  That if only that they could hold fast to the things that are most truthful in their lives and their understanding and their philosophies.
Why, it’s only a matter of time before the good lord shall in infinite wisdom afford them the opportunity to share it with others.  And so it’s been, you know.

By and by…(words lost)  I recall even now should I cast my attention retrospectively that I would oft lament unto my wife: “How is it that they cannot understand these things?  How is it that they scoff at the very mystery of life?”  And yet, well, I was surrounded by it, wasn’t I.  All about.
 
Yet fortunately, as in the case of the great lord Buddha, who by the by and by,  shall be releasing an incredibly wonderful current, I shall call it, of power soon in that most potent event known in the Buddhist world as the Wesok festival approaching the full moon of May.  But still I say the great lord Buddha, so the story goes, upon his descent from the Nervanic plane, he was just entering the astral world and about to fully focus into the physical again, his body having sat immobile for quite some time, when he was surrounded by these, well, some would call them demons and said “Don’t do it, don’t go, no one will understand you. You’ve come from the plane of pure inspiration.  You’ve been before the very throne of God Almighty.  What makes you think these mortals will understand?  Look at them groveling about for food, for shelter.”  And it stopped him just for the moment; just for the moment.  But then he put his hand down, just like that, tapped the earth and said “Some will understand.”...ha..ha..ha..ha…
And so they have and so they shall, friend.  And so they shall understand you.
Now, look here, let us get one thing quite plain betwixt the two of us and it is this: authors work with authors.
In that you’ve taken this step, in that you’ve elected to do the thing that you are now endeavoring to do, you should find much help coming from very sources.  We stick together you might say as a family of sorts.
Not alone when discussing or writing about topics that are of spirit, but in anything that can elucidate the minds of men.  Why to explain the rules of the game, of soccer for instance is enlightening…yes, enlightening.  For suddenly your brother walks away knowing something that he did not know before.  The light in the aura registers the joy for the soul knows its own worth and its own intrinsic path toward ultimate enlightenment.

But again, back to you, let us take this interesting little direction.  You are soon to become more acquainted than ever I do believe with the concept of those that collectively form what is known as the great karmic board.  The so-called Lords of Karma.  Oh yes, these beings do indeed exist.  I believe the old Hindus might have referred to them as the Limpikas.  So does Madame Blavatsky, that was her term I believe..

But any rate, these beings can be addressed, can be approached as one might approach ones senator—-not always in person, for they are not physical after all.  But in the written document, in the petition if you will and it is precisely for this point that I have come really.  That I might…well…coach you, I suppose, if you don’t mind the pun on how to reach them.  What would I do were I in your case? Well, I should do this. I should set my self down and begin tapping away on those keys:

Beloved lords of karma, I approach you in reverence, humility and sincerity and I ask
that you might guide my thoughts, my work, my service and certainly the direction that my life is taking and shall take in the near future.  I ask that you might open the doors of opportunity for me, but perhaps more than anything, that I might only be guided toward those directions that will fully embody the very will of God for me.  Whatever was the purpose of my incarnation, may I fulfill it with your aid.  I ask for immediate divine intervention.  I ask that you all might take a very close look, a scrutiny of my known karmic records and the pledges and pacts that I’ve made prenatally, and that I be guided closely and eternally from this point forward in that I know this must be supplicated of you.  And I ask that you would kindly make it quite clear that at the next turn that I am to take the right turn or the left, this be incredibly obvious to me least I should be guilty of a miscalculation.  I ask you that you will guide me now and forever.  That I might please….................

W(ords lost at this point due to turning the tape over.  My question here is whether a person in trance has the awareness to turn the tape over.  That is what made me more skeptical than anything, but now I am not so sure.)
 
...it records and then reproduces faithfully.
So, to continue… you would sign your name to it, read it for three days running and upon the third burn it to ashes.  Thus it is sent almost by post you would say. And it suddenly reaches those august beings.  Then after that, watch and see, watch and see. They’ll certainly reply in their own inimitable manners.  But this is one of the things that is shall we say is my privilege to bring and leave on the table of your inspection.  Furthermore, I will say this thing that in times to be you shall find yourself sir in a most enviable position for you’ll have the not some much ear, but the eye of those that most need to read what you’ll have to elucidate upon.  In other words, in that your background has been purposely kept, may I say, in the mainstream versus some you know rather metaphysical thing.  Then of curse you’ve got the reputation, you see…. the credibility, if you will ...that you’ve gained in other ways,  but of course that will be transferable into this other field.
I should like to read you a bit of a table of contents of things that you shall be doing in times to be.  I do not speak in chronological order necessarily but only in the hopes that as I speak these things and the words resonate on the tympans of your eardrums that they shall simultaneously awaken the memories of the things that you yourself have elected to do prenatally.  The prenatal pact is very important.  So, there will come a time where you will yourself inspired…nay, overshadowed I would think… to write how it is that an athlete can increase the effectiveness, potency and shear power of his or her performance by correctly working with the reprogram of the subconscious mind.  That topic I dare say shall be one of your favorites ones to dwell upon.  And dwell you shall.  I don’t have the time.  You’ll find yourself guided to speak about a particular athlete…now mind you I’m keeping it in the athletic, aye…not what you might have expected but to continue…who at that particular time shall be making a name for himself due to certain claims and allegations of a spiritual nature.  In other words, you, as one who as per your article will have consulted an authority…well,  that authority shall be yourself ...ha…ha…  They won’t know that; they don’t need to. Oh, on these topics that you find vis a vis holes in his philosophy.  Oh, he’ll just be spouting off things that he thinks will make him effective.  That’ll be another thing; a bit controversial that.  Yet again you’ll be writing, leaving the athletic field for the anont.  You shall be writing about the ability of children to cultivate their psychic senses far more easily than adults and the ways and means by which this lovely thing can be accomplished.  So, you see, these be but just a few; I say they continue.
In times past, you were…well… a practitioner of the magical arts in all the various lives—-three times in England that I am aware of.  And in one particular case, we crossed paths in that very life.  Why I must admit though that in that life you struck fear into my heart. I was a young lad, born in the very place I was born when last physical—- Edinburgh—- but a different life.  And you were known as an older wizard of sorts.  People feared you for you were known to cast spells, make it rain, whatever.  But one thing I did learn from you cause when my father in that life left us—- died, so called—-oh, I went off you know.  A young lad of about 14, just coming into my manhood.  And I went off on myself—- crying, lamenting of course as a young lad will do when he loses his father.  Then out of the blue I heard this very gruff voice—-yours—- ha..ha..ha…  saying to me “Why waste all that energy on crying like an old lady, when you can be using it to build a future that your father wants you to build?”  Well, the shock of it, eh.  I turned about only to see you of all people.  The old boo boogey.

Amos, we’ve probably discussed this before, but I can’t recall for sure.  On page 222 of the Prince book about Patience Worth, we find Patience saying there is “no reincarnation” or words to the effect.  One can lend his own interpretation to what she/they is/are saying, but I am wondering how you interpret it.

Bill,

Thanks for your comment.  I did not mean to imply that I would prefer a return to Victorian mores and values.  I believe I said I was looking for a middleground between them and what we have today. 1958 would just about put us in the middle in terms of years. I was only 21 then and saw the world thru different eyes, but, in retrospect, I believe the downhill slide began about then, It didn’t pick up steam until the 1960s.

I did say that I might prefer to come back in the Amish tradition, although it was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but not completely.  If I were a teenager again and had the choice of being an Amish teenager or what I see here walking home from high school or in the stores, I’ll definitely choose a very traditional Amish lifestyle.

Anthony,
Interesting question. On earth there is linear time, in the afterlife not. There is said that everything happens at the same ’time’ or maybe the time is just when things happen. In fact there, as well as here,everything happens in the now. The past is just a memory based event. The knowledge of that event can even change through time. And then there is the question of parallel worlds. It can be an interesting experiment for the divine creator to create parallel worlds at the same ’time’, so that can be examinated how they evolve differently as an effect of free will. Sometimes I feel that I got dreams of those worlds of other ’me’s’ in settings and people I have never seen and a few family members or friends that I know. The dream always pose a problem that must be solved. It is as if my higher self interact between those parallel worlds and tries to find solutions in one of the worlds. Sometimes in the morning I get answers out of nowhere. 
If that is the case then I think that you can be what you asked, but I think that the outcome of the events can be different due to the free will.
The solution to your question can also be easier: spirits say that Earth life is just an illusion. When you go into the afterlife (NDE’S prove that) you come in different possible illusions. The one sees Jesus another enters a tunnel or a garden ,.... If it is that simple, the divine consciousness can easely create a new illusion. It is even said that people can have a sort of revival of an event to correct some faults they did wrong in the past.

Dear all,

Anthony raises an interesting question. The Great Being, the conscious Whole, Who contains and IS everything, does not experience time. That Being, He/She, “permanently” IS. “Time”, by contrast, happens to those entities within the Whole who are conscious, and are small parts of the Wholeness, and so seem to themselves, though somewhat erroneously, to be distinguishable entities within the Whole. They can “rattle around” within the Whole, and so experience what they think of as “not-themselves”, and in this way experience PROCESS, which they misconceive as “time”. The Great ALL, on the other hand, CONTAINS all distinguishable things, such as us. The Great container does not experience time, because that Being CONTAINS ALL times, so any life that can occur or has occurred or will occur within that WHOLE can be re-run whenever (if it happens at all - and we cannot know whether it does or not) the Great Being chooses to “re-run” a life of a tiny spark of His/Her Wholeness. This is difficult to state unambiguously in words (stupid human invention that words are) but easy to contemplatively “see”. (But when you first see it do not try to put it into words, as I am trying to do here, because you will lose it and have to regain it by wordless contemplation). So we could be allowed by the Great All to re-run a life in what WE call the past or the present or the future, but whether the Great Being ever does re-run lives “for us” I cannot presume to speculate. One might like to have life as it could have been without the difficulties which, for whatever reason, have plagued one’s earlier experience in the present life, (whether those nasty events were karmically caused or not, karma being a large topic of Mike’s present blog).

Eric Franklin

Amos,

I mentioned reincarnation because reincarnation was Mike’s topic. I mentioned forgiveness because it was regarding forgiveness that Chris had asked me a question. I have mentioned parenting in the past when it, or its purported karmic implications, have been relevant to Mike’s topic on the occasion in question. Our personal experience is always a relevant aspect of the topic, or even the main topic itself; and most of us make comments which reflect our personal experience, its scope or its limits. Stafford’s present comment, which is a passage from his latest book, which I have just read with a proofreader’s meticulous attention, explains his highly relevant view of the matter. Have a good day, Amos.

Eric

Anthony,

Thank you for your comment and question. I’m sorry, but I can’t answer your question.  As mentioned in a prior post, there seems to be some evidence from past-life regressions that there is no time in the larger life and that we are living many lives at the same time, including “future” lives.  That is all beyond my comprehension and my ability to visualize. It has been more than 20 years since I read Dr. Michael Newton’s books, but   his three books come to mind as possible references on this subject.

Michael,
Yes, I agree.  With the advent of television in everyone’s home the mores and values as well as language of Americans changed relatively quickly and Americans became more homogenized in behaviors and language.

I don’t think that happened with movies prior to television.  Movies of the 30s, 40s and into the 50s seemed to perpetuate the stolid ways of living brought forward from the 1800s, even in spite of the wayward ”roaring twenties.”  Perhaps it was the Depression or World War I and II that brought people back down to earth and God-fearing but the movies of the 30s and 40s especially, presented rather strict moral values. And depending on one’s own moral values that was either good or bad. Twin beds were required in those movies and even ‘married’ couples were not filmed in a double bed.  Actors did not appear nude in the throes of coitus spouting the “F” word in every other sentence as is commonly seen and heard in almost every popular movie today.  There is no comparison how women, especially young women of today are portrayed in movies now when compared with women in popular films of the 30s and 40s. With a few exceptions, women were more respected then than they are now.

I too long for a more natural way of living as was lived in the past although I rarely want to consider the nitty-gritty of having a lack of indoor plumbing, toilet paper, central heating, air conditioning and modern dentistry.  “Amish” is a little too strict for me but living 20 miles from Lincoln’s New Salem of log cabins, I do enjoy visiting there every Fall to vicariously live a life in a primitive prairie village of the 1830s.  That period as well as the 1880s and 1920s seems to have a ‘pull’ on my consciousness and I like to return to those times in my imagination.

I don’t ascribe to the many worlds ideas of living many lives at the same ‘time’.  I don’t think my soul is fragmented across time and multiple dimensions. I think I am one consciousness sequentially experiencing one life at a time, different personalities but that each life is only part of a larger consciousness which is the eternal me living in the eternal now and is part of God.

I sometimes sense a softening toward reincarnation in your comments now.  One that I did not sense in prior blogs of yours over the past ten years.  What has changed that seems to have made you more receptive to reincarnation? - AOD

Anthony,
You have asked a question that I too have wondered. From the perspective of an afterlife can one choose to be reincarnated in any period of time?  That is, from the perspective of higher planes of existence, perhaps time is not linear but is laid out before us and there is no past or present only an eternal now.  I don’t know but it seems reasonable to me that such would be the case.  It might be like choosing a movie or play that one had seen before but wanting to see again.

I think that a previous life can have a certain pull on a spirit and cause a certain affinity with things of the past life.  There may be a sense of comfort about those ‘old’ things causing one in a nostalgic moment to want to return to that time.  I think that many old-timers like myself have a sense of belonging to other times prior to this one and are quite comfortable with the trappings of those times and long to experience them again.

Patience Worth when answering questions about the process of dying and the afterlife from which she was speaking, said that one wakes in “yesteryear.”  One can take that to mean that one returns to experience an environment in which they previously lived with people they knew then or perhaps to go even further back into experiences of a distant past life.  She described it as going to a “mart” or marketplace where everything is available for the choosing.

I think that nothing is impossible in God’s heaven.  Whatever is necessary for soul growth is possible. The choice of embodiment of course is up to the soul and made in accordance with one’s need for experience and growth.  - AOD

“In further thinking about the middleground between Victorian mores and values and those of today, it would be sometime before the 1960s, maybe 1958.  That’s about when television really started taking off and promoting hedonistic and Epicurean values.”

Michael:  “Victorian mores and values” (“proper” beliefs associated with a British queen who died in 1901 after a very long reign) went out the window for many with “The Great War” long before the rise of television but this varies from place to place and from group to group.

Look at the “Roaring Twenties” (including Prohibition) in the U.S., the Weimar Republic in Germany, or even pre-WWI Parisian artistic circles, just a few examples of a great many.

You chose to “incarnate” when and where you did (with all that goes with that, including prevailing and changing mass beliefs, the accelerating development and use of electronic technologies, etc.) but I wonder, based on all you’ve posted here over many years, whether a very Victorian person, someone fascinated by Spiritualism, lurks in the background of your mind.

You could work with a hypnotist.  By doing so you might be able to learn more about any such “previous” version of yourself.  Did he or she live somewhere in the U.S., possibly in a rural area, or, maybe, somewhere in the UK?

Of those Victorian era selves of mine I’m aware of, one in particular wanted nothing whatsoever to do with anything smacking of spirits, seances, and so on.  A newspaper man (but one closely involved with a “quality” newspaper, not a tabloid), his beliefs were very consistent with “Victorian mores and values.”

Thanks to my interests and experiences, we’ve gotten to know each other (and quite a few other selves).  The effect has been to widen our understanding, changing both of us.

One topic of interest to both of us, now, is the changing nature of “ego” over linear time.

As Seth said:

“Most of my readers are familiar with the term, ‘muscle bound.’ As a species you have grown ‘ego bound’ instead, held in a spiritual rigidity, with the intuitive portions of the self either denied or distorted beyond any recognition.”

We agree that the best overall direction is away from this “ego bound” condition but what does that mean in terms of “mores and value”?

(Seth said in one of his books, in all caps:  “Thou shall not violate!”)

For decades this other self of mine wrote editorials night after night (printed on the front page in his day) and he could probably pen an editorial on this topic (not the political topics he tended to write about).

Although we share some traits and inclinations, I grew up in a different time and place and read books like _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_ and _In Search of the Miraculous_ at a fairly early age.

Unlike him, I have no university degree. I ceased to attend church after I was confirmed; he was an ardent Christian, although he was influenced by Seeley’s _Ecce Homo_.

My parents purchased an ugly cube-shaped B&W TV for the pleasure of my brother and me during our recovery from tonsillectomies, too, in the early 50s, and that medium did have an influence on me (the same medium later featured Walter Cronkite speaking from Vietnam, having such an influence on the population that the U.S. Army later modified its procedures regarding journalists covering wars).

I’d have a very difficult time writing an editorial on suitable “mores and values” but then I’m not a newspaper man (and glad of it—the Internet has really dented that business).

One cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven with a heart filled with hate or a consciousness that refuses to forgive.  Even Jesus in his hour of agony on the cross after being wrongly accused and tortured, prayed to God to “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

The kingdom of heaven is a place of love for everything and everyone that God has created. To continue to hate and to refuse to forgive is to reject God’s wisdom, his plan for creation and heaven itself.
 

A consciousness filled with hatred, after crossing over will find itself in a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, trapped with other hateful spirits who suffer together from their refusal to let go of hate. Hate must be recognized and eradicated before one is allowed into heaven.  Without relinquishing hate, only crying out to God for his forgiveness will allow one to rise up from the depths of Hell into the loving light of their Creator in which hate can no longer exist.  If God can forgive you and welcome you home, then surely you can forgive others.

Patience Worth wrote the following poem concerning man’s need to hold on to his own sense of righteousness and to ignore God’s plan whilst the God of love, forgives and accepts the sinner as a loving parent would accept a wayward child.  - AOD

Ah, God, I have drunk unto the dregs,
And flung the cup at Thee!
The dust of crumbled righteousness
Hath dried and soaked unto itself
E’en the drop I spilled to Bacchus—-

Whilst Thou, all-patient, sendest
Purple vintage for a later harvest.

Thanks for the post, Michael and thanks to all who have left comments. I learn so much here! Question to Michael & any/all commentators: is there any evidence that we can reincarnate “back in time” relative to our present lives? In other words, could I come back as an eventual WWII concentration camp victim? Or a WWII perpetrator? Or WWII liberator? I know our sense of time moves forward here on the Earth plane ... but once we’re out of it, is it possible to “jump back in” at any time in Earth history? Thanks in advance for any thoughts or insight.

Eric,
I do not want to prolong your agony but you have brought up your dissatisfaction with your father over and over and over again in many of these blogs. Unnecessarily and inappropriately so, I think.  I am reluctant to comment to your posts because it is predictable how you will respond.  No one, especially me, thinks you are a child or thinks you are naïve regarding psychology.  What is offered as a response to your agony regarding your upbringing and especially how you were treated by your father is simply a sympathetic embrace in hope of providing some comfort for you or perhaps a new perspective when dealing with your lifetime of hurt which you experienced as a result of your treatment by your father and as you recently lamented your apprehension about being reincarnated in the same circumstances again with your father.
 

As Patience Worth says “it is bread, if only eaten by sparrows”.  Make of it what you will Eric.  You are not alone in your dissatisfaction with the way your parents raised you but most of us keep our personal trials and tribulations to ourselves.  You choose to share them so to attack a response seems to me to be an overreaction to something that was given in good faith that it might be helpful to you and received in the manner in which it was given.

Go with God Eric.  I have tried on several occasions to enter into a civil discussion with you but this is the last time you will ever hear from me. If you want this to be the end of a “silly diversion” then stop talking about it!  - AOD

Amos,

In further thinking about the middleground between Victorian mores and values and those of today, it would be sometime before the 1960s, maybe 1958.  That’s about when television really started taking off and promoting hedonistic and Epicurean values.

Also, relative to reincarnation, if it is true and I have my way, I think I want to come back in the Amish tradition. Actually, if time is not a factor and we are living many lives at the same time, I should be living that life or the one as a physically and mentally challenged child now. However, I can’t access them and let you know if I made the right choice.

Dear Amos,

Thank you for your comment, though it leaves me puzzled. Do you suppose that I have not long realised the truths you explain? Every one of them? I am not so naive regarding psychology. There is nothing new to me in what you have, very kindly, written. I thank you for your concern. No matter. The additional information to give in this instance is that MY MOTHER, years too late, told us children, already young men, that her husband was “not like other men” and was a source of extreme and prolonged sexual frustration to her. We occasionally saw written proof of this, pleas left for him to read beside his warmed-up dinner when he returned from work late in the evening, my mother having despairingly retired to bed.

There is a logic to the process of forgiveness, and that logical thinking requires at least a first move by the recipient towards the state of reformed mind that warrants the forgiveness of those robbed by the offender’s wrong attitudes. It is the complex mixture of things one wants to do and things one is blocked from doing that makes final resolution in some acts of forgiving so difficult. On one occasion I wrote an apologetic letter (it was NOT justified I may add, but a despairing attempt to find peace SOMEHOW). Their reaction was to stand their former ground and thank me for my penitence, having shown no understanding of my view, and made not the slightest admission or accommodation to any new view of themselves. In reinforcement of my point, I heard a Christadelphian, not my own father, once explain that the right conduct when in discussion with someone of different view from oneself was to deny him any opportunity get a word in edgewise because (I quote precisely) “You already have the truth” and no-one should be allowed to speak against the truth YOU have. How does one forgive THAT mindset, perpetuated along with Freudian tricks to knowingly and deliberately disadvantage one’s own offspring in life-damagingly serious ways, on account of jealousy that, on just one occasion, was ADMITTED? When I said to my mother on another occasion that “he’s no father, is he?” she replied simply “He intends well”. My father himself had once said that Hitler was sincere, so sincerity was not ever enough. Instead, he evinced the same qualities as an inquisitor.

If you think all that out you will find every statement fits together rather logically with the others to reveal the situation that underlies it. My elder brother, almost in tears at about twenty years of age, defending himself, reacted desperately, saying to my father that he was a bully. Other Christadelphians were, later, incredulous. It is sometimes not so easy as you think, Amos. Almost every night I speak at length and agonised depth to the Great Being about the problem of forgiving a man who never showed any hint of believing he might need it. When he died in the presence of my youngest brother (I arrived a minute or two late) I told the nurses (many of them are wonderfully understanding intelligent people - having been hospitalised twice I have reason to appreciate them) that he was a great man - just mistaken. Amos, thank you, but you are not counselling a child.

I have been far more open than most people would think I should be. I am not unkind. I am a victim of cruelty. I would like this to be the end of this silly diversion. We all should be looking forward with thankful anticipation to Mike’s next blog, should we not?

Eric Franklin

Amos,

Thanks for the NDE You-Tube recommendation. I just had an opportunity to watch it.  As I have said before, I have never had an NDE, but I consider myself a “vicarious experiencer” from having merged so many NDEs in consciously reading or hearing about them.  Hearing or reading about new ones help renew the lessons of the NDE.

Being 85, I could identify with many of your comments to Eric about our parents, but at the same time I yearn for a return to some “Victorian” mores and values—not entirely, but at some middle ground between 1942 and 2022.

Eric, Amos is correct, let it go or it can follow you. Maybe you can go to a medium to connect with your father and hear what he has to say now being in the afterlife with all the better understandings over there.

Eric,
Those of us who are 80 or more years old probably had parents who were born in the early part of the 20th century.  Their parents, our grandparents, were probably born in the last quarter of the 19th century a time especially in the U.K. when Victorian emphasis on Christian teaching, strict behaviors for children and high moral standards were in vogue. Supposedly, men went into a frenzy at the sight of the naked ankle of a woman and women regarded their undergarments as ‘unmentionables’!

Those Victorian ideas carried over of course from generation to generation so that by the 1930s or 40s (only 30 or 40 years after Queen Victoria died) people continued to follow, either consciously or subconsciously, the remnants of Victorian standards of parenting and sexuality.  Parents of 80-year-old people living today were still strongly influenced by the Victorian morality and child-rearing ideas of two or three generations before them.

Men under the Victorian influence thought that child rearing was a woman’s job and therefore he had little direct role in his child’s upbringing except when it came to doling out punishment which in some cases was strict and harsh.  But according to Christian teaching, that was his role; to instill in his children that God also would punish those who did not obey him.  Fathers during the 1930s and 1940s could therefore be somewhat remote from their children as God was remote from his children.  To generalize, with the influence of Victorian sexual mores and assigned roles of child rearing, many people still alive today may feel that they suffered under that parenting from a lack of love and affection from their father as well as a failure of their father to provide the necessary education regarding male sexual functioning and behavior, which of course due to Victorian influence the father was embarrassed to talk about.

In terms of reincarnation, I think it is important to acknowledge that parents are the product of their parent’s teaching and cultural standards of several generations past.  Most of those parents did what they thought was right, what was fitting and proper in order to raise a responsible productive child.  It is important for that adult ‘child’ now to recognize that and to understand and to forgive their wayward parent for any failures which the child perceives as inappropriate or lacking.  This need for acknowledgement and forgiveness is very important if the soul does not want to be reincarnated in a lifetime that repeats the previous relationship either as the receiver of the same treatment by a parent (not necessarily the same one) or in reversed roles as the parent treating their own children in a similar way.

After 81 years Eric, it is time to let this all go, to forgive and forget and not let any perceived mistreatment by one’s parents to continue to influence in a negative way one’s remaining life.  To not forgive and forget is giving power to a relationship that may continue in one form or another in another lifetime.  Best wishes Eric.  – Amos

Dear Chris,

I know that my trust in the real God is inadequate, so wavering that it is an insult to Him/Her. And I am afraid He/She will reincarnate me as disabled, either for my own failure to learn things in this present incarnation or to test the faith of my parents, as Mike Tymn has described relative to himself. I hope I shall not have the same parents as I have suffered this time. I hope that, instead, I shall be invited to live in a higher universe, or if I do have to endure this one again at least I shall have “earned” a pleasanter life net time, either as male or female. I would relish a female life in many ways because I do have a better-than-some empathy with ow a womaan feels, and a strong rapport with Jungian notions of wholeness of masculine and feminine sides. I have written this in a great hurry, and ought to revise it heavily. It is not a well-thought piece because I am trying to cook my dinner at the same time as writing it.

Eric Franklin

Eric, who do you not trust? The image of the God your father forced you to believe or the divine creator where you yourself believe in?

Dear Mike,

I am worried about that too. I already suspect that my present life was to challenge my father to reconsider his over-righteous religious zealotry - and that, if fsact, cost me nearly every joy a human male can have. I know I am disrespecting ‘God’ by not trusting Him/Her, but I cannot free myself from some fear of being disabled next time and so suffering an even greater test than this life seems to have been. In other words, to endure even more (in a no doubt very minor Christ-like way) for others.

Concerning Chris’s comment, I have dealt with the matters he raises, imagining a top-down view of the everything (all billions of universes) in my paper that nobody (except one world-known mathematician, who approved) bothers to ask to read, and part of Dr Maureen Lockhart’s book ‘The Subtle Energy Body’. If I have the energy, I intend to write a book wholly my own fitting these two sets of ideas together. They fit very nicely. By the way, and also with real relevance in the ideas expressed, I have read Stafford’s new book ‘When were you ever less by dying?’, and find it has some useful ideas in it that are new to me, but my own writing bears on that also.

Eric Franklin <erf678@gmail.com>

Amos,
I think that your last paragraph is quite right.  Why would All that Is create all of this worlds and mansions (heavenly realms), if not to explore the possibilities of it. But that does not exclude the fact that all is still and stays One on the deepest level. The manifestations are diverse and they ought to be that way but the core stays One.
Nowadays some channelers call it ’the I Am presence ’ and I think it means that it is the ’we are One’ feeling and knowledge on our deepest level. Even in the ’mansions’ ,although there seems to be more awareness of the connection with All that Is, there still is diversity. The last chapter of my eagle story tries to explain it.
You can emphasize the ’many’ or ’diversity’ or ’individuality’ or emphasize the ’oneness’, but they are existing together. The more you are connected with ’the earthly story’ you will see diversity and the more you connect with the I Am presence the more you feel the Oneness. Does a cell in the body see its individuality or see the Oneness of the person? So below, so above. That’s a bit what I am thinking, although I accept the limits of my knowing and understanding.

Eric,

My concern about reincarnation is that I will choose to come back as a mentally or physically challenged child in order to help some parents learn and progress from the experience.

Take a break and watch this 30 minute NDE.  You won’t be disapointed.  - AOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7Co5sXVA-E

Recent comments by Gordon, Michael, and Eric bring many thoughts to mind about reincarnation and Karma, as does the comment by Chris about ‘oneness’.

Perhaps, ‘oneness’ is the easiest concept to address because while it might be nice to think that humanity is moving toward oneness, that probably will never happen.  I have a difficult time thinking that all of the people of earth will at some time in the future ever be united in behaviors and beliefs.  And, if so, that would be a loss not a gain. If one considers the history of mankind, it seems that in more than 5,000 years of civilization ‘oneness’ has been a futile and ephemeral dream if a dream at all.

‘Oneness” on earth perhaps would defeat the purpose of being in physicality. It might be likely on higher planes of existence as one evolves closer to God, especially as one becomes fully enlightened but in the rough and tumble life as exists on the lower Earth plane, (sometimes referred-to as “the insane asylum of the universe”) oneness would offer nothing but a bland existence where everyone looked alike, acted alike and believed the same things.  There would be little or no learning experience in that oneness and everyone would act like Zombies or ‘Stepford Wives’ with repressed emotions and desires.  Humans will never become angels while on Earth.

The oft-quoted comment by Jesus that “In my father’s house there are many mansions and I go to prepare a place for you.” suggests to me that even in other levels of existence there may be distinctions or groupings of like-minded people but that there still is separateness according to one’s belief system. One of the discourses given through Cora L.V. Richman about the afterlife by—-I forgot who, (Ben Franklin or someone like that) described a tour of ‘heaven’ where there were groups of like-minded people. American Indians were happily living in their private and unique ‘happy hunting ground’, while others like the Victorians had their own Walt-Disney Main Street in heaven.

If consciousness is indeed evolving and Earth is a no-nonsense school of education, then consciousness must have different experiences or classrooms through which to evolve.  What I am suggesting, and I may be going off of the deep end here, is that consciousness starts out as a small spark of God let lose in the universe and finds embodiment in a multitude of physical forms thereby allowing God to continue to grow and evolve.  Patience Worth has said that she could not describe God because he is not the same today as he was yesterday or will be tomorrow.  That is, God was evolving as each new fully-enlightened spirit returned to him.

That small spark of God, that consciousness, perhaps starts out in the lowest life form and progresses through a myriad of life forms from the smallest undeveloped form to the most developed life form.  (Now this is where it gets touchy.) It could be—-and I am saying this without prejudice, bias, or favoritism—-that within the ‘human species’, evolving consciousness incarnates, with exceptions, in a form most congruent with their previous incarnation but that a prior incarnation may not have been a human one.  For example, consciousness having evolved through the animal kingdom may find itself eventually incarnated in a human form but in a very primitive culture.  With subsequent incarnations in human form that soul advances in other cultures that offer an opportunity for greater learning.

 
Perhaps in the greater reality from the smallest spark to the most enlightened soul, we are all part of a ‘oneness’ which is God but on Earth, oneness may be a state of being not really to be desired.  - AOD

I think that the future generations the ’ gender’problem will be no issue anymore. As we grow toward Oneness that may not be a problem anymore. Try to be that what you feel what you want to be. Just be respectful and loving.

Dear all,

I feel grateful to Amos for his open discussion of the question of our gender differences and range of sexuality. They are important down here on Earth, whether important or not in other universes. The people who purported to be very good parents, standing dogmatically in loco Dei, 80 years ago, gave the matter no mention (it was virtually a taboo subject, enforced by threats of punishment) and so gave us children (four boys, no girls) not one wisp of guidance, nor even a group of friends in our own age group who might have become wives in due course. Just as that starvation was devastating, so is open and unprudish discussion of sex every curious and intelligent child’s greatest need. Other families’ children were much more aware than we four boys were allowed to be.

The quandary of which sex to choose, if we are planning a reincarnation, is also very real, as Amos also sees. With an openness equal to Amos’ own, I can say that when I think about it even now, at 81, it would be difficult to choose. I have been very masculine, far too much so for many women of little sexuality themselves (though I have NOT been a libertine!!), but I would love to be female, and then meet someone like myself. If, and I hope this will NOT be the case, I am faced with an order to reincarnate, I shall find the decision difficult, but be adamantly against having a confused sexuality in that next life. I shall probably plead to have a repeat of the male experience, but this time a successful experience please, after a better-guided childhood and far better social opportunities, though nothing like Tyson, rather an intellectual and creative man of mature emotion, and later a yet further reincarnation as a woman half-way towards the example Amos refers to in his comment, but with genuine spirituality to balance the high sexuality. I would then feel ready to leave Earth for a higher world, whereas one problem my parents gave me is my present unreadiness to enter
a higher world now, the precise opposite of what they intended with their legalistic man-made religion.

I am being dangerously open, and hope no-one minds. For ‘openness’, one can always read ‘honesty’, I believe. If we can discuss anything, surely we can discuss sex and spirituality together, and in depth. That is what Amos has done, is it not? Bravo, Amos, and thanks.

Eric Franklin

Amos,

Good question. It also affects the race and ethnic issues.  If we have lived past lives in other races or cultures, might a cruel slave owner in one lifetime come back in the minority race or culture to experience similar subjugation?

Amos Doyle:  your points are well taken by me.  An acceptance of “many lives” in our cultures would lead to all sorts of new understandings and acceptances.

What if the culture of the U.S. and the U.K acknowledged that reincarnation was a fact!  Would that make any difference in the way gender dysphoria is regarded by those cultures?  Would there be an acceptance that every person alive today has lived many lifetimes as both male and female?  If reincarnation were accepted as a fact, then how would the so-called “trans” people be regarded?  Would surgery and life-long hormone therapy still be recommended as an appropriate treatment by some physicians in the medical community?  Or, would dissatisfaction with one’s gender be seen as just experiencing a difficult adjustment to a change from male to female or female to male from one lifetime to another and that more soul growth might occur if one fully experienced the body they were given at birth, the one that they chose prior to incarnation.  One can easily imagine how difficult it would be for say, someone like Marilyn Monroe to find herself in a male body or Mike Tyson to find himself in a female body.

One’s gender identity is probably influenced by the sexual identity of the previous past life, especially in those having a difficult time accepting the sex of their current life form.  A previous life as a macho male would make for a problematic adjustment to a female body and vice-versa in a reincarnate.
 

Human sexual identity is probably better seen on a graduated scale of say, 1 to 10 with 1 being high femininity and 10 being high masculinity.  While there are some people at those extremes, e.g., Monroe and Tyson, most people are somewhere at other points on that scale.  Some androgenous people might be at a 5 or 6 but generally most women probably are around a 3 and most men at an 8.
 

If humans were regarded as reincarnated consciousnesses then it would be easy to see how difficult it might be to reincarnate from one sex to another when in a past life the soul lived a full and rewarding life fully immersed in behaviors and physical traits of a sex opposite to that in which they now find themselves.
 

Maybe if society understood the mental and spiritual difficulties that occur when one changes sex from lifetime to another lifetime, perhaps it would be less likely to criticize those who struggle making this adjustment and less likely to condone mutilation of their body.  - AOD

Michael and all,
Michael, you bring back fond memories of the Watchers who were in contact with Frederick Bligh Bond. They communicated details about the lost chapels of Glastonbury Abbey.
Shaw Desmond autobiography Pilgrim to paradise was not a favourite. I still have the book.
The quotes to support your position are, as always, excellent. I would agree with Bill that our concept of time needs far better understanding. Precognition is always difficult to explain.
Eric has a knack for leading me to reach for the dictionary and then hitting me back across the literary court with a pop culture reference from Stan Lee ( nuff said- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCqDOBaLfGA).
Myers tried a pun with Dorr (Ali Baba -Open Sesame opens the door to the treasure - spiritual treasure) which had the mediums scratching their heads. Eric would be just as demanding.

I do like the logic of Amos in explaining the convenience of the reincarnation explanation of any situation. I also like if the life is cut short too early (the symbol of a rose bush cut at the stem) then you can return quickly.

Have we all been returned to repay karma to Michael for past wrongs? If so, then I suspect the karmic score keeper must be busy with such conversations. Would karmic debt look like an inverse credit score?

My minds reels with new points of view with each of these discussions. In such times of wordy exchange I always remember the quote I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours Lewis Carroll
Thanks,
Bruce

Dear all,

Bill Ingle is expressing the view I hold, but with very different conceptions and words from my own. For me the same view is grounded in Heidegger and Einstein, and a layman’s grasp of physical principles and a bit of maths. It is worth noticing, and acknowledging, that many truths, of various kinds, lead to the same overall conceptions.

I also find deep rapport with the view Amos is describing, and feel similar misgivings about reincarnating in the human ‘world’, with its suffering and its delusion of time passing, often agonisingly. I would like a better chance to experience the joys of this life, denied me in large measure by doctrinaire parentiing (nuff said), but I know I ought to be preferring the joys of the age to come, not looking back to a better humman life. Perhaps it fails to respect the Great Being to want to return, it being better to trust the Great Father’s assurances that life in a spiritual ‘world’ is much more fulfilling. One can feel very inadequate and immensely relieved and hopeful of a better life at the same time.

Eric Franklin

Reincarnation makes most sense to me when I consider the death of a person who dies in childhood or at any early age and therefore doesn’t have the same opportunities to learn that the person who lives a normal life expectancy.  However, the counter to this is that the soul incarnated (or came back) only to help others, e.g., his parents, learn something. He or she had no need to come back otherwise. 

In his 1939 book, Reincarnation for Everyman, author Shaw Desmond states that there are two approaches to reincarnation – the “terrestrial” and the “celestial.”  The former view has the individual returning again and again as the same man, while the latter view has man “solely as spirit and his temporary inhabitancy of the physical body as but a tiny projection of the Greater Self.
Thus, it may be that those mystics and spirits who have rejected reincarnation were rejecting it in the terrestrial sense but not in the celestial.  “Think of an atom,” Liszt told Rosemary Brown.  “It is made up of protons and neutrons which all go to make up the nucleus surrounded by electrons.  That is what a soul is like.  These separate parts are held together in the nucleus, but the parts can be isolated.  And it is the isolated parts of the nucleus of the soul so to speak which can manifest as various personalities in your world.  These are what the reincarnationalist calls different incarnations – but they all belong to one soul which can choose which particular part of the soul it wishes to manifest.”  This sounds more like the group soul concept.

When Frederick Bligh Bond asked a Glastonbury spirits about reincarnation, the spirit replied:  “You understand not reincarnation, nor can we explain.  What in you reincarnates, do you think?  How can you find words?  Blind gropers after immutable facts, which are not of your sphere of experience.”

Both the usual ideas of karma and “past lives” are flawed simply because they are based on a concept of time that applies here, in physical reality, but nowhere else.

Some material contrasts “linear time”—the usual view of the living—with “simultaneous time.” 

Even if that version of you, a resident of Nineveh, died thousands of years ago from the perspective of your present self, he and you are alive now, in the “spacious present.”

Further, his transition after his death and your own transition after your death, in “the future”, including all changes in terms of who he has become and who you will become, also exist in the “spacious present.”

It’s possible to know this, rather directly, but I can offer no simple set of instructions to follow for achieving this knowing.

Then there are endless probable realities and probable selves.  I do know of an exercise for knowing of this, directly.

Generally, we, as human personalities, view everything from an extremely limited perspective, yet each of us is part of multiple “larger” and non-physical beings—it’s possible to gain at least a glimmer of the perspectives of those “larger” beings, but once again, I can offer no set of simple instructions to follow.

If there’s an “afterlife” (and I’m quite certain there is) this is only because we are not strictly physical beings, separate from all else—it’s as though our bodies are like deep sea diving suits, designed to enable operation in a particular environment. Socialization leads us to believe that we are our bodies when in fact we are like the divers inside the diving suits.

Unlike diving suits, our bodies include perceptual organs and our brains and are closely integrated with our minds; yet they eventually wear out, just as diving suits do.

It is just those perceptual organs and parts of our brains that support our beliefs concerning time (and space, as well).

Who is the equivalent of the diver?  What equivalent of physical senses and brain exist for him or her?  Understanding this is essential for achieving truly good communication between those who are physically embodied and those who are not.

Me—I’m still working on this. Some have incredible natural abilities in this area but for the rest of us, neither explanation/theory nor practice alone will do; what’s required is a combination of the two.

My earlier repsonse was written ahead of other comments, and I now have a bit more to say:  (1) Using rational/analyical arguments against karma/“reap-what-you-sow” will not help you, will just keep you in the realms of debate and “where’s the irrefutable evidence?”  (2) Reading Weiss and Newton and others will till the soil but not help anything grow.  For that you need to do regressions yourself and feel their reality. (3) Karma is indeed more subtle than any tit-for-tat retribution or balancing. (4) Understanding the role that “Higher Self” plays in all this is fundamental.  (5) Perhaps, may I say respectfully, Myers and Stevenson, have played their roles well but have been surpassed?

I agree with Stafford when he opines about a long life versus a short life and a need to come back quickly or not.  I agree with the concept of an “exquisitely calibrated life” for my future life after having lived a long life in which I now see some specific things on which I need to focus or experience.  It may be that a quick return lends itself to hasty decisions that are not “exquisitely calibrated” for the best outcomes of the soul.
 

As a young man thinking about reincarnation, I thought that I wanted to come back—-if that were possible, right away. But as an old man I am not so sure that I want to come back right away.  Now I think I would like to rest for a while, maybe sleep for a time to eventually wake up in an upstairs bedroom of an old house, with sunshine streaming through an open window with white curtains blowing in the breeze and the smell of breakfast cooking downstairs in the kitchen.  I would like to exist in a beautiful environment of plants and animals, maybe with a few relatives or friends just taking it all in for an eon or two. I want to be restored mentally and spiritually before I come back.  Three years seems too short for me.
 

I know eventually I will have to return to earth since I have come to learn that I am not so advanced a spirit as at one time I thought I was but my hope is that my future life will be more fulfilling than the current one. I still want to be a male but with a strong healthy body, more focused on physical things in this reality rather than things intellectual, and maybe in a different family structure, ethnic or racial group in a different environment from the one I am now in.

Paraphrasing the thoughts that Kahlil Gibran wrote in his epic The Prophet, “A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind and my soul will gather sand and foam for another body and another woman shall bear me.”  - AOD

Wow! I didn’t expect so much reaction to this post. Thanks to all for the comments. As I have said in past blogs, I am somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to reincarnation, but my skepticism is based more on emotion than reason.  I prefer the explanation given by Frederic Myers through the hand of Geraldine Cummins, i.e., the group soul concept, even though I struggle to understand it.

In “The Road to Immortality,” Myers seemed to be saying that there is reincarnation and there isn’t reincarnation, depending on the meaning one gives to reincarnation. “While I was on earth, I belonged to a group-soul, but its branches and the spirit – which might be compared to the roots – were in the invisible,” Myers wrote through Cummins. “Now, if you would understand psychic evolution, this group-soul must be studied and understood.  For instance, it explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can be removed only by the doctrine of reincarnation. You may think my statement frivolous, but the fact that we do appear on earth to be paying for the sins of another life is, in a certain sense, true.  It is our life and yet not our life.”

Myers went on to explain that a soul belonging to the group of which he was part lived a previous life and built for him a framework for his own earthly life.  The spirit – the bond of the group soul – manifests, he said, many times on earth.    “We are all of us distinct,” he continued, “though we are influenced by others of our community on the various planes of being.” He further explained that a group soul might contain twenty souls, a hundred souls, or a thousand souls.
“When your Buddhist speaks of the cycle of birth, of man’s continual return to earth, he utters but a half-truth,” Myers went on.  “And often a half-truth is more inaccurate than an entire misstatement.  I shall not live again on earth, but a new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter into the pattern of karma I have woven for him on earth.”

Myers likened the soul to a spectator caught within the spell of some drama outside of its actual life, perceiving all the consequences of acts, moods, and thoughts of a kindred soul.  He further pointed out that there are an infinite variety of conditions in the invisible world and that he made no claim to being infallible. He called it a “general rule” based on what he had learned and experienced on the Other Side.

Michael,
Another writer of which I was unaware. I was interested on your understanding of universal harmony ““We come to give advice, to strengthen you, to teach you to know about universal harmony;”.
I am reminded of Myers mention of Unity In his exchange in cross correspondences “Dorr’s scheme excellent Myers that I have to use different
scribes means that I must show different aspects of thought underlying which Unity is to be found.”
I have always been heedful (blame Eric for that word ) of the words of spirits and there have been many talking about harmony such as The Great Harmonia: Being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe by Andrew Jackson Davis.
Universal harmony seems to be in short supply in today’s world.
Thanks again for the article on Soler.
Bruce

Hi Michael, Just when I think I know all the various contributors to the Afterlife esoterica you present new names and histories which remind me how much info. there is that most people are unaware of and don’t even care.Too bad. Anyway my biggest problem with the subject of reincarnation is that I find it too hard to wrap my mind around the concept of having to learn lessons of previous lives. We neither remember these lives and sins of omission or commission so how can we possibly learn to improve . I’m clueless in recognizing any past I may have had.I have read Brian Weiss and Michael Newton who have both written several books on this subject and I know that DR. Ian Stevenson studied this for many years in India so perhaps I need a refresher . If you have any recent revelations that would update me to clarify my confusion I’d be obliged.Thanks again for your always interesting blogs. Andrew.Simpson

Michael.
Do you really believe in reincarnation ?

Larry

Good blog, Mike. The relationship between Spiritism and Spiritualism had always intrigued me.

Thanks for this rarity Michael, had not heard of it before.  Karma is indeed pivotal in our long and winding roads to completeion.

I read several of the karmic accounts in this book, which was sent to me by Ms. Limoges. What troubles me about these very precise tit-for-tat stories, reminiscent of Dante’s Purgatorio, is that they conflict with Ian Stevenson’s analysis,  and isn’t Stevenson the world’s greatest authority on reincarnation? He delves into the question of karma near the end of his book Children Who Remember Previous Lives, which I summarize in my book When Did You Become Less by Dying? Here is the summary:

But…does the second life seem to grow justly out of the earlier?  Does the law of karma seem to govern their relation? Stevenson writes:
 
“In the cases that I have investigated, I have found no evidence of the effects of moral conduct in one life on the external circumstances of another.  When I examine the cases that include the feature of a marked difference in socioeconomic status between the families concerned, I can discern no pattern indicating that the vicious have been demoted in this respect and the virtuous promoted.”
   
But that’s not where it ends.  Stevenson continues:

“The children just mentioned, however, did not all remain set in the attitudes of the previous lives, and I have had the pleasure of hearing about, and occasionally observing, the development of different habits in some of them.  In these evolutions we see the effect of new environments perhaps; but I think we also see the inner growth of personalities, accomplished only by the self working on itself.”
     
In other words, the socioeconomic, or what he calls the external circumstances of our rebirth don’t have much to do with a supposed law of karma working itself out.  If this law is at work, it shows itself in other ways.  What are these ways?
Stevenson finds that it’s common, even normal, for people to reincarnate in the same immediate or extended family they were members of in their previous incarnation.  In Myanmar (Burma) and several other regions of the world, stay-at-home cases are almost invariable.  In a few indigenous tribes of northwestern North America (“Eskimos”), it’s not uncommon for a person to choose his or her parents in the next life before he or she dies.  The rule is that ties of love, affection, and friendship bind.  But sometimes animosities or a sense of guilt or indebtedness attracts.  Attractions, both of love and hate, usually mean that individuals are reborn in the same geographical area they left at death.  Even when the individual’s two families are not related, they are usually located within 15 miles of each other.  In rare cases an individual is reborn a continent away from where he died.  In these cases Stevenson can usually find a logical explanation for such an anomaly, but not always.  Either way, it’s obvious to him that “physical distance is no impediment” to reincarnation.

It might appear, then, that a law of karma is not in control of the process since family ties seem to trump every other influence.  Maybe a young man murders a rival in a fit of jealousy over a woman and is later killed by his victim’s brother, or maybe this same young man, choosing a different course, accepts his loss, forgives his vanquisher, and gets on with life, only to die of a disease a little later.  Either way, Stevenson finds, it’s likely the young man would have the same parents and probably the same newborn body.  Where is the law of karma in this?  Or consider Bill and Melinda Gates.  Lately they have been giving away tens of billions of dollars of their enormous wealth to worthy charities.  Suppose they had ignored the moral obligation to share their wealth with the poor or diseased.  According to Stevenson their parents and new bodies next time round would quite possibly be the same either way.  But wouldn’t we like to see the generous Bill Gates reborn in a wealthy Silicon Valley family, and the stingy Bill Gates reborn in a poor family in a San Jose slum?  If this does not happen, isn’t the law of karma being flouted?

No, says Stevenson, and here’s why.  Stevenson shows in case after case that personality traits and special skills or aptitudes in the previous life are carried over into the next.  Whatever conditions he is reborn into, these traits and skills will be tested.  He will have plenty of scope to develop them further or altogether new ones.  Whether reborn as a wealthy man or a poor man, the way he meets life’s challenges will determine, and they alone, whether he grows in wisdom and love or just marks time.  Isn’t it unwise to think the Governor of our world – let’s call Him (or Her) God – sees wealth as we do?  We see it as something greatly to be desired, but God, if I am right, sees it only as a special kind of challenge for growing our souls, just as God sees poverty as a different kind of challenge.  Anyone who is rich or knows someone well who is rich is aware that riches are seldom, by themselves, conducive to nobility of character. 

And that is the only thing, let us hope, that God ultimately cares about.  But if the point of our lives is to grow our souls, who is to say how that is best accomplished across several lifetimes?  As long as we retain our hard-earned nobility of character from one life to the next—“character karma” let’s agree to call it—then justice is served in the highest sense.  Stevenson’s findings are in line with this complex view of karma, not with a tit-for-tat formulaic view – what he calls “retributive karma”—which might insist that Hitler must come back over and over as a Jew and, through countless lives, be subjected to every conceivable brutality until his karmic debt is paid. 

Stevenson admits that he is on somewhat shaky ground in his speculations about karma and that he “may have said too much.”  Here is why.  The great majority of his subjects died young, and most of these died by violence or by accident.  And the average length of time between death and rebirth, covering thousands of cases, is “usually less than three years.”  In other words, they are a special class of people – not at all like most of us.  And their peculiarity, Stevenson suspects, might obscure the way the law of karma works itself out for people like us who live long lives and usually die from a disease.  First of all, should we expect, if reincarnation is true, to spend “less than three years” on the Other Side before being reincarnated?  And if we spend much more time than they, are we as likely to remember our past lives?  We know from our own experience that the more distant events of our lives are the ones most often forgotten.  Now what might we expect to remember of a previous life if we had stayed on the Other Side for seventy or eighty years instead of two or three?  Probably nothing at all.  If life on the Other Side is an orderly, instructive, “soul-building” kind of place, then many years on earth would normally translate into a longer stay on the Other Side.  In other words, Stevenson is aware, and wants us to be aware, that he may be dealing with too narrow a sample of souls – those who usually died young and often by violence—to form a safe idea of how a supposed law of karma applies to most of us.  It may well be that a long friendship built up on the Other Side, to take only one example, can result in a person’s being reborn, not into his previous earthside family, but into the family of his spirit friend.  It might also be the case that one’s character or talent built up over a long earth life would require, not just the next available family fetus, but a more finely calibrated one in an unrelated family.  Furthermore, karmic force might be so exquisitely calibrated that it can guide the single most appropriate sperm—out of three-hundred million or so available in each ejaculation—to the ovum, thus providing the reincarnating soul with precisely the best environment for its further evolution.  According to this view, the length of your nose and color of your eyes might be karmically determined.

Stevenson finds no evidence of such determination, but he doesn’t find any against it either.  It’s an open question.

What do you all think about this?

Thanks, Michael, for bringing to the fore another player in the grand play in which we all perform on earth.
 

The problem with Karma, at least from this side of the veil, is that one can always intuit a past life to balance the current life.  No matter what the current life is, either good or bad, one can always imagine the current life as either a punishment or a reward for the past life.  (When in reality it is neither a reward or punishment, rather just a balancing learning experience.)

For example, a man in his current life has had a life-long incessant desire for a home and family.  But try as he will in the current life, he remains single after two failed marriages and no children or grandchildren. In later life he has no family at all, no parents, no siblings, no wife, no children, no nieces, or nephews and no friends.  He finds himself in his current life as a lonely recluse, a teetotaler without any human relationships.

Now what would have been the past life that required that ‘karma’?  It is not difficult to fabricate a past life that resulted in that karma.  Perhaps his past life was one completely opposite to his current one; a life where he had a loving wife, and children and a warm family life.  But in that life, he abandoned his wife and children for a life on the road and a life of gambling and drink and one in which he ended up a drunk being run over face down in a muddy road by a horse and carriage after which he died.  His current unrewarded desire for a family simply provided a learning experience concerning the value and importance of loving relationships and family.

In my own life, (which at my age I am not afraid to share) I find myself surrounded by women for whom I provide on-going emotional support and encouragement as well as physical and financial assistance.  Whether it is mother, grandmothers, sister, aunts, cousins, wife or step-daughter or friends and coworkers, I have spent a lifetime surrounded by and catering to women.  There has been a decided lack of meaningful male relationships in my current life.

Now what can I imagine caused this karma?  Well, several things actually, but predominately a lifetime where I was a marauder on horseback, with other barbarians who raided and pillaged small towns, raping and brutally killing women.  My life now is payback for all of the brutality I perpetrated upon women.
 

You see, it is easy to come up with a story after the fact that balances a current life.  I don’t want to leave the impression that I don’t think ‘Karma’ exists, but if it does, then I don’t think it is a complicated matter at all.  And, anyone can create a story line of a past life that counterbalances a current life.

As evolving spirit entities or consciousnesses, life on earth is a learning experience where spirit learns and grows toward God. What is not learned in one lifetime is learned in another lifetime. It is not a punishment at all, it is just an enlightening experience for soul growth.  - AOD

Dear all,

Oh, the ambiguity of the pronoun, especially when reading in a hurry! When I sense this ambiguity in anything I write I usually rewrite the sentence to eliminate the ambiguity without loss of flow. I don’t know how well I succeed. Yvonne Limoges (I do not know who she is) is one of our contemporaries; Amalia (Amelia?) Domingo Soler is shown in the photograph from over a century ago. My too-hasty reading does nothing to reduce the value and impact of Michael Tymn’s latest blog. Thank you again, Michael.

Eric Franklin

Interesting subject. I think there is indeed a sort of karma. I notice that when I do something wrong and it also feels that way, later on I am confronted to rectify that somehow.It seems obvious that if you can not restore the balance in this life, you are confronted with it in the next. It is a little bit strange that if the existence of karma is without doubt, is not commonly known by us humans. People would probably think twice
When hurting someone else. Of course in that case you can argue that it is limiting the free will. However, you can argue back that having important knowledge is not a limitation but making progress.

Dear Mike,

Thanks again for an intriguing blog. Has not a comment often appeared after your blogs from one Yvonne Limoges? Yet the photograph you show with the blog is of a lady of over a century ago. Does that, too, show a clue to an as-yet-hidden story of karma and reincarnaton?

Eric Franklin