Life Between Lives
Thank you Angela and Marie for your blogs on soul and life after life.
This is a topic which excites me more than any other (and there are many that excite me). Recently my excitement was heightened by the bodily death of one of our community group members. Erma Lee Rouse had passed on just hours earlier when I became aware of her presence. She called out in her initimitable voice, "Hey Bob it's just like our New Options Community Group over here!" And then she was gone. Had this been my first experience of this kind I probably would have been stunned but it was just the most recent of a long string of such occurences.
I was raised in a devout religious community that believed in the existence of a soul within each of us which survived bodily death. Reincarnation, however, was something most refused to consider as credible. Later I left organized religion to develop my own concept of an integral natural science system which investigated science-based orientations to the existence of souls and reincarnation among other interests such as cocreative self-management, cocreative leadership and organization development.
I found psychoanalyst Carl Jung's views on the existence of the psyche (soul, mind, consciousness) as most useful. The upshot of my study of his work combined with Michael Newton's (2004), which I briefly describe below, is that the soul itself cannot be fully described except as some sort of psychic energy, possibly kinetic. However, various functions of the soul can be identified as autopoietic (cocreative self-managing), focusing, feeling-emotive, thinking, sensing, parasensing-intuiting, and remembering (Johnston 1979; 2003).
As to reincarnation and the existence of souls, the late University of Virginia psychiatrist and scientist Ian Stevenson's (1974) findings about the reincarnation experiences of children in India, Lebanon and the U.S. are to me the most valid and reliable to date. More recently, board-certified child psychiatrist Jim Tucker,MD (2005) published an overview of more than 40 years of research at the University of Virginia Division of Personality Studies. Dr. Tucker was a colleague of Dr. Stevenson and took over his research at the university.
Beginning as an atheistic traditional licensed hypnotherapist Michael Newton, PhD (2004) serendipitously discovered some of his patients were reporting experiences of not only other incarnations but also what their transtemporal life between temporal lives were like. Curious, he skeptically investigated the phenomena further. What first was a professional curiosity became an obsession involving painstaking study of life between lives reports of approximately 7,000 patients during hypnotherapeutic regression, respectively, conducted by Newton over a thirty year period. Following is an overview of the empirical results of his studies of his life between lives soul regressions.
1. The soul cannot be defined because it has no limits that are perceived about its creation. The most consistent reports of its demonstrated essence is that the soul represents intelligent energy which is immortal and manifested by vibrational waves of light and color.
2. All human beings have one soul that remains attached to its chosen physical body until death. Souls play a part in the selection of their next physical body during their reincarnation cycles. The soul typically joins its physical body after conception between the fourth month and birth.
3. Each soul has a unique immortal character. When joined with the human brain this character is melded with the emotional temperament, or human ego, of that brain to produce one personality for one lifetime.
4. Souls reincarnate with human beings for countless lifetimes to advance through levels of development by addressing karmic tasks from former lifetimes. Souls grow in knowledge and wisdom through this learning process while pondering their thoughts and deeds in past lives with peers under the direction of teachers.
5. At the moment of physical death the soul returns to the spirit world, the source of its creation. Since part of a soul’s energy essence has never left the spirit world during incarnation, the returning soul rejoins with that essence of itself. This, spiritual learning never ceases for the soul. The spirit world also offers souls the opportunity for rest and reflection between lives.
6. Souls appear to be members of specific spirit cluster groups to whom they have been assigned since their creation. The teachers of each group are the personal spirit guides of members of that group. Members of these groups reincarnate with the soul and assume meaningful roles during a soul’s life on earth.
7. Rather than being defined as a place of ultimate non-action, or Nirvana, the spirit world appears to be a space of soul transition into higher forms of energy with capabilities for creation with advancement. Their spirit world has an area of influence which is undefined except that it includes our universe and nearby dimensions.
8. No earthly religious deities are seen in the spirit world by returning souls. A soul’s closest connection with the divine is with their personal spirit guide and members of a council of benevolent counselors who monitor the affairs of each soul. Souls from earth feel and sense the presence of a God-like Oversoul or Source emanating from above their counselors. The spirit world is composed of highly advanced non-reincarnating soul specialists who regulate the work of advancement for the souls in their care.
9. When incarnating souls develop to a high level of experience, performance and wisdom they will cease to incarnate and become advanced beings themselves who assist the still-incarnating souls.
10.The ultimate goal of all souls appears to be the desire to seek perfection and conjoin with the Source that created them.
REFERENCES
Jung, Carl G. (1968). Psychology and Alchemy, Bollingen Series XX. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Johnston, Robert Wayne (1979), Integrated Management Process Workbook -- Identifying With the Changeless to Better Respond to the Changing. Los Angeles: Western Gear Corporation Publication
Johnston, Robert Wayne (2003). Cocreatively Self-Managing From One's Inner 'Seat' of Timeless Awareness. Workshop presented to the Institute of Noetic Sciences Annual Conference. Palm Springs, CA.
Newton, Michael (2004). The Journey of Souls, St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Newton, Michael (2004). The Destiny of Souls. St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Stevenson, Ian (1974). Twenty cases suggestive of reincarnation, second (revised and enlarged) edition, University of Virginia Press.
Tucker, Jim B. (2005). Life Before Life: A scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. NewYork:St. Martin's Press
