Remembering Past Lives

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

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Remembering Past Lives
© 2011 by Carl Llewellyn Weschcke and Joe H.Slate, Ph.D.

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Do you believe in Reincarnation?

If “no”—Why Not?

Let's discuss this a bit so we understand what we're “talking” about.

Yes, “talking,” because even though we're not actually meeting face to face—
this is a book after all
—we're going to make this as much a two-sided conversation as possible by explaining what serious believers do mean about living many previous lives.

First of all, this is not an academic book, so you are not going to see footnotes, detailed references, and a load of statistics. You can get all that you may want in other books (see the last page for some suggestions) but here we only want to introduce you to the subject, what it really involves, answer a few fundamental questions, and then give you the basic means to remember your own previous lives.

Just to put a few things in context: a substantial percentage of the world's population does believe in reincarnation, while a December 9, 2009 study by the Pew Forum reports that
24 percent of Americans overall and 22 percent of Christians and 28 percent of Catholics say they believe in reincarnation.
And, generally, the higher the educational level, the greater the percentage. (Note: the Catholic Church forbids belief in reincarnation, just as do many of the more fundamentalist Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religions.)

Yes, it is generally accepted in major world religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, and most modern Neo-Pagan and African Traditionalist religions, as well as earlier shamanic and mystical traditions, the ancient religious and philosophical systems of Tibet, Egypt, Greece, the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas, and most indigenous religions we know of.

Taking a slightly different approach,
AllAboutSpirituality.org
(May 24, 2011) posts that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe reincarnation is possible.

Reincarnation is not, per se, a religious belief

For a growing number of people it is a logically sensible philosophical understanding echoed in many metaphysical, spiritual, and psychological practices, and experienced in actual personal past-life memories (with some undertaken as part of paranormal research programs). Even many humanist and non-deist spiritually inclined people find reincarnation a belief that not only does not contradict their nonreligious perspective but makes sense of the beauty, wonder, complexity, and obvious evolutionary origins of human life as we know it.

Some of the more famous people of recent history who publically acknowledged belief in reincarnation include Henry Ford (“I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six … Work is futile if the experience we collect in one life cannot be utilized in the next … Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives.”); Benjamin Franklin (“Finding myself to exist in the world, I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist.”); Jack London (“I did not begin when I was born … I have been growing, developing, through incalculable myriads of millenniums … Oh, incalculable times again shall I be born.”); Mark Twain (“I have been more times than anybody except Krishna.”); Ralph Waldo Emerson (“The soul comes from without into the human body, as a temporary abode, and it goes out of it anew … it passes into other habitations, for the soul is immortal.”); Walt Whitman (“I Know I am deathless. No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.”); George Harrison (“Friends are all souls that we've known in other lives.”); actress Shirley MacLaine revealed that famous scientist Stephen Hawking confided in her that he believes he is the reincarnation of Isaac Newton.

Does it really matter that we can say that some famous people have publically stated their belief in reincarnation?
Not to this writer. My belief is personal and not based on the number of other believers. Yes, I've read several thousand books on different religions, philosophy, and esoteric principles that support the belief, but it is my own conviction that reincarnation makes sense and that my own Higher Self says it is so.

In other words, “belief” is mostly a personal point of view arrived at through education, personal experience and observation, and thinking things through. Reincarnation is also a common element to most esoteric teachings, both Western and Eastern. When your head tells you that it is logical and your heart confirms it, you become a believer.

We want to provide the information here to describe those common elements making up the reincarnation philosophy and how it is being researched in current paranormal studies so that you can make your own judgment.

Who, and What, Reincarnates?

This gets right to the reason that most of us do not remember past lives until we are introduced to specific techniques for remembering past lives. The reason is that
you are
not
who you think you are!

Who you think you are is your
personality
,
mostly experienced through your conscious mind—but that is just a single lifetime manifestation of your soul. The personality that incarnates is unique to your current lifetime and you've had as many different personalities as you've had lifetimes—and that's a lot. Your current personality does not substantially include much in the way of conscious memories from even your most immediate past life, and far less of any of the hundreds or thousands,
or more
, lives before that.

To make it easier, think about masks.

If you put on a theatrical mask, you appear as, and to varying degrees,
assume and
become
another personality just as an actor does. In theater we call that assumed personality a “character role.” It's a real role, but it isn't the real you.

Realize, however, that you have worn many masks over the years and still do wear masks by which you represent yourself to the world. We call these unconsciously adopted different masks “personas.” Watch a child growing up: they first are themselves, and then begin to relate in different ways to others—first to parents and siblings, then to their friends and school teachers, later to other kids and adults outside of school, and then—still growing—to various service people, to lovers, employer and fellow employees, professional associates, and so on.

In every relationship you assume a different mask, a different
persona
just as specific as any theatrical mask. As adults we have many different personas, but are only one personality—except in those rare instances of multiple personalities. But that one personality does contain all those mask-personas of which many do submerge into the subconsciousness as we grow and mature, finding less need for them.

Most people don't realize that they have these different
personas
unless they engage in some kind of self-analysis through which they discover and understand them as different aspects of their current lifetime personality, not unlike virtual
avatars
in online game playing.
Each persona is a particular means to expression and learning during a lifetime.
During life, your various experiences and lessons become memories that sink into the subconscious mind.

In the same way,
each personality is a means to expression and learning
over many lifetimes.
Just as there is a single personality with many personas, so there is a soul with many personalities. At the end of each lifetime, the lessons and experiences of the personality are abstracted and their essence is absorbed and retained by the soul.

In addition to your own lessons and memories, those of others are retained in the Universal Consciousness at a level known as the
Akashic Records.
Those records also contain the entire history of the world and may be accessed through procedures of deep meditation, self-hypnosis, astral projection, and during after-death experiences of past-lives review.

In summary, the
ultimate
you—the immortal soul—is far greater and far older than the incarnating personality. Each lifetime the soul projects a new personality into incarnation, and after the life and death of that personality, its learned lessons and experiences are abstracted in the life-after-death process and absorbed into the soul. Then the process of incarnation is repeated with more growth and learning opportunities in a continuing program of
becoming more than you are.

Contrary to some sectarian teachings, there is no “judgment day” upon which the soul is assigned to eternal punishment or eternal reward. Instead, in the after-death process, the lessons of each lifetime are balanced against your soul's greater vision, and the next incarnation is planned and prepared for. And when the time is right and the right opportunities of parents and environment are available, a new personality is given birth in a new body.

Each Lifetime is a chapter in the Book of Life and there are many chapters and perhaps even many volumes representing different phases in the soul's growth.

Just as the many life-lessons are abstracted and their essence is retained by the soul, so the many personas
and their memories
of your current lifetime are retained in your subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind is a unit of the greater Collective Unconscious where those many personalities and their memories reside and are accessible through your subconscious mind.

Can
you
remember
your
Past Lives?

If “no”—Why Not?

Our past-life experiences remain forever with us for a purpose.
But rather than being automatically available to us at the beginning
of each lifetime, they challenge us to retrieve them and discover
their relevance for ourselves. Only then can we integrate them into
our present lifetime. It's through concentrated effort and self-dis
covery that we learn and grow. It's then that knowledge of the past
becomes power for the present. It's then that we uncover totally
new potentials to be realized and enjoyed. Once we discover them,
our past-life achievements in particular can build feelings of worth
and well-being. We become less constricted in our self-identity and
more at one with the universe.

Dr. Joe Slate in
Doors to Past Lives

Until recent times, it was common for spiritual teachers to respond to questions about remembering past-lives by saying: “You're not supposed to.” In other words,
Live in the present and don't look to the past in the hope you were someone famous.
That's good advice, but people today are more sophisticated than to waste time hoping to find Cleopatra or George Washington among their past lives and do instead perceive the potential power of past life memories as resources of value today.

Please read that quoted paragraph again and realize that within one life time you now have three primary jobs:

1. to have new goals and new experiences which become new life lessons
   
2. to retrieve and discover pertinent lessons, knowledge, and skills from the past
   
3. to integrate past and present into your current “person-hood” as you
   become more than you are.
   

We now live in a new age of greater opportunities and higher expectations than ever before, and more is needed from each of us if we are to meet and rise above the critical challenges of the coming decades. Yes, there are books (and speeches and sermons) forecasting “end times,” and there always is and always will be such. Yet, as you look about, you see great problems all over the world. Wars, social conflict, economic challenges, political manipulations, earth movements, extreme weather, new health threats, increased use of mass weapons, divisions between government factions, solar eruptions, explosions of criminal and terrorist activities, planetary incoherence, moral and ethical failures in high places, massive corruption, and more and more bad things too numerous to account for here.

But, always, where there develops a massive imbalance, there is potential for massive rebalancing through intelligent leadership, heroic action, corrective restructuring, intelligent public policy decisions, sudden scientific and technological advancement, reconstruction of collapsed infrastructure, real investment and beneficial development, and responsible and selfless actions—individual, corporate, and governmental.

And this is not a book predicting the end of the world. It is, however, a
Call to Action
that involves each person becoming more aware, more conscious, more
integrated
to bring forth their highest emotional, mental and spiritual powers for all to
become more than you are
,
because it is at the highest levels that we will resolve the crises of our times.

To put it more succinctly, we must remember who we were and who we are to become more than we are. Remembering your past lives can become very important to your present and future lives.

The Importance of Memory

Memory is in many ways the foundation of the mind. If the mind was just a blank slate, there would be no language, no culture, no science, no rule of law, no civilization, and in fact there would be no individual persons—only herds functioning mostly through animal instinct.

Memories give us our individuality and provide us with the resources to live life fully and to gain success in our chosen endeavors. True, not all memories have to be stored in our consciousness and can instead be selected from such resources as books, files, and Internet search engines. But we must have a
personal
collection of memories available in our conscious mind in order to make use of these other resources. Other personal memories fall into the subconscious mind and can be recalled with greater effort—as you well know when struggling to recall a particular word or phone number.