What Dreams May Come (24 page)

Another danger of this method is that the soul may, inadvertently, select a vehicle which is mentally or physically deformed. In that event, the mistake must be borne for life. At times, of course, this way is chosen deliberately as a means of “paying off” Karmic debts, Karma being the doctrine of inevitable consequence for our deeds. A soul entering a sick or damaged body, who meets and overcomes these handicaps with good cheer, grows faster spiritually than one who, by earthly standards, has everything to live for. As, God willing, in Ann’s case.

While, in any area of the world, the soul has the option of entering its new vehicle of life at any stage from conception to post-birth, the Occidental method is, usually, to wait until the child is born. That way, no soul can ever be locked into the coma I mentioned.

The actual process of rebirth depends on the ability of the soul to contract its spiritual bodies—astral, then etheric— until they can be coordinated with the body of the child. This coordination usually takes place immediately after birth and is not easy to accomplish. For this reason, the process usually requires the assistance of a spirit physician who can see, in his or her mind’s eye, the spinal cords of both child and spirit bodies and merge them.

As I indicated, another method of reincarnation occurs as follows: The soul does not enter the body until the child has developed for five to eight weeks. That way, the certainty of a proper physical vessel becomes completely defined.

“Upon incarnating,” the woman continued, “all memories of the previous life and the interval in afterlife are obliterated and a fresh set of mental impressions begun. Occasionally, if the reincarnation is precipitate, the memory lasts—which explains the high incidence of such cases in India, for instance.

“For several months, the soul sleeps in the baby which utilizes animal instincts to learn the operations of its body— feeding, sleeping and performing organic functions. Only when the soul begins to awaken does the child begin to demonstrate active intelligence.

“The soul does not wake all at once but progressively throughout the childhood and youth of the new individual. Infrequently, a soul wakes prematurely and recalls, if not its past life, its past skills; thus the occasional appearance of child prodigies.

“The soul gradually merges with the body so that, at approximately the age of twenty-one, it has incarnated fully. Sometimes, a soul will not ‘wake up’ until its vehicle is nearly middle-aged. In that case, the personality shows no signs of full intellectual activity until then.

“And following its new life span, the immortal soul, which has gone forth into incarnation to struggle for the mastery of its nature, returns, once more, to home for refreshment and new study before returning again to earth in its cyclic search for perfection—and reunion with God.

I will say no more about the lecture. Further information on reincarnation is not essential to my story; there are books you can read if you are interested.

My next step was to reopen the closed book of my memory and examine it once more.

By utilization of my individual wave length, I was shown my past lives.

It was a dizzying spectacle, Robert, in which nothing was withheld. I scarcely had time to react as the details flooded before me, a vivid burst of events, each moment reproduced in total detail.

I have had many lifetimes but I will mention only the last two in which Ann and I were together.

I was in contact with her in the 1300s when both our souls expressed themselves in what may be termed “the feminine framework.” We were sisters, eleven years apart— myself the older—but so close in our relationships that friends and family remarked on it with wonderment. All our lives we were, psychologically, inseparable.

We came together again in the 1700s, in Russia, me in the masculine valence, she in the feminine. We grew up, knowing each other, lost contact for a while, then met again in our teen years, fell in love and married. I was a writer in that lifetime too; novels and short stories. Ann (her name was different then, of course) believed in me loyally though my success was minimal.

It was the end of that life that I’d witnessed at my second death.

Now I saw not only its conclusion but all of it, given a perspective which allowed me to observe what plan and purpose not only that former life had possessed but all my other lives as well.

I will not go into details here; again, it is irrelevant to what I have to say. Suffice to mention that I decided that the one factor needed more than any other to enhance the growth of my soul is the helping of others. Which tied in perfectly with my desire to be with Ann again. Albert had told me that, in time, she will need much medical care.

I will become a doctor.

At first, I considered being born in India as well. The difficulties of doing so and ending up a doctor, however, are close to insuperable and I have had to alter the idea. Being born in India is not the objective anyway. Ultimately reach-big India to help Ann is.

Which is why I’ve chosen who I have as parents: Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Braningwell of Philadelphia. They are young and well-to-do and I will be their only child. I will have a comfortable upbringing, attend medical school and believe I am to follow in my father’s footsteps.

At the age of thirty, that resolve will change entirely, for reasons I will not go into, and I will leave the path of comfort to practice medicine in the deprived areas of the world.

Eventually, I will arrive in India, take care of, fall in love with and, finally, marry a young woman whose soul will be Ann’s. Whether we will ever know or even sense what is really happening is not important. We will be together again.

Nothing else matters.

The infant body chosen by me is four and a half weeks old now. It will not be strong enough for the entry of my astral and etheric bodies until it is seven weeks old.

I have been lingering near the body constantly, experimenting with the process of reducing those bodies to the size of the child. When I am ready for transition, a doctor, skilled in the procedure, will set up a radioactive current which will make it possible to connect the bodies through a gland at the base of the child’s brain.

Then I will enter.

In the final moments before incarnation, I will try to evolve a clear image of the type of body I need. In this way, I can help to generate the health and strength required to do the life work I have planned. If I fail to do this, the child’s body could, conceivably, be carried off by an early illness or I might, like Ann, be weak and sickly.

I confess to you, Robert, that I feel a strong revulsion toward rebirth. Enough time has elapsed so that the idea of returning to flesh is no longer inviting to me. At the moment, only the knowledge that Ann has gone back makes me want to return. For, in truth, it is not courageous to die. True courage is involved in being born voluntarily, leaving the manifold beauties of Summerland to plunge back into the depths of dark, imprisoning matter. Trauma isn’t caused by death but by life. One can die without knowing it.

Birth invariably entails a shock of recognition.

I will reassure myself by thinking of my dream.

That, one day, we will be together here in Summerland. That we will share our love in this exquisite clime, our oneness an abiding comfort to each other.

Perhaps, as Albert has suggested, we will be remarried someday in one of heaven’s great cathedrals, the ceremony performed by a Master from a higher level, a chorus singing us a hymn of joy to our united love.

I will give her gifts of my own creation—flowers, clothing, jewels and ornaments, furnishings for the home we will make together. A home which will blend our tastes and desires, located in a lovely, natural setting we will cherish always.

There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity.

Return to my love

THERE WAS ONE thing more I had to do before departure.

Dictate this book and have it brought to you.

Again, I will not detail how I was put in contact with the woman who brought you this manuscript. Originally, I’d planned to have it given to my children. But when it turned out that the only sensitive available was on the east coast, I decided to have the book brought to you instead.

I hope it is published and read by many. I hope that, at the very least, a few people are prepared for the inevitable transition which will take place at the end of their lives.

My account draws to a close.

Remember this: What I have told you is partial. It could be no other way. I could only tell you what I, personally, saw and heard. It is my recollection of what happened, nothing more. Recall what Albert told me.

The mind is all.

I emphasize that strongly. The experience was my experience and no one else’s. While it is all completely true, it is not, by any means, definitive regarding afterlife experience.

Another person would tell a different story.

Remember this as well: Things I have not told you would fill a hundred volumes. Accept my word that the variety in afterlife is boundless. There is so much more that my account is as a grain of sand to all the beaches and the deserts in the world.

I must mention, too, that all I have described has taken place on a relatively low level of spiritual existence. There are planes which I have never known and may not know for eons.

In brief, there is no standard afterlife reality. I told you my experience. Yours will be different. You can be sure of only one thing.

It will happen.

I feel it vital to enlarge upon my point.

Nothing is as simple as I have stated it.

In actuality, the conditions of survival cannot be explained in terms of time, space and form. I have described people, locations and events but these were subject to my ability— or lack of it—to see things as they really are.

In point of fact, the entire experience may have been precisely what I told myself it was following my death.

A dream.

When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?

So it may be here as well.

By that token, it is only natural that what I have referred to as Summerland would appear as it does. Since the phenomena of this level are essentially thought pictures carried over by the consciousness of those newly arrived from earth, what else could Summerland be but an idealized version of earth?

Albert told me, at the very outset, that heaven was a state of mind.

It is.

Consider though. Isn’t earth a state of mind as well? Matter is no more than energy which, to the human intellect, appears static. Life is the state of consciousness which perceives this energy as matter. Death is the state of consciousness which no longer perceives it as such.

Life on earth is only a panorama of vivid observations which seem real to you.

Why should afterlife seem less real?

Let me not confuse you though.

It will seem real enough to you.

And, please, my brother, do not fear it.

Death is not the king of terrors.

Death is a friend.

Consider it this way. Do you fear to sleep at night? Of course not. Because you know that you will wake again.

Think of death the same way. As a sleep from which, inevitably, you will awaken.

True life is a process of becoming. Death is a stage in this progression. Life is not followed by un-life.

There is only a single continuity of being.

We are part of a plan, never doubt that. A plan to bring each one of us to the highest level of which we are capable. The way will be dark at times but it leads, assuredly, to light.

Never forget, however, that we pay for every act and thought and feeling we commit.

One statement from the Bible says it all.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

People are not punished for their deeds but by them.

If only everyone believed that.

If only every man and woman in the world knew—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that they would have to face the consequences of their lives.

The world could change overnight.

God bless you.

I return to my love.

Epilogue

I HAVE JUST returned from Philadelphia.

Maybe it was foolish of me. It’s entirely possible that the woman who brought me the manuscript was aware of the existence of Dr. Braningwell and his wife. There is no way of knowing for certain. I can only wonder again. If this is so, why should she go to all that trouble to deceive me?

At first, I thought of knocking on the Braningwells’ door and telling them my story.

Rationality soon dispensed with that.

What I did was wait until their maid took the baby for a carriage ride. I walked behind her to a small neighborhood park, and, there, while she was sitting on a bench, I stopped and chatted with her briefly, glancing at the child. Feeling a perfect fool for doing so. But feeling something else as well as I stared into the eyes of that child.

Awe.

Does that baby boy possess the soul of my brother Chris? Will he really go to India when he has passed his thirtieth

year, meet a young woman possessing the soul of my brother’s wife Ann and marry her?

I wish to God I knew.

I’m sixty-three years old, however. It’s obvious I’ll never live to verify it. I could tell my children to check it out but I’m sure they’d find it difficult to retain interest in a vague, improbable event which may or may not occur decades hence in a country thousands of miles away.

So there it will, doubtless, end.

All I can do is repeat: If the manuscript is true, all of us had better examine our lives.

Carefully.

THE END

Bibliography

Appleman, John Alan. Your Psychic Powers and Immortality. New York: Frederick Fell, Inc., 1968.

Atkinson, W. W. Reincarnation and the Law of Karma. Chicago: Yogi Publication Society, 1936.

Bayless, Raymond. The Other Side of Death. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, Inc., 1971.