Having said that, the detail to which this little boy, James Leiniger, experienced these things was quite amazing, and the book is very much worth reading. There was also a Prime Time interview with the parents posted on their website. My favorite line from the book may well be when the father said to his young son that he loves him, and the son says: "Of course daddy, that's why I picked you." So when did he pick his parents the bewildered father asks: "When you were in the pink hotel in Hawaii." The fathers memory then zooms back to a time spent with his wife in Hawaii, about five weeks prior to the time of conception of his son.
The holographic model of time and space which the Course implicitly espouses, and which is at least implied by the quantum physical model, suggests another way of looking at this. The mental activity of the separated mind simply consists of reviewing a past gone by in the present, so that it's not only the notion of past life memories, which represent in a way reviewing a past experience, which in turn can preoccupy us in the present. Our entire life experience is like this, for the world never exists in the present, hence the Course's dictum that: "There is no world!" ♠
There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your
ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all
the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. This
central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if
you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells
you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change
your mind.
But it is pride
that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself,
impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to
think it is. There is no world! This is the central thought the course
attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must
go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will
return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then
return again. (ACIM:W-132.5,6)
The same theme comes up in Logion 52,
of the Thomas Gospel, in which Jesus points out to the apostles that
they are trying in vain to understand him from the past, whereby they
fail to be present with Jesus, and joining with him in the now. Although
it is not explained in so many words, the implication here is evidently
the same, namely that this is our human condition as children from the
ego, that we fail to recognize Jesus, because we are judging based on
the past, and so we are repeating the past in the present, and thus
keeping the present safely outdoors, outside of the framework of reality
which we are prepared to accept.In the book, the research of the parents ends up being useful to young James Leiniger to let go of the past and move on with his life, so they were extremely helpful to him by not suppressing or denying his experiences, as a result of which he was able to deal with the past and let it go. The more common outcome would have been to suppress the experience, and staying stuck in it for a long time. In terms of the Course, this is an example of the miracle, as follows:
Miracles are
both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order. 2
They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but
really go forward. 3 They undo the past in the present, and thus release
the future. (ACIM:T-1/I.13)
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