Navigating by Past Life Recall

As I have argued in the prior post, "reincarnation" may be a useful way of looking at certain aspects of our experience, even if in the abstract it may not be any more "true" than the more common Western linear view of time, which really implies Newtonian physics, and is long since obsolete for that reason alone. The notion of the holographic universe is certainly not easy to grasp. Meanwhile however, the kneejerk rejection of past life recall and reincarnation that is so common in certain quarters is also obviously meaningless. I've gotten some of that in commentaries to prior posts about Pursah's Gospel of Thomas, because it is based on her memory of her lifetime as Thomas.

To take an extreme example, General George S. Patton chose his strategy in France, guided rather strongly by past life recall of a lifetime in which he was a Roman soldier and marched with Caesar, and his intuition was to avoid all man made bridges which were built after that time, guessing correctly that the Germans would or at least were likely to, destroy them. So he planned his route based on the natural terrain, and where it would be easy to cross rivers and other obstacles. In his case, his past life recall was so vivid that in his own words, he could still smell the piss and sweat of the Roman soldiers he had been with in that terrain, and frequently he could recall features of the terrain. He experienced the same with the battle field of Gettysburg in the US, and many other historical battlefields. Nobody doubts his success. For anybody interested the full details I recommend Carlo d'Este's biography. I have also previously blogged about Patton elsewhere, particularly on his experience on the battlefield of St. Mihiel in World War I.

In short, as Shakespeare reminded us, there is more in this world than is dreamt of in our philosophy, and we are well advised to keep an open mind, and be duly sceptical about the would be obviousness of what our senses would seem to tell us. It is with this in mind that in my book I have addressed the provenance of Pursah's Gospel of Thomas as a putative kernel of the Thomas Gospel, which she feels is authentic based on her recall, but aside from that I have also validated het selection based purely on my own common sense. The combined result is what gave me the confidence to go forward. Here really lies the essence of the difference--quite in the spirit of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience-- beween formal religion and personal religion, or today we would probably simply say between religion and spirituality. Learning to have a healthy relationship with that inner guide, which we all do have, but which we have buried under rationalizations, is definitely part of waking up to who we truly are. It can also become a distraction, if we become too enamored of it, and give it more importance than it really has. The fact remains however that we all have this ability, and can generally learn to live with more ease as we learn to trust it more. This is quite independent of whatever conscious awareness we may or may not have regarding past life memories or déja vu.

Multiple Thomases and other Curiosa

I reflected yesterday on the multiple Thomases in my life, and it's really funny. I can't think of this having been as prominent before. In fact I can't remember any Thomases before the last few years, and now they seem to be everywhere. So somehow my mind is on the topic of Thomas indeed, and synchronicity is of course one way to incorporate joining into our experience. As to Gary Renard there is the notion of a parallel Thomas experience with Michael Tamura, as documented in The Return of the Revolutionaries, see www.johnadams.net and then there is also the experience of Micael Ledwith. I was present when Gary and Micael were together on a TV panel discussion in Manhattan, on Alan Steinfeld's New Realities TV. It did not particularly impress me in any specific way, but it was a curious fact nevertheless.

Besides the fact that many of these incidents of past life recall can be very fallacious, no doubt, there is no question that for some people they can be very clear and strong, as was the case with General George S. Patton, for whom they were an unquestionable fact of life, and clearly had a great deal of accuracy, and explicit relevance to his present incarnation, such as knowing how to pick his route through France with avoidance of man-made bridges, since he remembered from the Gallic wars, when he marched with Caesar, where the natural places were to ford rivers, and avoid other obstacles. Yet there remains the fact that often times the stories don't fully coincide or confirm each other or the historical record for that matter. It would seem that different people remember different aspects of the experience, and there may even be something to the multiple choice nature of our script, that different people remember different versions. None of this yields to much rational analysis, because the holographic nature of this experience is beyond easy comprehension, but it is just another aspect of our experience.

It has been clear to me for a long time that a preference or a strong interest in certain periods of time indicates a certain level of awareness of: "I was there," as GSP would often note in his books, and sometimes it was: "I know, I was there." And he was provably right on numerous occasions. I know I had that sense with Plato and the academy, and to some degree I have it with the time of Jesus, yet I have no great Aha! experiences around that, except to realize that as we become less afraid of ourselves, we can let more of these experiences in perhaps, so memories can come back. At a certain level it can be a distraction, if we let it, but it can simply be a happy experience, which can enrich our lives. The fact that multiple people are having partially overlapping memories is also easily possible once we fathom the holographic nature of the mind even a little bit. There are not discrete souls incarnating in bodies, that's just how we conceive of it as long as we identify strongly with our body, rather, the puppeteer, the mind dreams up all the characters. We are only identified with one particular role until we wake up from it.

I know, I was there!

That was the phrase Gen. George S. Patton frequently wrote in the margins of his books, when he had a comment about a historical battle, of which he had particularly vivid past-life recall. (see Carlo d'Este, Patton, a Genius for War)  Increasingly it feels to me as if the Thomas gospel may be evocative of those kinds of memories for lots of people. Somehow these little sayings, particularly in the form of the compact kernel Pursah has given us through Gary Renard's work, have an effect that reminds me of the passage "The Forgotten Song," in the Course.

Listen,–perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state not quite forgotten; dim, perhaps, and yet not altogether unfamiliar, like a song whose name is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or a place or anything particular. But you remember, from just this little part, how lovely was the song, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you.
(ACIM:T-21.I.6)

It appears to me that while there can be some initial getting used to process, because some of the imagery is evocative of Palestine 2000 years ago, in the end it appears that the very sparseness of detail evokes a recognition of what Jesus might have sounded like, which by far transcends the particulars of the time and place. To the extent that we can just learn to listen to these statements, Pursah's words  in The Disappearance of the Universe may gain some poignancy, for in her introduction of this material, she lays much emphasis on that her rendering of these statements are what Jesus really sounded like, except that he would have said them in Aramaic.

I have already reflected in an earlier note here on a growth process with this material which I have begun to observe in my workshop and with people who collaborated on the book with me. There comes a time when the strangeness wears off, and the familiarity comes back, and with it the possibility of our holographic reality may seem more present also, for the deep recognition that seems to reach across the ages in reality has naught to do with history or a historical Jesus, but with a letting go of fear, when we can let something come close to us which once seemed distant and far away. Allowing ourselves to bring far away times and places close to us in a somewhat meditative state can be very helpful, and puts us in a position to begin to appreciate the whole story of Jesus on a more personal level. Particularly also, we can see a reflection of our own struggles with the teachings of the Course, by seeing the apostles as our brothers, and recognizing in their stumbling and fumbling, and continued failures in faith and trust and their misunderstandings of Jesus. One of the central points of the Course is that we need to come up to Jesus's level, we need to bring our problems to the answer, not to compromise the answer by making our problems good and real, this is what he means with following him, this is what he means with the idea that the Kingdom is not of this earth.

And so, letting Jesus's voice ring out across the ages from the sayings in the Thomas gospel, and allowing our mind to travel to Palestine, 2000 years ago essentially involves a letting go of fear, in which the initial seeming strangeness of his expressions can flow into an awareness of living presence, and letting ourselves be with him there and then, becomes the same as letting his presence be with us here and now, as our memory of him newly comes to life. Surely that is the real meaning of the story of the Last Supper-"Do this in the remembrance of me." In the Course he says it thusly:

(7) The injunction "Be of one mind" is the statement for revelation-readiness. My request "Do this in remembrance of me" is the appeal for cooperation from miracle workers.  The two statements are not in the same order of reality. Only the latter involves an awareness of time, since to remember is to recall the past in the present. Time is under my direction, but timelessness belongs to God. In time we exist for and with each other. In timelessness we coexist with God. (ACIM: T-2.V.A.17)