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| From the Archives |
| Sumpter talks on reincarnation |
| The material in the archives was not originally written for a website, but is nevertheless well worth reading. It was all written in New Zealand, and you will occasionally notice this. |
| It is time now for many to think beyond the one life in a new way, for although reincarnation has been a proper part of some of the world's religions for many centuries, and still is today, some of the interpretations are actually quite limited. The idea being that this personality in the current life, is a discrete personality who has merely inherited the results of past personality's activities, whereas in fact the truth is a little different, if I may use that word truth. For each person as they know themselves in their current life, has far greater access to all other lives, and the personalities, characteristics, and attributes of those lives, than is normally considered to be the case. I will first mention one line of approach, which is to take the interest that people feel from the current lifetime, about other lifetimes. This approach comes about because people realise that in one lifetime they cannot possibly explore all the dimensions of their abilities, or make physical all the potentials of their soul. So they are interested in discovering where else these potentials blossom, and so that leads them on to the idea of reincarnation quite naturally and helps them to accept it. I will now explain the other direction from which we can approach this subject. We begin at the other end of the reincarnational scheme of things with, if you like, the beginning of the entire process for each person. I would like to talk of a time before your oversoul had human lives. Before your oversoul decided to come to the earth and take upon itself the various lives you call your own incarnations. You can imagine the oversoul in any way you like, in many ways you could say it is like a seed with great potential compressed within it, or if you prefer, you can imagine it as something very huge and energetic, able to split its energy into multitudinous directions. The image does not matter so long as you have an image that you are comfortable with. The oversoul coming and perceiving the earth and all its glorious potential from outside then, for the purposes of our story, can see multitudinous ways in which it can benefit from earth experience. The oversoul of course was ready for human consciousness. So there is no question of it evolving out through the insects, animal, or plant, or other life forms and only later becoming human. It came here in a 'ready to be human' state. As the oversoul perceives the earth dimension and its multitudinous opportunities, it is aware of all the available times and places at once. I suppose you could compare it to having some marvellous catalogue available showing each century and each place in each century, and the peculiar developments available in each. And the oversoul with great glorious abandon, throws its energy into many of the times and places. There is a seeming contradiction here, in that there are patterns involved where one theme from the oversoul, one individuality strand will be strung like a necklace in many centuries, perhaps several centuries BC and then several AD. This particular string of personalities will form one individual and at any point along the string, a person in one of those lives will regard that string as its personal incarnations but it is not the only string or necklace involved, there are many. Each personality, each pearl upon the necklace also has the opportunity to develop and can throw off side strands forwards and backwards in time, so that development is not limited in any way or any direction. As a result of all this activity the oversoul grows in knowledge and develops its abilities and expresses its potentials. From the point of view of the oversoul this happens all at once and yet there are fresh developments that happen in that timeless state. Eventually the oversoul, having learned all it wishes to, withdraws from human lives. It may withdraw suddenly in one go, all personalities collected up together and disappearing off into another system of reality at the same time, or it may withdraw slowly one necklace, one strand of pearls, or even just one individual choosing to leave physical life but still very much involved with the physical world for as long as the oversoul still has others personalities in physical lives, until eventually all the individuals in that oversoul withdraw. Now, I wish to come back to you, the person and begin our exploration then of the reincarnational patterns starting with you again. I have described you, a moment ago, as a pearl on the string of a necklace which represents your own group of reincarnational lives and I hope you like this analogy. Now, because all time is simultaneous, all your lives, past and future, are in that sense now, lived at once. So all those personalities are real and vivid and alive and do not have to die for the next personality to become born. You, the person then, have dreams, aspirations, abilities, and so forth and can only express a fraction of that in your current lifetime. All of your deep desires which cannot be expressed in your own life, carry energy which is expressed elsewhere. The usual idea is that they are all expressed through reincarnation. This is not the whole story. Many of these desires and so forth are expressed in other probabilities as well, so the energy goes off in several directions. From your point of view, when a new personality arises out of all these abilities and characteristics you perceive it as another reincarnational self. From the oversoul's point of view, however, the energy goes out and becomes all of its personalities. But from your point of view, that which you cannot use but which is enough to form another personality, becomes a personality somewhere else. All those personalities which form in your particular reincarnational grouping are available to you on a regular and daily basis. Each action you take has a correspondence with actions taken in all of those personalities. This is where it becomes difficult to explain, because in your linear timeframe you expect that those personalities who appear to you in previous centuries, for example, have already lived; their life is over and it is hard to imagine that your thoughts are forming those lives now, as surely as they are forming your current moment, and herein lies a great mystery and the understanding of this mystery, enables you to see what an amazingly psychological and psychic world you live in, with the physical very much the handmaiden of the psychic and psychological theme. Now, I would like you to bear in mind the concepts and ideas I have already put before you, as I suggest to you three ways in which you can contact your reincarnational selves, as I will call them from now on, meaning those other pearls on your string. I hope you will bear with me if the words do not always do justice to the reality. I have said that there are correspondences between your self and the other reincarnational selves, who are, shall we say, attached to you, and that fresh action is always happening in your life because of your thoughts and actions in the present moment. Fresh action is happening in their lives also, because of your thoughts and actions in the present moment. This is also true from the other direction, of course. Fresh action in their lives has an impact on you, can be picked up and used, or picked up and examined and discarded, and this is done constantly at inner levels. I wish to remind you here of the exercise suggested with associations, for this is the pattern of associations that we are dealing with again. However this time I will call it correspondences, correspondences of action. You can explore this for yourself and I would remind you that you are doing the same thing with the past of this life, that you are constantly re-using and re-inventing your childhood, for example. Every time you say, when I was a child I used to do so and so, in that moment you are resurrecting that childhood activity and giving it a fresh burst of energy from your present and making it a part of your present also, at the same time. And so, what I am suggesting is merely an extension of this ability. Take the past lives that you know about, and at any given moment, on any given day, you can think to yourself, I wonder what so-and-so is doing right now. That very question does not make sense in linear time terms, however by using the imagination and the process of association, you may find yourself at any point in that other individual's life and the point you intuitively choose will reflect something about yourself at that moment, and so in your imagination you may find yourself walking with that person or experiencing an event from their childhood, or adulthood, or old age and there will be something in that for you, a message, a gift of correspondence and it works in very much the same way as the pattern of associations, I spoke about in our time study evening. That is one way, and a way which you can use your imagination very freely and yet receive very real and dear messages and gifts from other lifetimes. There is no need to restrict yourself, by the way, to past lives. You can correspond with any point of a future life in exactly the same way. You will begin to get a different idea and feel for yourself and for the reincarnational gestalt, in which you are an important part, if you do this, and that is one way. Another way to relate to one of your reincarnational selves is to imagine that this is another person that can walk into the room and look around at your life. If you do that you get another feel for your own life and for the abilities that perhaps you are not using. For the personality that you pick up on, who would handle, for example, your eating habits in a different way, or would meet your friends with a fresh point of view, represents a very real part of yourself and you can benefit from that perspective and again, you can do this exercise in a purely imaginary way and you will still gain value and gifts from it. So you could say, I wonder how so-and-so would feel in this room, or on this beach, or about this person, or in this situation, and gain valuable insights, and these insights will be insights about you, and about a part of you that is valuable to you, and even the choice you make of the personality to approach in this way will be relevant and will tell you something about what you need to know. The third way you can experience these people is to merge with them temporarily, either in this life, your life, allowing them to merge with you, and for a moment or two living your life as if you were that other person living it, or you can go back and merge with them as if you now, with all your personality and abilities were reliving that little part of their life, that day, or whatever. That is the same thing as imagining that you with your current knowledge of relationships or social interaction, become the teenager that you were at 13, and giving them the benefit of your new knowledge, enable them to go through a day quite differently than you did when you actually were 13. All these ways make more use of the reincarnational gestalt at a conscious level than is normally understood. All these interactions of which I speak actually occur quite naturally and changes are made and sometimes, for example, miracle cures appear, because of these changes being made. The advantage, I am offering to you, is to bring this up to the conscious level, and I hope you have fun with these suggestions. Reincarnation is a great and glorious venture, a real adventure for us all. It is with great wonder that I search among my lives and express myself with perfect finesse, by finding exactly the right tone and moment and personality to express a certain mood, a certain ability, a certain characteristic. The abilities of an entire bank of personalities are glorious indeed to the individual who has a grasp of them and who can use them to express a multitude of abilities at any time, and it is at this point that the individual with a grasp of their own many personalities, has the advantage of being able to move towards a closer understanding of the oversoul The oversoul includes probable selves and counterparts as well as reincarnational selves. Counterparts have a sense of 'me yet not me', which is different from the 'me yet not me' of the reincarnational selves. For me, all my reincarnational selves now are me, and I am both the sum of them and each of them at any time as I wish. The various lives that are lived are so beautiful each by each no matter how much terror or difficulty was experienced that the overriding sensation when they are understood each by each, is one of joy and joyful fulfilment and this is often forgotten while the difficulties are being encountered moment by moment during the lifetime, but is always experienced again when the lives are held in the soul's hands as a jewel of great value and price. The personalities which make up your own reincarnational gestalt, also form a recognisable individual that is a completed version of the self that contains all the various personalities and is a wonderful being in its own right Q: "I find it quite difficult to grasp that you say even a life of horror is special and beautiful. Can you explain that differently, please?" I would like you to compare it to works of art then. There may be a work of art that is about a terrible scene, a tragedy and yet it is a beautiful and amazing and worthy piece of art. In the same sense, the work of any lifetime is a creative work that outweighs any horror that was experienced. EXERCISES Exercise One Now, if my dear friends would like to calm themselves and imagine themselves in a calm open setting, an open plain or hilltop would be very good for these purposes. A still time, some light in the sky, day or night it matters not. And I would like them to imagine that they can walk forward into this open place and notice that around the edges of this plain or open place other selves walk forward, for this is a meeting place of the reincarnational selves, and it matters not if they see but a shadowy figure, or the details of a person, it matters not. I would like them to imagine that they can converse with any of these figures and that the conversations are not in English, not in any languages spoken, but at deeper levels, and exchanges of information go on amongst all the different personalities, grouping and regrouping, and if they would now imagine themselves floating out of body and looking down upon the group, and there below them is the group that is their personal reincarnational gestalt; personalities from all different times and places and they are looking down upon it, including themselves. I would like to get my dear friends to have a feel for the essence of the group they see down there, the essence that is themselves. I would like them to imagine that their astral body now becomes undefined, a consciousness without form, and expands and expands and expands until it is as big in the air as the group below is big on the ground, and I would like them to imagine with their expansion of consciousness complete, with their expanded self, they sink down, down, and enter each personality of the group simultaneously, enter the group as a group and there is a hint in the feelings that result, of the essence of the individual that you truly are. There are moments of comfort and moments of discomfort as you find yourself experiencing the essence of the group. And now withdraw again, back up into the sky and shrink your expanded consciousness back to a form that you feel comfortable with, the form of your own personality, the shape of your current physical body, and go back down and re-enter your body on the ground, and look out at all these other personalities and realise that these are yourself looking back at you. You feel the love of identification, and you sense the knowledge available. Though you may lose this moment, some of its air and mystery can go with you through your days and you can experiment with repeating this exercise whenever you need that expansion, that greater sense of self, to help you through a difficult time, for example, or to give you a fresh perspective. And now bring yourself back to your chair and identify yourself in this room with these other people and this strange spirit being talking to you. Relax into your favourite self and allow yourself to think about and produce in your mind your favourite sound or music and become reoriented into your personality. Exercise Two I want you to imagine that you step out, out of your body, and on to another plain of existence entirely. A plain where there are lives for sale. There are brochures telling you of the attractions of various times and areas. Parents looking for children, children looking for parents. A market place, and I want you to imagine that here you can choose any life you wish. I want you to imagine that you are taking your most underdeveloped ability, your strangest and least identified sense of self. Choose an ability or characteristic that you feel is not being developed in this lifetime. Studying the brochures, I want you to simply accept whatever information comes to you, about an offer of a lifetime in which that ability will be experienced, expanded, developed. Whatever comes, comes. You may here discover ways of relating to the world that are very different from those you are used to in your everyday life, for this is something I want you to think about while you are in this market place of possibilities. When you look at other life times and other places and other civilisations, you do so through the filters of your present personality and your present social understanding and all that goes with that. There are other ways of relating to the world and by choosing those abilities which are least developed in you and seeking to find development for them, in this market place of lives, you will open your mind up to other perspectives in other times and places, where experience was far more different than the history books would grant or stories allow. Now, turn around and leave the market place, you can come back any time you wish, and sink back in to your body and reorient yourself in this room and to help you reorient, think about something you enjoyed to smell, a scent or perfume that appeals to you, and with this simple example you bring yourself back to your full personality, for what you like and dislike is a part of how you know yourself. I will give you one more exercise and then I will leave you. Exercise Three In this life you have a certain gender. You are a man or you are a woman and that is understood. In some of your other lives you have been a member of the opposite gender. I would like you therefore to imagine for the moment that you go to bed tonight and you wake up in the morning, and you are a member of the opposite gender, and as you wake up and you are a member of the opposite gender, you activate the lives you had before, of the opposite gender. They come into prominence for you, in a way they did not yesterday, and how do you relate to them? Let your imagination pick those out, and feel how differently you relate to them, now you are the same gender, than you did yesterday, when you were the opposite. Again return to your normal orientation, the day is over, you wake up back in the gender you have known since birth, and any time you wish to gain more understanding and the full flavour from your other lives, approach them in this direction also. |
| Copyright © Z Smith 1994 (Edited in 2004) Unaltered copies may be made for free or non-profit distribution. All other rights reserved |
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| The Spiritual Mastery Path |
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