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Reincarnation, the ‘Interlife’, Universal Consciousness & the Holographic Soul
Posted by admin on November 16, 2012
By IAN LAWTON | New Dawn
–
Modern studies repeatedly suggest that a significant proportion of
people in the Western world now believe in reincarnation. Although this
phenomenon can be traced back to various esoteric movements that
flourished from the second half of the 19th century, it gained
significant ground with the explosion of popular interest in Eastern
spiritual approaches in the 60s. And it was reinforced by a
proliferation of therapists offering to regress people into their past
lives.
Yet now the tide seems to be turning again. For some years the
emphasis has been moving more towards the idea that we are all part of
the One, the All, the Source, the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Great
Spirit or whatever we choose to call the ‘universal consciousness’. Of
course this is not a new idea. But what is changing is that especially
more intellectually minded spiritual seekers are tending towards the
view that anything outside of the ‘One’ is mere ‘illusion’.
In fact this word illusion is used a great deal in spiritual
circles these days, although actually in quite different contexts, and
it is perhaps worth considering what these are. Of course readers would
all agree that the physical world itself is to some extent an illusion,
at least inasmuch as it is underpinned by the nonphysical planes and
states of being that science is increasingly pointing towards. But what
about the idea that we only reincarnate for as long as we fail to see
through the ‘illusion’, and that as soon as we gain ‘enlightenment’ we
can ‘break the bonds of karma’ and ‘reunite with the Source’? More
radical still, what about the idea that any notion of individuality is
completely illusory on all levels, and that as soon as we die there is
no sense of continuation of any sort of individual soul consciousness?
Whether or not they make it explicitly clear, these latter two are
the ‘illusion models’ supported by a significant proportion of our
best-known spiritual commentators of modern times – be they proponents
of, for example, the ‘power of now’, or of ‘cosmic ordering’, or of
‘quantum mysticism’. Yet to see the world in this way is entirely at
odds with what we might call the ‘experience model’, which holds that we
lead many lives in order to see all sides of every emotional coin, and
to learn to deal with the manifest challenges that life on this planet
provides. In other words, a model in which the emphasis is on an
individual soul growing by experience over many lifetimes.
If we are to adopt a rational approach then, rather than relying on
‘revealed wisdom’ ancient or modern, it is surely sensible to consider
which of these models is best supported by logical analysis and the
available evidence.
We can start with the premise that there must exist some sort of
ultimate force or energy that underlies the entire universe, both seen
and unseen, which is the Origin or Source of everything in it. However
ineffable it may be, this principle of a universal consciousness is
almost a logical necessity, and it is certainly supported by scientific
research at both the quantum and the macrocosmic level. The idea that
‘we are all one’ is also a common element of transcendental experiences,
whether spontaneous, meditative or induced by hallucinogens. So our
next step must be to investigate whether, at the same time, there is any
real evidence to support the idea of an individual consciousness that exists or survives independent of the physical body.
The most relevant area of research here is near-death experiences. In
particular we are interested in cases that involve subjects returning
with factual information that is subsequently verified, and yet so
obscure that they could not reasonably have acquired it in any ‘normal’
way.
Near-Death Experience & Reincarnation Cases
One of the most fascinating cases on record took place in the early
70s, and involves a gifted young Russian scientist called George
Rodonaia. His work on chemical brain transmitters was sufficiently
valued by the KGB that they were not prepared to lose his expertise to
the US by letting him take up an invite to further his research at Yale.
On the day of his departure, as he stood on the pavement in Tbilisi
waiting for a taxi to the airport, he was deliberately mown down by a
car and pronounced dead at the scene. His body lay in a morgue for three
days, but as the autopsy began his eyelids flickered and he was rushed
to surgery.
As a man of science George had never had any time for religion. So
those close to him were bewildered when, three days into his lengthy
recovery, he began to describe what had happened while he was ‘dead’. In
fact his was a relatively non-typical and highly transcendental
experience, but for our current purposes he also claimed he had also
been able to travel anywhere he liked while ‘out of body’. In particular
he was drawn to a newborn baby in the hospital adjoining the morgue
because she would not stop crying, and doctors had been unable to
diagnose the problem. Much to his surprise he found that he was able to
communicate with her telepathically, and also to scan her body and
establish that her hip had been broken, probably at birth. Incredibly,
as soon as George was well enough to pass on this information, the
doctors x-rayed the baby and found that she did indeed have a fractured
hip.
There are other, similar cases of near-death experiences involving
obscure, factual information that combine to strongly suggest that our
individual awareness or consciousness does indeed continue to exist even
when the physical brain is absolutely non-functional. So far so good.
But is there any evidence to support the further idea that individual
souls have many lives?
Here we encounter two important areas of research, the first
involving children who have spontaneous memories of past lives. Although
historically most of these cases have come from Asia, one of the finest
involves a young American boy called James Leininger of Lafayette,
Louisiana. Born in 1998, his fascination with toy planes from the
earliest age took a more sinister turn as he approached his second
birthday, when vivid nightmares began. He would thrash around in his
sleep, kicking out with his legs up in the air and moaning: “Airplane
crash, on fire, little man can’t get out.” His mother Andrea had no
particular religious convictions but, when her mother suggested these
might be memories of a past life, she began to encourage little James to
talk about them. And he began to reveal startling details, such as that
the pilot of the plane was also called James; that he had been shot
down by the Japanese; that he had flown Corsairs; and that one of his
fellow pilots went by the name of Jack Larsen. He also mysteriously
mentioned the single word Natoma.
His father Bruce remained dubious about any sort of spiritual
explanation, but he knew that neither he nor any other member of their
family had any particular interest in aircraft or the war. So he began
to research, and quickly established that an aircraft carrier called the
USS Natoma Bay had been stationed in the Pacific during World
War II and had taken part in the notorious battle for the Japanese
island of Iwo Jima early in 1945. He ordered a book about this, and was
flicking through it one day when James pointed to the island of Chichi
Jima on a map and exclaimed, “Daddy, that is where my plane was shot
down.” He then made contact with the ‘Natoma Bay Association’, who
confirmed that Jack Larsen had been one of the pilots, and also that
only one pilot had been lost at Chichi Jima: 21-year-old Lt James M. Huston Jr.
Bruce also knew that Huston had flown Wildcats, not Corsairs, on the Natoma Bay.
But when he made contact with Huston’s elderly sister she kindly sent
him some photos – including one of her brother standing proudly next to a
Corsair. Military records then showed he had originally been part of an
elite special squadron who test-flew these planes. But the real
clincher involves three ‘GI Joe’ dolls. When Bruce asked his son why he
called them Leon, Walter and Billie he replied, “Because they greeted me
when I went to heaven.” Again military records confirmed that three of
Huston’s fellow Natoma Bay pilots were Lt Leon S. Conner, Ensign Walter J. Devlin and Ensign Billie R. Peeler – and that all three had diedbefore Huston on other engagements. None of this detailed information is available on the internet pages about the Natoma Bay even now, let alone in popular books and so on.
Past Lives & Hypnotic Regression
The second area of past-life research is hypnotic regression. With
this we must first appreciate that the human brain appears to store a
complete record of everything we have ever been exposed to, no matter
how briefly or how long ago, and that although most of these memories
remain inaccessible to our normal consciousness they can be accessed in
trance. So apparently authentic and detailed past lives, even including
strong emotions and strange accents and so on, have sometimes been
proved to come from perfectly normal sources – not least historical
fiction, which is often overlooked by spiritual researchers.
Nevertheless, there remain some cases involving information so obscure that only a paranormal explanation seems appropriate.
One of the finest involves a young woman dubbed Jane Evans, who was
one of many subjects regressed by the Welsh hypnotherapist Arnall
Bloxham. She first visited him in the late 60s and proved a responsive
subject who, over the course of a number of sessions, regressed into six
separate lives from Roman times onwards. She would go on to be the star
of a 1976 documentary made by the initially sceptical BBC producer
Jeffrey Iverson, entitled ‘The Bloxham Tapes’. Her most celebrated past
life was that of a persecuted Jewess in 12th century York,
but on close investigation this case is somewhat inconclusive. In fact
her strongest life in terms of obscure evidence involved Alison, a young
servant to the 15th century French financier and merchant, Jacques Coeur.
Some of the historical information Jane came up with in trance was
relatively obscure, and could only be verified by professional French
historians. For example, she said that Charles VII’s nickname was “heron
legs”; that his son Louis had poisoned his wife; that his mistress
Agnes Sorel had two pet dogs clothed in “coats of white fur with
jewelled collars”; and that Coeur was Jewish and his father was a
goldsmith. Perhaps more impressive was her knowledge that Coeur was an
avid collector of art, with paintings by Jean “Fouquet,” the court
painter to the king and one of Coeur’s debtors; by Jan “van Eyck,” the
court painter to the nearby Duke of Burgundy; by “Giotto,” an Italian
master from the previous century; and by the little-known “John of
Bruges” who, Iverson established only with great difficulty, was also
known as John Bondolf and was a Flemish court painter for the king’s
grandfather. More impressive again was her report that Coeur had a “body
servant” called Abdul, who was “dressed differently from the others” –
because it was only from obscure French court records of the time that
Iverson was able to confirm that he did indeed have an Egyptian body
slave.
Impressive enough, yet the clincher in this case is Jane’s recall of a
“beautiful golden apple with jewels in it” that she said had been given
to Coeur by the Sultan of Turkey. All of Iverson’s initial attempts to
verify the existence of such a piece drew a blank until his last night
in Coeur’s home town of Bourges, when he returned to his hotel to find a
message from a local historian. The latter reported that he had been
searching through contemporary archives when he found “an obscure list
of items confiscated by the Treasury from Jacques Coeur”; and in that
list was a “grenade” of gold – a pomegranate. Of course this is so like
an apple in shape and size that the English word contains the French
root pomme. It is also worth noting that one sceptic’s supposed
attempt to trace all these details to a historical novel is a complete
travesty, because the novel has an entirely different plot and contains
virtually none of these obscure details.
Again there are other, similar cases of both childhood recall and
regression that involve equally obscure yet verifiable information about
past lives. But could all these merely result from subjects tapping
into some sort of universal memory, or even from possession by the
deceased? Probably the strongest evidence that these are indeed memories
from the subjects’ own, individual, past lives comes from subjects also
being regressed into the time between lives, or ‘interlife’.
This stems from the research of a number of pioneering psychologists
and psychiatrists around the world, who each stumbled on the interlife
independently in the 70s and 80s. Their subjects’ reports are extremely
consistent, so that the experience can be broken into five main
elements: transition and healing, past-life review, soul group
interaction, next-life planning and returning. This evidence from what
now constitute thousands of subjects from diverse backgrounds suggests
strongly that there is a continuity of individual soul identity across
many lives.
The Holographic Soul
So how do we properly bring this evidence of individual soul survival
and reincarnation together with the idea of a universal consciousness
that underlies everything? Although the most profound spiritual sources
have hinted at the truth throughout the ages, the most simple yet
elegant solution has only become available to us in recent decades with
the discovery of the hologram. And it involves applying this principle
not to the brain, nor to memory, nor even to the universe as a whole,
but instead to soul consciousness itself:
Soul consciousness is holographic. We are both individual aspects
of the Source, and full holographic representations of it, all at the
same time. However this does not mean that soul individuality is in
itself an illusion. The principle of the hologram is that the part
contains the whole, and yet is clearly distinguishable from it.
The other message that comes through loud and clear from interlife
research, as well as from the most profound spiritual sources, is that
free will and personal responsibility reign supreme. This is what allows
us to learn from our mistakes, and to grow as souls. So any next-life
previews seen between lives merely represent major probabilities and
lesser possibilities, and there is no karmic punishment or predestiny.
Indeed the idea of karma itself has arguably outlived its usefulness,
because it is clear that the dynamics of how our attitudes, intentions
and experiences feed into the futures we create for ourselves, both
across and within lives, are far too complex to be reduced to simplistic
‘laws’.
In conclusion it appears that there are no ‘flaws in the grand plan’.
The physical world is not an abomination created by fallen angels. Nor
is the reincarnation cycle something to be escaped from at all costs,
either by suddenly gaining the enlightenment to see through the
illusion, or by learning to give up all ‘attachment’ so as to generate
no more karma. Although we would do well to aim for a degree of
emotional detachment and balance, and regular meditation is absolutely
invaluable in trying to bring our ‘higher selves’ to the fore, life is
to be lived and experienced!
So where does it all end? Interlife evidence, again backed by the
most profound spiritual sources, suggests that we continue to
reincarnate until we have exhausted all the possibilities for growth in
the physical plane. And this is only the ‘end of the beginning’ of the
soul’s journey, because there are many other opportunities for new
experiences in other realms. As for the idea of ‘reuniting with the
Source’, the concept of the Holographic Soul suggests that we never
split off from It in the first place, and that It is always within us
and us within It.
What about the million dollar question from which ‘illusionists’ tend
to shy away? What is the whole point of the universe in the first
place, and how do we humans fit into the ‘big picture’?
The Source’s primary aim, in diversifying into all the billions
of holographic soul aspects of itself that operate in the various realms
throughout the universe, is to experience all that is and can be. So as
individualised aspects of the Source who have chosen to reincarnate on
this planet, we are merely fulfilling a small part of that objective by
gaining a balance of all the experiences available via this route.
James Leininger’s amazing story is documented in the book Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot.
–
IAN LAWTON is a spiritual philosopher, the architect of
‘Rational Spirituality’ and one of the world’s leading authorities on
the interlife. Further case studies are available in the simple,
pocket-size Little Book of the Soul (2007), while the full research for this article can be found in The Big Book of the Soul (2008). For further information and to order The Big Book of the Soul, see www.ianlawton.com.
© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com.
Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial
purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.
© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com.
Permission to re-send, post and place on web sites for non-commercial
purposes, and if shown only in its entirety with no changes or
additions. This notice must accompany all re-posting.
Thanks to: http://www.thehealersjournal.com
Posted by admin on November 16, 2012
By IAN LAWTON | New Dawn
–
Modern studies repeatedly suggest that a significant proportion of
people in the Western world now believe in reincarnation. Although this
phenomenon can be traced back to various esoteric movements that
flourished from the second half of the 19th century, it gained
significant ground with the explosion of popular interest in Eastern
spiritual approaches in the 60s. And it was reinforced by a
proliferation of therapists offering to regress people into their past
lives.
Yet now the tide seems to be turning again. For some years the
emphasis has been moving more towards the idea that we are all part of
the One, the All, the Source, the Absolute, the Ultimate, the Great
Spirit or whatever we choose to call the ‘universal consciousness’. Of
course this is not a new idea. But what is changing is that especially
more intellectually minded spiritual seekers are tending towards the
view that anything outside of the ‘One’ is mere ‘illusion’.
In fact this word illusion is used a great deal in spiritual
circles these days, although actually in quite different contexts, and
it is perhaps worth considering what these are. Of course readers would
all agree that the physical world itself is to some extent an illusion,
at least inasmuch as it is underpinned by the nonphysical planes and
states of being that science is increasingly pointing towards. But what
about the idea that we only reincarnate for as long as we fail to see
through the ‘illusion’, and that as soon as we gain ‘enlightenment’ we
can ‘break the bonds of karma’ and ‘reunite with the Source’? More
radical still, what about the idea that any notion of individuality is
completely illusory on all levels, and that as soon as we die there is
no sense of continuation of any sort of individual soul consciousness?
Whether or not they make it explicitly clear, these latter two are
the ‘illusion models’ supported by a significant proportion of our
best-known spiritual commentators of modern times – be they proponents
of, for example, the ‘power of now’, or of ‘cosmic ordering’, or of
‘quantum mysticism’. Yet to see the world in this way is entirely at
odds with what we might call the ‘experience model’, which holds that we
lead many lives in order to see all sides of every emotional coin, and
to learn to deal with the manifest challenges that life on this planet
provides. In other words, a model in which the emphasis is on an
individual soul growing by experience over many lifetimes.
If we are to adopt a rational approach then, rather than relying on
‘revealed wisdom’ ancient or modern, it is surely sensible to consider
which of these models is best supported by logical analysis and the
available evidence.
We can start with the premise that there must exist some sort of
ultimate force or energy that underlies the entire universe, both seen
and unseen, which is the Origin or Source of everything in it. However
ineffable it may be, this principle of a universal consciousness is
almost a logical necessity, and it is certainly supported by scientific
research at both the quantum and the macrocosmic level. The idea that
‘we are all one’ is also a common element of transcendental experiences,
whether spontaneous, meditative or induced by hallucinogens. So our
next step must be to investigate whether, at the same time, there is any
real evidence to support the idea of an individual consciousness that exists or survives independent of the physical body.
The most relevant area of research here is near-death experiences. In
particular we are interested in cases that involve subjects returning
with factual information that is subsequently verified, and yet so
obscure that they could not reasonably have acquired it in any ‘normal’
way.
Near-Death Experience & Reincarnation Cases
One of the most fascinating cases on record took place in the early
70s, and involves a gifted young Russian scientist called George
Rodonaia. His work on chemical brain transmitters was sufficiently
valued by the KGB that they were not prepared to lose his expertise to
the US by letting him take up an invite to further his research at Yale.
On the day of his departure, as he stood on the pavement in Tbilisi
waiting for a taxi to the airport, he was deliberately mown down by a
car and pronounced dead at the scene. His body lay in a morgue for three
days, but as the autopsy began his eyelids flickered and he was rushed
to surgery.
As a man of science George had never had any time for religion. So
those close to him were bewildered when, three days into his lengthy
recovery, he began to describe what had happened while he was ‘dead’. In
fact his was a relatively non-typical and highly transcendental
experience, but for our current purposes he also claimed he had also
been able to travel anywhere he liked while ‘out of body’. In particular
he was drawn to a newborn baby in the hospital adjoining the morgue
because she would not stop crying, and doctors had been unable to
diagnose the problem. Much to his surprise he found that he was able to
communicate with her telepathically, and also to scan her body and
establish that her hip had been broken, probably at birth. Incredibly,
as soon as George was well enough to pass on this information, the
doctors x-rayed the baby and found that she did indeed have a fractured
hip.
There are other, similar cases of near-death experiences involving
obscure, factual information that combine to strongly suggest that our
individual awareness or consciousness does indeed continue to exist even
when the physical brain is absolutely non-functional. So far so good.
But is there any evidence to support the further idea that individual
souls have many lives?
Here we encounter two important areas of research, the first
involving children who have spontaneous memories of past lives. Although
historically most of these cases have come from Asia, one of the finest
involves a young American boy called James Leininger of Lafayette,
Louisiana. Born in 1998, his fascination with toy planes from the
earliest age took a more sinister turn as he approached his second
birthday, when vivid nightmares began. He would thrash around in his
sleep, kicking out with his legs up in the air and moaning: “Airplane
crash, on fire, little man can’t get out.” His mother Andrea had no
particular religious convictions but, when her mother suggested these
might be memories of a past life, she began to encourage little James to
talk about them. And he began to reveal startling details, such as that
the pilot of the plane was also called James; that he had been shot
down by the Japanese; that he had flown Corsairs; and that one of his
fellow pilots went by the name of Jack Larsen. He also mysteriously
mentioned the single word Natoma.
His father Bruce remained dubious about any sort of spiritual
explanation, but he knew that neither he nor any other member of their
family had any particular interest in aircraft or the war. So he began
to research, and quickly established that an aircraft carrier called the
USS Natoma Bay had been stationed in the Pacific during World
War II and had taken part in the notorious battle for the Japanese
island of Iwo Jima early in 1945. He ordered a book about this, and was
flicking through it one day when James pointed to the island of Chichi
Jima on a map and exclaimed, “Daddy, that is where my plane was shot
down.” He then made contact with the ‘Natoma Bay Association’, who
confirmed that Jack Larsen had been one of the pilots, and also that
only one pilot had been lost at Chichi Jima: 21-year-old Lt James M. Huston Jr.
Bruce also knew that Huston had flown Wildcats, not Corsairs, on the Natoma Bay.
But when he made contact with Huston’s elderly sister she kindly sent
him some photos – including one of her brother standing proudly next to a
Corsair. Military records then showed he had originally been part of an
elite special squadron who test-flew these planes. But the real
clincher involves three ‘GI Joe’ dolls. When Bruce asked his son why he
called them Leon, Walter and Billie he replied, “Because they greeted me
when I went to heaven.” Again military records confirmed that three of
Huston’s fellow Natoma Bay pilots were Lt Leon S. Conner, Ensign Walter J. Devlin and Ensign Billie R. Peeler – and that all three had diedbefore Huston on other engagements. None of this detailed information is available on the internet pages about the Natoma Bay even now, let alone in popular books and so on.
Past Lives & Hypnotic Regression
The second area of past-life research is hypnotic regression. With
this we must first appreciate that the human brain appears to store a
complete record of everything we have ever been exposed to, no matter
how briefly or how long ago, and that although most of these memories
remain inaccessible to our normal consciousness they can be accessed in
trance. So apparently authentic and detailed past lives, even including
strong emotions and strange accents and so on, have sometimes been
proved to come from perfectly normal sources – not least historical
fiction, which is often overlooked by spiritual researchers.
Nevertheless, there remain some cases involving information so obscure that only a paranormal explanation seems appropriate.
One of the finest involves a young woman dubbed Jane Evans, who was
one of many subjects regressed by the Welsh hypnotherapist Arnall
Bloxham. She first visited him in the late 60s and proved a responsive
subject who, over the course of a number of sessions, regressed into six
separate lives from Roman times onwards. She would go on to be the star
of a 1976 documentary made by the initially sceptical BBC producer
Jeffrey Iverson, entitled ‘The Bloxham Tapes’. Her most celebrated past
life was that of a persecuted Jewess in 12th century York,
but on close investigation this case is somewhat inconclusive. In fact
her strongest life in terms of obscure evidence involved Alison, a young
servant to the 15th century French financier and merchant, Jacques Coeur.
Some of the historical information Jane came up with in trance was
relatively obscure, and could only be verified by professional French
historians. For example, she said that Charles VII’s nickname was “heron
legs”; that his son Louis had poisoned his wife; that his mistress
Agnes Sorel had two pet dogs clothed in “coats of white fur with
jewelled collars”; and that Coeur was Jewish and his father was a
goldsmith. Perhaps more impressive was her knowledge that Coeur was an
avid collector of art, with paintings by Jean “Fouquet,” the court
painter to the king and one of Coeur’s debtors; by Jan “van Eyck,” the
court painter to the nearby Duke of Burgundy; by “Giotto,” an Italian
master from the previous century; and by the little-known “John of
Bruges” who, Iverson established only with great difficulty, was also
known as John Bondolf and was a Flemish court painter for the king’s
grandfather. More impressive again was her report that Coeur had a “body
servant” called Abdul, who was “dressed differently from the others” –
because it was only from obscure French court records of the time that
Iverson was able to confirm that he did indeed have an Egyptian body
slave.
Impressive enough, yet the clincher in this case is Jane’s recall of a
“beautiful golden apple with jewels in it” that she said had been given
to Coeur by the Sultan of Turkey. All of Iverson’s initial attempts to
verify the existence of such a piece drew a blank until his last night
in Coeur’s home town of Bourges, when he returned to his hotel to find a
message from a local historian. The latter reported that he had been
searching through contemporary archives when he found “an obscure list
of items confiscated by the Treasury from Jacques Coeur”; and in that
list was a “grenade” of gold – a pomegranate. Of course this is so like
an apple in shape and size that the English word contains the French
root pomme. It is also worth noting that one sceptic’s supposed
attempt to trace all these details to a historical novel is a complete
travesty, because the novel has an entirely different plot and contains
virtually none of these obscure details.
Again there are other, similar cases of both childhood recall and
regression that involve equally obscure yet verifiable information about
past lives. But could all these merely result from subjects tapping
into some sort of universal memory, or even from possession by the
deceased? Probably the strongest evidence that these are indeed memories
from the subjects’ own, individual, past lives comes from subjects also
being regressed into the time between lives, or ‘interlife’.
This stems from the research of a number of pioneering psychologists
and psychiatrists around the world, who each stumbled on the interlife
independently in the 70s and 80s. Their subjects’ reports are extremely
consistent, so that the experience can be broken into five main
elements: transition and healing, past-life review, soul group
interaction, next-life planning and returning. This evidence from what
now constitute thousands of subjects from diverse backgrounds suggests
strongly that there is a continuity of individual soul identity across
many lives.
The Holographic Soul
So how do we properly bring this evidence of individual soul survival
and reincarnation together with the idea of a universal consciousness
that underlies everything? Although the most profound spiritual sources
have hinted at the truth throughout the ages, the most simple yet
elegant solution has only become available to us in recent decades with
the discovery of the hologram. And it involves applying this principle
not to the brain, nor to memory, nor even to the universe as a whole,
but instead to soul consciousness itself:
Soul consciousness is holographic. We are both individual aspects
of the Source, and full holographic representations of it, all at the
same time. However this does not mean that soul individuality is in
itself an illusion. The principle of the hologram is that the part
contains the whole, and yet is clearly distinguishable from it.
The other message that comes through loud and clear from interlife
research, as well as from the most profound spiritual sources, is that
free will and personal responsibility reign supreme. This is what allows
us to learn from our mistakes, and to grow as souls. So any next-life
previews seen between lives merely represent major probabilities and
lesser possibilities, and there is no karmic punishment or predestiny.
Indeed the idea of karma itself has arguably outlived its usefulness,
because it is clear that the dynamics of how our attitudes, intentions
and experiences feed into the futures we create for ourselves, both
across and within lives, are far too complex to be reduced to simplistic
‘laws’.
In conclusion it appears that there are no ‘flaws in the grand plan’.
The physical world is not an abomination created by fallen angels. Nor
is the reincarnation cycle something to be escaped from at all costs,
either by suddenly gaining the enlightenment to see through the
illusion, or by learning to give up all ‘attachment’ so as to generate
no more karma. Although we would do well to aim for a degree of
emotional detachment and balance, and regular meditation is absolutely
invaluable in trying to bring our ‘higher selves’ to the fore, life is
to be lived and experienced!
So where does it all end? Interlife evidence, again backed by the
most profound spiritual sources, suggests that we continue to
reincarnate until we have exhausted all the possibilities for growth in
the physical plane. And this is only the ‘end of the beginning’ of the
soul’s journey, because there are many other opportunities for new
experiences in other realms. As for the idea of ‘reuniting with the
Source’, the concept of the Holographic Soul suggests that we never
split off from It in the first place, and that It is always within us
and us within It.
What about the million dollar question from which ‘illusionists’ tend
to shy away? What is the whole point of the universe in the first
place, and how do we humans fit into the ‘big picture’?
The Source’s primary aim, in diversifying into all the billions
of holographic soul aspects of itself that operate in the various realms
throughout the universe, is to experience all that is and can be. So as
individualised aspects of the Source who have chosen to reincarnate on
this planet, we are merely fulfilling a small part of that objective by
gaining a balance of all the experiences available via this route.
James Leininger’s amazing story is documented in the book Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot.
–
IAN LAWTON is a spiritual philosopher, the architect of
‘Rational Spirituality’ and one of the world’s leading authorities on
the interlife. Further case studies are available in the simple,
pocket-size Little Book of the Soul (2007), while the full research for this article can be found in The Big Book of the Soul (2008). For further information and to order The Big Book of the Soul, see www.ianlawton.com.
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