Reader Dave Stephens posted a long reply to my “Tapping Into the Cosmic Internet” entry, and asked questions that were sufficiently interesting that I asked, and got, his permission to post them here as a separate post, since not everybody reads the comments people send.
I started to reply, then realized that I didn’t know what to say. Of course, the obvious answer was to let the guys speak for themselves, so that’s what I will do, with my initial comments inserted within brackets [like this], and theirs at the end.
July 13, 2011 at 9:24 pm
Enjoyed your appearance on Coast To Coast, good interview.
So, I got the new book and it did clarify things about “crystallizing” personalities better.
But, some things in this new work don’t click with what I’ve read for years and years, from OB explorers from Monroe, Seth books, Cayce, and any rational grounded works I could find from real life explorers. Not arguing with you but what TGU’s statement that the life we are living is IT, then we’re done here….hmmmmm.
[Bear in mind, anything we bring over from the other side has so many ways it could be wrong! I could mis-hear it; I could meld it with ideas I have had]
Why I have a problem with this is the results of that idea would be that Earth would pretty much just be a massive “misery mill,” turning out personalities that have never existed before with just a few short years to get it together. Reality is that pretty much all of us are going to die with regrets, unfulfilled desires etc. Then TGU says we can’t develop past what we’ve gained here in the fraction of a second we were alive and that we can only further develop by being a “strand” in someone else’s life, if we are “lucky.” So, after we die all we will have is this personality that maybe had a real bad time here and we’re stuck with those regrets for eternity. It begins to sound like a bad sci-fi plot, or a definition of hell ;-(
I agree that there has to be positive and negative in all reality, but this again means those of us who were born to be on the negative side of things, murderers etc. will depart this life only to live in eternal regrets and misery at the damage done by serving the negative pole of the universe. An eternity of suffering, how is this fair or make any sense at all, it would seem that the physical plane would just keep generating more and more suffering and regretful souls until all of reality would just deadlock in darkness.
I also read Whitley Strieber’s THE KEY about a paranormal visit he had from some strange man, who seems to suggest that’s exactly how things work, even so far as stating that Earth is a “fallen world” and that “God is angry with us, the fallen ones.” He also talked about crystallizing souls and recommended meditation to strength the energy body for that purpose.
[I haven’t read The Key, so can’t comment on it.]
Seth never painted a picture like TGU or Strieber’s visitor, saying that we all have many many lives that all exist at once and that we are currently “focused” in our present life. This gives us the opportunity to experience lives of light and lives of darkness, and experience everything physical life consists of. He said we come from soul groups that we are always in touch with and that we go to “school” between incarnations etc. If you read JOURNEY OF SOULS by Michael Newton, he was a hypnotist who accidentally tapped into people’s soul histories and actually had people’s guides channel through the person he was working with. He had no belief system about any of this before he stumbled into it, so his work is as untainted as it should be. Again his subjects tell of between lives going to school, choosing life scenarios to be born into, even practicing those lives in 3D simulations, choosing situations where talents could be developed, obstacles met etc. Its a fascinating read and confirms what I read in the Seth books. The picture he got from his many patients is of souls being birthed, gaining experience of dark and light, and GROWING towards other levels, not stuck with the shoddy remains of only living one physical life.
The kid who remembered being a fighter pilot was on TV last week, and he remembered “choosing his parents,” how could this happen if TGU were just putting together some traits and attaching them to a newborn physical body?
[This refers to James Leininger, a truly fascinating case.]
I realize that as humans we have limited ability to understand the big picture and personally I don’t feel I know it all or ever will and no one COULD, but I think TGU’s ideas don’t make sense on this subject, there is too much evidence, for me anyway, for a more broad and loving idea of us each as particles of All That Is, that grow and evolve to gather massive amounts of experience without LIMITS. I wonder if TGU presented that idea of “you got 40 minutes of Earth time to figure it all out, and live with your mistakes forever” to scare the hell out of us so we wake up more
The best things in the book were the idea “there are NO outside influences” and the exercises in the end of the book, I liked those a lot.
Anyway, I had to get this off my chest as it’s been bothering to do. Thanks,
Dave
[So. Guys?]
These and other dilemmas present themselves whether you believe in reincarnation or believe that there is no reincarnation. The problem stems from wrong definitions, as we said, and stems from your therefore identifying yourself with an illusion.
If you as individuals were indeed the units you often experience yourselves to be, then the primary dichotomy would be, reincarnation or none. And in either case, your fate would be inescapably bound up with the unit you experienced yourself to be. That is, if you have a life as John, what happens after death happens to John and that’s it, no matter what the result.
However, that isn’t the case. You experience yourself as John while living John’s lifetime, but as soon as the barrier between physical and non-physical is removed (that is to say, as soon as you drop the body, or “die”), you remember that the part of yourself that lived that life is only one part of a much greater whole. And it is the whole, not the individual life, that may continue to experience life in the physical. George Washington is dead and is not coming back to the physical – but the underlying being of which George Washington was a part may come back innumerable times, in innumerable forms, and the George Washington part of itself may or may not partake in the make-up of those other lifetimes.
George Washington exists in the non-physical. He may be experienced by those in the physical should you choose to do so, but that is not his reason for being. We don’t have tourist attractions here! But his mind, his person, created by a lifetime of disciplined choice, remains.
Now, if George Washington was used to create another person, that person might experience him vividly and interpret that connection as a “past life,” which indeed would not necessarily be incorrect as a way to see it. But of course that person would not be George Washington, because the physical heredity, and the total mixture of elements, and many other factors, would be different. Just as you in the body cannot step twice into the same river – neither can those outside of time-space use exactly the same materials twice. It would be as impossible as having two Tuesdays in a given week.
We hope this cleared up the confusion, but if not, or if other problems present themselves, of course you may return for another dip into the well. Be assured, like it or not, you will live forever – but the question that would repay careful thought and experience is, what do you mean, what should you mean, when you say “you”?
[Nothing is more flattering to an author than to have someone take his ideas seriously enough to argue with them! Again, Dave, thanks for taking the time.]
Response to Comment by Dave Stephens in reply to “Tapping into the Cosmic Internet”.
I too am a student of Seth, Edgar Cayce etc., and agree to some extent with Dave.
I believe in Original Goodness as opposed to the other thing! Whatever role we find ourselves in a life on Earth, shall I say the current focus into what we call this reality, there is an underlying purpose that has little to do with our physical appreciation of life in the here and now, i.e. the grow of that eternal bit of us that we can call Soul. There are several philosophies that encourage us to live life devoid of attachment and to attain a state of mind that allows us to witness and experience life in the same state of bliss whether in joy or pain. The practise of Mediation helps us to achieve this state and I truly believe that happiness is indeed a state of consciousness achievable through this practise. I’m not sure what TGU is but it sounds like the ultimate pessimistic view of life, afterlife and following life. Probably believing that Karma is only of the negative kind. Not true! And as far as choosing ones parents … Yes! Yes! Yes! However there is no way that we can appreciate any dream sequence or alternate reality with our waking consciousness or for that matter begin to understand the complexity of concurrent lives since we are so entrenched in the linear time frame. So don’t lets try. Eh? Like Angels, Guides, Guardians and the like you either believe or you don’t. I cannot prove their existence neither can I disprove it. But I am in no doubt about their channellings through us even though I cannot prove that it is them and not me alone. Similarly I do not believe in God, I am and I know. Love and Faith, David Tenneson.
> I’m not sure what TGU is but it sounds like the ultimate pessimistic view of life, afterlife and following life.
It is a waste of time to attempt to assess what you haven’t read. That isn’t TGU at all.
Whatever the guys upstairs say this is the time of discernement and as Seth would say we are what we believe.
And I repeat, it is futile to try to judge what you have not experienced first-hand. If you have not even read what they said, but only a report of what they said, you are judging an impression of an impression, and in so doing you are wasting your time. Read what they have to say before you try to judge it! And, it may be worth adding, the word judgment has two meanings, often confused. Judging in the sense of discerning is always good, always worthwhile (but requires that you have something to judge! You can’t just decide ahead of time!) but judgment in the sense of condemnation is a dead-end path, leading to isolation rather than understanding.
Frank, thank the guys upstairs for me 😉 I guess this all gets cluttered in language definitions. From what I understand, no we don’t come back here as Dave Stephens again, we come back and become a different personality for different purposes to gather more experience. In “Journey of Souls,” when one was going to come back to Earth, one might want to expand say, musical abilities, so a physical body is chosen and circumstances that would enhance those abilities etc. and nonphysical 3D simulations were set up to practice and try some things out before diving into physical 3D life. So in one light, yeah, Dave’s life was a single experience, but the larger “us” has many more experiences. I understand that. The book sounded like Dave dies and Dave is Dave forever and there’s no more growth, so I guess I misunderstood their explanation. I still have a hard time understanding what “I” am and how all this experience fits in with my perception of the vast amount of experience gained, do “I” have all those experiences, do I personally live all these lives and have access to all that experience, are these peronalities that lived, are they like self aware recordings that are part of me/we/us? What is “me?” A drop of water in an ocean, with invisible boundaries, I dunno, I guess we’ll only really know once we’re done with these bodies we’re in now. I’m doing the Monroe Gateway CD’s again, to see if I can open doors that have never really opened very wide for me, maybe that’ll help 😉
David, you need to read the book, and the previous one “Sphere and Hologram” to get the full picture of what’s going on here. My perceptions of the material are my own fuzzy views, you would probably get a completely different picture out of the material, both are a good reading experience, recommended…
Dave
It’s not my job or anyone’s job to try and uproot someone’s belief, whether or not I believe that belief is complete or incomplete. Heck, by definition, all our beliefs could be expanded when our organizing function is ready for that. We need to build on substantial foundations, on a belief worth falling back on if the new belief does not take root.
But here’s another take on what Frank may be saying (through TGU). We are composed of various aspects of a higher Self or Soul. As such, when Soul reincarnates another 3-D personality, by definition it does so with aspects of its entire Being, and does not limit the new personality to aspects from only one newly arrived 3-D person, someone like me when I die. (That would mean a reincarnation clone. What would be the point of that). What does that mean to us down here in 3-D theater? It means we have access to all the previous personalities who lived and died and had something to share with The larger being of our Self or Soul. It may depend on how relevant those personalities are to our present lives, because we may identify with our larger Soul through that with which we feel affinity. So that could give us connection and affinity to George Washington, Cleopatra, an Australian aborigine (if those personalities originated from our larger Soul)… Whoever we feel most aligned with — the greatest resonance we identify from within the makeup of our larger Soul — may be people we identify as past lives. These might be people who have something to teach us, and they may feel like lineage. And in a certain sense, they are lineage, though they are not JUST lineage. They, too, are parts of a larger Soul. And when we become part of our larger Soul (and I believe this to be potentially quite mind expanding), there may be 3-D personalities who have affinity with our crystallized experience and feel we are therefore part of their lineage. But we will be only part of their lineage, because Soul is vast. And while you may be able to reduce aspects of the Soul for purposes of instruction or integration, ultimately the Soul is an irreducible whole. Call It interconnected. Call It completely connected. I admit, it sometimes seems big enough that I would just as soon interact through a smaller aspect or symbol of the whole, something my little 3-D mind has a better chance of understanding, working with, and integrating.
Thats really well put, I like that. What I am personally hoping for is a scenario like in Journey of Souls book and what I gathered from Seth. The stuff I didn’t really get to do this time around or didn’t do to my satisfaction, I would be able to consciously come back here again and live those unexpressed elements that are in me now. I’m 61 and not much time here left. Or even do something totally different and crazy like be an Afghan warrior or a fighter pilot 😉 It would still be ME but with a totally different body, parents and environment. I want the experiencing “I” that is currently identified with “Dave” to be here again (or wherever) having new and amazing experiences, I want to BE there enjoying more….and when its over at death, have all those lives to recall and revisit and replay. Seth says each life exists simultaneously, but when we’re here we’re focused in this one. In Journey, I gather after you’ve lived a life you can replay it, immerse yourself in being that person again and change things to see how it would have affected outcomes. And even that life is always alive, your conscioussness is focused in only one at a time. Maybe we just aren’t capable of really understanding what that means being stuck down here in Earth suits 😉 Seth said we can also incarnate as several people in the same time frame, that is rather hard to grasp for me, but I believe it.
I read in many sources that its difficult to actually accomplish anything in non-physical reality and that by incarnating in a physical world with delayed time consequences, gains and experiences here are highly valued. In non-physical its seems we end up clustered with those of like mind; I imagine that can get rather boring after awhile, stale.
As for beliefs, well, the big reason I seek out books like Frank’s, Seth, Cayce etc. is because these are exceptional and proven sources of information and experience. I’ve tracked down almost every Monroe Explorer in books that I could because these people are actually DOING things, all the while questioning what they are perceiving, without belief systems tainting the information as much as that’s possible. At a very young age (eight years old) I rebelled against Christianity / sunday school ideas and all these current books about “heaven” are not for me 😉 So, I read as valid resources as I can because I want to stay out of dogma and belief systems that are out of date and crusty, looking for pure knowledge and truth. My current belief system is rather vague but composed of as real information as I can find and as current as I can find.
Its a real tradgedy that science is scared to death of getting involved in this kind of research, but I think that will eventually change, sure would be exciting to incarnate back here again to be part of that awakening!
It would be great if TGU could contact the bigger part of themselves that they seem to only vaguely sense and see what their own TGU has to say about all this stuff, and if they know what’s “above” their level as well…..
Dave
Perhaps this excerpt from The Cosmic Internet will help. Can’t quote the whole book, obviously, but perhaps this will serve as a teaser, to move people’s minds away from their accustomed way of thinking about these things.
Souls, Traits, and Reincarnation
[Another time, I talked to Joseph Smallwood (though I may not have his name right), who I think of as a “past life” that is part of me.]
Joseph, my friend, how do you spend your time? (Don’t think I don’t know this is a planted question, coming out of the blue “because” I just looked back at an entry here, but still I’d like to know.)
I assume that you know that in talking to Joseph you are talking to the completed soul – that is what it looks like to you, anyway. Let me tell you the difference life on earth makes, and you will gradually get the idea. You go to earth one thing and you come out something pretty different! That’s the whole point of it. You’re used to talking about bundles and threads and all that, and that is well and good from TGU’s side – that’s the big picture, the overview, you know. But that’s more like theory than the way it seems to us doing it.
I don’t remember ever not existing, any more than you do. Seems to me I’ve always been here, only I came out of a fog, sort of. I don’t mean that’s how I feel since coming over, I mean that’s how it felt when I was in a body. You know how it is, you’re in a body. Wherever you are, you’re in a chain of memories, and those memories extend backwards but after a while they sort of peter out and it’s all mist and fog.
First we find ourselves in a body, and it takes a while to learn to use the thing, pulling and hauling till we figure it out. That’s physically. Then when we go through puberty there’s another whole set of gears to learn, emotional ones this time, and at the end of it we ain’t kids any more, but men, or women. Well, I say “emotional” but you’d probably say chemical and such; don’t matter as long as we’re talking about the same thing.
Well, as you know very well, we go along day by day following our inclinations you might say, or trying to if the world will let us, and as we live we shift ground, mostly without much noticing, and the person at 30 ain’t at all the same as he was at 20 or will be at 40. I mean, he is – things continue – but he’s different, too. All that living, all that choosing, means he’s down various paths, and finally, long or short, the path is over and he’s over here.
Now – remember, I’m telling this the way we mostly experience it, not the way it could be seen from a wider perspective – for all extents and purposes each new person that gets born has been created new for the occasion. The psychic materials that went into him – all the threads that the guys talk about – they are like raw material, like the chemicals and all that made the baby’s body. As far as you yourself are concerned, every thing in you is raw material that went into making you. It’s what was used, but it wasn’t you.
You understand what I’m doing here? I’m trying to say that each lifetime is a creation more than it is a continuity. I’m saying Joe Smallwood may be the result of other lives on the spiritual side the way he is on the physical side, but in neither case are his ancestors him! Until Joe Smallwood was born, there wasn’t any Joe Smallwood, from the beginning of time, no matter how many people’s lives went into the making of him. But once he was born and lived, he’s going to live forever. There’s your “infinite stick with one end” that Voltaire made fun of, but it don’t matter what he thought, true’s true.
So, now. One way or another, old Joe Indian [Smallwood’s nickname among the whites] dies. That’s it for him in the physical. It ought to be obvious enough. Once in, once out. Joe, as a person, as a separate being, is finished with the physical! He can’t come back any more than 1842 can come back. Nor would we want to or need to!
While this conversation started with the Cosmic Internet, it’s worth noting that Frank’s book Chasing Smallwood is a fascinating read too. Joseph Smallwood (and Frank!) has a lot more to share than the insights in the brief note above. I recommend that book too.
Thanks for the plug, Matthew.