Saturday, May 28, 2016
F: 7:15 a.m. Okay, here I am – and it does feel different, I admit, after the cleaning-up process. I hope you’ve made good use of your time, given that “on the other side, there is no time.” J
R: The problem is one of definition, as so often. The questions implicitly deal with different things, thinking they are the same, and [with] the same thing, seen differently. That much was clear. The difficulty was in finding an easy way to connect the dots.
So, Uri says, is what you gain in one like carried over to another. And she cites her book that sees life as a soul’s progression through mastering various aspects of life represented by the chakras. And – most interestingly – she cites my granddaughter’s reports of her own – memories? We need a better word. Her own life-perceptions, call them, her own other-life-perceptions.
This is the way to clarify abstract thing, by the way—test them against concrete examples. That won’t guarantee clarity, but it usually clarifies what is illusion or misunderstanding and what is not.
I begin, but I warn you, this may go long, and may involve a good deal of floundering around, as well as tedious recital of previously known relationships.
F: I had a break. We can go another hour if need be, I think. If not, surely we can quit in the middle as usual.
R: If it goes too long, you need not type it up all at once.
Very well. Let’s consider the question in three parts, separately, and then see what light they shed upon one another.
Is the knowledge and wisdom we gain in one life carried over to another? To this question, as phrased, and if it were being considered in isolation, I would have to say no, because the premise is wrong. The soul who lived in one time / place is not the same as the soul that lives earlier or later in other time / places. There are resonances between them, but resonances are not additions or subtractions.
This answer, considered only by itself, would replicate the logic of those who say “there is no reincarnation,” and it would say, in effect, no one progresses but in one single lifetime. But this answer would be not only unsatisfying, it would be clearly contradicted by much evidence of equal weight, such as Katelyn’s testimony.
So let us look at Katelyn’s testimony. She told her mother, at age two, before she could have picked up these concepts (let alone the understanding behind the concepts), that she was at that moment in China in her last lifetime. That is, she said “my being” was in China. And then years later she reported that that life had died. What does this tell us – ignoring, for the moment, contradictions from other testimony, other contexts?
It seems to me it tells us three things:
- Katelyn was in intimate contact with another life in China.
- She was in intimate contact with the knowledge that this was her last life.
- She knew the course of that life and expressed it as a definite given, without alternative versions and timelines.
The first does not necessarily mean that it is more correct to view that life as one of hers (in a line of descent) than to view it as one of a family of lives of which she is a part. We’ll have to come back to this.
The second strongly implies that she knew or felt that the overall pattern of the life (one part of which was Katelyn) was sketched-out or perhaps firm or perhaps could be considered as happening at the same time. We’ll need to come back to this too.
The third hints that her specific timeline was tied to a specific timeline of the child in China, which hints that other versions are tied in similar but mutually exclusive ways. I see no need to expand upon this at the moment.
Now let us proceed to the third part, the scheme she proposed in the book. This scheme is logical and helpful and will be persuasive as long as one assumes an identity or continuity where, in fact, it does not exist.
F: I think I get that. It seems to assume that a given soul proceeds to re-incarnate as another seemingly different soul, which then incarnates in yet another place / time as another seemingly different soul, so that the external diversity actually masks an internal continuity.
R: Which is a rough summary of conventional view of reincarnation, yes. And how would we see it?
F: I’d guess that life A may feed into life B as one strand but not the whole thing, and the resulting life B may feed into life C – as a strand and, again, not the whole thing.
R: Logical, but not quite correct. It is more like, life A comprised certain elements from the larger being, and the larger being took some or all of the same elements to feed into life B and took some or all of those elements to feed into life C.
F: And they all interconnect!
R: All the time. Fluctuations in one affect all the others, because they aren’t really “other” at all.
F: So from the point of view of any of them, that one is in the process of growth and the others may seem completed.
R: Well, not quite. This is productive, so I think we should continue if we can. I suggest you have breakfast and rest – not a nap necessarily, but nothing involving reading – and return for a third session if you’re feeling up to it.
F: Well, I think I am. We’ll see, I guess. (7:50 a.m.)