Reincarnation And Dreams

Tony Crisp

When people have accepted the idea that they may have had previous lives, they frequently then wish to remember what was experienced in the past, who they were, and what lessons were learned or failed. And of course one of the biggest arguments against past existence is the very obvious lack of memory. If I had lived before, they say, then I would surely remember it.

Before we can properly understand how to work with dreams to recover our lost selves, we must see just why we do not, in general, remember our past. Imagine a tulip bulb in the earth, unseen, unexpressed. In the spring it produces leaves, a stem, and a flower. If the flower were a conscious being, it might look at what was visible of itself. From such a study it might say, I have a physical body which has never existed before. I am a unique individual, I am born, I live, I will fade again and perish.

The self and the Overself

Indeed the tulip flower and leaves perish, but the bulb draws back into itself their essence as they fade. Next spring up comes another tulip. Once more it may look at itself as if it were a conscious being. But suppose this one were more persevering than the first, and went beyond the obvious: supposing it went beyond its personal awareness into consciousness of the bulb which gave rise to it. Then it might say, I am certainly a unique being who has never previously existed. Yet, at the same time, I am created from the essence of other tulips existing in the past, and the part of my being which lies beneath normal awareness exists beyond my personal death, and holds in it the experience of many other tulips.

This is a helpful but not perfect analogy. Our present personality has never existed before. Searching within its own experience and memories it could never find memory of our past lives, for it has had none-but yet it has been created out of the essence of other past personalities. Tendencies, unaccountable fears or talents, give the clue to these past selves. But behind the personal consciousness lies what Jung calls the Self, or Overself, which gives rise to being after being, in search of self-realisation, and only when we become aware of this aspect of self do we become aware of our link, in the overself, of all these past selves. Our personal consciousness does not reincarnate; it is the overself that unfolds into physical life in order to experience itself in particular ways.

If it is our eternal overself that holds the awareness of many lives, and if we lack consciousness of our eternal nature, then it is obvious we will also lack memory of past existences linked with our present life. And because we are woven of the wisdom and folly, hates and loves, of these past selves, we carry with us yet another possibility of forgetfulness. Many of us, even in this life, have no memory of our own childhood and infancy - I mean detailed memory. But thousands of people undergoing psychotherapy where they meet the traumas of their past, recover a detailed experience of their infancy, or even their birth and life in the womb. Painful past experiences causes us to shut out memory. Such barriers are also built between the small self we know as our present identity, and the enormity of the self we are in our eternal aspect.

Thousands of people at present only know tiny parts of their complete nature because of this. If you cannot remember your childhood in its unfolding; if you cannot remember your life in the womb; if you cannot remember your life in eternity, then you really only know a tine part of yourself. No wonder you cannot remember the much greater and more challenging memories of past lives linked with the present. Such remembering needs courage. It needs the gradual melting away of the subtle and crucial barriers built between consciousness, between our present identity, and our fuller memory of self.

These three things (a) different centre of consciousness between overself and ego (b) wilful turning away, and (c) barriers of bitterness, grudges, pain and unforgiveness, effectively shut us off from knowing who we are in our entirety.

But there is one other excellent reason our present ego is exploring experiences it might never gain if it knew all. One of the reasons the Overself takes up physical life is to develop waking awareness in a self-conscious state. To be self conscious we must of necessity exist within very small boundaries of awareness. If we were aware of ALL-there would be no self - or self would be very difficult to hold onto. Certainly we would not be able to experience the world in the way we do. Once this ego, this self, has been developed and is strong enough, then gradually the boundaries can be enlarged, but not too quickly, for the ego is a very vulnerable thing. In an evolutionary sense the self aware identity is a tiny infant newly arisen on the world scene. In fact enormous numbers of people breakdown into mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, medical sedation or depression because of this vulnerability. And we must remember it is difficult enough to cope with the problems of this life. Memory of others would bring back the urges, fears, pains, and talents of the past.

First of all heal the present

Therefore, if we are approaching the study of dreams for the purpose of discovering our relationship with our overself and through this our experiences, karma, and talents from the past, we must expect to meet certain activities in our dream life.

Firstly, it does not often happen that dreams show us our past lives until we have fairly well integrated the aspects of our present personality. When we first come to dream study, we usually have to work for some years on using the dreams to integrate our present psychological state. If one is a woman, one has to learn properly to express to a fair degree ones own femininity and also to be capable of meeting and expressing the masculine side of self. Conversely, the man has to meet and integrate his feminine nature. The problems of our infantile relationships with our parents; our sexual nature; our ambitions; all have to be faced in some degree before any real entry into past life contact is made. Some memories may arise before this if they are important to what is being met in the present, but to begin to actually integrate the past cannot take place until we have integrated the beginning of this present life.

The simple fact is, if we have not the mental, spiritual, or moral strength and ability to integrate our present life we obviously also lack the equipment to face and integrate the past ones, and this is why integration of the present stands like a barrier in the way of exploring the past. But another barrier also stands before us: like the barrier of integration, it exists in the invisible realms of our soul, intangible but very real.

It lies in our relationship with the overself. As memories of the past are only in our eternal nature, to reach them we must relate to, enter into, or become aware of, our overself. Therefore, when we have begun to develop qualities that enable us to deal with psychological problems, our dreams begin to instruct us more and more how we may then nurture attitudes in our soul which will extend and deepen our relationship with the overself.

Such dreams may instruct us in certain types of meditation or the development of particular attitudes of mind or behaviour, and we should apply them to the best of our ability.

Only then does a particular type of dream begin to occur, marking the start of a process which, if persevered in, will frequently lead to the unconscious life actually breaking through into waking consciousness, bringing direct experience, of past lives.

A man of twenty-one who was interested in dreams but had not particularly worked with them had the following dream.

I seemed to be a young man, not myself as I am, living in Germany in a past age. As this man I was a well-known writer or poet, yet I was of peasant stock and lived in the forest. My writings had become fashionable, however, and because of this notoriety I had been invited to a ball given by the local nobility. This was not because I was liked or admired by these people, but to enable them to say they had seen me. In fact, I was somewhat despised or looked down on because of my background even though I was well educated and capable of the necessary social graces. Because of this, at the ball, the younger men took every opportunity to discredit me. But I did not seem at all perturbed, dancing with the best of the ladies, young and old.

As the evening drew on, however, the young men became more aggressive. I was pushed or tripped in ways meant to look accidental. They wanted me to lose my temper so they would have an opportunity of attacking me. When I did not respond as they wanted me to they became openly aggressive and encircled me, pushing, insulting, and trying to start a fight. I knew if I did, they would beat me badly. Suddenly, when violence could no longer be avoided, 1 cried out a call. It was the call of the Zimmermen (the woodsmen) for I had expected the crisis. Immediately, my friends of the forest, who had been waiting at the windows and doors, leaped into the room with a shout, and a battle royal began. Nobody was really hurt, but both sides relieved their dislike for each other, and afterwards my comrades and I walked back through the dark woods to our homes . We sang the song of the Zimmermen as we marched, and this song I remembered even when I woke.

This dream may seem to contradict much of what has been said, for the person had not given time to self study, but it is typical of the occasional dreams people do get before a substantial contact with the past has been made. The dreamer had recently stayed in Germany for some months and had begun to write poetry there. During the years that followed he in fact wrote much poetry. No further dreams of that nature followed.

The Guardian of the threshold

In this type of dream a fairly straight memory is presented, and is not repeated. It is a spontaneous event, a gift as it were, from the Self, and it cannot be repeated because the personality has not forged they key which opens the door to its source. The dreams which arise when we develop into higher awareness are usually of a different nature and nearly always bring, not only memory, but also the lessons to be learnt from the memory. They come loaded with comment from the Overself on how these memories relate to present situations we face.

To understand this process let us look at a series of dreams experienced by a man over a period of about three years. He had been studying his dreams seriously for a long time, and had even been shown in dreams a particular type of meditation, which he had thereafter practised daily for at least two years.

Dream 1. I was walking by a riverbank near a cemetery. As I walked and drew near to the cemetery, I saw submerged in the river a record player-in fact my record player. I walked into the river and pulled it out.

Prior to this he had experienced several dreams showing the river being blocked, or silted up, or made sluggish with reeds and weeds, and in this dream he was walking in the direction the river flowed, it being clear and free flowing. The river is the flow of his life, showing the energies of growth and creativity, the energies underlying emotions, thinking and sexuality. The dream shows him is consciously following their flow. The cemetery is the many past lives buried with him. The record player is the faculty of memory covered up by the emotions or flow of his inner life, but now he is bringing this faculty to the surface. He felt this dream had something to do with past lives, but was far from being sure.

Dream 2. About two weeks later he had the following dream: A friend and I entered an old empty house which had not been lived in for a long time, and we explored its rooms. In an upstairs room we came upon what looked at first like a baby grand-piano. when I opened the lid, however, it was seen to be a record player with a very large turntable, and I noticed behind the piano, stacked against the wall, a large number of records. They were as huge as the turntable, at least two feet across. I put one on; it was Cheiro (the palmist and prophet) speaking about prophecy. My friend was fascinated with the record player, and said he was going to renovate it, clean it up and use it.

Old Dwelling places - the House of the Ancestors

Depending upon the context of a dream, an old house is frequently used to represent an old way of life or the past that links with the present. The friend was one who always talked about sex, and had a very active sex life outside of marriage. He therefore represented the mans sexual problems, which had produced a great deal of unhappiness in his marriage. The dream is saying the faculty of remembering past lives was a part or feature of a past life, but needs cleaning up or renovating.

It suggests that the cleaning up of the dreamer's sexual life would bring this faculty into present use again. The fact the piano was also a record player shows that in self expression, in self expression of inner feelings, the past becomes known. The dreamer, on pondering the magnificent size of the records, felt they were cosmic records. These are indeed the patterns of particular impressions or imprints left by past experiences in the Overself. That the first record mentioned prophecy, and was spoken by a prophet, suggests this will be one of the first of the gifts of the Spirit brought to consciousness; it is saying that this gift of prophecy was also an ability of a past life. The dreamer, already in his thirties with no sign of such an ability, could not understand this part of his dream. But in fact it did begin to appear in his life some time later.

Dream 3. This occurred quite some time after dream 2, and explained the implications of spiritual gifts and sexuality in more detail. I was in a headmasters study - no one I know . We were conversing when he suddenly held before my gaze a small head of a Buddha statue which looked as if it should fit onto something else. Immediately I recognised it as my own, and foolishly began to feel through my trouser pockets, perhaps to see if there was a hole there. But up until the moment of seeing it I had not even had an inkling I owned such a thing, much less lost it. I held my hand out for the head, to take it back into my possession, but with a smile the headmaster shook his head. I could not have it back yet, and to explain why he beckoned me to follow and led me to another room. We stood in the doorway and looked in. A large ornate bed was in the room with, I believe, a mirror above it. Suddenly it was like looking into the past. Scene after scene of sexual abandon, performed without love, commitment or any other feeling except the desire for pleasure, arose before me. The friend, who was the person going to clean up the record player, was the man in the scenes. I knew this was why I could not have the head of the Buddha, and also, more important, why I had lost it.

This is a fairly straightforward comment from the Self or the master of consciousness, the headmaster, on the errors the dreamer had committed. Here is the tremendous difference between a simple memory dream and a dream of instruction occurring due to efforts to discover who we are, and align our identity with the Self. The Buddha head is the consciousness of the Overself, and the hole in the trousers the wrong expression of sexuality by which it was lost.

The dreamer didnt know he had it to lose, because he in fact never did have it in this lifetime. The bedroom scene is an amplification of just how it was lost, by what aspect of ones nature, and when, i.e. in the past. Although up to this time the dreamer still had tremendous urges to arrange liaisons with other women, the dream helped him find strength to hold his sexuality within his marriage, and to seek to express it with love.

Dream 4. He etched these lessons as deeply into his consciousness as he could by meditating on them frequently, and in this way his life gradually altered but not without a lot of difficulty and inner struggle. Nevertheless, he still felt much imprisoned by his wife, and could not find spontaneous love for her. The following dream then occurred.

This is a very long dream, so I will cut it as short as I can. In a kitchen of a huge house a rat was eating the food, because a snake which should have guarded it was too docile. In turning out a cupboard I found a key to a room I had not known existed; on the key were pictures depicting very sentimental love. Day dawned and I took the key to open the door. A young man I had been having a homosexual relationship with came with me. In the room my wife was locked up as a prisoner; there had been some rumour of her being unfaithful, and my sentimental immaturity caused me to feel terribly wronged. In fact she had never had any such affair, nor wanted to, and this was an excuse for me to express homosexual tendencies. I had spread two conflicting rumours to confuse people.

Maybe we don't want to see who we were?

One was that my wife was mad and had to be locked up, the other that she had suddenly become religious and had retired from the world. I treated her like an anima. She had in fact nearly gone mad, but had developed a real religious inner life of forgiveness and surrender which had saved her from insanity and had also given her an inner beauty which was apparent, and which angered me still more. Now I made her strip naked and washed her in front of my friend, doing so with much roughness. The friend begged her forgiveness for the part he had played in this, as he had never seen her before.

The dream not only shows a past relationship but also depicts the mans inner life and his relationship with his own femininity and emotions. He realised he had to accept the feelings of being a prisoner, just as his wife in the past had done. If he allowed them full consciousness in his life, and yet did not seek to escape, they would burn out and he would have dealt with that part of his karma. He managed to do this, although sorely tried, and it worked. Not only did the feeling of being trapped gradually fade, but he began to find spontaneous love for his wife. Of course, this was not a quick process.

There then followed a number of dreams, well spaced, about the integration of his feminine self, i.e. his marriage to her. In one he dreamt he had intercourse with an Indian girl on a beach and afterwards he wanted to marry her. But although nothing seemed to stand in the way of illicit relationships with her, to legally marry her presented enormous difficulties and he had to prove himself worthy. In fact, he had taken LSD twice prior to this, and longed to further investigate the inner world it exposed. He knew the Indian girl was this inner life, and his illicit, easy intercourse, the LSD. But he wanted to be personally capable of experiencing the inner world, not have to depend on a chemical, and the dream showed him the difficulties he would have to meet. Nevertheless he decided to do this rather than use an artificial method.

In a later dream, he was going with a dark, slightly oriental girl, to the Quaker Meeting House in Euston Road. Some big event was taking place. As they reached the entrance, however, they were asked for tickets. The girl had a ticket, so only she was admitted; he was ushered through another door into the Euston Road, where a battle was raging. He lay down on the ground feigning death.

The dream shows how he still did not have the 'ticket' the capability to enter the innermost part of himself, where the big event will be experienced. It again implies marriage or unity with his feminine nature. It also says, to do this, he must first face his conflicts, which he is avoiding by not wishing to become involved in them.

Through determining to face his inner conflicts, and allow himself to experience them, he gradually began to have dreams in which he was dressed as a soldier.

In his dreams this meant he was now inwardly willing to become involved in his inner battle or conflicts. He then had the following dreams.

Dream 5. I had dreamt I had joined the army, and was going to face the enemy. With many other troops I was on a boat. It was night time. Ahead, land loomed. On the left, flashes of gunfire showed, raining shells on a defenceless and innocent town on the right. Our task was to deal with these guns.

About a week or fortnight after this, I not only dreamt earthquakes occurring releasing prehistoric monsters from the depths of the earth, but also of battle. I was in the trenches. We were all keyed up. In the previous dream of war I had experienced a tremendous fellowship, or mystical union between myself and the other troops. Now I wondered how I was going to face open combat when it occurred. But there arose in me a feeling of certain commitment to face whatever came. Then it was upon us. Bullets were flying, the signal was given, and I was out of the trench running toward the enemy, all fear gone, only the total feeling of destiny, or complete involvement. Whatever happened, I would face it.

In the light of the other dreams, I think these speak for themselves. The gunfire on the left was the arising to consciousness of the effects of inner conflict and fears. The town on the right was his outer life, being devastated by inner explosive emotions. I will let the dreamer describe the result of these years of working on himself.

The Door Opens

"The very day of dreaming I was going into battle, I began to express an uneasy trembling. The years of inner search, coupled with as much or more outer search through books and organisations, had readied me for this. I had read of others having similar experiences, and in fact had been through the same thing with LSD. But never before had it occurred naturally. I lay down and let it happen. To my astonishment not only did I remember and actually relive a childhood scene, I went right into a past life event of great painfulness, and relived it, thus healing and integrating the emotions it had locked up.

After that time I could enter this inner experience anytime I opened myself to it. Events from my present life and childhood were slowly brought to consciousness and healed. Then, still slowly, a wider awareness gradually emerged showing me how this life was part of a continuum stretching from the far past. But quite apart from the past, I began to be able, over some years of entry into this inner world, to be capable of moving around in it, asking questions, being taught, and discovering who I was in eternity and not just in time. It had taken me, not just counting working on dreams and meditation, but also with my exploration of occultism and so on, twenty years of searching to find this. Nevertheless, it was worth it. But of course, this must not be thought of as an end. No, it is only a beginning, for like so many others who discover their own inner immensity, in this new world I am but a baby."

See: LifeStream; Karma and Reincarnation; Do You Believe in Reincarnation.

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