Posts Tagged ‘memories of pre-existence’

The Collective Unconscious

Some thinkers, like Jung and Sheldrake, see individual human consciousness like an island in a huge ocean in which there are countless other islands. Above the surface of the water – waking self-awareness – there is a sense of separate existence, with definite boundaries where the shore meets the sea. Beneath the surface however, one island is connected to all other islands. The land stretches away under the waves and rises here and there into other islands. So, it is thought, personal awareness, beneath our everyday consciousness, shades off into a connection with a collective unconscious we all share. Through this connection we may be able to arrive at insights into other people otherwise denied to us.

In recent years there has been a lot of research very strongly suggesting that the quantum level of the universe is such a universal memory and consciousness. See Physics – new physics and the mind

Jung describes the collective unconscious as the ‘inherited potentialities of human imagination. It is the all controlling deposit of ancestral experiences from untold millions of years, the echo of prehistoric world events to which each century adds an infinitesimal small amount of variation and differentiation. These primordial images are the most ancient, universal, and deep thoughts of mankind.’

However, such ideas have been stated long before Jung and modern psychology. Eastern philosophy has talked of the akasha, the fundamental substance that holds in it memory of all that has happened. In Western occultism levels of awareness have been defined for hundreds of years. At the end of the 19th century Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke wrote about Cosmic Consciousness that was described as having the same universality as the collective unconscious.

A lucid experience describes this very clearly:

Now it seemed as if my awareness went beyond the frontier. This was a very visual experience. I was seeing a vast desert and I knew this represented immense periods of time, perhaps what we call eternity. So it could be called the Desert of Eternity. Here and there in the desert were huge rock formations, a little bit like what one sees in Monument Valley in Arizona. But these rock formations were not plain or slightly coloured rock. Also they were immense. They had the appearance of massive mosaics – brightly coloured mosaics. But the mosaics did not form illustrations or patterns. However, some pieces of the mosaics were larger than others. And each piece might be in itself multicoloured and a sort of miniature pictograph.

As I looked at these massive formations I understood that they had been carved or created through events in the passage of time. Each mosaic, each part of the overall mosaic, had been formed by enormous creative acts, or by long-standing actions. So these latter were like ideograms or archetypes. So, for instance, mother creatures have cared for, fought for, died for their young. This pattern of behaviour has been so enormously potent and perhaps we can use the word successful, that it has created, shaped aspects of eternity. It has left its pattern, its artwork, on time itself. Thus eternity honours that pattern by giving it a place in the very structure of itself. No one being created such a mosaic in the formations. Such a mosaic was large and had in it the essence of all the lives that formed it.

So the rock formations and the mosaics on them represented influences that will flow into the future. They were sources of power or influence that shaped the phenomenal world. They were the body under the coat so to speak. See Archetypes – Links to

This explains some forms of intuition, as one person’s mind is said to connect to all others beneath the surface in the unconscious. In this way, questions or inquiry about a particular person will draw information pertaining to them from the enormous collective unconscious. In fact Einstein said that “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust – we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper”. So our individual consciousness is rather an outcrop of a huge and ancient collective consciousness.

Edgar Cayce discovered in his adulthood, that he could put himself at will into the state of mind in which he could tap this unconscious reservoir of knowledge. Because he could diagnose people’s illness without examining them, his work was supported by doctors. Investigators of psychology and philosophy also sought him, and he dictated 14 million words while in this state of wider awareness. His findings suggest that we all have this ability to tap the wealth of unconscious information – truly a collective unconscious – but few of us can bring it to waking awareness. His biography, There is a River, and Seer Out of Season, are astonishing and inspiring books to read. See: Edgar Cayce.

We see this markedly in animals that are largely instinctive. Birds have no present memory of how to fly or build a nest, yet when the time comes they draw on something that enables them to express the collective experience of their species.

I am a Child of the Universe

If this connection is a fundamental part of everybody’s life, the waters of self and the waters of the ocean are not separated. Jung called this universal consciousness the collective unconscious. Other cultures have given it other names – the ocean of Brahm for instance in Hinduism. Within Buddhism there is also the phrase, ‘the dewdrop slips into the shining sea’. Australian Aborigines call it The Dreamtime.

The image of the dewdrop slipping into the ocean illustrates the individual becoming aware of melting the boundaries of their personal awareness, and becoming aware of the ocean of sentience within which they exist.

When we first begin to ‘hear the voice of God’ again – i.e. feel the immense power of the collective unconscious, the foundation of our awareness – we are often afraid, even terrified, as the story of Adam and Eve depicts. The fear arises because whether we admit it or not, we feel we might be swallowed up, be lost in the immensity. Basically it is a fear of death. See What Happens When I Die?

Reaching the shore of consciousness

Looking back at the psychological history of humanity, at their emergence of identity out of an animal level of awareness, all consciousness was originally merged, as it were, in a great ocean or pool. At that point no creature had crawled out of that pool. Nothing had arrived at self-awareness. No sense of separateness or identity had emerged. Then out of that ocean onto the shore of self-awareness, perhaps for moments only at first, a daring creature crawled and said – ‘I am’. Doing so they left a mark – footprints, two stones rolled together, scratches on a rock, a cave painting. And those creatures still in the ocean looked out upon others and wondered, until a spark was struck in them too. Perhaps struggling for a closer view they emerged and gasping also exclaimed – I am – and added another rock.

So the ocean is the world of sleep, babyhood, life of the nameless herd, consciousness immersed completely in the streams of instinct, reproduction, eating, sleeping and the senses, the collective unconsciousness. But the shore is the pathway of consciousness, the spoken word, art, drama, music, education and questioning enquiry. We all take this path if today we can say ‘I am’! We too, in our infancy, emerged from the collective consciousness. We too were gained a soul, an identity, when we were given a name and speech. You too stepped out of the great waters of life – and will meet them again at death. See Programmed

As already quoted, Jung describes this as the ‘inherited potentialities of human imagination. It is the all controlling deposit of ancestral experiences from untold millions of years, the echo of prehistoric world events to which each century adds an infinitesimal small amount of variation and differentiation. These primordial images are the most ancient, universal, and deep thoughts of mankind.’

What this means in practical terms is that through our dreams, or through any of the ways people access this immense reservoir of human experience, we can find patterns of behaviour – archetypes – and whole memories of people who have lived through and found solutions to the problems we face, or defined the understanding we are seeking. Also, Cayce found actual details of medicines and techniques that had been used successfully in the past and were part of the memory within the collective unconscious.

In trying to present this to sceptical colleagues and intellectuals and scientists of his time, Jung tried to explain his observation of a strata of being in which individual minds have their collective origin in a genetic way. This seems unlikely, and Rupert Sheldrake sees it as a mental phenomena. Dr Maurice Bucke called it Cosmic Consciousness. J. B. Priestley saw it as ‘the flame of life’ which synthesised the experience of all living things and held within itself the essentials of all lives. If we think of it as a vast collective memory of all that has existed, then we can say the life of Edgar Cayce exhibited a working relationship with it.

Such a collective level of mind would explain many things, such as telepathy, so called out of body experiences, life after death, which have always been puzzling because it is difficult to explain them using presently known beliefs. Mostly this difficulty has been because our language and the concepts arising from it insist of a duality of mind and body. However, researches into the nature of fundamental particles – quantum – show us that such divisions do not exist, except in our limited sensory view of the world.

For more information See: Quantum Physics; Levels of Awareness – Levels of the Brain – Consciousness – The Brain Mind Split; Cayce, Edgar; archetype of the self; religion and dreams; sea; Dimensions of Human Experience

Meetings with an Unborn Child

Elisabeth Hallett

In these columns, we go out on a limb to catch a glimpse of patterns that can’t be seen from safer ground. The “limb” on which our explorations depend is the premise of pre-existence-that we exist in some form before conception. With that premise, we’re free to consider the implications of parents’ pre-birth communication experiences and the revealing comments of young children. As we shall see, it is exciting when the evidence from these two sources overlaps.

The stories in this installment suggest one of the most intriguing patterns of possible connection between parent and child. Imagine the situation: In childhood, you encounter your own future son or daughter as a companion who visits your dreams and reveries or flashes across your mind’s eye at odd moments.

Margaret writes, “I knew and played with my three sons (two yet to be born) when I was still a child. I had many recurring dreams, around age seven, of riding bikes with three boys who were my sons, even though they were about my age or older. Always the oldest was the most clear to me, and the other two didn’t connect quite as strongly, though they were all firmly present. I always thought the oldest was cute. He was also really nice, smart, thoughtful, and took his responsibilities seriously, looking after his brothers and guiding our play. But he was still fun.” Margaret clearly identifies her childhood dream playmate with her firstborn son. The next story is more complex and raises the question of how such an identification is made. Donna recalls: “Right around the time I reached menarche, I became aware of a loving, guiding female presence. I think I always knew she would be with me as my daughter. I don’t remember analyzing much, only accepting. I decided then that my first child would be a girl and her name would be Kirsten. Later I decided wedlock was a horrible idea and I’d never bind myself thus, nor would I ever bear a child. Still Kirsten was with me. Certain places, certain people would bring her to mind. A blond girl would appear, spontaneously, in my mind’s eye. As I approached my twenties, I began to ‘see’ her as a four-year-old. I could ‘see’ or be aware of the little girl in my peripheral vision-and only as long as I didn’t look.

“A few more years and the desire to have babies struck. Suddenly marriage seemed tolerable. My first child was a girl, and I named her Kirsten. Once we were home and settled in and starting to learn each other, I realized that this little person wasn’t Kirsten. After a bout with colic we fell in love and still are.”

Donna bore three more children, all boys, and felt that her family was complete. She thought her youngest son might be the embodiment of the female presence she had sensed for so long. However, she continues, “As the kids grew, I started having the emotional freedom to start meditating again. When I relaxed, I began noticing a glowing white disc with a lavender rim. It was always waiting. Then I read “Models of Love” and was overwhelmed at one point by the beauty of childbearing. As I was glorying, I saw a pillar of light next to me, and I knew I would have another child.” Finally, Donna conceived her last child. “In a meditation the glowing white disc featured a purple fetus. I knew I was pregnant. I knew it was my girl.” Cicely was born eleven years to the day after Kirsten. “Cicely has always been with me,” says Donna. “This being is her.”

We may ask, “How do you know?” But the answer is a mystery. The sense of recognition, which may be completely convincing to the one experiencing it, is really not open to objective validation. Linda, an English mother, identifies her firstborn daughter as the girl she met in a vivid dream years earlier. As she says, “There has never been any doubt in my mind that it was her-I knew it the moment she was born.”

There is a hidden aspect to these stories which may be coincidental, or it may point to a deeper meaning behind these experiences. Linda was eighteen-nearly grown up-when she dreamed of her future daughter. She says, “I knew that this girl was my daughter… I remember feeling so happy that she had shown herself to me, especially as I had quite a hard time growing up and it was like a little message of hope and happiness for me to help me along when I needed it. I wasn’t planning on kids at the time as I was preparing for University and travel. I also didn’t feel any urgency with the dream-she wasn’t saying, ‘Have me now.’ She was just saying, ‘Hello-this is what you have to look forward to!'”

Like Linda, each of the young girls in this survey was coping with difficult situations around the time of her initial experience-from simple loneliness to sexual abuse. Donna moved at thirteen to a place she hated, and recalls that she “retreated into herself” for years. Margaret, who dreamed of bike riding with her three sons, says, “I think they felt bad for me because I didn’t have many friends, and I had been recently assaulted by a distant family member. The nice innocent fun we had riding our bikes, plus the slightly protective feeling I got from the eldest boy, helped me get through that time.”

With these circumstances in mind it would be easy to say, Aha!–these girls created imaginary friends to help cope with their stressful situations. But it seems equally possible that here is a special grace and kindness in life’ s patterns, whereby an unhappy child can be comforted and companioned by her own future children. After all, they would have an interest in the welfare of their intended mother.

What of the enigmatic memories that little children express, usually between the ages of three and seven? Do they ever provide evidence for these early connections? Brent was six years old when he began relating what seemed to be memories of a previous lifetime with an abusive father, ending in an early death. Among other details, he told his mother that he had chosen her. She took advantage of a moment when Brent was quietly absorbed in play to seek more information.

“I asked him why he chose me. He told me very matter-of-factly that he knew he couldn’t stand to live like that with that other dad any more, and his mother had somehow disappeared, and so he looked for another mom. And he saw me, but when I was a little girl. Then he came back to me when I was an adult and chose to be born to me because he liked me. He answered promptly, without thinking about any of this for a second! As I wrapped my arms around him and gave him a big kiss on the cheek and looked into his blue eyes, I told him, Brent, I am so glad that you chose me. I love being your mom and you don’t have to worry ever, because I will keep you safe and love you forever. He smiled and withdrew to get on with his playing with his army tank!”

The final story is a rare treasure because it includes evidence from both sources: a mother’s childhood experience and her child’s mysterious remark. From Australia, Jenny writes: “When I was 10 years old I did a drawing of how I would like to look if I was beautiful. It turned out great, which was weird because I was just past stick figures. My eleven-year-old sister instantly grabbed it and criticized it. “The eyes are too slanted, cheekbones too high, jaw too square for this kind of face,” she said. She then changed it, saying she just wanted to fix it for me. I was really upset and took the drawing away to make it right. I couldn’t start again because I couldn’t really draw. To me it was a miracle. The drawing seemed to take on a life of its own. I began talking to the girl in the picture. She was the classic ‘invisible friend.’ I could really sense her there and occasionally I thought I heard her answer.

“Then when I was fourteen our family went to see ‘South Pacific’ at the movies. When the girl called Liat on Bali Hai came on, I thought, ‘Wow, she looks a lot like my ‘invisible girl.’ On the way home, I was thinking ‘I wonder why she looks like her. Maybe I should call her Liat.’ Then I heard her respond! ‘Because I’m part Islander and my name is Lee but you can call me Liat.’ She was yelling in my ear and I looked around to see if anyone else could hear. Naturally they couldn’t.

“I guess I had always been kind of weird compared with other people. My Scottish Nanna said I was fey. This time I thought, I’m really crazy now. My invisible friend refused to go away so I asked her who she was. She said she was my daughter. That was a stunner. I asked her when she would be born. ‘When you’re thirty-six.’ ‘Don’t I have any choice?’ ‘You have already chosen,’ she said.

“Liat hung around for years. We continued to talk and argue, discussing all kinds of metaphysical things. Sometimes she didn’t know much more than I did. Other times she amazed me with her knowledge. Occasionally I would get images of her at different times in her life. She was really beautiful.”

By the time Jenny was nearly thirty-six, she was twice married and divorced and had four sons. Now Liat started communicating about being born soon. “I banished her,” says Jenny, “but she came back and sat in the background not saying much.” Jenny soon found herself involved in a love affair and despite precautions she became pregnant. “I told Colin all about our future daughter and described her. He brought me a photo of one of his sisters. She looked uncannily like Liat. When I explained about the island girl, he said ‘Yes, that’s the Samoan in her.’ He just accepted everything. When she was born, Colin named our little girl Amy-Lee. I hadn’t told him the name I had used all those years.

“When Amy turned three she said, ‘Mummy, I used to know you when you were a little girl, didn’t I.’ It was a statement. She is six now and beautiful. Who knows what the future holds for her-she is already extraordinary and much loved by many people.”

Editor’s Note: