During our many lives, we have lived principally under the control of the ego. Our thoughts, words and deeds have been motivated by our ego to satisfy its desires and its need to control our lives. The ego dominated our consciousness and thus prevented our Higher Consciousness from guiding us on our path through life.
During our many lives, we have lived principally under the control of the ego. Our thoughts, words and deeds have been motivated by our ego to satisfy its desires and its need to control our lives. The ego dominated our consciousness and thus prevented our Higher Consciousness from guiding us on our path through life.
These ego-initiated thoughts, words and deeds from all the various personalities we have assumed in our many existences in the world are thought-forms filled with our energy. Energy is used to think, speak and act. But energy is neutral, neither good nor bad, positive nor negative. It is the thought-form, or body in which it is clothed, or which contains it, that determines whether the thought, word or deed will have a positive or negative effect. So, we part with some of our energy every time we think, speak or act. But our energy, in whatever form it is confined, always makes its way back to us like a homing pigeon.
Sometimes it returns immediately but, more often, lifetimes later, whenever the circumstances in our lives are conducive to its return. The thought-forms containing it are rather like boomerangs thrown with a certain amount of force that determines how far they will go, or when they will hit their mark. They return to their senders with a force commensurate to the energy used in launching them. So if, in the past, we have used our energy to harm another person by thought, word or deed, the actual thought-form containing the energy will return to us in an equally negative form. This is very different from the commonly held theory, that it is usually someone outside ourselves who hurts us. Yes, others are used to facilitate the return of our past acts, but we could not receive them unless we ourselves had first set them in motion.
The same is true of positive thoughts, words and deeds. These also return to us at some time when the circumstances allow us to re-absorb them. Since thought precedes words and deeds, it is thought that gives them form, which is the reason we call thoughts that result in words and actions thought-forms. We are their originators or creators, but we are also the recipients of all our past words and actions.
If, however, we ask our Higher Consciousness to think, speak and act through us each day, all day, It will initiate our thoughts, words and deeds. Then the personal self will not be responsible and need not receive the reactions, good or bad. We will be free to remain detached from the fruit of our actions, since they were not initiated by the ego. We can then be in the world without being immersed in it. This means that we cannot claim any credit for the successes or blame for the failures. That is the way to detachment. So, in each new life, we need to ask ourselves repeatedly, ‘Will this act, thought or word take me nearer to the goal or further away from it?’ The answer should dictate our behaviour.
We are drawn back each time into incarnation by our attachment to tangible things, people and places, as well as the intangible desires for power, position, success, and so on. Our task is clear. We need to find out who or what has the power to control us and is preventing us from freely expressing our own true selves; and who or what is preventing us from saying, with full conviction, ‘Thy will, not mine, be done.’ But it is not enough merely to say it. We have to live that decision on a day-to-day basis. Our lives can then become instruments for the God within us to use to bring about Its plan, not just for ourselves, but for the whole world.
With this theory in mind, we need to accept whatever occurs in our lives. But we should also understand that they are not directed at us by a cruel fate; they are the result of our own behaviour some time in the past.
For those who find this whole concept of past lives difficult to accept, an alternative approach can be taken in which each episode is seen as a teaching story similar to those used by the Sufis. It is the underlying teaching that is important rather than whether the episode is actually a past life. Viewed in this way, the main character could represent a facet of a person, very much as the characters appearing in dreams often symbolise aspects of the dreamer’s own personality. Such stories can just as easily be used to point out areas needing healing or change, which is the only useful purpose for delving into the self at all. The important point to bear in mind is the quest for self-knowledge, not proof of past lives.
There are many different methods that are now popular for taking people back into former incarnations. However, the motive should not be to identify with famous characters and then try to live in their reflected glory, as some people have done. We should revive old memories only if, in so doing, we are helped to live our present life with more awareness.
