The Way Toward Health - June 15, 1984

Chapter 12: Early Instances of Death or Disease in Relationship to Further Reincarnational Influences

June 15, 1984

Before we discuss other varieties of health and illness as they more ordinarily appear, I want to bring up the subject of more or less extraordinary conditions – dilemmas of body or mind in early life that often seem to have no cause or meaning.

The universe is meaningful or it is not.  Since the universe is indeed meaningful, then there must be a reason and a cause even for conditions that appear chaotic, cruel, or grotesque.  Even in such cases, however, at some extent or another the individual can indeed start over – or at least those closest to the person in question can begin to see a larger framework of existence in which even the most dire of physical circumstances are somehow redeemed.

In many cases, it is the parents of such offspring who suffer more than their children, since it seems as if such families were unjustly saddled with the most unfortunate woes.

We hope to explain this larger framework of existence still further, for indeed it also affects the human condition in all of its aspects.

As I said before, the reasons for most physical, mental, spiritual, or emotional problems can be found in this one lifetime, and because of the nature of simultaneous time, new beliefs in the present can also affect those in the past.

In a basic way, it is possible for present beliefs to actually modify the beliefs of a life that is seemingly a past one.  I must explain again that all lives are lived at once – but in different kinds of focuses.  Your conventional ideas of time make it simpler, however, to speak of one life as happening before or after another.

Again, no one is punished for crimes committed in a past life, and in each life you are unique.  The inner intelligence within you that gives you each life also gives you the conditions of each life.  It certainly seems to you, or to many of you, that most people would always choose to be born healthy and whole, in an excellent environment, of parents with loving natures and genetic excellence – and in other words to grow up healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Life, however, is far too profound and multitudinous, and requires great depths of emotional response and action that could never be satisfied adequately by any given set of circumstances, however favorable.

The species is filled with a powerful sense of curiosity and wonder, and the need for exploration and discovery, so that even a man born as a king through several lives would find himself bored and determined to seek out a different or opposite experience.

In some lives, then, you are born in fortunate circumstances, and in others you may find an environment of poverty and want.  You may be born in excellent health in one life, with a high intelligence and great wit, while in still another existence you may be born ill or crippled or mentally deficient.

It also seems that each fetus must naturally desire to grow, emerge whole from its mother’s womb, and develop into a natural childhood and adulthood.  However, in those terms, just as many fetuses want the experience of being fetuses without following through on other stages.  They have no intention of growing into complete human development.  In fact, many fetuses explore that element of existence numberless times before deciding to go on still further, and emerge normally from the womb.

Those fetuses that do not develop still contribute to the body’s overall experience, and they feel themselves successful in their own existences.  An understanding of these issues can greatly help throw light on the question of early deaths and diseases, and spontaneous abortions.

These are all part of the continuous undercurrents of life, and the same issues apply to many other species whose offspring are lost in every early life.

This is not an uncaring universe or nature operating, but portions of consciousness who choose at whatever levels certain experiences that nourish the living environment, and bring satisfactions that may never show on life’s surface.

In the case of human beings, however, many questions certainly rise to the fore.  I do not want to generalize, for each living situation is too unique for that.  I do want to point out that all fetuses do not necessarily intend to develop into normal babies, and that if medical science, through its techniques, ends up in directing a normal birth, the consciousness of the child may never feel normally allied with physical experience.

The child may go from one illness to another, or simply display an odd disinclination for life – a lack of enthusiasm, until finally in some cases the child dies at an early age.  Another individual, under the same circumstances, might change its mind and decide to go along with the experience of normal life.

It seems unnatural to some people to hear of animals’ mothers who refuse to nurse one offspring, or sometimes even attack it – but in those instances the animal mother is instinctively aware of the situation, and acts to save the offspring from future suffering.

I am not advising that malformed infants be killed, but I do want to point out that even in those most severe cases there is meaning in such conditions, and the consciousness involved then chooses another kind of experience.

There are also perfectly healthy, normal children who have determined ahead of time that they will live only to the threshold of adulthood, happy and flushed with dreams and promises of accomplishments, yet not experiencing any disillusionment or regret or sorrow.  Such young people die of sickness or accident, but go to their deaths like children after a splendid day.  In most instances, they choose quick deaths.

In one way or another, such children may try to describe their feelings to those closest to them, so as to cushion the shock.  Usually these people are not suicides in conventional terms – although they may be.

Perhaps the greatest variances in human behavior show in mental states, and so parents are apt to feel most crushed and despondent if any of their children prove to be what is generally regarded as mentally deficient.  In the first place, the term is a judgment cast by others, and a particular personality may feel quite comfortable in his or her own perception of reality, and only become aware of the difference when confronted by others.  Most such persons are quite peaceful rather than violent, and their emotional experience may indeed cover nuances and depths unknown to normal persons.

Many simply perceive reality from a different focus, feeling a problem out rather than thinking a problem out.