The Way Toward Health - June 18, 1984

June 18, 1984

The reincarnational heritage is rich, however, and it can have a tendency to assert itself under certain conditions.

I am not speaking of usual, but fairly unusual events, when, in one fashion or another, reincarnational memory seems to bleed through to the present life.  Again, this is not usual experience.  It happens infrequently.  On some occasions – sometimes in periods of poor health or seeming senility – such instances may occur.  They are more apt to happen in adolescence, though I do want to stress that we are speaking of extraordinary cases.

Old people often begin to exercise their own consciousness in ways that they had not done earlier.  There may be less diversions to take up their thoughts.  They may be lonely, and then quite surprisingly find themselves casting about for different kinds of experience – experience seemingly most difficult to achieve in the physical world under their present circumstances.

Since they are often frightened and unsure of the future, they are more apt to cast their thoughts backwards into their early childhoods, reaching for their earliest memories, and mentally try to gain comfort from the remembered sounds of beloved voices, only to mentally glimpse other images than they expected, or to hear other voices than those for which they yearned.

In fact, fragments of many episodes from many other lives may rush into their consciousness, and in most cases they are, of course, quite unprepared for the experience.  On the other hand, usually such episodes are highly reassuring, for along with them rides the inner assurance that life has been lived before, many times.

The individuals involved may then return to normal consciousness, but if they talked or muttered while the affair was happening, any observers might take it for granted that delirium was involved.  Drugs should not be prescribed under those conditions, unless the patient becomes highly restless and confused, and requests them.  In most cases, however, the experiences do not leave any detrimental side effects.

The same kind of event may happen in periods of poor health, or in over-drugged states.  They are less easily handled, however, under drugged conditions, since the consciousness does not have the full agility to depend upon in periods of stress – unusual stress.  The same can occur in adolescence, and easily be misinterpreted as a schizophrenic episode.

This happens perhaps more frequently than the other cases mentioned, but usually such events are not repeated.  They remain only as memories, having opened up the person’s mind to larger visions of life than he or she may have entertained before.