Recalling the Past
Those of you who have read the novels of Joan Grant will no doubt at some time or other think about the recalling of past lives. The psychic talent of Far Memory is not as common as some would have you believe. It is a fairly rare gift in its pure form and can be used together with mediation to recover lost knowledge. It is rarely used for the deliberate recalling of past lives. It is my personal opinion that unless there is a real need to recover a past life, they should be left alone. At this moment you are the sum total of the experiences encountered and dealt with, good and bad, in all your previous lives, odd memories will surface as and when they are needed, you do not need to search for them. There must be several thousand Nerfertitis around, and you can multiply that amount by several tens of thousands in the case of Tutankhamun, though why anyone would be anxious to prove they had lived a bare eighteen years under enormous personal stress and probably died painfully from poisoning defeats me.
You will have spontaneous memories returning as you increase your ability to understand their place in this life, or if you arrive in a location that holds strong links for you. There will be times when you will need to recover certain memories, and you will need to learn how to do this and practice the technique.
But to spend large chunks of your time 'researching' your past lives simply to try and prove you were someone famous is ridiculous. It can also be traumatic. Remember this, true far memory means total recall with full sensory perception. You cannot control which area of that life you will tune into. Do you fancy finding yourself on the rack at a particularly painful moment, or watching someone set light to the wood stacked around you, come to that how would you feel if you were the one doing the lighting?
When you work on recall as a group you often find that you touch on lives when at least some of you will have incarnated together. Can you imagine what it could do to your present day friendships to find your best friend, wife or son was the one who had betrayed you to the Inquisition, or had gone over to the Roundheads while you were still a Royalist? Such memories can stir old quarrels as well as loves...
which is another thing for you to consider. And it is no good telling yourself that you can overcome such things... maybe you can, and maybe not.
If you are returning to mystery school training having experienced it before, you will probably turn up several incarnations as a cleric in holy orders as well as those earlier lives which are concerned with the ancient religions. It is said that it takes three lives of actual training within a mystery school to make an initiate, but there will have been lives spent simply as 'a drawer of water and hewer of wood' as Dion Fortune said.
What is it like to remember a life lived before? I can only offer my own experiences as an example, for each one it feels different. There are two ways in which it can happen. You may have intermittent flashes of memories, no more than a vague feeling of recognition of a place or a person, but as more time is spent either with that person, or in that location the memories become more pronounced, but rarely go beyond that stage. This can happen in many places or with many people during your lifetime. It can account for the immediate friendship with one person, and an irrational dislike of another for no real reason. This is as far as most people go in the process of far memory.
The second way is a slow awakening to a different reality that seems to overlay the present world. At times it produces a dreamlike state through which one moves, observing and feeling at the same time, while your own time is still present. As you can imagine this can be a bit of a problem, however, as I have said, not everyone experiences things in the same way, and when I am 'observing' for a specific purpose and under ritual conditions it is much sharper and less crowded by the present.
One of the clearest personal far memory sequences I have ever had came to me at Winchester. It is a place I have always loved even before my first visit, in this life. On a cold spring day in the mid‐seventies I met with Ernest Butler in Winchester. I had just finished a series of lectures in London and had decided to stay overnight in Winchester and phoned ahead to ask Ernest if he would like to spend the day with me and have lunch. He was delighted and we spent a happy day in each other's company, one of those quiet days that you remember for years after. We walked round the cathedral and spoke of many things, past and present, something that probably started the train of events that came later.
At about five o'clock Ernest took the bus back to Southampton and I, with the evening on my hands, returned to the cathedral to wait for Evensong. It was the beginning of Lent and the Bishop of Winchester was to give the first of a series of Lenten lectures. I sat quietly until the service. As there
were so few people attending we were invited to move from the nave of the cathedral into the beautiful carved stalls. I began to feel a shift of consciousness and closed it off for it was neither the time nor the place. After the service I spoke with the Bishop for a few minutes requesting a copy of the lecture which was to be published, then left by a side door and made my way round to the West Front. It was almost dark, a clock began to chime the hour, and I stood looking up at the West window and thinking how much I loved this old place. It then happened so smoothly I did not realize at first what had taken place.
Nearly all the familar houses were gone, those that were there were very different. I was no longer a woman, but a man, middle aged and none too bright, in fact this other me was very confused. I knew everything about him, his name was Walter, and he had been in the monastery since he was quite young, left there by parents too poor to keep him. He was a simple soul and had never amounted to much and spent most of his monastic life in the kitchen helping to prepare the meals. I remembered quite clearly his opinion of Brother Cook and his overwhelming awe of the Bishop. The cathedral was his only home and he loved it with a passion that in his heart he was afraid might border on the forbidden.
His confusion arose from a discourse he had just heard in the refectory. Something to do with the possibility of a man living not just one but several lives.
This had frightened him, he could not imagine living anywhere else and was too simple to understand the mechanics of the argument. All he knew was the fact that this was home and he wanted to always be here. He stood before the great window looking up, shivering with cold and as I 'slipped in' he was muttering somewhat desperately, 'If I come back again I will stand here and I will remember, I will remember, I will remember.' Then I was back, standing and shivering with the cold looking up at the great West window, telling myself desperately, 'I will remember'. The clock was still chiming, and I was left with fast fading memories a few of which have remained. I know, with a certainty beyond words, thoughts, or reason that somewhere under the stones of Winchester lie the bones of a none too bright little monk who wanted nothing more of life than to be where he was, in Winchester, We are the same person, we still love Winchester, and each time I pass through on my way up to London I look to catch the short glimpse of the cathedral.
Among the other 'memories' that have been most clear is that of watching my mother and father walking away and leaving me with a strange woman, kindly, but strict, who was to be my guide and teacher from now on. Ahead of me were long years of hard work and study, I felt resentful and afraid and the thought uppermost in my mind was 'if only I didn't have those dreams I would still be at home with my brother'. There was a lot more but its telling is for another time.
If such experiences should come to you try always to check as far as you can, it will seldom be very far, but at least check on the costume, tools, houses, etc. With that part of you that is still in this time, try to note as much as you can, especially the time of year and if at all possible the date.
There are techniques for the recovering of past lives, but I urge you not to use them indiscriminately. If you hit a bad experience shut down psychically for at least two weeks and let it clear from your
subconscious. Don't use the techniques more than once or twice a month, keep detailed records of
everything you do, see, hear, or remember. Also remember this, most of the 'best' incarnations seem to have been taken already... so you and I will have to make do with what is left!!!
J.H. Brennan's book, Five Keys to Past Lives is one of the 'Paths to Inner Power' series published by Aquarian Press. In it you will find all that you need to enable you to acquire the basic techniques of recalling past lives. The only one with which I disagree is the use of a Ouija board. I dislike these things intensely and will always speak out against them. In the hands of trained psychics they may have some merit, but 99% of those who use them are not trained, nor anywhere near being trained and that makes it dangerous. When people get unpleasant results, or even experience mental shock through such unwise experimentation, it is always the occult that is blamed, never their own stupidity. That makes me angry because many mystery schools are conscientious, open and run their courses according to the ethics of the Occult. To be blamed because of the carelessness of others who ignored repeated warnings is galling.
Having said that the other techniques in this book are ideal and written with Mr Brennan's impish sense of humour. His chapter on hypnosis is simple and direct and can be followed safely even by a newcomer.
You can of course follow his instructions sitting in your living room, but the atmosphere of the temple may well boost the experiments. I would advise that you always have at least one other person with you, or at least a tape recorder. Certainly if you plan to use hypnosis another person is vital.
Some years ago a book came out called The Christos Experiment giving techniques for the recovery of past lives. That it worked was undeniable, that it caused quite serious problems in some people is also true. It is not a completely safe technique in my view, and I would advise against its use. Stick with the straightforward advice of Mr Brennan and you will not go far wrong.
One last word on this subject. The Akashic Records is a term you will no doubt hear when researching past lives. Let me make it quite clear, while it is possible to use them, it is not permissable to go rooting about in them searching for other people's past records. I have lost count of the number of people who fall for the old 'I am a high initiate and I can read your Akashic Records' line. A true initiate will rarely admit to being one at all, and as for reading other people's records...! Occult ethics would prevent that for a start, and you should do your own searching anyway. Such offers can end up with you 'owing' a karmic debt, according to their interpretation, usually to them. Past life research can be made a serious study, but it can have a few drawbacks as well. Try it by all means, but tread warily and don't fall for the undoubted glamour of it all.