9/5/1999
Who or What am I?
I see the group is guessing who I may have been in past lives. I suppose I had better comment on this or some will feel I am avoiding the question.
Now suppose I told you I was some great teacher or historical figure from the past and you accepted this in your mind? Whenever I give you a teaching from that point on, there is the danger that that you would not be looking at what I am teaching, but what some authority from the past is teaching and there are some who would accept me without first checking with their own minds and souls.
On the other hand, suppose I told you that I have been nobody special in any past life? Then we have a danger in the opposite direction. Some would not even give me enough credibility to bother to check with their souls to find the truth of my teachings.
This is one of the reasons that we lose our memory of past lives. It allows all of us, great and small, to have a fresh start in each new birth. If you and Jesus were born as twin brothers or sisters, your words and actions would have as much authority as His until He proved himself anew.
This is as it should be; otherwise we would be tempted to rest upon our past accomplishments and not attempt to learn new things and improve upon the old.
The Master taught: “Except you be born again, you will not see the Kingdom of God.”
We can see the wisdom of being born again when we examine many people in the latter half or near the end of their lives. They have learned a trade and have few financial worries so they desire to retire and spend the rest of their lives fishing, relaxing, traveling the country or the world and if they lived forever in this state of mind they would be of no use to God or man for eternity. By the grace of God they die and are reborn in a challenging situation where they must struggle to survive and achieve.
Only when a person can become born again without being born again can he become ready for true eternal life. In this wording is a major hint for contemplation.
Let us use the effect of past lives in relation to a group member, like John K. for instance. He often writes inspiring postings, parables and stories and we all appreciate him for it.
Now let us suppose that we all found out that he was the Buddha born again. Why, we would all stop in our tracks and reread everything he has written and see meaning there that we never saw before.. Then when he posts something we would read it with bated breath to see the latest revelations of the great one instead of the simple words of a friend we all know as John.
The Tibetans have this problem with the Dalai Lama.
They look for the same leader to be reborn in each new generation and when they find him, as they suppose, they immediately begin to place everything he says above the words of everyone else in the realm. Meanwhile if a great Master were to arise in their midst, his words would be largely ignored in favor of the lesser words of their leader.
It is always difficult for a spiritual teacher to get the attention of the masses without some strong astral attention grabber. Look at Christ, for instance, the greatest of us all. Even though He had power to attract attention through miracles He had great difficulty getting people to pay attention to His words. After His crucifixion and the miracles were gone His disciples met together and their full number was one hundred and twenty (See Acts 1:15) I guess with that in mind we are lucky to have a couple hundred in this group who are seeking the words that stir the soul.
Now let us go the other direction and say that we found out that John was Judas. Now things would be different. We would look with suspicion on every word he posted. We would wonder about his sincerity and we would make sure he never got close to our kids.
Thus it is a blessing that we do not generally remember our past or know the past lives of others, for by starting with a clean slate in our relationships all people have a fair chance to succeed. If our past life was a great success, our ego may have to be taken down a few notches, but if our past life was a failure we are able to drop those negative memories and get on with our progression.
As it is John is seen by us for what he is now in the present time without the disadvantage of seeing him through the eyes of the past.
Dave was very close to reading me correctly when he said:
“I think it would be wonderful to learn that our teacher used to be one of the great people. On the other hand, it would probably benefit most people to not know. People have a tendency to ‘blindly’ follow prophets, and if anyone had any reason to believe he was one of these people, they would stop questioning him and never verify anything he said against their soul. You’re soul will help you learn what you need to know when the time is right.”
You are on the right track here. But I do not want the group to get me wrong in the other direction and think there is no value to learning our past lives. It can be of great value, but the value of learning our own past lives is generally much more than learning someone else’s. Knowing our past can often help us understand the direction we need to take in this life and how karma is to be dealt with.
Thus I will not reveal my past. If there is some necessity for someone to know it the knowledge can be acquired through the Oneness Principle through the soul, but that would be for your personal benefit and not for any publication.
I’d like to make one other observation about past lives. We all know that there is strong glamour and illusion connected with them. About half of the people who believe in it tend to think they were some great historical figure, even though their talents in this life do not seem to vaguely resemble a Lincoln, Edison or Jesus. If you mention to such people that they might have just been some person forgotten to history their jaw will often drop in disappointment, but just suppose this with me for a moment.
Let us suppose that all of us in this group died this day and were reborn a hundred years from now and in that future age we received a revelation of who we were back in this time. Would our jaws drop?
Let’s pick on John again. He is a musician, and I assume a good one, but if he died today there probably would be little record 100 years hence of any contribution he made to mankind. But that does not mean his life was not important. It is important to all of us for he has touched many souls here as well I am sure he has touched many souls off the list.
The same may be said of me. If I were to die today there would be little or no historical record of me in a hundred years, yet that does not diminish what I teach or what I have learned in preparation for the future. If I were to die today I would carry my essence with me into the future and finish what I have Decided to Become and the mission I have accepted.
We cannot all be a Washington, a Peter or a Buddha, but we can all be a Glenys, a John K, a Rob, a Rick, an Anni, a Xavier…
Well maybe not Xavier – he’s one of a kind (LOL)
My point is that most of us, possibly all of us were not historical figures and we must all be prepared for the possibility that we were no more famous in our last life than we are in this one, but that’s not so bad, is it?
I am enjoying being a regular guy in this life. That could change if I produce a best selling book, and in some ways I’m not looking forward to any fame but I have an inner driving from the Spirit that pushes me ahead and all of us must face whatever comes as we follow higher purpose.
Laura wants to know the fate of the original twelve apostles. Are they going to show up in this group or as a molecule somewhere on the earth or are they Masters living apart from humanity?
Some of them have become Masters and some of them are still struggling to attain the higher initiations. All of the twelve that were in the Molecule on the day of Pentecost and I believe that most are in physical bodies on the earth today. Some who have incarnated have gotten temporarily caught up in some illusion and are not performing the work they intended to accomplish. This is partially due to the intense efforts of the Dark Brotherhood to discourage them for the desire of the Christ is to gather them around Him when He walks among us again.
Because of free will there are no guarantees on this type of thing.
And how about Judas? I do not know about his fate for sure, but we do know that he had remorse after he saw what happened to his Lord and this tells us that he had not yet completely chosen the dark path. It is entirely possible that he has paid off his debt and is a disciple today.
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