Quotes from Journey of Souls

From Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls" -

"In a remarkable underlying message, particularly from advanced subjects, the possibility is held out that the God-oversoul of our universe is on a less-than-perfect level. Thus, complete infallibility is deferred to an even higher source. … The concept that our immediate God is still evolving as we are takes away nothing from an ultimate source of perfection who spawned our God. To my mind, a supreme, perfect God would not lose omnipotence or total control over all creation by allowing for the maturation of less-than-perfect superior offspring. These lesser gods could be allowed to create their own imperfect worlds as a final means of edification so they might join with the ultimate God."

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Pg. 275

(Fascinating that Newton comes up with that from his reports. It is worthy of an entire book in itself. But it resonates perfectly with Swygard's idea that the Creator released parts of itself with the admonition, "Go, know my creation, and return it to me." Our experiences are returned to the Creator who then 'learns' from them, so of course our immediate God is "still evolving." And I absolutely love the concept of "our immediate God." It opens us to the idea that our God has a God, and on and on until we reach "the ultimate God". )

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"...my belief (is) that souls are attracted to geographical settings they have known during earlier incarnations."

pg. 117

(Here's an idea I have not yet experienced in my personal work, but will be paying attention to it now that it has been brought to my attention.)

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"... past life memories often spill over into contemporary problems in whatever spiritual setting is selected."

Pg. 64

(The idea that "we may be done with the past, but the past is not done with us." I don't know who said that first, but it is the basis for this work. )

Review of Michael Newton's "Journey of Souls"

    Back after a hard drive failure and replacement. I used the time to read a book suggested by someone at the first MeetUp, “Journey of Souls”, by Michael Newton, PhD. (1994). Subtitled “case Studies of Lives Between Lives”, this is what the book jacket calls the “travel log” of the accounts of 29 people utilizing Newton’s own hypnotic technique. Now I am presenting my work as an alternative to the standard method of hypnotic regression for past life exploration, so I had to overcome my skepticism of the whole practice but this book was a perfect introduction. (I will be digging deeper into the differences between hypnotic and guided meditation as a means of accessing past lives with a planned interview with a leading hypnotist.) Newton has assembled an overview of the between lives experience from a 10-year collection of clients’ experiences, providing a fascinating road map of the between lives journey, some of which I have experienced and others I have not. Newton’s unique hypnosis technique places the client in what he refers to as a state of superconsciousness, and this allows him to take a conversational tone with his clients that took me by surprise. I prefer to ask questions and the most common question is merely “What happens next?”, allowing the experiencers consciousness to show the most relevant material to their inquiry. Newton is fearless to the point of being confrontational, interrupting and using hypnotic techniques to get the information he wants, when he wants it. This causes me great discomfort, especially with the delicacy of the (literally) ethereal nature of the work.

    This brings me to the main issue with Newton’s work. I don’t know if his doctoral status as a hypnotherapist required that he maintain clinical detachment, but he does not address his direct experience with his own technique. It is only the common elements in his numerous client’s journeys that enabled him to construct the scenario he is describing. By the end of the book, I had the sense of someone writing a travel guide to Europe without having ever visited, and using the reviews from TripAdvisor as his source material. But I will never take anyone into an area that I have not extensively explored myself.

The past life piece of the puzzle

"Every soul has existed from the beginning. It has therefore passed through some worlds already, and it will pass through others before it reaches the final consummation. It comes into the world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life."

Origen, an early Christian scholar

I found this quote, or it found me, just as I was starting this website, and thought it was a perfect distillation of the concepts involved in past lives exploration. I am using the work of William Swygard as a jumping off point, and he had a beautiful and unique description of the origin of the soul. In Swygard's cosmology, souls came into existence when Source/Spirit/"God"/choose your favorite deity released pieces of itself with the admonition, "Go know my Creation, and return it to Me." I love that description of Creation; it resonates with me and I refer to it as "the spiritual Big Bang Theory." If it is true, and I am open to believing that it is, then as Origen pointed out, "every soul has existed from the beginning." In this framework, we are all old souls. This work is based on the idea that we can know where we were "strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life." Or as someone put it more recently, "You may think you're done with the past, but is the past done with you?"

Past life explorations are just the start of the journey, I call it Phase 1 of the Past Lives Project. If we have had even one past life in a different body, then that life had a beginning, middle and and end, and after it ended, the soul continued its journey between lives. I like to call it an NPE, the non-physical experience that we are able to explore any time we leave a past life behind, (in contrast to the NDE which requires almost dying). This is Phase 2. 

The 3rd phase is hinted at in Origen's quote. The idea that we have "passed through some worlds already, and ... will pass through others" is intriguing. I have not even explored this on my own, but when I do, I will be sharing my experiences here on this blog. This is an ongoing project, I have a few answers and a thousand questions, and I welcome you to join me on this journey.