Here’s an interesting take on past life exploration by author Joan Grant:

The technique of this type of far–memory, as opposed to the isolated incident which is a spontaneous recall or recovered with the aid of Hypnosis, entails learning how to shift the level of the majority of one’s attention from the current personality to the earlier one, while still retaining sufficient normal – waking – consciousness to dictate a running commentary of the earlier personality’s thoughts, emotions, and sensations. 

Joan Grant, who was the author of “Winged Pharaoh” and seven other historical novels, used the term “far-memory” to describe her ability to remember her previous lives. I particularly like how she makes a distinction between her own “far-memory”  and hypnosis or spontaneous recall.  I’m reading “Many Lifetimes,” a book co-written by Grant and her husband, psychiatrist Denys Kelsey, who was one of the early adopters of hypnosis in psychiatric treatment. It’s an interesting read; in alternating chapters, they tell the story of their relationship (he was her 3rd husband) and their shared past lives work. And it’s one of the earliest published works on modern past life exploration, having been released in 1967.

“Winged Pharaoh” was a historical novel based in ancient Egypt and was best seller when released in 1937. In her 1956 autobiography “Time Out of Mind” Grant admitted that “during the last twenty years, seven books of mine have been published as historical novels which to me are biographies of previous lives I have known.” Grant writes of “bodies terrestrial and bodies celestial” when describing her concept of the “supra-physical”:

Implicit in the recognition of reincarnation is the knowledge that the current personality is not only immortal, but is one of a series of personalities. But it is less generally recognized that the body, except for its outer, three-dimensional rind, is equally immortal.

The body of every individual has a physical and a supra-physical component; and when the energy-exchange between these two components ceases to exist, the physical body dies. But the supra-physical body does not die. It cannot die…. The true state of affairs is that the supra-physical body is the receptor of sensory experience on all its levels of activity, and when free of the need to operate through its physical component is infinitely more perceptive than when muffled in flesh.

Being housebound lately has made me more aware of the “muffled in flesh” feeling.

Their take on putting this into practice:

... I decided that I would try to teach myself to play golf by practicing it in my supra–physical —which in those days I thought of as my ‘upstairs body.’

…This is one of the reasons why I know it is exceedingly important to think of one’s supra–physical as being in a state of health and efficiency even when its physical counterpart is suffering from the effects of disease, injury, or age. 

Some of Grant’s concepts are incredibly modern, including addressing time:

When asked to explain why some bodies are born with inherent health and beauty, and others are crippled, a frequent answer is to the effect that the body is given to us either as a reward or as a punishment. But our body is not given to us; it is initiated by an earlier supra-physical of our own, although not necessarily its immediate forerunner in the series. 

That’s pretty advanced for 1967.

Grant and Kelsey refer to entering the state of consciousness where this work is accomplished as shifting levels or a “level-shift.”. Their reframe on death:

No more than a particular type of level-shift which every individual has often experienced.

More to come from “Many Lifetimes.”