REVIEWS
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Talking with Leaders of the Past
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Oh my gosh! This book is absolutely amazing.
Dr. Rick Schaefer, M.D., USA
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The Leaders book is quite unlike any before; it makes available the soul perspective of those incarnates that we know as world leaders from the last century. To potential readers, all I can say is that it will be an emotional experience. This may be shock, amazement, fascination, or when the words of the evolved spirits resonate with you, simply transform your thinking. An amazing although controversial book that will be debated for many years to come. I can totally recommend it. Andy Tomlinson, Dorset, UK
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I highly recommend this intriguing book.
Tiziano, Amsterdam, NL
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I highly recommend this book - it's just brilliant!
Linda Hopkins, UK
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This book is so fascinating and mind opening. I love the way it was organized with a brief bio of each Leader to refresh your memory of each individual, well thought-out questions for each one.
Julia Marino, N. Carolina, USA
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This book was truly an incredible read … at times I laughed, cried, and almost shook with fear whilst reading Hitler's words. I've never read a book that has had such an impact on me before.
Kerrie Keeling, UK
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It was an interesting, refreshing and mind opening journey through the past century. If we take into account, that it is channeled material and not written by some historians trying to come up with new perspectives, then it is indeed mind blowing. Thumbs up!
S. Strobel, USA
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Talking with Leaders of the Past
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A Book of Spiritual Interviews
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Compiled by: Peter Watson Jenkins
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Channeled by: Toni Ann Winninger
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Published by Celestial Voices, Inc. at Smashwords
This book is available as a paperback at CelestialVoicesInc.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007907531
ISBN: 978-0-9798917-1-7
©2008 Celestial Voices, Inc.
13354 W. Heiden Circle, Lake Bluff, IL 60044 USA
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did
not buy it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
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Introduction
Working with Spirits
These days, large numbers of people are openly examining the spiritual issues of daily life, and are reviewing their personal philosophy and spirituality. This book aims to provide fresh ideas to inform that search for truth about the meaning and purpose of our human existence.
Compiling this material involved Toni Ann Winninger in psychically channeling from the Other Side the vibrational thoughts of a wonderful group of Masters of the Spirit World (the Masters), with whom she interacts daily. With their help, she made contact with fifteen leading individuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (the Leaders), who dwell currently in the spiritual realm, which they usually call Home.
This group of Ascended Masters includes wise souls who became spiritually enlightened while still in physical form, and a number of mature advisors who previously incarnated on planet Earth but who have finished doing so. There are also souls in the group who chose never to incarnate, whom people sometimes describe as angels. Our group of Masters tells us that these celestial beings are involved in counseling incarnated souls on planet Earth.
In addition to the large core group of Masters were fifteen individual Leaders, named in the table of contents, with whom we were encouraged to speak. When these souls were last in physical form, each was a leading figure in some part of human society. We were not told what degree of spiritual enlightenment these individual souls may have attained at this stage, but they were made available to us with the Masters’ enthusiastic agreement.
Interviews of the Masters and Leaders were conducted by Peter Watson Jenkins. In making his choice of topics, he aimed to cover issues of interest and concern to a wide audience. He conducted the dialogues fully aware that, being just a layman, he had only a little background in the historical or academic disciplines involved in the study of each personality.
Toni channeled the thoughts transmitted from Home by the Masters and Leaders as faithfully as possible. She has a great facility at channeling and is exceptionally accurate. She is painstakingly aware of the need to suppress all interference from her own mind that might influence the meaning of the messages transmitted from Home. She is justly proud of her skill in cutting off her own thoughts during each interview by maintaining a self-imposed regimen of strict mental control. Scholars might prefer more extended discussions than are given here, but contacts with Home are necessarily short, not because of any restriction by the souls involved, but because of the limitations of the channeler’s body. This book has no academic pretensions, however; we just saw that our task was to get to the point with dispatch in order to meet the practical needs of psychic contact and communication.
How accurate is channeling? Certainly anyone who does not question whether those we interviewed can possibly be who we say they are must be lacking in curiosity! As authors we know full well that we are inviting controversy and risking criticism by asserting that those with whom we have spoken are neither imposters nor figments of our imagination. Based on our experience of regular but ever-critical contacts with the Masters, however, it is our sincere judgment that all those interviewed in this book are genuinely who they say they are, or to be more accurate, who they used to be when last in human form. Back again in the spiritual environment, these souls are only as much the named person interviewed as they are any other individual whom they have been during their series of personal incarnations over a multitude of lives.
We publish these interviews with both of us wholly sure—in the language of the law, “beyond a reasonable doubt”—that those we interviewed truly are the people whom we have sought. We are convinced of this mostly by the subtle differences of their energy, tone, style, and use of language—and also because Toni had no prior knowledge of some of the people with whom Peter spoke. Nevertheless, we are very aware that it is quite impossible for us to offer any absolute proof about those whom we interviewed here. We also appreciate that even daring to ask people beyond the grave for their opinion may not appeal to everyone’s sensitivities—a sensitivity that frequent bursts of loving laughter from back Home has long dispelled within us.
If you are among the skeptics, we respect your view and commend the Masters’ words to you for their fascinating content. After all, it is neither impossible nor ridiculous for the curious to ask, “If these people really are who they say they are, what might they want to tell us now?” We believe absolutely in the authenticity of these interviews, but should you prefer to read this book as a work of fiction, enjoy it—it is thought provoking.
It was fascinating to observe many shifts and even some clear reversals of personal opinion that have followed the earthly death of the Leaders whom we contacted, and whose words are this transcript. Above all, we want to tell you how the Masters, who have made this volume possible, always appeared to us as being happy, modest, and full of love. It has been a delight to work with them, and so we affectionately dedicate this volume to “The Guys,” as we call them, with our grateful thanks.
Toni Ann Winninger works daily with clients who are helped by this ever-changing, friendly, fun-loving group of spirits. She is very careful in her preparation for sessions with them to request that “only those beings who are in and of the Light,” and who come “for the highest and greatest good,” will enter into the discussion. As a channel, Toni is involved in a very specific contact with this spirit group. Unlike mediums who choose to work with discarnate souls who have not yet returned Home, Toni has dedicated her contact to be with only the most advanced spiritual sources available, those who will give wise counsel to her many clients who come seeking growth in spiritual knowledge and wisdom, and psycho-spiritual health.
Channeling is as much an art as a science. Although most ideas transmitted by the Masters come in thought forms similar to language, some are given as metaphors, frequently in picture form, necessitating that the channel herself find appropriate words. Having worked for some time in this way, Toni usually can make a close approximate interpretation. So, as you read our conversations, be aware of the problem of having too narrow a reliance on the precise words of every statement—although each line we have written has been carefully double-checked for accuracy with the souls involved. Coming from the Masters and the Leaders are wise words and vital information, not legalistic formulas which should be interpreted literally and strictly
We need to understand that the Masters work under different conditions. They live in the timeless, genderless, non-judgmental, and unconditionally loving Home environment, where the concept of our free will dominates many conversations, and where ego trips are noticeably absent. This brings a refreshing flavor to every discussion. Spirits have little ability to be accurate about issues based on earth-time, however, so it is no good asking them for future winning Lotto numbers (we tried!) because they cannot (or, in love, will not) tell you on which day the game is played. More importantly, if any of our questions can even remotely be answered with the words, “You have freedom of choice,” they will be! Finally, although their answers are very helpful, the Masters seldom initiate conversation. Their role is to answer, if they are able, whatever we ask sincerely, so we must always do the asking. Anything else and they might risk violating the strict free-will rule.
One thing must not be missing from this statement of our relationship. We stress that the whole experience of working with the Masters is shot through with their kindness and immense sense of fun. They all laugh freely! We remember their greeting us one day when we had dodged the raindrops to get from our cars to the office. Toni opened her psychic channel to them and immediately enjoyed a ham group recital of Gene Kelly’s dance from Singing in the Rain, replete with lampposts and unfurled umbrellas.
If some of the discussions we have in this book ramble a little, they may have been drawn from more than one session. Together, however, they comprise a powerful comment on how we should view and live our life, and how we may get to know that help is always available for our physical and emotional healing.
The Spirit Masters and this book
Over the years spent working with the Masters, we have become aware that this unique contact provides us with exceptional information and enlightenment about the nature of spiritual life. Wanting to deepen our understanding of the process of reincarnation, we began to grill the Masters on their views. In the early discussions, not recorded in this book, we compared our existing knowledge with theirs, only to find that they frequently did not agree with many of the so-called “informed” views put forward by contemporary past-life regression, reincarnation, and New-Age gurus whose work we mentioned to them.
That was the starting point. So, wanting to have a firm and accurate basis for our own ideas about reincarnation, we decided to formalize the dialogue. Parts of these early conversations are recorded in the first chapter. Then we went on to health issues, where we found that the Masters had a very specific viewpoint on the nature of human disease and healing methods, which we knew would cause great controversy when published. Consequently the chapter on health was taken out of this book and now provides the basis of our first publication: Healing with the Universe, Meditation, and Prayer. Our agenda thus simplified, we were free in this book to concentrate on observing and analyzing the many aspects of human reincarnation.
In thinking of ways to expand the discussion of reincarnation, both sides agreed with the idea that having dialogues with a number of recently incarnated spirits would add muscle to the book. This enhanced our reincarnation studies and brought the spice of personal discovery to the proceedings. Working with leaders of the past gave us a new set of options. We could ask now if the historical record of their life is correct, and if the soul—now back Home with a clearer and more balanced vision of the past life—had had any personal change of heart since its physical death. We got much more than we bargained for! Many corrections, even reversals of opinion came to light, and some explanations and elaborations given us were much more radical than we ever anticipated.
The main burden of coming up with a list of names of potential subjects fell to Peter, although he is sure that his intuition was stimulated by the Masters themselves. We made a practical decision that all our subjects should have been born in the nineteenth century, giving a small measure of distance from our present time. Actual physical contact had taken place with only one subject: Peter had spoken at a peace rally also addressed by Lord Bertrand Russell, and they had talked together very briefly. Peter had also been in a student audience at Bristol University where Sir Winston Churchill, recently turned eighty, was the featured speaker. The selection of leading individuals was hard to make. With help we chose fifteen (more might have been too many), and left lots of good people out.
To start with, we picked five men of contrasting religious and philosophical beliefs: Dwight Moody, the popular Protestant evangelist; John XXIII, the Roman Catholic reformist pope; Bertrand Russell, the agnostic philosopher; the aesthete and playwright Oscar Wilde; and William James, philosopher, psychologist, and author of Varieties of Religious Experience.
There followed a trio of leading ladies, Margaret Sanger’s humble birth contrasting powerfully with the privileged background of Florence Nightingale and Eleanor Roosevelt. Each was involved in working for the betterment and emancipation of women. Their styles of serving the community were sharply different, but their honored place in history is secure.
The theme of empire was the basis for the choice of Andrew Carnegie (industrial empire), Winston Churchill (British Empire), and Mahatma Gandhi (the overthrow of British rule). We had not given any great thought to including Adolf Hitler (Nazi Germany’s Third Reich), but the Masters strongly wanted us to consider him and, with no little trepidation on our part, his name was eventually added to the list.
To round out the Dialogues on a scientific note we selected three intellectual giants: Charles Darwin, Carl G. Jung, and Albert Einstein, whose major contributions to science have clearly changed forever our understanding of the nature of human evolution, human psychology, and the physical laws of the universe.
We have no pretensions concerning the briefly sketched biographies and the series of questions and comments Peter employed in the dialogues. We do not claim to be scholars of these quite different fifteen historical lives, and our dialogues delved only a small amount into the religious, philosophical, sociological, or scientific issues of each subject’s past life. It is vital to add that during and after the interview each soul was given an opportunity to correct and add to the record, and all of them did so both modestly and helpfully.
We discovered that many of the Leaders have changed their opinions and broadened the basis of their knowledge since going Home. Some human opinions, which are mere speculation, are seen quite differently by the truth-centered community of souls at Home. Back in this atmosphere souls express little concern for personal reputation, so their once-cherished beliefs may be freely abandoned. Examples are Margaret Sanger’s outright rejection of eugenics, and the qualifications Gandhi now places on vegetarianism. Of import are radical reassessments in the thinking of John XXIII, Russell, James, Darwin, Jung, and Einstein.
There is no hidden agenda in this book, just the authors’ desire to get to the core of the secular issues of human reincarnation. But, like T. S. Eliot in Little Gidding (1942), during the course of our discussions we rediscovered the enigmatic truth that:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
In a nutshell, we are transmitting ideas and concepts of significance from master spirits who live in that dimension from whence every reader of this book has come, and whither, in due course, every reader will return. The Masters have chosen this time of deep trouble and chaos in our earthly society to make their views plain through us (as they have done through other chosen writers). To our mind it is as challenging a set of opinions as any humanity has ever met. Although we remain essentially their messengers, we thought it right to draw our own conclusions of the world view they have presented. These comments we have shared with them, and we have gratefully received their broad approval.
Peter Watson Jenkins
Toni Ann Winninger
Notes
In the book, questions and comments by Peter Watson Jenkins are in italic script. Toni Winninger’s channeled replies, are in roman script. Editorial comment is in square brackets.
Some Leaders used the male pronoun inclusively. English usage has changed only recently, and we decided, so as to retain the historical overtones of an individual’s speech, not to adjust the record to be gender neutral (as both of us would prefer).
In the commentaries following individual dialogues, Toni portrays what the energetic feel of the conversation was like. Then Peter reviews its content and comments on selected issues.
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“Without a body the soul is in the realm of unconditional love, and it doesn’t have the opportunity to experience anything else.”
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The Masters on Reincarnation
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The Incarnation Process
Q: Please explain the process of incarnation. I understand that a soul, who is a distinct being, comes into relationship with a body, a physical organism that becomes enlivened by the presence of that soul
A: Correct.
How is it done?
The soul is a spark of light which is a fragment of the Creator. It is an energy able to inhabit many different things. When a soul chooses to experience something it must have the vehicle of a body, a living organism, to do so. It determines, with its council of advisors, what it wishes to experience within the life-span of that living vehicle. It then chooses the parentage for that vehicle, who will allow it to be placed into an appropriate situation to experience whatever it has decided to experience.
So, should the soul want to experience grief, it chooses parents who are going to die, or a family in which there is going to be a physical loss. Therefore it chooses to inhabit the cellular division, the fetus, that occurs from the union of those two parents. The soul generally does not inhabit the growing organism until it is near to birth, but it remains close, monitoring what is going on, to ensure that the circumstances being set up are those which it had anticipated, and which it wants to experience. Sometimes, because of the freedom of choice of the parents, the situation may change; there may be a stillbirth, or some anomaly, so that which is delivered does not need the soul.
Can a human being exist without a soul?
Although a soul may not choose to fully enter a fetus until it is being born, it has to make a connection in order for the fetus to be viable.
When the fetus starts kicking, does that indicate the soul has entered it?
Yes. There only has to be a connection. [Toni: They are showing me fine strands between the soul and the fetus.] That’s how the soul can travel outside the fetus and still maintain the viability of the “host”. The host in this sense is the body that the soul has chosen to inhabit. This happens even within an adult host—it has to have at least some contact with the soul. At the moment of conception there is a determination made by each soul that that unique fetus is in fact the chosen one. That’s not a connection but an energetic acknowledgment. The soul is aware of the act of conception, but this is not a specific connection. The soul may, in fact, be acting in cooperation with the biological parents to give the urge for the conception at a moment of its choosing. It also determines whether it wants to be male or female.
How does the soul actually inhabit the physical body: is it by an interface at the cellular level, or at the level of the DNA?
It goes into the fetus and brings knowledge of its DNA and its prior experiences—not the DNA strands which have been identified on Earth, but additional strands with which you are unfamiliar. It enters into everything, like a liquid totally saturating a piece of material. It becomes everything that is within the body. In the same way the light—the energy of the soul—comes in contact with the body and can be completely absorbed. In addition to having a connection with that body, the soul can also project out through the ether.
Then the memories of the soul are downloaded progressively. The soul is still free while the fetus, whose DNA is gradually being filled up, is becoming a storehouse of the knowledge and experience that the soul has had in its prior lives. Ultimately, this part of the physical memory bank is stored in the DNA. Contained within the DNA of the host are all of the soul’s memories and lessons, including whatever is desired to be accomplished in this particular incarnation.
At what point does the total connection take place—if it is, in fact, total?
There is no set format. There are instances, with less mature souls in particular, where they enter the fetus almost at the point of conception and remain there. The more experienced souls “watch the cake baking” but don’t become a part of it until it is ready to be consumed—or in this case, delivered. These souls will spend their time elsewhere, saying goodbye to their friends, for example. There is also a small part of the soul left at Home, but the majority of the energy is put into the learning experience.
For the baby to live apart from the mother, the soul must be inside. The idea is incorrect that the fetus may be delivered and ten minutes later the soul would inhabit it, because within that ten minutes the shell (body) would die. It is rare that the connection between soul and fetus ever takes place after birth. Incorrect readings of this process come from the physical host’s faulty memory, not from the facts. It takes a while for the host to be acclimated to the energy of the soul, and to be aware of the point when the two united, which accounts for the occasional incorrect perspective.
How is it that all the people we have sought to interview for this book have not returned to Earth?
There are various reasons. Some of them have not come back because they are acting as guides for people now in similar incarnations. Others are still going through their life-reviews, comparing and contrasting what they learned with what is going on now. Some have chosen not to enter the chaos which is on Earth at present—we can choose to come when we want to.
Soul groups
Dr. Ian Stevenson’s research shows some souls going back into their immediate biological families, and others back into the extended family of the tribe. How common is that compared with people coming back more randomly, not to the family but to other situations?
It depends completely upon the contracts which were made within the soul group. You continually reincarnate with a fairly small number of peers. Within your group are up to 144 souls. Most souls have a close soul group of about 24. If you make very involved contracts within your soul group, it is possible that if you transition (die) but have agreed to more complicated contracts, you will have to come back to complete the rest of the contracts. This is particularly true of grandparents who have started things with grandchildren and then come back, perhaps as siblings or cousins.
This appears to happen in the Tlingit tribe in Alaska.
There is a very closely intertwined soul group there.
How much does the culture of the tribe influence the soul group?
Not at all. If no complicated contract has been made necessitating your coming back into the same close-knit group, you have no reason to come into that group. Most people choose to have differing experiences: you might be a native American Indian, then an African, then a white in the United States or in Europe, so you get a varied experience. Then you would make contracts with others among your soul mates who are not occupied within the initial close group.
Why do so many souls appear to make contracts?
For a number of different reasons. One is that a lot of souls want to prove something that they can best get by having contracts. This is secondary to their choosing to experience such things as prejudice, or lack of self-esteem, so severely that it results in their not being functional. In some situations [Toni: the Masters are showing groups in Africa where so many are starving], there’s a richness of life (besides the hunger) that a lot of souls want to experience. So there are all kinds of reasons in these choices.
Gender
When is gender decided upon?
The decision concerning gender is made before the joining of egg and sperm.
How about differences of sexual orientation and trans-sexuality?
Those are all lessons which the soul wishes to experience.
So sexual orientation is the lesson?
Yes.
How does it come about? Is it that the soul is now wanting to be the other sex?
That’s only how it is manifested. The soul wishes to experience ambivalence, prejudice, and self-worth issues generally. It goes further than that in their ability to clearly feel themselves in the physicality of the body. In feeling the physicality of the body, souls begin to re-feel their own essence.
Primarily, souls come down to learn lessons, and then, while in the process of learning or after having learned those lessons, to recall the essence of who they are. So people who are going through an apparent conflict between whatever their physical body shows everyone else and whatever their inner feelings may be, are actually leaning toward connecting with who each of them is as a soul, as opposed to who they are as a physical being.
Is a gay male truly in a male body with an emotional desire to be a female?
It is other than that. It is that they are able to tap into their emotional core, which is sexless. They choose to experience what it is that makes them feel better in a human body, which are the emotions and the energy of the female aspects of themselves. Because society says that makes them female, they identify strongly with that gender, which makes them feel so good that then they choose to be female, or to play the female role while remaining in the male body.
Can homosexuals be talked out of their attitude by society?
If they choose not to continue to grow, experience, and learn lessons, yes, they can. But in that case they wall themselves off and fail to continue to grow and to mature.
So a gay’s not a hard-wired female in a male body, but a soul tapping into its female nature more than its male nature, and who happens to be in a male body?
Yes.
Soul and body
Describe the relationship between the soul and the body.
The soul connects with the body to experience physicality. Without a body the soul is in the realm of unconditional love, and it doesn’t have the opportunity to experience anything else. It cannot experience anger, sorrow, or joy of any kind—other than the joy of unconditional love. It can’t experience particular kinds of love, such as a child’s love; it can only experience the vastness of being in the presence of unconditional love. So it has to have physicality in order to experience any of the physical emotions that we have on Earth.
There is an in-between body—depending upon your perspective. The in-between body can be thought of as the prior lessons that the soul has experienced in other bodies. That is primarily a physical state rather than an etheric one, so in that regard you can say that it is a physicality that isn’t totally of the soul (which is etheric). Truthfully, there is no real division; it’s akin to a physical body growing from childhood into adulthood—the adult isn’t different from the child but is just a different aspect of the child. The experience of the child is still there. Such is the way that its experience of past lives remains within the soul itself.
In our discussion, C. G. Jung told me that when we tap into a past life we find the one with which we have the greatest energetic connection, which is most likely to be our own past life. We download our own experiences into the DNA but sometimes happen to draw from a greater database. Where is that database?
That database is everywhere. It’s in the collective energy where everything is interconnected. So the experience of one soul is the experience of all—but not precisely the same, because you can know the experience of running a four-minute mile, but if you haven’t actually done it physically, you don’t have the experience of the exertion that it takes. If you observe it occurring, you have the experience that it can be done and the effort needed to do it, so in one sense you do have an experience of it, but in another sense, you don’t. You could tap into the greater database and draw on it to discover what you need to know for the physical experience of it.
Does each cell’s DNA have a holographic impression of everything, including an impression of the whole of the body?
Yes—and of the Creator.
So the current idea that there is an interface between the body and the soul is ephemeral? It’s a question of who is doing the looking?
Yes, and at what depth.
There’s a lot being said about our having many bodies: physical, etheric, astral, and so on. I’m getting the feeling it’s all nonsense!
Yes. It is all a matter of perception, and the reality that the spirit creates at the moment of that perception.
If going into the body involves downloading experiences into the DNA, what happens at death?
The soul has kept all of the downloaded information. It’s like when you buy a new computer. If you have all of your files already on one computer, you have to download them into the new computer in order for them to be easily accessible. But you can still retain the original files.
So when the soul leaves the body, it leaves the DNA to rot?
Yes, but it doesn’t make any difference because there’s an exact copy. Everything is transferred, with periodic updates. Only copies are involved in the DNA.
Sometimes we can carry negative ideas from one life to the next. Are they stored in the general database?
All ideas are energy. Energy is how the DNA imprint is conveyed. If, as we pass from a physical life to the non-physical, then back to the physical, there is something that is still firing—an emotion such as hatred or jealousy which hasn’t been dealt with, hasn’t dissipated, and that lesson isn’t learned—that emotion carries over into the next body, and if not dealt with there, it is carried over to a subsequent human lifetime. If you eventually go back and correct it at the point of origin, it cuts the connections to the subsequent lifetimes. You’ve changed the database; you’ve erased what’s there and rewritten the program.
Past-Life Regression
That is like my client whose bad experience in one past life was resolved, and that positively affected another past life and also her current life.
Yes, you changed the master database. It’s how past-life regression therapy works.
Does such a change in the master database relate to the absence of time in the spiritual realm, where everything co-exists—so if you change one part it will have a ripple effect on the experiences of the soul?
The master database is in the Akashic (celestial) records. Once you have experienced something, you cannot un-experience it. So, regardless of where in your linear time you may have had the experience, it becomes the experience of the soul in all of its manifestations.
So, what is the effect of the rewriting or reframing of the past-life experience in hypnosis?
We make a distinction between the two different types of possible action. If you only rewrite the experience, changing the script without the person learning the lesson, the energy of that lesson will still be there. But if you totally reframe it, in terms of feeling that it was wrong, or feeling that you can understand fully now, then the change becomes permanent.
The change is permanent, but the original experience is still etched in the record?
It’s as if you have a person who has learned just the rudiments of a foreign language. They will always have those basic skills. If they then go and take an immersion course and really understand the language, and think the language, and have it become part of them, afterwards they don’t have to go back to the rudiments. It’s a learning experience that’s now part of them.
Is it like a proofreader’s copy, all marked up?
Yes, one does not erase the other, but it matures and improves it and lets you feel it more.
So reframing experiences is a very effective way of dealing with problem areas.
Yes. It is the whole basis of a therapeutic past-life regression.
One issue for me is interference. When a soul goes back into the interlife (i.e., life between incarnations), it is given an opportunity to erase problems that are still sparking away. But it doesn’t always choose to do so.
It doesn’t have to do it. It always has freedom of choice.
Would the therapist be interfering with that freedom in such a situation?
Has the person come to you for their problem? Has the person come to you to deal with their life-lessons, to get to know themselves, so they can move ahead in this lifetime? That is not interference. If you were to go out to a group of people to brainwash them against their will, it would be interference, but it wouldn’t be successful because it is only with their intention that they can clean things up. If you put them into the therapeutic situation and they choose not to deal with forgiveness, not to get rid of their fear, or not to learn the particular lesson, then they are still not going to learn it because it is their intention that controls what happens.
Commentary
Peter: These words of the Masters were recorded over several sessions. We had made no current plan for a book when asking for this description of incarnation, but what they say here covers a lot of questions that people frequently raise concerning the topic. Many of these themes are also picked up in our dialogues with the Leaders.
What the Masters say about human sexuality will be novel for many readers. When our souls are about to incarnate on Earth we choose our parents, decide which sex we will be, and are quite loosely attached to the fetus until, usually, soon before the baby’s birth. Then, when the downloading of vital information into the DNA of the fetus is complete, we make the little “shell” our temporary habitation until just before or at the moment of physical death. No human body survives outside of the womb without an indwelling soul.
The most controversial section of this dialogue will probably be the Masters’ views on homosexuality. This issue comes up in dialogues with several Leaders, and all of these spirits sharply contradict those judgments made by homophobes and their innocent followers in our current worldwide human society.
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“The man known as the Lord Jesus Christ in the Bible and by me, while in physical form, is an energy which is of the most intense, beautiful, totally giving, totally loving energy within all of creation.”
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Dwight L. Moody
1837-1899
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Biographical Note
Dwight Lyman Moody was born in 1837 at Northfield, Massachusetts, the seventh of nine children. His bricklayer father died when Dwight was very young. Because of the family’s poverty, he left school after the fifth grade and went to Boston to sell shoes in his uncle’s store. There he attended Sunday school classes and, at eighteen, became a Christian. He moved to Chicago, still selling shoes and working hard to amass a personal fortune. Then he began to feel that God had called him to help the poor, and to establish a Christian mission in the Chicago slums. In the fall of 1858 he started his own Sunday School in an abandoned freight car, later moving it to a vacant bar. The little community quickly grew into a church. Now, sure that his future lay with evangelism, Moody left the shoe business to concentrate on social work and preaching the gospel among the city’s poor, immigrant workers. In 1861 he became a city missionary for the YMCA. The next year, at the age of 23, he met and married Emma Revell (19), one of the mission’s Sunday school teachers. The couple reared three children, a girl and two boys.
In 1863, he raised enough money to erect the 1,500-seat Illinois Street Church, which opened the following year with only twelve members. This was the beginning of what is now called the Moody Memorial Church. He preached there until a pastor was called in 1866. Moody was a tireless evangelist, distributing tracts and holding daily prayer meetings. He also helped to erect America’s first Y.M.C.A. building. Moody refused to fight in the American Civil War, but used his connections in the YMCA and the United States Christian Commission to bring the Bible to the Union troops, visiting the battlefields nine times. In 1867 he held his first revival campaign in Philadelphia. At an 1870 Y.M.C.A. convention in Indianapolis, he met Ira A. Sankey. Greatly impressed with his singing, Moody persuaded him to join the Chicago mission’s staff.
In October 1871 Moody’s mission church, the YMCA, and the parsonage were all destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. He visited New York in a fundraising effort to rebuild the church, and while there he sensed a divine presence strongly calling him. Returning to Chicago, he preached the gospel with renewed zeal and rebuilt the church with twice the seating capacity.
In 1873 Dwight Moody and Ira Sankey were invited to take the gospel to Britain. They held small rallies in the north of England, then in Newcastle and the industrial North of England. Their efforts were rewarded with thousands of converts, and their popularity increased greatly. After two very productive years working as evangelists in the British Isles, Moody returned to America with an international reputation. He strove to perfect his evangelistic techniques and his campaign’s administrative model. Eventually, over 100 million people attended Sankey and Moody’s gospel campaigns in Europe and America, and their hymnbook proved a best seller. In one single day in 1893, over 130,000 people attended evangelistic meetings in Chicago, coordinated by Moody.
Bible training for working people was one means of enlarging the outreach of his inner-city evangelism. Moody saw dedication to the cause, rather than great talent, as central. He established two schools for girls and boys and, in 1880, created summer Bible conferences at his Northfield, Massachusetts, home to foster biblical fundamentalism and foreign missions. In 1886 he founded what was later called the Moody Bible Institute. Following this came the Moody Press, which used “Gospel wagons” to sell affordable evangelical Christian literature nationwide.
Dwight Moody continued to work immensely hard as an evangelist right up to the time of his death at his Northfield farm in 1899 at 62 years of age.
The Dialogue
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Bible and belief
You were a child in a poor family.
Not in the value of life, but only in those benefits that could be provided to us by money.
Your father’s affiliation was Unitarian; was your mother also a Unitarian?
My mother’s family moved a lot, and it was whatever church was convenient for them to attend throughout her youth.
When you joined in the Chicago YMCA Bible studies, was that a break with your family tradition?
My mother was always reading the Bible to us. The YMCA Bible study was a way of learning the ideas and the interpretation of others beyond the mixture that my mother had picked up along the way.
Your early life was spent selling shoes, first with your uncle in Boston and later when you went to Chicago. You had a large ambition to create a pile of wealth. Do you feel that drive, that ambition, helped you in the development and organization of your evangelistic work, in which you were so successful as a pioneer?
Yes, it did. My uncle and my thirst for money—based upon how god-like money sometimes seemed to us within the family—established within me the drive to go toward an end and put all of my effort into it. It propelled me forward until I could attain what I sought. It established a work ethic that was a model for others to make something out of their lives. When it seemed as if I wasn’t able to get through to people and increase the importance of my word throughout the community, it enabled me to know that you don’t get anywhere until after you have put in substantial effort. When I first came to Chicago, I thought I was going to be as successful as I had been working with my uncle, but I had to start from scratch there and build up my business. When I heard the Word, and it became a part of me, I knew it was important to get it across. I knew I had to start from the bottom again and build up.
You heard the Word of God in the YMCA Bible classes?
That was where the first echoes began.
You said once, “A man ought to live so that everybody knows he is a Christian, and most of all, his family ought to know.” And you also said, “I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man.” Will you comment, please.
All people in physical form should live by the tenets of Christianity and should know that you should “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” that “It is better to give than to receive.” These are the basic principles of religion. In the beginning I had more problems with myself because of the allure of money, which was able to provide for me what I did not have as I was growing up. I looked upon money as some kind of demon: it was something that could lure you in and promise to provide you with everything you could possibly imagine, and yet provided you with nothing that took care of your soul and your growth. It was a constant battle in the beginning to realize that money should not be put before God, and should not be put before our Christian principles.
Evangelism
That sort of temptation does not come only with money; it also comes with power. In your work with Ira Sankey, something like a hundred million people heard you. Wasn’t a power issue involved there?
[Laughs] I cannot deny that it felt good to be able to influence others, and I did have to be very conscious of the fact that I was not promoting myself—although in the beginning it was like selling shoes: you promote yourself in order to bring the clientele back. It was a little bit of a battle to realize that all I was doing was being a messenger of the Word, and being a director of the way in which people could improve their lives by connecting to God, and connecting to the unity of a group of people who all have the same beliefs and principles and live their lives in the same manner.
There were some outstanding developments of evangelistic techniques in the movement you created. On one occasion you wanted to ensure people came to Sunday worship rather than going to the Great Chicago Fair. So you organized 130,000 people to attend your meetings. That must have taken a lot of organizational clout. Did you see yourself as an organizational genius?
I don’t think that I thought of it in those terms. I thought of it more as being somewhat of a savior of the people. I was taking them out of the poverty mode that they were in, and enriching their lives—not in a monetary way but in a spiritual way. I was giving them something that was long-lasting, that permeated every aspect of their being. As to that time with the Fair, it was very easy to let them know the Fair was something put together by other people to benefit those other people, and that visitors got nothing more than a little bit of eye-candy out of it, whereas in coming to the service they got a connection with their Savior, with their God, with the people of the community—something to enrich their lives and to transport into every aspect of their lives. It would take them beyond the little time that the Fair was going on, and provide them with a pathway.
I understand a big change started in Wall Street, when you were seeking financial help for the YMCA and your own church. You turned a spiritual corner at that point.
I began to realize that this wasn’t just another business venture. Unfortunately, I had started it as a business thinking I could turn from having a “product” into providing something of which I didn’t have to keep an inventory. That I could go with my wits, and that I could go with my understanding. I had always been able to persuade people with my words. It was as if, one day, the context of what I was saying, and the heart-connection that I was attempting to establish with the people, clicked in for me, and I felt the power of the Lord coming in. I felt the energy of spreading that power to others and how, by magnifying it, the power became all the more intense for all of us, including myself.
Was this on one occasion, or was it a whole series of experiences for you?
It was a series for me. Various other people felt it when they reached the point where they opened up to the message. They no longer chose to specify that they only wanted to be with the Lord on Sunday; they began to know that this was a way of life, that this was a way to connect with God and with their souls as they traveled through life towards eternity.
The Bible and truth
The Bible was of enormous importance in your message. You said, “The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.” In your thinking now, is the Bible still as central to the life of the Christian as it was?
For people in human bodies, yes. The people who were my first “sheep” were those who had nothing. They had ideals, most of which had been crushed. They needed something they could look to as the ultimate answer, the ultimate hope, and they looked primarily in times of trouble. When they were making money they had to be reminded to go back to the Bible, because it became tedious for them when they could go off, make money and purchase things with it. That was why it was so important to get them into that habit of coming to the services and of going to the Bible study groups. Then they could know how important it was to have a set of rules by which they could become Christians, the best people possible.
Are you putting all this in the past tense, or was it the Channel?
No, that was me! [laughs]
You said, “Sin will keep you from the Bible.” What about people who know the Bible, have read the Bible, but do not live by the Bible? Are they being kept from it by sin? Do you still hold that view of sin?
I think the mentality of society has shifted. It is not as true now as it was then. I still feel that sin, as I defined it, was anything that was not completely within the Christian principle—that could be drinking, gambling, and the things of the flesh—anything that kept people from the tenets of the Bible. As it exists today, society has a different mentality, a different inbuilt experience. Now people have a front-line experience of what is good and evil provided to them by the news media. We did not have that interchange in my time. It was at the point where the people had to be led by the hand, and they had to be given a book of rules, which was the Bible. Anything which kept them from adhering to that was sin, even if it was laziness, or some of the other major sins.
So you made a black-and-white statement to help their self-discipline?
It was what they needed because they had no discipline.
But people don’t need that today because they have a wider view of what life is like?
Yes.
Is the Bible no longer to be seen as the Word of God?
The energy of the Bible is the word of God. Each little word was chosen for each edition of the Bible by the compilers and is not necessarily a true account of the Word as it was given. It was put into a form which provided the action that was thought necessary by the compilers.
There is some evidence that parts of the Bible have been deliberately left out.
Certainly, I know that now; I did not know it when I was in physical form.
Bible omissions
What part of the original teaching of the Bible is most missing from it these days?
Reincarnation, and the soul’s journey through life.
Is there a misunderstanding about the place of women in society because of the Bible’s teaching?
Yes. Here again, the Bible was shifted to comply with what those who ordered the compilations wished the energy set-up to be vis-à-vis men and women. It was always men who asked for Bibles to be compiled or translated. They had the idea that women were less than they. This was at a time when there were very few women who were allowed to have any degree of literacy, so it played into what everyone currently thought, when women were considered to be mere chattels rather than people who should have rights as well as duties.
So the teaching about the nature of marital relationships is flawed for that reason?
Yes.
What about the teaching concerning homosexuality?
That is also flawed.
The Bible and the Word of God
Some Bible teachers have considerable influence in today’s Christian church. Should they be listened to?
By those people who are drawn to their message—they are drawn because they are at a stage where they need the message which is being taught, as all of my flock were drawn to me because they needed my message. With my message they were able to grow and become as enlightened as they could, within their intellectual, mental, and physical limitations.
So for these people today, the Bible is still…
Very critical.
…the Word of God?
The Word of God, and very critical, too.
The Word in a broad sense. Despite the Bible’s missing reincarnation, despite its distorting the place of women in society, despite incorrect teaching about women, homosexuality, and maybe one or two other things, it still represents the Word of God?
The energy of the Word of God is there, and it represents the how-to manual for people to go through life, because this is what they need at this stage of their becoming mature.
Can you explain to me what you mean by the phrase “The Word of God”?
That is more your term than mine at this point. I now use “the energy of the Word of God,” which is unconditional love. That permeates everything. If it is allowed to be felt, it can be said in any language, in any set of words, and it will be felt. The words themselves are immaterial; it is the energy behind the words that is important.
Jesus and heaven
You said this once: “A rule I have had for years is to treat the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. His is not a creed, a mere doctrine, but it is He Himself we have.”
The man known as the Lord Jesus Christ in the Bible and by me, while in physical form, is an energy which is of the most intense, beautiful, totally giving, totally loving energy within all of creation. It is an energy which, once you open to it, becomes a part of you. It joins with you and allows you to feel the unconditional love which is God the Creator and all of the universe. In accepting that unconditional love it is as if I become a twin with that energy—then it and I are inseparable.
You once said, “We talk about heaven being so far away. It is within speaking distance to those who belong there. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.” How do you prepare?
You prepare by going in and connecting with the energy. It was a bit presumptuous of me to say it was a place so far away, when I am now here, there, and everywhere. It is heaven to be in this unconditional love. I could have been in it on Earth in physical form, had I opened up to the suggestion and not put it as something that was so far away to be attained. That, again, was what was necessary to shape the lives of those who came under my tutelage.
In fairness to you now, you once said, “It is within speaking distance to those who belong.”
But to speak is not to feel, and I now know that feeling is important. I could speak of it but not accept it. So I quibble with my own terminology! The idea was somewhat right, but very narrow in its application. If one were but to reach out to the unconditional love that is heaven, it is within reach. To speak of it without believing in it, accepting it, and surrendering to it, does not get one to that place of ecstasy which is heaven.
A lot of people would like to ask you what heaven is like.
In a sensory sense it is everything you could possibly want. It is being enwrapped in unconditional love, support, companion-ship, comfort—everything that you could possibly envision. It is not for most a physical place, where people walk around in bodies. Those who transition generally keep some form of their body until they acclimate. Those of us who travel around a lot, experiencing and sampling, simply go with energy. We are totally connected with all of the other energy.
Have you met with Jesus?
Oh! Of course. He is an energy of a higher order than most of those whom I meet. He has the knowledge and the wisdom of all that has gone into what is called “the spirit, the connection of all the souls.” Of course He has knowledge of some of the negative experiments on the Earth, and some of the negativity, such as the means of his passing while he was incarnated as Jesus. He envisions and holds only that purest energy of the Creator, without flaws, without negativity. It is an inspiration to be within his energy.
The Bible and the Christian Church call Jesus “The Son of God.” How should we understand this description?
All souls are children of God; all those incarnated as males are sons of God; all those incarnated in a female body are daughters of God. The Creator is within all of us. When Jesus was on the Earth and in the Bible, it was at a time when people did not recognize the divinity that was within them. There had to be some torch which brought them to an understanding to the beginning of spirituality. This spirit was coming down to show the way to people in physicality to get in touch with their souls and to get in touch with the God-Force while in physical form, but no one would believe that was possible if he were not designated as The Son of God.
Are there others like Jesus, or is he unique?
There are others like him. Some of them you know as the archangels. He is on a high plateau with those. There is a cadre of souls who were in physical form, who were able to bring their enlightenment, their knowledge of their soul, into their physical bodies and ascend with all of that knowledge intact. What we call the Ascended Masters. They are of a vibration almost as intense.
Satan and hell
Do you have experience of the devil? I’m sure you mentioned him while you were on Earth.
I have experience of the devil in two forms: I have experience within Earth’s dimension of the devil, where there is all the negativity that can possibly exist—hatred, inhumanity to others. This I have experienced on Earth, and on Earth, this energy is called the devil. Secondly, I know the core of this energy which derives from the source of all energy, which is the Creator, is of God.