Volume XVII - (2016)

Multidimensional Reality

Written by Kerry Pobanz Kerry Pobanz

Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 17, 2016 - Pages 177-194

One of the most fascinating and extraordinary developments in our time is the continuing revelation of the multidimensional nature of the human soul, or alternatively, the multidimensional nature of the cosmos as structured through infinitely creative human consciousness. For long ages human beings never suspected that their true birthright as sons and daughters of God, is to beings of eternal love and endless creativity, capable of existing in multiple dimensions or realities at the same time. However, as we jump into the 21st century, these potentialities are beginning to be experienced and recognized. 

Four contemporary authors—Dannion Brinkley, Whitley Strieber, Graham Hancock and Jurgen Ziewe—offer tantalizing glimpses into this hitherto unexplored aspect of human consciousness and the human soul. These are then explicated through a brief consideration of the teachings of Seth, channeled through Jane Roberts, which speak of the human soul existing simultaneously in multiple dimensions. We conclude with a commentary showing how the Divine Principle’s theology of returning resurrection can be accommodated within Seth’s notion of the growth of the human soul.

 

Four Testimonies of Personal Multidimensionality

Dannion Brinkley

In Secrets of the Light (2008), Dannion Brinkley describes his third major near-death experience (NDE), in which he is astonished to discover that he exists as an indisputably multidimensional being. Consider the following passage from Secrets of the Light:

This same system infused me with the stunning revelation that we live in different dimensions, and that many realities exist beyond this one.

At the same time, I saw so clearly that our mortal, human presence within this earthly plane is in no way diminished by the presence of those other realities. In fact, it was indelibly impressed upon me just how vitally important the work we do on Earth is in the greater scheme of things. In earnest, we need to take to heart this one fact that the evolution of every one of us, along with humankind as a whole, has an unmistakable and mighty impact on the overall development of the entire universe. Each of us is intricately woven into the plan of perfection. Collectively and individually, we are indispensable in the pursuit of that perfection. Although we are all unique in our identities and how we manifest our life force, we remain an inseparable component of the one consciousness—our universal unified field. Like the individual notes in an exquisite melody, each of us is essential to the flow of harmony, to the wholeness and beauty of the universal rhapsody that breathes life into the core of our souls. Even more astonishing for me was the realization that, as multidimensional beings, aspects of us (in our multilayered totality) are doing this powerful work in several places at once. I don’t know about you, but I thought that was some pretty wild and cosmic information to grip!

I always thought one life held quite enough spiritual intrigue for me to handle. Then to discover we coexist, with different aspects of ourselves, in multiple lives on multiple levels of consciousness was a huge leap for me. Nevertheless, I knew it was true. And it helped me to understand why we need so much sleep at night. Think about it—with all the work we’re doing on so many levels, no wonder we feel tired all the time! This bounty of universal truth was the treasure of knowledge I acquired from my visits beyond the veil. [1]
Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber, originally a disciple of Russian mystic philosopher George Gurdjieff, spent a good part of his life writing about visitations from intelligent, nonhuman beings at his forest cabin in upstate New York. A person of great honesty and critical common sense, he continuously tried to come to grips with his numerous transdimensional experiences. In describing them in “Whitley’s Journal” (2015), he wrote:

I was living in five different lives at once, perhaps more. It was fabulously mind-opening, deeply disturbing and intellectually radicalizing. In a few seconds, it fundamentally, permanently revised my vision of myself and of what it means to be human. [2]

Whitley’s fuller 2007 description of this event more substantially conveys the stunning reality of his experience:

Then I was in bed again, and aware that I was asleep, and not only that but I was dreaming about the lives of five different Whitley Striebers unfolding in five parallel universes at the same time, one of which was the one I was in.

While this was happening, the five of them were distinct, and I was inside five different selves at once. There was no confusion, and I wasn’t on the outside looking in. I was in these lives, living them, all at the same time. I wasn’t in the least confused by this. It seemed extraordinary, of course, but also perfectly possible.

In four of these lives, Anne [his wife] was also present, but not in the fifth, and that was a life I very much wanted to leave. In it, I was walking down a path with a small boy, toward a quay where there were a number of men. The quay was on a pellucid bay, its water an exquisite turquoise-green color. It was daytime in this universe, midday. In this universe, Anne had died of her stroke, and I was walking with my grandson, who was about three.

In another, Anne and I lived in my old family home in San Antonio. It was very worn and run-down, and she was bravely trying to clean the kitchen. We were obviously very poor, and clinging to what once had been fine. Here, it was late afternoon.

In a third, we were living together and in an apartment. We were asleep in this universe, and the dogs were under the bed. It was in this universe that the fingers had grasped my hand and were tugging at it.

When I woke up and went to the window, it might well have been in this other universe, which was a close approximation to the one I am living in now. But, to tell the truth, since that night, I don’t feel all that fixed anywhere. I am not sure where I am, only that my life is unfolding.

The fourth universe was the one where the trees were in the living room. They were decorative, and the fashion, I was aware, had been adopted from pictures from another world. What was so exciting here was that TV transmissions from another planet were being picked up and rebroadcast by SETI, and they were a gigantic sensation.

This all ended with the yanking on my hand, the awakening at 4:53 and the observation of the drone outside the window. [3]
Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock, in his 2015 book The Divine Spark, describes a visionary experience he had while participating in a group specifically organized to share the ingestion of the usually hallucinatory drug Ayahuasca:

This absence of visions, which I experienced as a gulf, a void, seemed to go on for a very long while, but gradually an odd state of mind began to overtake me. I had glimpses of a whole other life that I was living somewhere else, where I was me and yet had a different biography from the one that defines me in this life. I knew different people, did different things, and was living out that parallel life completely oblivious to this one. So it was an odd thing, lying in the darkness in our ceremonial space here in Brazil, under the influence of Ayahuasca but not very much—if at all—carried away by visions, to experience these strange episodes of crossover, of intersection, in which I became aware of both lives simultaneously, with each life seeming like a dream—ephemeral, fleeting, and yet haunting—that I was experiencing in the other. [4]
Jurgen Ziewe

Jurgen Ziewe discovered as a teenager that he was able to enter dream states and remain fully conscious. Over a period of 40 years, he was able to rigorously train his consciousness in precise maneuvering among and investigation of dream realities, developing his capacity for lucid dreaming to an exceedingly refined level that enabled him to almost spontaneously enter out-of-body (OBE) states and interact with many people inhabiting different realms or dimensions of the afterlife. For those 40 years Ziewe, an artist by trade, also kept exacting journals of his spiritual experiences, until 2012 when he received that he should begin the process of sharing his lucid dreaming explorations with the general public.

In Vistas of Infinity (2015), Ziewe tells of an experience in which he discovered that he has numerous, simultaneous lives:

While still in OBE I contemplated the significance of what Consciousness was trying to show me and I found it was twofold. On the one hand, the building represented my lifelong work on myself, my career and family. The murals dated back to my youth when I was writing and illustrating a children’s story, but never finished it. The murals were the different illustrations for the book, each of which had taken me weeks in real life. That was over thirty years ago, hence it had been forgotten and had probably been fading away, so then was simply washed over.

On the other hand, Consciousness made it absolutely clear that I had been working on various other parts of the building over a very long period and I now clearly remembered it. I also started recalling other events with great clarity: paintings I had worked on, exhibitions I had put on, people I had met, old friends I knew well, none of which played any role whatsoever in my physical life. Here, in my OBE state, not just one, but perhaps two or more parallel life spans were rolled out in front of me, to my utter astonishment.

Consciousness was clearly showing me that my physical life was just a small part of many other life experiences and that, at night, possibly in deep dream state, or even parallel to my waking state, I had been busy pursuing one or more alternative existences. With this thought, I sank into a semi-meditative state and I began to remember more and more detail with astonishing clarity; I gained the realization that the life I am leading back in my physical body is only the tip of the iceberg, one of many lives I am leading—or, perhaps better, Consciousness is leading—each one of equal significance. [5]

What seems especially extraordinary about these four testimonies is that these four writers were all shocked to realize that somehow they were actually living in other realities seemingly parallel to the reality they were normally conscious of, and that somehow these other dimensionalities were accessible under certain conditions. So, how do we explain apparently multiple, simultaneous incarnations of the same person living different lives in other, perhaps parallel, dimensions?

 

The Significance of Multiple Incarnations—Three Channeled Explanations

The last paragraph of Ziewe’s testimony offers what this writer believes to be an excellent clarification of this phenomenon. Ziewe’s remarkable and extensive investigations of consciousness enabled him to recognize that multiple, simultaneous incarnations of the “same person” can take place, not because a person has been simultaneously incarnated in many different physical bodies in numerous dimensions, or because a person has been re-incarnated through numerous physical lifetimes on earth, but rather because human consciousness possesses an inherently designed, natural character of multidimensionality—a natural capability for multidimensional projection and/or manifestation. He affirms that while we have a physical incarnation and live through a physical lifetime on the earth, each of us, almost completely unknown to ourselves, is also endowed with an extraordinarily powerful and creative consciousness—the direct expression of the human soul, that is capable of entering, or generating, other nonphysical, though substantial, multidimensional realities. In fact, because our consciousness is so powerful, we need to affirm Ziewe’s final realization that “the life I am leading back in my physical body is only the tip of the iceberg, one of many lives I am leading—or, perhaps better—Consciousness is leading.”

Here, my contention would be that human beings as a race are entering a higher stage of awareness that affords them the capability, under certain conditions, to become cognizant of their own natural multidimensionality of consciousness, or their natural multidimensionality of soul. 

Evidence for the reality that humans can naturally manifest multiple, simultaneous incarnations, like those testified to by Brinkley, Strieber, Hancock and Ziewe, comes from several remarkable channeled sources, the first two of which specifically describe the natural multidimensionality of the human spirit-self and otherwise stand as a provocative prelude to the third, which affirms the limitless creativity of the foundational identity that is the human soul.

Erik Medhus

First, there are the channeled descriptions of Erik Medhus, who as a 20-year-old young adult grappling with severe bipolar disorder, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. In his book My Life after Death (2015), Erik’s verbatim descriptions of his life in the spirit world, communicated through psychic medium Jamie Butler, are truly stunning.

He testifies that after enduring a period of serious healing in the afterlife, and as he began to train as a spirit guide to assist people on earth, he learned how to naturally split himself into numerous selves or fully conscious manifestations that could then independently guide many people at the same time in many different locations. In the following paragraphs, Erik elucidates why this splitting is a completely natural process for spirit-persons living in the spirit world.

Splitting into infinite selves feels amazing. Imagine looking at yourself in a mirror and there’s another mirror behind you. You see infinite reflections of yourself in the mirror you’re facing. My home base is between the first set of facing mirrors, but it doesn’t feel like all my other reflected selves are in a different location.

Say I divide into four Eriks so I can help four people on earth at the same time. I get this sense in each of those four parts of me that what I’m learning and understanding and doing is in reflection number one. At the same time, I’m directly experiencing in reflections two, three, and four. That’s because the experiences of all the divided “me’s” go back to the home base. But home base is not two miles from Erik one, a hundred miles from Erik two, five feet from Erik three, and six inches from Erik four. Home base is also in each of those four Eriks. It’s in every reflection. Does that make sense?

Let me use another analogy. Take a prism. The sunlight that goes through it is my energy, my soul. The prism is the tool I use to divide the sunlight into all the colors of the rainbow, but there’s still only one prism and the separate colors still represent the entirety of my light.

Here’s another analogy: I take my heart consciousness energy and shake it loose like a saltshaker so that all the salt granules are dispersed. This way, I can go to the homes of those [thousands of] blog members, one salt granule at a time. Each granule has my ability to communicate, prank, get information, learn, teach, help, heal, observe, visit my family, and everything else I do—all at the same time. Then when I bring each salt granule back into the saltshaker, it all becomes part of me again. To someone on Earth, that might seem impossible, but you have to remember that both time and energy work and move differently here. [6]

Medhus’s description of splitting into multiple selves is evocative of the similar phenomenon depicted in the 2007 movie Next, where Nicholas Cage’s character employs his capacity for psychic imaging to discover the presence of terrorists who planted an atomic bomb in a matrix of abandoned Los Angeles industrial buildings. He has very little time to find the bomb and disarm it before it explodes. In the interest of saving time, he is portrayed, via special effects, to be able to split off from himself multiple (three or more), diaphanous manifestations of himself, selves who then simultaneously and systematically search the buildings for the terrorists and the bomb. Each of these manifestations is clearly conscious—a unitary expression of his own consciousness—who is sent out to explore in a specific direction and then quickly returns with the requisite information.

Barry Eaton

A second source is No Goodbyes (2015) by Barry Eaton, who records the following description channeled from a close friend in the spirit world. It is a description of multiple, simultaneous being that corroborates that of Erik Medhus:

Judy told us she has advanced to the stage where she is now able to be in hundreds of places at the same time. Part of her activities in the afterlife includes working with spirit children in the healing center after they cross over. [7]

Further corroboration of this psychic capacity to occupy different locations simultaneously has been traditionally understood in terms of the phenomenon of bilocation. Bilocation, or multilocation, is the purported ability to be present in numerous locations at the same time. It is apparently an ancient phenomenon that has been experienced, or even practiced at will, by mystics, saints, monks, shamans, magic adepts, and by many spiritual teachers, including Satya Sai Baba and, most recently, by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. [8] Bilocation entails the projection of a person’s self, whether conscious or subconscious, as a double that appears in various locations simultaneously. Since the appearance of this double is so lifelike and normally functioning to those who witness it, it is often construed to somehow be an actual physical body. However, from a higher-dimensional perspective, it is likely more correct to describe this double as substantial but only apparently physical, inasmuch as it is primarily a manifestation of that person’s consciousness. In this regard, some have suggested that bilocation is a rarified form or species of astral projection. 

One example of bilocation is St. Alphonsus Maria de’ Ligouri, who in 1774 was seen by several witnesses at the bedside of the dying Pope Clement XIV, when in fact the saint was confined verifiably to his cell at a location a four-day journey away. Another historical example is the Franciscan abbess Ven. Maria Coronel de Agreda (1602-1665). Her bilocations, verified by numerous witnesses, seemingly took place both during the day and at night more than 500 times, and often involved appearing in Mexico and Spain at the same time. [9]

Jane Roberts

Yet, as fascinating and compelling as Medhus’s and Eaton’s descriptions are, they do not completely address the simultaneous-lives phenomenon described earlier. The experiences of the four authors cited initially are, in fact, best appreciated and understood through the teachings of Seth, channeled through Jane Roberts in the 1970s. Medhus and Eaton describe multiple, simultaneous manifestations of a single personality, whereas Seth’s teachings describe multiple, simultaneous “incarnations.” Stated another way, we transition here from the lower-octave explanation of the phenomenon of one personality being projected simultaneously to numerous locations, to the higher-octave Sethian notion of one human soul being simultaneously projected into numerous personalities—each with its own integrity and participating in its own unique lifetime, while remaining rooted in its originating soul.

 

Seth’s Explication of the Soul

The extensive teachings of Seth—a seemingly vast, perhaps angelic, intelligence who otherwise describes himself as an “energy personality essence” were channeled through Jane Roberts from 1964 to 1984. Seth seems to have much to say about this issue. He seems to be the original teacher of the inherent multidimensionality of the human soul through his idea of simultaneous, parallel selves, which he refers to as “probable selves” in one context and as “reincarnational selves” in another. Seth seems to be saying that the fact that consciousness is capable of generating simultaneously these different forms of alternative selves is the primary expression of the multidimensionality of the human soul. Seth specifically terms this reality “The Unknown Reality,” which is also the title of his two-volume work.

The most important element for us to understand here is Seth’s notion of the soul. For Seth, who also calls the soul “the Entity,” the soul is essentially eternal and is a person’s “inner self” or “larger self.” The Entity, or soul, is a person’s “inner identity.” In other words, the soul is who each of us truly is. Seth says, “Your soul therefore—the soul that you are—the soul that you are part of—that soul is a far more creative and miraculous phenomenon than you previously supposed.” [10]

Seth regards a person as only one manifestation of his or her own soul. Because the foremost character of the Entity is its creativity (in its effort, we might suggest, to become a co-creator with God), it is eternally in a state of flux, of learning and becoming. This is to affirm that the soul, by its very nature, is not a closed system; it is eternally a work in progress, and it is indestructible.

How then does the soul continue to learn, experience and grow? It does this through sending out representations, or manifestations, of itself to explore, investigate and learn, which later return their unique harvest to the soul. But these manifestations are not just symbols or images of the soul. Because the soul is infinitely and powerfully creative, its manifestations are all as fully alive and filled with creative vitality as the soul itself. These are what Seth variously refers to as “probable selves,” “reincarnational selves,” “parallel selves,” or “counterparts.” Each possesses its own unique personality, individuality and identity, and each capable of living through a lifetime of experiences in a multitude of otherdimensional realms, the vast majority of which are not physical. 

For instance, at one point, Jane Roberts explains:

According to Seth there are many other systems of reality in which we operate, all unknown to the waking ego. Not only are there universal systems composed of matter and antimatter, but there are an infinite variety of realities in between. Apparently there are also “probable realities,” in which we follow paths we may have taken, but did not, in physical life… [11]

[E]ach of us has counterparts in other systems of reality; not identical selves or twins, but other selves who are part of our Entity, developing abilities in a different way than we are here. [12]

The counterparts that Jane mentions here refer to “probable selves” that are essentially thought projections, but whose reality is at least as “real” as our physical reality, if not more real. In effect, I think it is legitimate to imagine these as mental realities, or projections of consciousness, that are fully alive, yet function in the last analysis as proxies for the soul who is trying to learn through them.

 

Two Examples of Encountering Probable Selves

I think it may be useful here to present a couple of examples of what might be conceived of as “probable selves.” In The Seth Material, Jane Roberts shares an experience in which she had fallen asleep, entered a lucid dreaming state and, otherwise fully awake, projected herself out-of-body. Traveling at great speed in her astral body, she eventually arrived at a seemingly unknown location in the middle of a city, where she walked along a street, entered a hotel and went into a bookshop. In her dream state, Jane felt that her entire environment and all the people there were quite physically real. In looking through the bookshelves, Jane was puzzled to discover three books on ESP written by herself, since she is aware that in her waking reality she had written and published only one such book. The several clerks in the store were standing still but watching her intently, at which point Jane finally felt she needed to speak to them:

“Uh, I haven’t seen these books before,” I said.

“I should think not. Where you live, you haven’t written them yet,” the young man said. With this he started laughing, but in a friendly open manner, as did the others who now gathered around.

“Where am I?” I asked.

He told me and said, “But forget it. That is, you won’t remember anyhow.”

“Oh, yes, I will. I’ve trained myself.”

“You just aren’t that good at it yet,” one of them said. And I got really angry. Whether I was astral-traveling or whatever, these people were really having a good laugh at my expense.

“Look,” I said, “I’m in my astral body. My physical body is home in bed.”

“We know that,” the young man said.

The books caught my eye again. “Go ahead,” he said, “memorize the titles. I’m sorry, but it won’t do you any good. You won’t remember.” Now all of them smiled more sympathetically.

“I’ve already memorized two street names,” I said. “Are you sure I’m going to write those books?”

“Here, you already have.” [13]

Also in the context of lucid dreaming, Jurgen Ziewe recorded an experience of entering into a distinctively probabilistic scenario, which enabled him to consciously process another possible path he might have followed in his life but did not actually explore. In his lucid dream, Ziewe experienced himself as a kind of probable self. He encountered two elderly ladies who were somehow old friends, but old friends he realized he never met before in his life. He somehow especially recognized the older of the two, and slowly this recognition overcame his confusion. Ziewe expressed the vividness of the moment in this way:

My confusion grew with every moment as I realized with more certainty that I had known her and yet there was no trace of memory I could clearly relate to. When she looked at me I asked:

‘How do I know you?’

‘You would have known me had you not moved to England and met your young wife.’

I was shocked; perhaps I did know her after all and I enquired about her name.

‘My name is Jung, but that won’t mean anything to you as we have never met, at least not in this lifetime. And no, I am not a distant relative of Carl Gustav,’ she said with a cheeky smile.

I was awestruck by the philosophical implications of what would have been had I made different choices in my life, had I not decided to go to England. Slowly an alternative life began to roll up in front of me where I had met another woman, full of life, unconcerned and pretty despite the fact that she was ten years older than me. There was serenity in her and even now I could detect a lust for life.

‘Yes, we would have married despite the fact that I am so much older than you, but that wouldn’t have mattered. We go much further back than that and no, we wouldn’t have had children. I never got married, never found the right one, because he had already gone.’

Miss Jung, which in German also means ‘young’, now looked at me with a slightly sad yet somehow mischievous smile. I wondered whether the name she had given me was simply a metaphor for letting me know that when she was much younger she would have made an attractive partner for me.

At a stroke I was reminded of my real-life family with my beautiful wife, the love of my life, who had given us two beautiful daughters, and not a day had gone by when I had not felt our deep connection, despite the fact—or because of it—that we had such different natures.

Yet at this moment I looked at the wife who could have been, her blonde hair stylishly trimmed into a bob and an enticing smile which was full of earnest love. I felt attracted to her and deeply aware of a potentially consuming connection. This didn’t escape her. She sipped her tea and looked at me out of the corners of her eyes.

‘I never married,’ she repeated. ‘I always knew that any marriage would only ever be second best to what could have been. There was always something missing when I met a man and this something was you.’

I felt left in a dilemma. She looked quite sad now, quite forlorn as she lowered her teacup and ran her finger round the rim of her cup, touching it comfortingly.

I too felt her sadness as if it was my own. I had rejected her despite never having met her in my life. I had chosen my wife and my two children and yet there was an element of guilt. But then I knew I had made the choice I did for the right reason. Had I not done so, this lucid encounter on this other dimension would have been quite different. [14]

Seth explains that many people have encountered probable selves in out-of-body experiences. He further maintains that reality is structured such that each probable self considers itself the real you, and in relation to itself you would be the probable self. In addition, you are not only capable of becoming aware of your own probable selves but of all probable selves, because they are rooted in the soul and are capable of being aware of each other.

 

The “Reincarnational” Self

Seth terms a particular species of probable self a “reincarnational self,” which affords us an opportunity to ask: What does Seth mean by “reincarnation”? Seth rejects the conventional notion of reincarnation, in which the same person returns to earth to successively assume hundreds of different physical bodies, one per each physical lifetime. He discounts this idea as absurdly simplistic and false. But Seth does recognize what might be called a higher-dimensional form of “reincarnation,” in which a person’s original soul Entity chooses to send fragments of itself out as separate, absolutely unique expressions of itself, each however possessing a unique personality and existing as a unique “reincarnational” self. Essentially, since all time is finally simultaneous—existing at once, numerous reincarnational selves may be sent out to different historical eras or future eras at the same time; where each of these selves then experiences a lifetime learning different kinds of lessons that will accrue to advance the growth of the original soul Entity. 

Further, Seth has said that, because reality is by nature endlessly permeable (i.e., there exist no closed systems), these reincarnational selves are all living substantial (i.e., apparently physical) lives in other dimensions, and each is as real as another. All are in touch with each other, theoretically able to know about each other’s existence and able to share information among themselves. Sometimes they even have clear realizations of their simultaneous existences in parallel dimensions or universes.

In other words, the integrity of a person’s soul consists in the integrity of a conglomerate of unique probable or reincarnational selves. From a higher perspective, Seth offers the following intriguing descriptions of the nature of the soul, which make clear that each soul stands as a kind of unity of a cosmic collective—a whole that is indeed profoundly greater than the sum of its holographic parts:

A group of cells forms an organ. A group of selves forms a soul. I am not telling you that you do not have a soul to call your own. You are part of your soul. It belongs to you and you to it. You dwell within its reality as a cell dwells within the reality of an organ. The organ is temporal in your terms. The soul is not. [15]

… the soul could be considered as a prime identity that is in itself a gestalt of many other individual consciousnesses—an unlimited self that is yet able to express itself in many ways and forms and yet maintain its own identity, its own “I am-ness,” even while it is aware that its I am-ness may be part of another I am-ness. [16]

 

Similarity of Reincarnation in Seth’s Teaching and Returning Resurrection in the Divine Principle

In the remainder of this paper, I would like to address, first, the similarity between Seth’s notion of reincarnation and the notion of returning resurrection in the Divine Principle, the revealed theology of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and second, to offer some final reflections on the nature of human identity.

It is probably best to begin by recognizing that Rev. Moon, across the enormous corpus of his teaching, taught a great deal about the existence and nature of the human spirit, but spoke almost nothing about the human soul—except to affirm that the soul did exist and that it was completely different from the spirit.

Beyond this, Divine Principle’s understanding of God’s original principles for creation include the idea that the human spirit grows on the foundation of the physical body, and that if human beings had not suffered a Fall which cut them off from God’s love and the possibility of growing to attain spiritual maturity, they could have attained such maturity or completion within one lifetime on earth. Yet, because the Fall did take place, human beings have never been able to attain their rightful spiritual maturity—to inherit the full heart of God and participate in the full multidimensionality of God’s love—before dying and moving into the spirit world.

Once in the spirit world, and existing without a physical body, human beings needed a way to continue to receive vitality elements that would normally come from participation in specific areas of human life on earth in order to continue their fundamental spiritual growth. While suffused with many difficulties, the method of growth available to spirits was realized as “returning resurrection” by way of spiritual cooperation between people in the spirit world without physical bodies and people on earth with physical bodies. Thus, in order to fulfill their maturation as spirits, it was necessary for spirits to painstakingly continue to return to earth, over and over again, striving to implement spiritually cooperative relationships with persons living on earth in order to have certain critical earthly experiences. That is to say, if a spirit in the spirt world could emotionally support or assist a person on earth, then the spirit could qualify to inherit some of the vitality elements of the person living on earth, making the relationship mutually beneficial.

In other words, in returning resurrection, spirits are drawn to return to earth and, through persons on earth, have pivotal experiences in earthly life that they missed out on in their own lives on earth. These experiences, shared within the matrix of earthly lives, enable them to experience maturation and wholeness in the spirit world. Most of these pivotal experiences are in the realm of heart and love, e.g., experiencing a truly parental heart for children, or a husband’s or wife’s heart for his wife or her husband, or true friendship, or authentic love for grandparents, etc.

In the Sethian perspective of an original system of creation, the human soul becomes progressively more educated and mature in heart, gaining greater and greater wisdom, through its originally inherent capacity to send out manifestations of itself as probable selves and reincarnational selves—as spirit-selves that accrue life experience in numerous dimensions of reality, which would also include the physical dimension that all of us normally, and more or less exclusively, relate to. These spirit-persons, with great integrity, creative vitality and desire, then explore the possibilities of living lifetimes in many different contexts in otherdimensional realities, thereby gaining life experience to further the growth and development of their own souls. Thus, spirits engaged in returning resurrection to acquire certain kinds of life experience in the physical realm to further their growth in the spirit world, reflects the larger principle of growth that seems to govern the development of the human soul. That is to say, the principle of the growth of the spirit in returning resurrection seems to be a kind of subset of a larger principle.

 

The Soul’s Unlimited Resources for Growth and Development

It seems appropriate to end where the paper began: with the recognition that the vast majority of human beings, both on earth and in the spirit world, simply do not know who they are. We have allowed ourselves to identify with the incredibly narrow notion of who we think we are—i.e., with a wholly benighted conception of ourselves. Seth makes this point in his teaching quite eloquently:

It is almost impossible to begin with concepts of one isolated universe, one self at the mercy of its past, one time sequence, and end up with any acceptable theory of a multidimensional soul or godhead that is anything else but a glorified personified concept of what you think man is.

Not only do your metaphysics and sciences suffer, but your daily experience as a human being is far less than it could be. There are, then, probabilities quite present, and for that matter biologically practical, that would allow for a change in individual consciousness so great as literally to propel the race into another level of experience entirely. As in your terms the cavemen ventured out into the daylight of the earth, there is a time for man to venture out into a greater knowledge of his subjective reality, to explore the dimensions of selfhood and go beyond the small areas of himself in which he has thus far found shelter. [17]

Thus, from everything we have considered in this paper, it seems clear, and urgent, that we need to turn over a new leaf and make a new beginning by making every effort to discover and accept our true identity as cosmic creatures, with unlimited potentials to think, imagine, love, and create. At the same time, we must know that we are ancient creatures, carrying within ourselves millions of years of the experiences of the human race encoded within our DNA. Moreover, because we have been designed to become co-creators with God through eternity, our consciousness is unquestionably powerful enough to create universes.

Our true identity is that we are creatures of an enormously rich and multiplex selfhood that ultimately carries us into godhood! Are we meant to be omnipresent? Yes! Are we meant to be omniscient? Yes! Are we meant to be omnipotent? Yes! Are we designed with the potentiality to become like God? Yes!

Let us open ourselves to what God truly wants us to see and know! Let us reject the smallness and pettiness that tries to threaten our everyday lives. By taking responsibility for who we really are, we will find ourselves celebrating the closing comment that Dannion Brinkley makes to end all of his public lectures: “You must realize that you are all mighty spiritual beings!”

 

Notes

[1] Dannion Brinkley and Kathryn Brinkley, Secrets of the Light: Lessons from Heaven (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), pp. 72-73. 

[2] Whitley Strieber, “Whitley’s Journal” (12/11/2015). On “The Unknown Country” at http://www.unknowncountry.com/.

[3] Strieber, “Whitley’s Journal” (12/11/2007). On “The Unknown Country.”

[4] Graham Hancock, The Divine Spark: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization (San Francisco: Disinformation Books, 2015), p. 289.

[5] Jurgen Ziewe, Vistas of Infinity: How to Enjoy Life When You Are Dead—Out of Body Explorations into Non-Local States of Consciousness and Post-Life Territories (Inner Eye Publishing, 2016), p. 169.

[6] Erik Medhus with Elisa Medhus, My Life after Death: A Memoir from Heaven (New York, NY: Atria Paperback and Hillsboro, OR: Beyond Words, 2015), pp. 149-150.

[7] Barry Eaton, No Goodbyes: Life-Changing Insights from the Other Side (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2015), p. 200.

[8] From the Wikipedia article “Bilocation.” The article does not mention Rev. Sun Myung Moon, but he is included here because, even though I was unable to discover a specific print reference for his affirmation of mentally projecting himself to his disciples under certain conditions, I was present at a speech he gave in the 1980s in which he did mention this ability. 

[9] Pamela Rae Heath, Mind-Matter Interaction: A Review of Historical Reports, Theory and Research (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011), [eBook format].

[10] Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul (San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing and Novato, CA: New World Library, 1972, 1994), pp. 75-76. 

[11] Roberts, Seth Speaks, p. 195.

[12] Jane Roberts, The Seth Material: The Spiritual Teacher That Launched the New Age (Manhasset, NY: New Awareness Network, 1970, 2001), pp. 193-194.

[13] Ibid., p. 190. 

[14] Jurgen Ziewe, The Ten Minute Moment (2013), pp. 68-70.

[15] Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality (San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing and Novato, CA: New World Library, 1974, 1994), p. 158. 

[16] Roberts, Seth Speaks, p. 83. Yet another quote where Seth intriguingly affirms the collective identity of the human soul is on p. 82:

The soul can be considered as an electromagnetic field, of which you are a part. It is a field of concentrated action when you consider it in this light—a powerhouse of probabilities or probable actions, seeking to be expressed; a grouping of nonphysical consciousnesses that nevertheless knows itself as an identity.”

[17] Jane Roberts, The Unknown Reality: Volume One (San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing, 1977, 1996), pp. 61-62.