Here is a question Sri Harold Klemp has been asked about understanding Spiritual Experiences.
Read on for clues that may help you.
Q: I would like to see my past lives. How do I go about this?
A: It is easiest to trace past lives through a study of your dreams.
To awaken such past-life dreams, make a note of things you greatly like or dislike. Do that also with people. Then watch your dreams. Also note if a certain country or century attracts you. There is a reason.
When we practice the Spiritual Exercises of ECK faithfully, the Inner Master will open us up to those things that are important to see concerning past lives. Most of them need not concern us. No matter what we were in the past during any other life, we are spiritually greater today.
The wealth and position we enjoyed in past lives mean nothing unless we know how to lift ourselves from materialism into the higher worlds. This does not mean to shun the good things of this life—family, home, wealth. God loves the rich man as much as the poor. We get no special benefits if we fall for the negative tricks of asceticism or unusual austerities.
We live the spiritual life beginning where we are today. We look to see the hand of Divine Spirit guiding us toward the greater consciousness, which leads us to becoming a more direct vehicle for Spirit.
—A Modern Prophet Answers Your Key Questions about Life, Book 1
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The Gift of a Spiritual Dream
By Sri Harold Klemp
“Rose,” a woman from Germany, had a dream where she was at a great dance, but everything looked like it was from the early 1950s. The clothes, the people, the music, the decorations, even the very structure of the room—it was all from the early 1950s. It occurred to Rose that that was when she was born.
In the dream, Rose looked around for a partner. She was going to dance with her aunt. But her aunt was dancing with someone else, and she looked happy. So Rose looked for another partner. But everybody was already dancing.
In this lifetime, Rose has had a very difficult time with her mother. It’s been a rough road. They haven’t always seen eye to eye. Her mother would give very definite rules, and Rose would have to follow them. Rose didn’t like it, and this caused hard feelings.
In her dream, Rose looked along the wall. There, sitting on a chair all by herself, was her mother.
“I’ll go dance with her,” Rose decided. “She looks unhappy.”
She went over to her mother and asked if she’d like to dance. The mother said she’d love to. So they started dancing and, true to form, her mother said, “Straighten your shoulders. Put that arm up higher.” And other rules that a German mama might have for her child.
But Rose noticed that they danced together extremely well. In fact, it was the best she had ever danced. Rose admitted to not being a very great dancer out here in the physical world. But there, even with her mother, it was just wonderful.
Rose thought to herself, No one’s ever led me through a dance like this before.
When Rose awoke, she knew the meaning of the dream. Between lives, before this one, Rose had chosen that particular Soul to be her mother. Rose had said, “This is a onetime deal only, OK?” Rose knew she needed certain spiritual disciplines so she could lead a safe and happy life and eventually find Eᴄᴋᴀɴᴋᴀʀ.
In a very special way, her mother led her to a very secure future and a good life. Rose is a happy woman now. She has a lot of zest for living. She accepts the blessings of the Holy Spirit with all her love and gratitude.
—Adapted from “Thanks for the Help and Love” in The Road to Spiritual Freedom
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Dreams & Medieval Past Lives
Understanding and Interpreting Dreams
Have you had a dream about a certain period of history? Could this be a memory of a past life?
Discover a deeper insight into your dreams in this answer from Sri Harold Klemp.
Dreaming about Medieval Times
Q: I haven’t been having any dreams that I can remember for the past month. This is unusual for me; I usually have dreams all the time. Is it karma? I would like to know, if possible, because I learn from my dreams.
Another thing I would like to know is, are there knights on the higher planes? I am attracted to medieval wars and battles.
A: In answer to your first question: By the time you read this, you will have started to dream again. There are times when Soul shifts gears; this is when we don’t always remember our dreams. But it is a passing thing.
About your attraction to knights and medieval wars and battles: Your interest in that period of history is due to your many past lives there.
It was a time of great adventure, chivalry, and heroics. The forces of darkness and light were in a hotly contested battle for centuries, and you played a part in those unsettled, but interesting, times.
History can teach us much about how mankind’s unlearned lessons repeat themselves. This allows us to use our knowledge to avoid unnecessary problems, because we can sidestep a lot of them.
People make history. You might enjoy the historical novels by Mary Stewart that bring to life the times of King Arthur at the beginning of the Middle Ages: The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and The Wicked Day.
You’ll find many spiritual insights in these books, for the author is adept at looking at past-life records on the Causal Plane.
—A Modern Prophet Answers Your Key Questions about Life, Book 1
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Why Do We Have Bad Dreams?
By Sri Harold Klemp
A good dream is one that helps you grow stronger, wiser, and more full of love.
So what are bad dreams for?
Children often have nightmares until the age of six or eight, and sometimes longer. Grown-ups do too, though not so often as a rule. But why scary dreams for good people?
A negative dream is generally a memory of a past life.
It may include experiences of mistreatment, suffering, and even death. Some of us even have dreams of being born, which can give a feeling of suffocation.
These experiences are part of everyone. Children still remember bits and pieces of past lives, and these bad dreams are a part of them.
Bad dreams are old fears.
Having a disturbing dream is like airing out a musty room in spring. You need to face that old fear until it loses its grip, for only then can you be free to live this life to its fullest.
So good and bad dreams both hold spiritual lessons.
—From ECK Wisdom on Karma and Reincarnation
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What Does It Mean to Dream About an Old Friend?
As spiritual leader of Eᴄᴋᴀɴᴋᴀʀ, Sri Harold Klemp receives thousands of letters from truth seekers around the world. All want direct and useful answers about how to travel the road to God. He replies personally to many of these letters.
Here is a question he was asked about the meaning of dreams and reincarnation.
Q: In my dreams, I am often with friends from the past whom I no longer see in the physical. These people had a big influence in my life at one time, but why are they in my dreams so often today?
A: Your question deals with the very broad sweep of reincarnation. The family you live with today is only a small part of the extended family from your past.
Each person’s past link with other people in this life is more like being a member of a farflung clan, which goes well beyond the close members of today’s family. So in this life, other members of your extended family come as schoolmates, childhood friends, teachers, and the like.
They remain in your dreams because they are a very real part of your world. For this lifetime, though, they have chosen a different mission and lifestyle, so you go along your separate paths.
But your inner bond spans time.
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Why Bad Things Happen to Good People
By Sri Harold Klemp
What do you suppose makes people unhappy? A survey would probably list a hundred reasons, both real and imagined.
Now how many of those people do you think would like to hear the true reason for their unhappiness? Just a guess—very few.
The choices you’ve made in the past are the direct cause of all your unhappiness today.
If this answer doesn’t suit you, don’t read another word. You have better things to do. But maybe you’re one of the few people who doesn’t absolutely reject the above explanation for your unhappiness. Then keep reading. Perhaps you’ll see how and why individuals make bad choices.
Most important, you may learn how to stop making them.
How We Get Here
Soul enters this world to pursue a series of tasks, for each is an exercise in spiritual purification. Taken as a whole, these assignments make up one’s destiny. To set the tone for Its mission, Soul enters a new lifetime with a body of strength or weakness, of great intellect or a simple mind, in a popular shade of skin or not, either as a male or a female, into wealth or poverty.
The idea of destiny as a concept is out of fashion in much of today’s Western society. People want to be captains of their own lives. They wish to run their own fate. They will shape their own tomorrows. Yet how can they do so without a knowledge of and an appreciation for the meticulous Law of Karma?
Or especially, of the Law of Love?
In spite of all fictions about who is the master of their own fate, they cannot even set the conditions of their birth. So the rules of karma and reincarnation remain a mystery, and they find a great deal of sorrow and disappointment in the outcome of their plans.
How could the stiff rules of karma include them?
Many would like to think they don’t, sure of being above the common pool of humanity and thus exempt from these rules.
The Lords of Karma
By and large, though, the Lords of Karma—not the individual—select a family for each Soul. They are responsible for the distribution of karma from the time each Soul first enters this world.
The Lord of Karma is like a minor’s guardian. He administers a trust on behalf of a spiritual infant, arranging for him or her to join a family with the best prospect for that Soul’s unfoldment. In selecting the time and place of reincarnation, the Lord of Karma is the sole judge. He is the sole arbiter in the choice of a body, health, family, or future. The Lord of Karma alone sets the conditions of most people’s fate.
Placement is a simple karmic detail. The Law of Karma governs all such placements, and he is only its agent.
The primal seed for each incarnation exists under the umbrella of destiny, which we also call past-life karma. On a practical level, genetic, cultural, and social elements combine to decide Soul’s place in this world. For people on the lower end of the survival scale, the Lord of Karma alone chooses the time and place of rebirth.
Soul Follows the Script
Soul then follows the script of destiny and enters a physical body.
After birth, the name of the game is survival. The survival scale, by definition, is a measure of one’s can-do instincts.
But karmic placement does set other standards for individuals on the high end of the spiritual scale. Most of them enjoy a voice in the choice of a human body or place of birth. They sense the need for spiritual freedom, a view gained from many past lives, and the self-responsibility that goes along with the package. So these Souls demonstrate creative ideas and inventiveness in their incarnations. For the most part they are cheerful, upbeat people.
Spiritual gains in past lives have given them a voice in choosing some of the conditions in their present incarnation.
They have earned the right.
Think of destiny as the equipment, talents, or gifts that one brings to this life. They carry a divine mandate to use them for the good of all life. It’s our responsibility to do so, with wisdom.
The idea of destiny, or fate, is poked fun at in many Western circles. Yet it is an age-old principle of the spiritual life.
What is the basis for a cultural bias against fate?
People are in a state of confusion about it. They wonder, How can fate and free will exist side by side? Destiny controls the conditions at birth. Much of what an individual does after birth is an open book, an exercise in free will.
To sum up, fate governs the conditions at birth; free will allows a choice as to how to move beyond them.
Free will can offset or even overcome the drawbacks of destiny, but only through the awakening of one’s consciousness. One may thus reshape both his material and spiritual life.
—Excerpted from ECK Wisdom on Karma and Reincarnation
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