Talk (summary) given by Rosalind Smith on Life between Lives to the QFAS Spring Conference at Friends’ House. 10th May 2008.

Rosalind suggested that if we can accept the concept of re-incarnation, then there must be a time when our soul actually finds itself between lives. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead  (written approx 12 centuries ago) this state is referred to as the bardo.

Some psychiatrists – in particular Dr. Whitton of Toronto – have found that under hypnosis, or past-life regression, clients not only explore their previous earth lives but also this state of life between lives. Some, like Michael Newton, have developed a therapy which concentrates on this time. He claims that this therapy is ‘a spiritual quest for better self-understanding.’ 

In this therapy the client is regressed back to the womb and then straight back into their most previous life.  This is so that they can experience their death scene naturally before they entered the spiritual world and then what it was like to be in the bardo. Those who go through this experience say that they cannot do justice to the richness, intensity and beauty of the bardo.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead states: ‘one’s environment in the disembodied state is largely a reflection of each person’s thought-forms and expectations. It would seem, therefore, that it is important that we die in a state of peace; Catholics have the sacrament of Extreme Unction, also designed to bring peace to a dying person.
 
Research suggests that the length of earth time one spends there varies widely.  The shortest Whitton encountered was 10 months and the longest about 800 years.  He found the average to be is about 40 years.  Some people spend this time resting while others spend it learning and growing spiritually and preparing for the next life.

Michael Newton has found that, on average, we need about 80% of our own spiritual energy to re-incarnate, but may therefore leave about 20% of our essence so to speak, behind in the spiritual world, which may be still contactable by mediums etc. There is a more comprehensive account of this theory in Michael Newton’s book ‘Life Between Lives’.

It seems that here, in this state of consciousness between lives, one is brought before a sort of panel of judgement, where the soul looks back on and confronts the truth of the life just lived. The next life is then selected to create the conditions for growth. According to Whitton, each of us sees what we are getting into before we are reborn. We may not like the new life but from the heightened perspective we can recognise its value as a learning device.

It is said that these karmic scripts are developed in consultation with other souls who will take part in them. For example, the choice of one’s parents is critical in establishing the themes of one’s life. The time and place of each birth is vitally important.

Suffering and hardship in a life does not mean punishment. It can be that as a soul nears the completion of its journeys it elects to experience more difficulties in order to speed up the completion of its course of study.  

In his book ‘Lifecycles’, Christopher Bache quotes many incidences of how people have come to understand why certain patterns repeat in their lives and why they appeared to choose to experience certain events.  

One person said: ‘I have been allowed the barest glimpse of levels of creation that are far above anything I can even begin to put into words.  I was made to feel that everything we do has meaning at the highest level.  Our sufferings are not random: they are merely part of an eternal plan more complex and awe-inspiring than we are capable of imagining.’