I have to be honest. Until recently, I have never looked deeply into the topic of dreams of past lives. I basically just assumed it was wishful thinking added to a powerful dream experience. But recently, ever since my own crack in the dam, I have forced myself to look anew at these reports.
When you’ve had your own extraordinary experience, it becomes impossible to hide behind the usual defenses when hearing other people’s (you know, ignoring the reports, ignoring the history of inquiry, making stab-at-the-dark reductive and demeaning explanations, and ultimately, when these don’t work, character assassination, like what happened to Dr. Brian Weiss.)
The deeper I went into the territory, I realized I couldn’t simply discount the veracity of the reports. And some of the historical cases are incredible. I don’t have any answers today, but this topic has fundamentally challenged my own neat paradigm of reality.
Here’s an account that really got my attention, excerpted from Big Dreams: Lucid Dreams and Borderlands of Consciousness (Book 2 in the Dream like a Boss series).
Case Study: The Forgotten Saint
I was recently contacted by a man named Chris who had a powerful dream that has the classic structure of a past life dream.
I had a dream that I was walking down a corridor with old stone walls, a man appeared, I was part of a tour or something like that. The old man spoke to a person in the group and said to them: do I know you”? …at this point my heart jumped and very deep down I suddenly remembered I knew him… but somehow I’d forgot him… I started to cry , I was so upset that I’d forgot him!… He then turned to me and said… Ah yes… I remember you… I am Saint Claret.. A vision of the 3rd world eternity…! I said to him why have I forgotten you… he touched my nose with his finger and said.. you won’t this time…. I started to wake up … but there was light inside my head…. I knew if I let the light get brighter something might happen… I chickened out and got up and shook myself. (personal communication, 2014)
Chris went on to tell me his does not have a religious background, but the dream was so unlike anything he has ever experienced before that the next day he went to his local bookstore and found, in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, a description of Saint Anthony Mary Claret, a Spanish archbishop and missionary who died in 1870 and was canonized in the 1950s.
With further research, Chris discovered that the phrase “3rd world eternity” actually had relevance for the “real” St. Claret. As a missionary, Claret had been obsessed with the concept of eternity, and had been since the age of five. Now that’s not so improbable that any Christian saint might write about eternity. However, Chris went on to discover, in his words, “that Claret held a prominent theological premise that the first world is matter, the second is spirit… and the third is the knowledge that the first and second are one and the same.”
So, Claret’s third world is the integrated landscape of eternal knowledge. How’s that for improbability?
Although it is tempting to only pursue this dream from an anomalous or historical perspective, it’s important to keep in mind the most salient feature of the dream for Chris is how it made him feel.
He told me, “I was mortified that I had forgotten him. To the point where I wept uncontrollably that I had forgotten him… I kept on saying to him “why have I forgotten you” … Also the recollection was way way deep down inside of me, hidden away from my waking conscious mind.”
It’s too early to tell why this dream came to Chris at this point in his life. Indeed, this dream will probably reverberate for the rest of his life. Like all dreams, we are forced to ponder, “Why this dream now?” He told me that his next plan is to honor Saint Claret’s Saint Day. Even at this early stage, Chris’s story is a reminder that researching powerful dreams can led to startling findings that might shake the bedrock of your perception of reality (and maybe, eternity).
You should read “Dreamer” by Andy Paquette. It will really change your life.
thanks for the suggestion Alan! I haven’t read it.
Having worked with clients as an agent of change for 12 years plus, the past lives theme has been presented quite a few times.As an agent of change I hold a position that we each have our own reality, and if past lives are a part of my clients reality then I will join them for the period we are working together,often with excellent results.From my own point of view I have experienced Hypnogogic/Full dream past life metaphors from the unconscious and as yet have not chosen to take a fixed position as to whether they are A:Unconscious Metaphors (produced from tacit knowledge) B:Shared Mind/Field Mind information not normally consciously available C:Knowledge assimilated genetically D:Wish fulfilment or finally E:Plain old strange dreams.Interesting subject and I look forward to others comments on their experiences. Martin
Thanks Martin for your lucid comment. My research has found a similar effect – namely that working with “past life dreams” (whatever they are) result in positive clinical outcomes. That’s an important point!
I have been studying dreams for the past 30+ years. I totally believe in past life dreams as dreams are real experiences happening in the heavens of God. To me, dreams are not a “mind thing.” Dreams are real experiences and our connection to our higher source, an opening to develop a closer relationship with God – the relationship is not religious based, it is spiritual.
Hi Carol, glad to have your perspective here! When we honor dreams as sacred, we take them seriously, and that can usher in many possibilities. Thanks.
Always interests me but I have no faith in past lives. I feel out SC has the ability to lead us where we want to go and if we are not careful are always on the edge of the great discovery but really are just fooling ourselves and being led in some way.
Our deepest emotionally strong desires are always there and our SC is willing to please and so its a great fantasy but that is all
I also don’t understand when the first life experience would have occurred. is it a modern development as at some point there was no past life for someone.
Hi Peter, great points. Yeah, the math doesn’t work out. Martin Wyse’s comment above really lays out some of the likely “grab bag” of causes that are all lumped in to this effect. As a dreamworker, I am mostly concerned with the powerful emotions and their ability to shift our perspectives and behavior. I don’t have any answers, but am more inclined to believe in “temporal resonance” theories than one-to-one past lives. Working them, thinking flexibly about them rather than dogmatically, is key, like with all extraordinary experiences.
Yea tend to agree, as a starting point for expression of emotions it could be very valuable and if it installs a sense of worth in someone again a good thing.
One of my lines of thought is that we can receive energy and so entirely possible that past lives are real but just not ours as we are acting like a TV and also mixing elements of our wishes and desires in there as well.
In my early teens – age 12 perhaps – I had three powerful past life dreams on three consecutive nights. They were unlike my usual dreams – so clear, so internally consistent and real, and so totally absorbing, as well as fully coloured and taking place in very specific, detailed landscapes – that I knew that they were real experiences. I already knew about reincarnation, and evidence of same, so I did some research into those three different cultures and found that my dreams were totally consistent with historical and archaeological records. One was in ancient Egypt. The second, in ancient Africa, and the third, in India at the time of partition with Pakistan. I never forgot those dreams, which told like stories. Years later, I happened to see a documentary on the Indian partition, a scene of turmoil at a train station and recognised it! I burst into tears, for that was where, in the dream, I had been separated by the dense crowd from a sister, who, unable to get off the train, had been carried forever away from me. Yes, they’re real, these dreams, and they are distinctive for their realism and the immediate knowing that one has on waking that they are true.
Thank you for telling your story Tosca! Wonderful dreams, powerful moments. That “realism” is a phenomenological property that is often present in other extraordinary events, such as visitations and near death experiences.
After reading this post, I’ve decided I’m going to have to check out “Dream Like a Boss” (although the title puts me off)…. That said, after 35+ years of keeping track of my dreams, I’m increasingly convinced that Dream Reality is its own order of reality. (More along the lines of a possible multiverse, parallel universe thing). I’m agnostic on past lives relative to 3D physical waking reality.
Ultimately, though, what matters is whether the dream itself benefits the dreamer in a useful way he/she can translate into waking life, serving as a change agent (like Martin says above.)
Thanks for this post!
Hi Cathy, I couldn’t have said it better myself! Honor the dream. That is actually the big theme in both books of Dream Like a Boss. Don’t interpret them and put them on a shelf — but make them live!
What you say in Cracks in the Dam is true: once you have a vivid, real experience it is difficult to dismiss it. A couple years ago, I had a series of parallel world dreams. Although not the same as past-life dreams, this experience made me wonder about the real possibility of the multiverse.
Hi Ryan and all,
Interesting dream experience – thanks for sharing it!
There are some dreams and some lucid dreams where the person gets information about an apparent past life and the history, time, customs and practices, so that they can ‘verify’ truly arcane bits of information about the place (which only deep historical records or scholars could confirm). It seems similar to the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, who investigated children who made ‘past life’ claims, and could often point out their former relatives in a village 30 miles away, or explain exactly how the past life person died.
Sadly, science seems to ignore this kind of research. Could it be because it might shatter old paradigms?
Hi 🙂
I died for 8 minutes during labor and was in a coma for a few days afterward. A few weeks after I went home from the hospital, I had a dream where I recalled a near death experience I had during that 8 minutes. It was vividly real, more so than our reality here. I knew I couldn’t deny its truth.
The collective unconscious is a source of great shifts in human consciousness, and we tap into that through our dreams. In The Forgotten Saint, I interpreted the message “Why have I forgotten you?” as the bodies’ innate awareness of our eternal connection as the energy that is shared by all, yet this is forgotten as we move through this physical existence. We’re here to remember. Thanks for your work, I’m going to read more! xox Krista
Krista, thanks so much! That’s wonderful interpretation.