Some skeptics say that ‘past lives’ are simply one’s imagination at work. Maybe (although I personally believe wholeheartedly in reincarnation across species), but then what is imagination really? Although it’s possible that we may not always accurately depict where a former life or story is coming from or how we individually arrive at it, that doesn’t make it any less a part of reality.
“Details of ‘past lives’ rendered during exploratory regression probes are not always what they seem. While I subscribe to the idea that we do live more than once, I also believe that some people are able to tap into the collective unconscious (or Akashic Records) either during the sleep state or while under hypnosis and absorb the lives and personalities of others who have lived in different periods of time. This would account for the repetitious personae that emerge in some cases of hypnotic regression, and the numerous [famous historical persons] who appear regularly during past life readings given by psychics. … Where knowledge of the subconscious mind is concerned, we have not yet passed the infant stage.”
The above by Murry Hope, in her wonderful book The Psychology of Healing, caught my attention not only because it makes sense to me about some past lives, but also because I believe that many writers are also inadvertently tapping into that same field (the collective unconscious or Akashic Records or some other frequency we cannot yet conceive of) for their novels. Everyone has heard repeatedly throughout time from a writer that the story or person or location just ‘came to them’, often fully formed. I’ve experienced that myself and it definitely doesn’t feel the same as when I construct an aspect of the work on my own.
Which led me long ago to wonder, as I mentioned above: what is imagination? Because it often feels very much like an energy moving into me (a sister to inspiration) rather than my making something up. For those who know on a deep, intuitive, and spiritual level that there is a lot more going on around us and throughout the universe that we haven’t even begun to understand, the energetic aliveness we cannot see is influencing our lives every second. And that includes where many ‘fictional’ stories and their characters or worlds come from.
In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert has a section titled “Enchantment” wherein she writes about ‘How Ideas Work’ in a manner similar to the above. She says straight out that she is “referring to the supernatural, the mystical, the inexplicable, the surreal, the divine, the transcendent, the otherworldly.[Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic. Page 34.]” She continues by stating that “ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form” that have consciousness and will. While she doesn’t actually refer to these as arising from the Akash (aka the Ether, which is seen as the fifth element in Samkhya cosmic philosophy), she does mention that the idea “sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you” and “will organize coincidences and portents to tumble across your path.” This certainly points to something coming to us in order to manifest itself, whether that is like a flickering candle of curiosity lit regularly or like a flash of lightening that strikes us in a single powerful hit of inspiration.
Some people might see this energetic life-form called Idea as resembling an Elemental or one of the Fae or any of the myriad Unseen that inhabit our universe; perhaps it is kin to them. Or maybe it is just our human need to catalog and organize that artificially separates the vibrational facets of the Unseen into individuals. I’m open to the possibilities. Are you? What do you believe the imagination is and where does it come from?
Barefoot On The Gaia Path 