Dr. Neil Recalls Past Lives: His Soul’s Journey Beyond Death

Dr. Neil describes soul awareness as a stage that emerged for him after his awakening to non-duality. He recalls six past lives (one that includes Me), their common themes, and the purpose of his soul group. He suggests that the value of remembering past lives is to expand our identity from the local, immediate body/mind we inhabit today to the soul, which cycles through births and deaths as it evolves without end.

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SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're going to take on the subject of past lives. Dr. Neil can recall a number of them. And you know, this is a kind of a popular discussion, but what is the value of it? What is the meaning of it? And what does it tell us about who we are? And in this case, who Dr. Neil is? Okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So the soul, human soul, uh, is both individual and collective. In other words, I have my own soul, and it belongs to a group soul whose purposes are very similar. And the group soul belongs to the human soul. The human soul, in other words, human beings are in essence all one soul, and that's an expression of dignity. So the notion of a soul, separate soul, is important because it's a higher evolutionary level of awareness than waking up and being just awake.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

It's um more complex and happens for most people after they reach a certain level of awaken, spiritual awaken.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

What does soul awareness?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Soul awareness.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So soul awareness came to me after I was already enlightened. After pure consciousness was by nature. Um, and soul awareness is it's important because the soul is immortal, it has no real beginning because it sort of starts with the divine and then manifests through the uh human soul and through the individual soul, the group soul, um, and evolves, so it moves through stages of evolution and does so through going through different lifetimes and times between lifetimes. So the soul is uh my soul, and nevertheless, I can't speak to everybody, but my soul is um always growing, always unfolding, always becoming, whether it's in a body or in a form, mental, physical, ego form, or whether it's between lifetimes, or whether it's immersed in the divine pure awareness. So the um the process of growth from a soul perspective looks somewhat linear. In other words, I had a past lifetime experience and I have a present lifetime experience. It's a growth on a soul level that, of course, is somewhat illusionary because all is available in the moment because the soul lives in the moment as well as in the sense of time and time involving. So I can recall six lifetimes right now. The earliest one was in Lemuria, which is a mystery for our culture because it doesn't exist in the world we're in. Some people believe it sank beneath the ocean, but my experience is that Lemuria was an astral planet, not a physical planet.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Oh, that's why it was never found.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

That's why it was never found. And so I came through the different levels of consciousness from the divine to the human to the group soul to the personal, and landed in uh body, astral body, venuria. Astral body means the astral plane, which is the more subtle plane, the physical plane, and there was some calamities in that because we were using magic, it was pretty self-destructive as a experiential level. But that was the first plane that human beings were incarnated into.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Oh, you know, there were no humans in bodies, there were just humans in astral bodies in the Maria.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Correct, but that was the first level for human beings incarnating for the species, we we didn't incarnate until then, uh, you know, and we made a pretty messy job of it, much like what we're doing in this lifetime. Yeah, pretty messy. So um, so as the human soul, as the human soul, let's call it an individual. We all left that plane, went back to the source, and incarnated through the different layers and levels of awareness, celestial level. We have a celestial body, uh, physical body, all the way in through the astral level through into the physical body, and that is really our second cycle of lifetimes, which we're in now. So now we're on a physical planet, not an astral planet. And the uh first lifetime I remember from this one was in Egypt.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

You mean after the myriad?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

After the myriad, coming to Egypt at the time of the sphinx. I was uh involved as I was in all my lifetimes with healing and spirituality, which is kind of interesting, uh, because that's our group soul, and that's my aspect is always connected with the group soul's purpose of healing and uh and development of this spirituality.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

And do you have any memories from your Egyptian life?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Yeah, I remember being initiated in a temple as part of a spiritual community. We kind of believed that we were divine and that we had privilege in that, and we were here to guide others along a sort of spiritual path.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

So you were the guides in some kind of a hierarchy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And the initiation process was pretty structured and pretty developed.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

I'll never forget a book I read called Initiation by Elizabeth H. I don't know why I remember that, but it was about the Egyptian initiation process.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yes, that was a later period where there was already pyramids, and people were initiated in the pyramids themselves.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Oh, so you were there earlier?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

I was there earlier. Okay, and the next uh lifetime uh was an interesting one. I was in ancient Greece, also a male, uh, also involved in healing with color and light and sound. And in fact, I met somebody recently, a doctor, who's working with color and sound and light. And uh who's who I was actually connected with in that lifetime when we worked together as healers.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yeah, it was kind of mind-blowing that you both remembered the past connection.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

And we both remembered it, and sort of was magical that yeah, this lifetime and that lifetime connected with each other, and it bonded you, bonded us. And the next lifetime was in China. I was uh also a healer, but this is a different kind of healer, this is an energetic healer, so I would move energy in people's bodies and minds, and that capacity is still with me now, although I don't do it very often. It's moving energy up the nadis, the subtle nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

But it would have been meridians then, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

The chakras, and yeah, just the language is Indian, but that's basically the process, so you know. So I would uh do healing work on people, and it was a very powerful practice.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

And who were you in that Chinese lifetime? Were you a f a householder?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

No, I was not. I was an individual.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Were you a monk?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Uh well, we didn't call ourselves monk, I was uh an healer, and being chaste, and that means no sex and no intimacy and no relationship was part of the process. Uh so it opened up all the energy centers and they were meant to be a source of energy movement. So the the uh Chinese lifetime was very much about building qi energy and being able to project it.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Uh and was this within a religious system like Confucian or Taoism?

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Yeah, Confucianism.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Ah, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Um next lifetime after that that I remember was in France, and that's an interesting one because I remember being with Connie. She wasn't Connie there, and she was a woman as well, and we were not directly related, we were cousins, but we lived in the same place and we went to the same community, uh, Catholic community. I was a priest, Catholic priest, and she was a nun. And that lifetime was about devotion. Once again, no family system, individual relationship with God, with the divine. And my development there was was powerful. I mean, I managed to reach to the heart level, and that was a very important lifetime because compassion, caring, empathy grew enormously in that last time.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Were you in a monastery?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I was not in the monastery, I was an active monk priest. I was in a community and I was taking care of people and helping people with healing and service. There was a lot of conflict going on at the time, there was a lot of wars. So there was important healing was an important role in care, caring for the ill and the wounded was important. And then the next lifetime was the Indian one, which I've spoken about before. I was in India, I was a Brahmin priest in the Shiva temple. I was married to wives, a bunch of kids, and I did intense spiritual practice where I moved my consciousness to one with the divine, with Brahman. And when I left my body around about 60 years old, I went straight to Brahmaloka, to the divine blissful place.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

So this was a Vedic tradition, it was Vedanta or Kashmiri Shaivism or something. And this was in southern India, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

This was in southern India.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Do you remember what lineage it was?

SPEAKER_01 12:37

She it was a Shiva temple.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

So I was the priest or one of the priests in the temple. And it was a very important lifetime because it was the first time I woke up to my spiritual consciousness, to my being pure awareness, being complete. Unfortunately, I skipped out a lot of the human development because I was in an intense path trying to reach real consciousness. And so when I got to Brahmaloka, which I've mentioned before, but I can mention again. I I was in bliss for a period of time and then became bored. This isn't actually wonderful, but if it's a flat, pure you know blissful, it's not that exciting after a while. One wants to grow, and I didn't have the vehicles to grow because I have moved from the uh third chakra from the mind from ego directly to the seventh, to being pure awareness.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

So the holy longing for you for evolution arose again.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yes, the the awareness that there's more, and that I did not have the vehicle for more. I needed to come back into this lifetime. So I looked about and found my mother. She had a particularly driven energy, and that was very good because that was neurotic and that was pushing me to grow, uh, and has been very successful in my this lifetime because it actually sent me to psychology and learning about growth in those terms.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

So, do you see any common themes in these six lifetimes?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yes, I was male in all of them, I was a healer in all of them, I was spiritually oriented in all of them. They were all part of the same soul group, which is involved in spiritual growth and healing, and they were contributed towards that, not just my personal growth, but contributed towards the sole purpose of the group, and we all belong to one group or another.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

You say this is a group of bodhisattvas, that would be a good description, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

In service, it's in service, and it's about healing.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

So, all of these lifetimes you were in service to others or to humanity, correct? Okay, and what's the value of knowing about this?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yes, well, one might say this is ego, but this is not ego, this is soul. So the soul remembers and takes in the full lifetime when one dies. So the soul eventually the soul will incorporate the full experience of the lifetime in itself. So the soul has memory and awareness of each lifetime and the continuity of the process, and it's capable of being very physical and very spiritual, very enlightened, and you know, in some ways integrates both of those. What's the value? The value is identity, who am I? The value is why we're here, the value is our connection with everything, our connection with all human beings, with everything else.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

And so, would you address identity and um meaning or purpose in the context of past lives and reincarnation?

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Well, identity, you know, we we start off uh being very basic, caveman, basic on a physical level. That's survival, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. What's important is the immediate identity with your body, with your spouse, with your children, and that's about it. So, you know, you're at war with everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

But was what does this have to do with past lives?

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Uh well, the soul is present through all eternity, through all through all lives. So right now, I am a soul operating through the divine, the union, the group soul, the the body, the emotional world, the mental world, the the heart world.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

What is this the ego? Okay, the ego.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

So so right now I was born as a soul. So now my awareness is I can remember coming into my mother's body. I can remember going through the birth process, I can remember uh early childhood where there's no ego, where there's soul awareness for the first few years. I can remember the development of an ego, I can remember the development of teenage part of myself, and I can remember all of the story of life through that process, and I can actually have a sense of what'll happen when the physical body dies and when I move back into soul awareness, you know, and what that means. And the development of soul is key because uh whether we where we go to next is part of this development.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

So, what I'm hearing you say about identity is most people are lost in their local immediate identity, either their bodies, their feelings, their beliefs, right? Physical, emotional, mental body, ethnicity, race, age, tribe, religion. And what this kind of experience that you're describing offers is that those immediate local one lifetime identities are very partial and limited and passing, and that when we see ourselves as souls in the cycle of birth and death, our identity expands tremendously, and our fear can reduce, right? And our sense of commonality can increase. Is that what I'm hearing?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yes, so the movement of identification from being an individual, uh, which to being cosmic and then to being a soul, which includes individual and cosmic, is important. That identification is a growth and allows us to be free. So I I'm I'm not just a body, I'm not just an ego, I'm not just soul or a separate thing. I'm collective, I'm divine, and that the soul allows all of that to happen.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

And the memory, the recollection of the soul's journey through the lifetimes frees our identification.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yes, so you know, death becomes an entry into the next level, and birth becomes an entry into initiating one into the growth of more story and reaching a place where one does not need to reincarnate uh because one's already occupying entire reality, uh, becomes real. So, you know, so this is an important development, important development of the of the consciousness of the divine experiencing itself through individuality.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Great, thank you. Do you want to say anything about where you're at in this present moment?

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah, I continue to be everywhere, unbounded, free from form. My my sense is that I am the wind, I'm the stars, I am whatever I perceive or whatever I don't perceive. I'm free. I can go anywhere and be anything.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Including a soul on a journey through many lives.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

And including a physical being, and including your husband.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

And grandpa Neil.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

And a grandfather.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Okay, thank you. Thanks for listening.