There are millions of people all over the world who believe that when they die their Soul will take a journey to another place called Heaven, or known by another name, depending on your culture and religion. Heaven is often portrayed as a wonderful place in which you will be reunited with your loved ones. Every religion, from Christianity to Shamanism has something to tell us about this place that our Soul will go to after death.
What if Heaven is a place that we are all remembering, a place that we have already been to?
As T.S. Eliot¹ said:
“We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Consider the possibility for a moment that your Soul’s journey began long before birth, even before your conception. If your Soul can take a journey to another place at death, could it not have taken a journey to come into life? “Over 800 references to the pre-earth existence of peoplekind have been identified in Jewish and Christian sources from the time of Christ until the sixth century, A.D. However, after the sixth century A.D., mention of a life before mortality virtually disappears (my bold) from orthodox Jewish, Christian, and Greek writings. …The doctrine of a pre-existence was condemned by the council of Constantinople in A.D. 553.”²
Why were these references to a pre-life removed?
What if ‘Heaven’ is actually the place that we came from?
One of the fundamental principles of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology is that we are conscious as prenate’s, and this includes our pre-conception period. I have distinct memories of being somewhere else before I came here, a place which I call my Divine Home – Home for short, or Source. I remember my Home as a place in which I was floating in luminescent light, bodiless, without even the concept of a boundary, dancing in pure love, like dust caught in sunlight, bathed in warmth, and knowing myself as pure being and presence. There is only love there, and this moment…. And this moment…. And this moment.
When it was time for me to leave this indescribably wondrous place, I felt happy to go, and sad to leave, but I had a sense of purpose. For what seemed like an eternity, and yet no time at all, I traveled through space/time in the vast magnificence of the divine stream into life, taking a journey that I seem to have forgotten by the time I was an adult. When I saw Earth ahead of me, I descended and appeared, as if by magic, beside my parents who were having sex in the back of an old 1950’s style car. I hovered about them, and awaiting my moment to be conceived.
Many people have recalled memories of their Divine Home under hypnosis, in regressions (a facilitated method for retrieving memories), through spontaneous memory, or in the kind of body based healing that I practice. Pioneering Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology practitioners like myself, other Therapists, and Hypnotherapists who are supporting people to explore their early life, including pre-conception, have discovered the following:
- Not everyone has a sense of purpose when they leave Home, but we often do
- Some experience themselves as being forced to leave, or are not happy to be leaving
- Most feel happy to go on their adventure into life; Each persons perception of their pre-life environment is different, but there are some common points, such as:
Feeling great love and communion, some fear or sadness about leaving Home, taking a journey to get here, choosing one’s parents and life lessons, and being with loved ones. People often feel supported at Home, and some report being escorted by guides to their new life, in the same way that people who report Near Death Experiences meet guides or loved ones who come to help them. It is also clear that our pre-conception experiences have a profound affect on both our Soul/energetic body and our embodied life. E.g. Resistance to leaving Home can translate later in life into feelings of resistance to being in a body, to God/Spirit, or to your life, and/or feeling as if you have no choice. In a regression I remembered that there were two people accompanying me to my new life, who felt very familiar to me, and with whom I was happy to travel. We had a contract to come here together, but they left me before conception. We were traveling through what looked like outer space, a vast, black, boundariless place, when I suddenly and violently felt as if I had been hit by a bolt of lightening. They had left me! I was shocked to the corners of my Soul by their betrayal and abandonment. This shock later turned up in my life as all kinds of painful betrayal dynamics involving three people, myself included. I played both sides of this dynamic a number of times – both the betrayer and the betrayed, before I came to a deeper understanding of the underlying dynamics. When I remembered this pre-conception betrayal I felt a ‘clicking into place’ of a piece of my personal cosmic jig saw, something I only feel when a deep, Soul truth is revealed. It rearranges ones molecules and puts everything into a different perspective, and is often very simply described as an ‘aha’ moment, or it may be considered a Peak Experience. (…..joyous and exciting moments in life,… wonder and awe, … involving an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth…. )³.
There were later betrayals in my life layered on top of this one, such as my mothers attempted abortion, and then of my younger brother one year later, and then her leaving me with my father when I was age 5. However, this pre-conception betrayal is the earliest one, and sat at the root of them all. I have, since understanding the deep origins of this dynamic, and been able to stop attracting this particular situation to myself unconsciously. Although I still have a sensitivity to being in a trianglulated dynamic as this can bring up some tender feelings, I find that they are usually not founded in present time circumstances. This is because when we are triggered or remembering a very early imprint (energetic, somatic and limbic brain memories stored in our body) it is common to perceive the event as happening in present time. It is very upsetting to be at the unconscious grip of such painful dynamics, they can wreak havoc on our lives, and break our hearts over and again.
If Heaven is the place we came from, why don’t we hear anything about that in school, or in our culture?
Brant Hinze studied 33 cases of pre-birth experiences and found that 53% had occurred before conception, and 47% after conception and before birth.4 “In a typical pre-birth experience, a family member or close friend of the family, receives a communication from a child before she is born, or in many cases, before she was even conceived. These unborn children at times can warn, protect and enlighten us through the veil. However, they appear most often to announce it is their time to experience mortality–their time to be born on earth.” 5
For many, many years before my granddaughter was born I felt I knew her, and was so excited to be meeting her again. I knew without doubt that she would be a girl, and is a Soul mate. A couple receiving support from me reported that 2 years before their grandson came here, they had gone through a period of time in which they seriously considered having a baby. During that period they had felt a strong baby spirit around them, compelling them to bring him in. They eventually chose not to have a baby, and a couple years later their daughter and her husband became pregnant ‘accidentally’. They always felt that their grandson was the same spirit who wanted to come to them. The mom and grandchild had often felt a great desperation and need to be with each other. For several years she felt strongly that her grandchild should be with her. During a visit he was in the bath and she spontaneously told him a story about a Spirit Boy who came here to be with his chosen parents, and that when they decided not to have a baby, he chose some other people in the same family to be born to. The boy was fascinated by this story. The grandma never told him that the boy in the story was him, nor that any of the people were from their family, but since the telling of it, she has felt a great deal more settled, and much less desperate. In telling this story to her grandson she was able to clearly differentiate her position, for herself, that she is the Grandma and not the Mother. After several years of heartache this interaction released a tension field between them, and they were able to feel more relaxed about their infrequent contact, and less desperate.
Have we all come from the place to which we shall return?
Communications from incoming Soul’s come in dreams, waking visions, voices heard, telepathy or spiritual communication (as often described in near death experiences), and sensorily. There are common reports of escorts bringing the pre-born to Earth, and of born children who have flashbacks and memories in which they vividly recollect being in a pre-mortal realm.
A life before conception is spoken of in the legends of Africa, in the traditions of Native Americans, and in the myths of other cultures. An excerpt from Alex Haley’s book ‘Roots’ serves as an example:
“He said that three groups of people lived in every village. First were those you could see – walking around, eating, sleeping, and working.
Second were the ancestors whom Grandma Yaisa had now joined.
“And the third people – who are they?” asked Kunta.
“The third people,” said Omoro, “are those waiting to be born.” 6
Clearly, there have been times in our history when a pre-life existence was considered just as likely as a post-life existence, and there are still many places on our beloved planet where this knowledge has been retained. We may never know the reasons why this information was purged from important texts. However, there are now many thousands of accounts of a Divine Home, a pre-conception journey, and of prenatal consciousness. As Wordsworth7 so eloquently wrote:
…. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!…..
References:
1. T. S. ELIOT, “Little Gidding,” last stanza, Collected Poems, 1909-1962, p. 208 (1963)
2. (Hamerton-Kelley, R.G., Pre-Existence, Wisdom and the Son of Man in the New Testament, Cambridge University Press, 1973)
3. Maslow, A. (1970). Religion, values and peak experiences. New York: Viking.
4. Hinze, Brant, Coming From The Light p.173 Pub: Pocket Books
5. Hinze, Sarah, We Lived In Heaven
6. Haley, Alex, Roots. New York: Doubleday, 1976, p. 29
7. Wordsworth 536. Ode – Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (60 and 65)