What's the Purpose of a Soul's Suffering?
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*Apologies: translating this excerpt from Scrivener into any other app or format is glitchy and the endnotes are not all showing correctly. Rectifying this will take me too long, so you will find some endnotes in square brackets in the main text. 😇
-Brendan
The Mission of an Incarnated Soul
It is noted consistently throughout NDE and life-between-lives (LBL) literature that the soul who has returned to the afterlife commonly determines a new course for themselves, a new set of goals to evolve towards and even some new responsibilities to take on. Some souls undertake to communicate to those on earth about the wonders of the afterlife in order to raise humanity’s awareness—others determine to reincarnate immediately, while others make slightly different plans.
Something that recurs over and over again in the literature based on widespread human experience (NDEs, OBEs, LBL, ancient wisdom traditions, etc.) is the theme of autonomy, choice, and self-determination. If the “reincarnation trap” is as big of a problem as its advocates make out, this should not be the case—especially if we consider the apparently very recent origin of the “trap” meme, and how easily so many NDErs and OBErs seem to bypass the astral “4D” trap altogether.
More specifically, we find in the literature time and time again definite assertions that almost everything we experience in our human lives is—in the long run—designed for our own benefit, and equally, of our own making. One difficulty some people have with this is the absence of any conscious recollection of such a design. We do not pre-plan our lives, their duration, and their major events from the conscious human level/the personality level—it is evidently done within a different order of reality (the “Daimonic”) altogether.
The Daimon-Eidolon (or “divine” self-human self) dyad dynamic is by no means entirely straightforward from where we human Eidolons stand. The Daimon/higher self version of us has its own desire for a temporary experience—or a series of many—in the worlds of manifestation and duality, not necessarily always realising how hard it might be for its human counterpart(s) having to directly endure it. It seems “God” is flying somewhat blind and having to “wing it,” as it were. This type of thinking is in line with Bruce Moen’s OBE insights about the “oversoul” (“Disk” to use Moen’s term) seeking to explore Unknowns, as we will explore later.
While free will is widely reputed to be the rule, one’s actions here are arguably determined mainly by subconscious programming of two types; the inborn proclivities, inclinations, intent, and “karma” borne in the immortal oversoul/Monad of the incarnating consciousness that is carried with that soul at all times throughout the whole life, and, secondly: physical life experiences, childhood indoctrination, formal education and so forth.
The level of the “quantum soul matrix” is where our motivations, passions, proclivities and deepest desires (skandhas or personality aggregates) for our lives are rooted. These latter factors might be referred to as probabilistic wave functions in themselves that are manifested in all of the individual’s bodies (etheric, astral, mental, causal, etc.) to some extent as vibrational frequencies, in order to fulfil the oversoul’s preselected purpose/s.
Our Monad’s stored “quantum karma” from “past lives” brings with it tendencies and biases towards selecting/creating certain experiential realities over others, though as Amit Goswami points out, we only bring some of our past propensities to bear in any particular life. Those are the propensities that would enable us to satisfy the particular learning agenda of a given incarnation contributing toward eventual “liberation [Goswami, Physics of the Soul, 252-3.].”
“Liberation” occurs at the point at which the oversoul/higher self entity perceives it has exhausted all possibilities for exploration and growth in a particular realm and mode of expression (e.g. a human on earth) and further experience of that nature is unwarranted. (Or perhaps it has simply become too harsh and painful to be worth continuing with.)
The Role of Suffering
Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda was once advised by a disembodied voice that suffering here serves to remind us of our eternal home [Yogananda, 307.] and prompts us to desire it once more. We are told suffering has other purposes too. One of Michael Newton’s LBL cases returned to the spirit world after a violent and wayward lifetime to spend some time alone with their teacher, followed by shortly returning to earth to incarnate as a woman in a place where people were cruel and abusive in order to develop understanding and empathy [Newton, Journey of Souls, 50-1.].
Annie Besant (1847 - 1933) said in looking back at her life, “not one pain would I let go, for pain is the teacher of wisdom…Power is pain transmuted.1”
Tibetan teacher Sogyal Rinpoche states suffering is “the spur to spiritual transformation.2” Famous psychic medium Allison DuBois shares a similar view [DuBois, We Are Their Heaven, 48].
One man suffering a chronic lack of energy discovered in a LBL regression that his previous life had been lived as a savage, ruthless and unforgiving Viking, who had run rampant. He was reminded in the regression by his guide that he had deliberately chosen a weaker, far less dominant body with lower energy levels for his current life so he could begin learning how to use his mind in this life.3
LBL subjects indicate that typically souls/spirits—most not being in the highly advanced categories—bring between fifty and seventy per cent of total soul energy. Human physiology could not handle the full “charge”: “we would blow the circuits of the brain,” as one subject put it. The aforementioned man (former Viking) brought approximately only 25%. It is interesting to note that it is possible for souls to miscalculate the energy requirements for the life ahead.
Newton reports that more advanced souls tend to take less than the less mature souls, sometimes underestimating their needs. Typically, highly advanced souls bring no more than 25%.4 As mind-bending as it may seem, the remaining aspects of our selves in the higher realms continue to be aware and to engage in their own interactions and soul development in parallel with development here in the earth system.
NDE research dovetails with what LBL clients share. According to P. M. H. Atwater, variously, as pre-birth memories or part of the NDE, numerous experiencers report seeing their conception and even participation in choosing which “genes” they were to receive.5
NDE researcher Arvin Gibson wrote about a young man named DeLynn with cystic fibrosis and chronic pain who was told during his NDE that he, as a soul, had chosen to be born with a debilitating disease. A familiar and kind voice informed him:
You chose your disease and the amount of pain you would be willing to suffer before this life—when you were in a premortal state…
DeLynn recognised the voice, though not from his earth life—he knew who it was and found “There was enormous love for me in the voice [Gibson, Near-Death Experience Patterns in from Research in the Salt Lake City Region, Journal of Near-Death Studies, 13(2) Winter 1994].”
DeLynn then experienced a pre-mortal environment where he saw himself making particular choices for his life to come. As a result of those insights, his perspective of the disease was forever altered.
No longer did I consider myself a victim. Rather, I was a privileged participant, by choice, in an eternal plan. That plan, if I measured up to the potential of my choice, would allow me to advance in mortal life in the fastest way possible...The specific choice of cystic fibrosis was to help me learn dignity in suffering [Ibid.].
In Gibson’s 1994 paper he mentions three people he had interviewed who had experienced seeing themselves in a pre-mortal environment during their NDE, experiences which were similar to one described by Betty Eadie in Embraced by the Light.
Nick Sambrook is sceptical of the types of experiences had by people like DeLynn, suggesting the message coming from the intelligence across the veil—“higher self” or whatever it may be—sounds like an excuse or rationalisation; the choice to suffer intentionally makes no sense, “Unless of course [this type of communication] is something higher trying to control things and keep the complaints from the sheep…to a minimum—and who wrote the plan anyway?” [Personal communication, November 2024.]
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PMH Atwater’s NDE data reveals that, despite the soul’s apparent ability to choose parents, there are no guarantees of outcomes and not everyone is always happy with how things pan out [Atwater, The Big Book…, 64.].
“Divine inspiration” does not always translate into a “divine” earthly experience.
For the minority of souls who do not require many hundreds of (re)incarnations into physical form, to achieve a faster, more direct means of evolution, Robert Monroe attributed better planning and foresight, including the careful selection of incarnate experiences, and successfully overcoming what many might see as insurmountable odds [Monroe, Far Journeys, 242.].
While the oversoul entity knows it is immortal regardless of what the human personality suffers on earth, it seems the amount of suffering during earth life has proliferated out of control and may not be part of a truly well thought out plan by the “divine mind” or whatever is supposed to be in control.
On a collective level things are a mess—there is a glaring lack of intelligent large-scale management, as Sambrook observes [See Sambrook’s IT trilogy.].
And yet the majority of NDErs return to us as individuals with an enormous sense of reassurance and peace, having had a glimpse of their lives from what is ostensibly a higher vantage point.
As Electronic Age NDEr Dr Mary Neal emphatically states, “You’re called to do something that pushes you out of your comfort zone,” adding that she believes we are meant to live lives of meaning, purpose, and joy [Youtube: She Died and Visited Heaven? Doctor's Near-Death Experience Sheds Light on Life After Death]
Life Previews
Thousands of life-between-lives (LBL) regressions reveal in detail that there are “screening rooms” for souls to assess possible future lives in viable bodies. These places, characterised by many souls as the Ring of Destiny, are seen as a sphere containing highly concentrated force fields of glowing energy screens. The Ring is a circular, domed theatre with floor-to-ceiling panoramic screens surrounding them completely while they are situated in a shadowed viewing area.
The Ring displays scenes of futuristic events and people the soul will encounter in the life ahead. The screens are interactive and can be directed/controlled by the mind and also entered into so as to allow direct experience of certain scenes to get a taste of things to come, to “try it on for size,” as it were, before making final decisions.6 This is more detail about the pre-incarnation process than we have had in previous eras—and the reports from LBL clients seem to have become more technological in nature, in line with the arrow of “progress” on the earth plane (we perceive the non-physical imaginal realms based on stored knowledge from earth life).
Newton offers an interesting caveat about the screening rooms, stressing that all his LBL subjects in trance have a sense that these immersion experiences are somehow edited for their own benefit (likely so as not to reveal too much of their intended future), and that they have less control over what they can watch in the Ring than, say, in the “library.” In the spirit world the “library” is analogous to the Akashic7 records where souls can go to study their own lives and choices made within them].8
Souls are variously accompanied by a guide or an “Elder” (or both), and often detect the presence of souls who are not always seen but sensed as being “in charge” of the timeline presentation of the potential future life. These beings Newton refers to as Timemasters.9 We visit with the “council of Elders”—Elders10 reportedly being a step or two ahead of our personal guides in their evolution—once or twice between lives in determining possible future courses of action. It is interesting that as souls develop and become more complex, Newton found they seem to require more specialists on their panels.11
We should pause and consider the possibility that just because there are Elders or guides it doesn’t necessarily mean they should be blindly trusted or that they know what they are doing. “The results in the physical world speak for themselves,” as Sambrook observes [Personal communication, November 2024.].
It is undeniable that on a collective level human experience is, in many respects, a disaster and that most people and institutional authorities are currently committed to unconsciously marching humanity off the proverbial cliff—based on outdated legacy programs/belief systems. It’s as if there is a mass-hypnosis program controlling humans on a scale even the Illuminati would be jealous of.
In a coming chapter, we will examine further evidence of our pre-mortal existence and apparent ability to choose earthly circumstances. While LBL, past life, and NDE data ostensibly offers a rationalisation for the suffering in the world, Sambrook suggests it is more likely something/someone is acting unconsciously and there is actually “nobody at the wheel of the Titanic [Ibid.].”
Perhaps “God” (the collective unconscious) is not as good of a ship’s captain as we might hope for our sojourn on earth.
The “real illusion” of linear time notwithstanding, reincarnation (or simultaneous parallel lives) is the traditional rationalisation for the purpose of suffering: soul development, or the development of the immortal “Ego” (sutratman/higher self/oversoul) in service of the Infinite One as it explores infinite possibilities through infinite manifestations and emanations.
If you’re interested in these subjects, you will want to read BOOK 2 when it’s available—make sure you jump on the wait list—this is a monumental and unique study into afterlife-related subjects.
The reincarnating Ego’s sense of service and moral accountability is high—much more acute than typically shown by the average incarnate human with spiritual amnesia. From the spiritual level, the evolution of consciousness is the whole point of participating in the illusion of the world of appearances—it is far beyond being a simple exercise in sado-masochism, or the result of some diabolical “soul trap” or reincarnation “prison” system.
Experience leads to insight and knowledge, and this expands and evolves the oversoul’s awareness. If that experience was one-dimensional, i.e., all “positive”, then the animating consciousness would miss out. It would not develop as fully and deeply as it could—infinite potentiality must be infinitely explored (I believe it is unavoidable).
A subject under hypnosis referred to as “Case 23” in Newton’s Journey of Souls put it succinctly, stating that the Source creates simply to fulfil itself—the process of transformation offers purpose and meaning that otherwise would not exist. Without the dream of “physical reality” our possibility of expression would be vastly more limited and our knowledge of such things would only be conceptual instead of experiential.12
The availability of a vast array of life’s “notes” for our soul to make music with serves the deeper intention of the “oversoul” to evolve towards love at every level of its manifest existence (including the human level). This theme, no matter how “New Age-y” it may seem, is dominant in metaphysical literature, especially in NDE accounts, as well as long being part of a very old Tibetan buddhist tradition. “
God”/the Infinite learns and develops through us, by utilising the daydream of time, space, and duality. We are being dreamed by a far vaster consciousness for its own exploration and edification [Monroe, Far Journeys, 51. See also Bruce Moen’s books.]. (Unfortunately it seems there are few, if any, “divine” safeguards in place to prevent the dream of earth life morphing into a nightmare.)
The channelled entity known as Rathma has echoed the sentiment about “God” learning through us, as has Eckhardt Tolle (The Power of Now), both stating essentially that “God” evolves in consciousness as we participate in existence as individuated beings (emanations of Source). Having studied thousands of NDEs, Kevin Williams concludes love is at the root of the meaning of life: “This world is part of a divine university of higher learning where learning to love is what life is all about [See Williams, Nothing Better…, Introduction.].”
Amit Goswami agrees, stating that if we have failed to understand love before we die, then we will return to give ourselves the opportunity to try again. Tibetan teacher Sogyal Rinpoche13 confirms the central message brought to us by NDErs is exactly the same as that of Buddha and the bardo teachings: the essential and most important qualities in life are love, knowledge, compassion, and wisdom [Sogyal Rinpoche, 337.].
Is this not the core of the Christian teachings?, “Do unto others…” and such?
The projected hologram of physical “reality” offers the ultimate challenge to cultivating love and compassion, in contrast to the “spirit world” where it is our default state of being.
Many sources inform us that we make a choice at the spiritual level to experience the illusion of the physical universe (involution) in a state of forgetfulness. This way, the events we encounter teach us human lessons that facilitate spiritual growth. There may be no end to this process (technically there was no beginning). An underlying core theme of many of our “lessons” is forgiveness—and not in a fluffy New Age spiritual bypass kind of way.
It is key so we ultimately accept our experiences (transcend duality and attraction/repulsion) and assimilate the lessons which facilitate our growth, let go, and move forward minus unnecessary psychic baggage/“karma” and attachments.
Karen Schaeffer had a dream in which she was in a horrific car accident which took her life. Despite finally talking herself into thinking it was insignificant, months later the accident happened as she foresaw: in her NDE she was shown parts of her family’s future and how they would get on in her absence—it had all been prearranged. However, her love and concern for her son was something she could not move beyond and it ultimately meant that she was permitted to return to her body despite it being time for her to depart the earth plane. In their attempts to alleviate her anxiety, the spirits she interacted with showed her that her family would be alright and that her death was actually a part of their souls’ own plans for development [See Williams, Nothing Better…, Case 4.] .
Cases like Schaeffer’s illustrate that not only do we plan our lives from a very different state of consciousness—the oversoul/Daimonic “level”—but that these plans can be modified along the way in “real time,” or in voyages back into the imaginal realm of spirit from which we may return. Sometimes the human experience of forgetting opens the way for overwhelming emotional attachments to earthly life that conspire to alter our “destiny”—this too is part of our free will choice to roll the dice on trying out earth life. Our entry and exit points into and out of this 3D dream are selected by us and alterable by us.
This high level of metaphysical autonomy is confirmed time and again by NDErs, many thousands of LBL clients, psychics, and occultists. One woman having an NDE objected to the entity encountered that she was too young to die and she hadn’t danced enough yet. At this, the being—stubborn until then—laughed heartily, and allowed her to return. Thirty years later, following a heart attack, the woman again convinced the being to let her live, stating that her children needed her at that point in their lives. The being yielded once more, adding that next time “you have to stay.14”
Instances like this where the being of light character/Daimon actually wants the human to return to the spirit world—instead of staying on earth and continuing to generate emotional “Loosh”—undermine the “strong” form of the reincarnation/soul trap conjecture, since the “Handlers” of the “trap” are supposed to want us to stay incarnated to keep generating harvestable energy.
It seems the Handlers are too few in number to do their jobs very effectively. (More on these themes can be found in Book 2 of THE GRAND ILLUSION - click to get on the wait list)
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About Brendan
Brendan D. Murphy is the “consciousness guy” and author of the critically acclaimed epic, “The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality — Book 1”
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1 Besant, An Introduction to Yoga, 48-9.
2 Sogyal Rinpoche, 118.
3 Newton, Memories of the Afterlife, 74-5. Case study contributed by David M. Pierce.
4 Newton, Destiny of Souls, 117.
5 Atwater, Big Book…, 62-3.
6 Newton, Destiny of Souls, 355-6.
7 LBL subjects refer to these as Life Books, stored in symbolic libraries adjacent to other spiritual locations. Unlike the Eastern traditions, these records don’t appear to these subjects “as being on some fourth causal plane separate from other functional areas.” (Newton, Destiny of Souls, 52.)
8 Ibid., 356.
9 Ibid., 357.
10 Elders are also referred to variously as Venerables, Sacred Masters, Old Ones, Examiners, or the Committee. (Newton, Destiny of Souls, 201.)
11 Newton, Destiny of Souls, 214.
12 Newton, Journey, 199-200.
13 Sogyal Rinpoche, 337.
14 Moody, The Light Beyond, 16.
