So, friend, when first I looked upon your face,
Our thoughts gave answer each to each, so true.
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each,
Although I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And each had lived in others’ mind and speech.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
ARTHUR Guirdham and his fellow Cathars are by no means the only examples of people drawn together by the conviction that they have shared a past life. The feeling that we live out our destinies over and over again with the same companions and the same behaviour patterns but in different ages and in different relationships is a common one. And from this follows naturally the idea that we each have a soul mate, a partner who is made for us, without whom we are incomplete, who is our destiny. The feeling of inevitability is often a normal part of falling in love—how could one not love this particular, this unique human being? And how could a feeling this strong arise out of nowhere, sometimes almost instantaneously? For many people, especially if they have apparent memories of a previous life, it seems more logical to believe that their empathy, their knowledge of each other, must derive from several lifetimes together.
Wendy McClymont had experiences as a child which convinced her that she had lived before (see chapter 14). When she met her husband she felt almost immediately that she had known him in a previous life. They both felt they had found the person they had been looking for. Frances Marie Preston met her husband on a train, and they married three months later. “We both feel that we have known each other in many lives, as women and men, maybe even as brothers or sisters. We cannot explain this, but I know in my heart that this is true. We have known each other for only two and a half years in this life, but thousands of years in others.”
Chris Warner says her belief in reincarnation has been strengthened since meeting her husband two years ago. “We both feel that we have been together before as we are so close and so attuned. We discovered very early on in our relationship how alike we are, and we frequently start talking about a subject at the same time . . . The relationship is truly idyllic, and we both feel that we have never been apart.”
American psychiatrist Brian Weiss had the odd experience of hypnotically regressing two of his patients, who were unknown to each other, and discovering that they seemed to have had a relationship in their previous lives. One described a life in which Roman soldiers tied him to their horses and dragged him along the ground, finally leaving him to die in the arms of his daughter. The other described a past life in which her father died in her arms after being dragged behind Roman soldiers’ horses. Dr. Weiss believes strongly in the power of twin souls to find each other in different lifetimes, and he decided to help destiny along by rearranging their appointments so that they were given an opportunity to meet in his waiting-room. They did indeed meet but at that time did not apparently recognise that this was a meeting of twin souls. Soon afterwards, however, they recognised each other in the departure lounge of the airport, about to board the same plane to Mexico. This time they started to talk, sat next to each other on the plane, and are now apparently happily married and living in Mexico.
One can only rejoice at the reunion of twin souls who rediscover perfect happiness. Perfect happiness, however, is a rare human condition. There is always the chance that we may find ourselves in an action replay of a more troubled relationship. Within any group of close friends alliances tend to shift, and tensions arise, and a new incarnation does not, apparently, always resolve these. This is a cautionary tale of four friends, Rick, Dave, Nick and Olwen, who each felt that they remembered parts of a life they had lived together, probably some time in the seventeenth century. We were given two accounts, one from Rick and one from Olwen, describing the way in which this quartet discovered their mutual past. Their story begins in the 1970s when Rick met a stranger, Dave, with whom he had an immediate rapport.
Some time back around 1970 I was at a friend’s house one afternoon, talking with his wife, when he came in with a stranger in tow; only he wasn’t a stranger. As soon as we saw one another we both said “I know you” almost in unison. We didn’t need any introduction, we sat down and swapped histories. His name was Dave and he had met my friend in a coffee bar. Back in those days us hippie types were more open and friendly than people are today, and my friend had invited him home to meet other people he thought he’d get on with. We established that we could never have met before, but we knew that we were, or had been, brothers. Over the next couple of years we were pretty close, and from time to time, when I looked at him, I had flashes of something like memory of him dressed in bright colours, blues, greens, and reds, and always laughing. One very complete memory was of us as we stood with some other men on a hill overlooking a forest and some open stretch of greyish sandy soil. He was laughing, as usual, brightly dressed and hung with weapons. I was dressed more soberly in black and white. (Several years after this flash I drove for the first of many times through les Landes de Gascogne in southern France and recognised the area and the soil.) The worst memory I have is of running and then riding for my life, with the impression that I had just murdered a woman who had somehow been responsible for my brother’s imprisonment and execution.
Olwen Bowen’s first past-life memory is a dramatic one. “I have an abiding memory of an execution. My execution. It was a hot, dusty day and I was up quite high and lots of people are looking up at me. They are dressed in seventeenth-century clothes, quite ordinary, peasant types. I know I’m about to die, but I’m not really afraid even though I didn’t do whatever I’ve been condemned for.”
It was only when Olwen one day decided to tell her friends about her execution that the friends realised that Olwen’s “vision” was just one part of a life they had all had a role in. They all remembered different bits of the same picture. Dave revealed that for years he had had a vision of being thrown into a cell and laughing at his captors even though he knew he was going to die. Rick not only remembered that incident but knew who had caused it. He and Dave had arrived in a town where they were strangers, and where a war, possibly the English Civil War, was raging. Olwen was married to a “Puritan type” who in this life was Nick, with whom she was living.
Back (or rather forward) to the 1970s and to the Southampton University bar. Here another serendipitous meeting enabled Rick to fill in another piece of the jigsaw. A mutual friend introduced him to a girl called Carrie. Olwen Bowen describes what happened next. “When Carrie turned to look at Rick, she turned white and with a look of absolute horror on her face ran off into the Ladies and refused to come out while Rick was still there. All very odd until Rick remembered why. She had caused the events in the previous life through jealousy and rumour-mongering. She had a liking for Dave which was not reciprocated. He had formed a friendship with me even though I was married. She mistook this for an adulterous affair, and we were both condemned, my husband apparently believing every word she said. After our deaths Rick wanted retribution. He followed her out of town one day and killed her with his sword.” No wonder poor Carrie had locked herself in the Ladies.
Olwen, however, had an intuitive feeling that this was not the end of the matter. The drama, she felt, was shortly to be played out again in this life—in two weeks’ time. She told her friends of her foreboding, but they reassured each other that, no matter what, nobody would die this time. “I was living with Nick then. Dave and I had formed a friendship but nothing more. Carrie wanted Dave, but he had no interest in her. She went to Nick and said that Dave and I were sleeping together. He believed it all, again. Silly man, never learned! I came home one day and he attacked me. Not badly, but just lashed out accusing me of all sorts. I was screaming that none of it was true and also, ‘You can’t kill me this time, you b—’ He was totally confused, but it stopped him dead and he calmed down. Needless to say, that was the end of the relationship in this life! All this happened two weeks after my announcement, just as I said it would. It was as if everything had come full circle. The sense of relief was overwhelming.”
And the aftermath? Olwen and Rick are still the best of friends and about to go into business together. Nick and Dave are long gone. So, too, is Carrie, who was, Olwen rather unfairly maintains, the cause of it all.
There is no question of verifying this story and even the participants are not particularly interested in establishing their previous personal identities. What is intriguing is to conjecture how far the past-life scenario which the group had created became a self-fulfilling prophecy, in exactly the same way as happened with the reincarnated Cathars. One has the impression that by the time poor Carrie appeared on the scene the whole thing had developed into a game in which they were all deeply involved, and in which she was unwittingly allotted a role. But however much one feels that they were locked within the story, there is still the question as to how the story first began, and here they are very clear that it started as a past-life memory.
The recognition of a past-life relationship is not always so happily reciprocated. Helen Bedford described to us an incident that happened when she was in her early teens. “My father was taking me to buy my Christmas present when we bumped into someone he had been in the army with. We stopped to pass the time of day, and my father introduced me. This man put out his hand to shake mine and as our hands touched I was transported. The whole thing could have only lasted a split second or two but was very powerful and intense. This man was about 40 or so, plain and wearing a cap and raincoat.”
Helen says that at that moment she felt older, but still young, and as though she knew him very well and had not seen him for some time. The feeling of complete happiness and joy she felt at seeing him was totally overwhelming, something she had never experienced before. She felt she had someone with her, a woman older than she was, to whom she was emotionally close, though she was not her mother. She could not see her properly because her vision was obscured by something dark which framed her face. She was aware that she was wearing a long dress, which felt “puffed out.”
The man coming towards them was in uniform, a high black hat, red coat with gold trim and buttons, black trousers, and carrying a sword at his side. And Helen had the feeling that although he was happy to see her his feelings were nowhere near as intense as hers. She has always believed that if this was indeed a glimpse of a past life, she was a spurned love.
Helen never told her father about the incident (he would have thought it all rubbish). She is now fifty-seven and says that although she has had plenty of happiness in her life, that was the first occasion and one of the very few times in her life when she has felt complete and total joy. It was very powerful and very memorable.
However, that story should sound a warning note for anyone who is searching for a reincarnated soul mate in their present-day existence. The soul mate may not recognise you. And sometimes the feeling that you have found your soul mate can be so overwhelming, so compelling that occasionally it can become an obsession. Suppose you believe you have met your past-life love again and he or she does not share your memories and has no wish to restart the relationship? And suppose you remember your soul mate in a past life but never meet up with him or her in this? There is a danger that the memory of a past-life love can become more real and more important than any present-day relationship. This is what happened to Laurel Dilmen, whose remembered passion for her sixteenth-century Spanish lover so obsessed her that no mere twentieth-century man could match her memories.
There seems to be no guarantee, either, that if you do meet your soul mate from a previous life, your relationship in this lifetime will necessarily follow the same pattern. One of the most interesting accounts of a reunion with a soul mate was told to us by Rachel J. (pseudonym), herself a psychotherapist. The story starts in the autumn of 1970.
I was twenty-three and going off to sleep one night in my bedroom in Wales. I was thinking about my new French boyfriend Claude, whom I had met at the beginning of August in Tunisia. I went out with him then for four years. Claude was Jewish, lived in Paris and had black hair, good looks, like a typical Gitanes advert. I went on to think of the one before him and then the one before him and the one before him, and so on, going backwards until I fell asleep. A few hours later, the next thing I knew was that I felt a man’s hand brushing my forehead, so vividly that I woke up. It seemed that when I opened my eyes I could see this dark-haired man looking down at me with a very deep expression of love on his face. I wondered who he was, for although he looked very much like him, it was not Claude. I tried to ask him telepathically who he was but to no avail. (I was in the body in the bed which was either asleep or unwell; for some reason I was not able physically to speak to him.) To myself I was saying, You are not Claude, you are not Richard, etc., etc. I could see his face clearly, even the wrinkles on his forehead. Then I looked around. I was in a strange room, in a four-poster bed. The floor was of stone slabs, there were swords and shields on the walls, armour, a big wooden door, and window slits. I think there was grass outside, but I couldn’t be sure. The period seemed to be the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
The man was dressed in a white round-necked shirt with big billowy sleeves, and black high-waisted trousers. It was not the way any casual male acquaintance of that period would be dressed, particularly in a lady’s bedroom, so I presumed that he was either a husband or, more probably, a lover. Whichever it was, there was a great feeling of love between us. At this point I thought, I must be dreaming. So I tried to wake myself up, but however much I rubbed my eyes, the vision would not go away. It seemed I was wide awake.
This seemed to last for ages, and I began to panic. I thought, I know I am not really here, I think I have gone back in time. But I can’t remember where I really should be. I had never experienced any mental or astral travelling or recall of previous lives before. It was also clear to me that this did not have the quality of a dream. Often when I am dreaming I can wake myself up if I want to, or change the dream if I want to. This was not the same. I kept trying to ask the man who he was, mentally, but he could only see the body in the bed, which was either ill or asleep, she certainly could not talk physically at that time. Neither did I “see” the body, for I was in it. Also I was too busy looking around at everything else. Now I became frightened and I think I started knocking my head to try to wake up to come back. Then all of a sudden, my eyes still wide open, the vision in front of them suddenly changed or clicked back, and there in front of me was my “real room,” the light shining through the window from outside. I put the light on, got up and walked around, shaken and amazed by the whole event. I could still remember absolutely every detail, and I could “see” it in my mind’s eye. But I could not actually see it as I had seen it then. I was remembering it, imagining it. When it was actually happening there was a quite different quality about it: I say I did actually “see” this vision, because my consciousness was there, in that dimension. When I remember the scene now, the vision is qualitatively different from the actual experience, although it is the most vivid memory I have. The more I thought about the scene, the more I thought it seemed to be mid-Europe.
The next morning I mentioned the experience to my mother, and possibly my sister, but I never talked to anyone else about it except a Sufi friend who said I must have gone back to a previous incarnation.
The appearance of Rachel’s dream lover is easy to explain. As she was drifting off to sleep she developed a mental “set” by thinking about her boyfriends, particularly Claude. This is a recognised technique for inducing a dream about someone or something you want to dream about—you make sure you are thinking about them as you go to sleep. The man in her dream was not Claude, but he was very much the same physical type as Claude—clearly a type Rachel finds attractive. But this doesn’t explain the strange medieval setting of the dream.
What happened next was that she had an episode of sleep paralysis. She was able to look around the room but was not able to move or talk. Although she felt she was awake, what she was seeing was the very real-seeming hallucinatory world that accompanies sleep paralysis (often the imagery in these experiences is terrifying, but on this occasion it was positive and full of love). Even though nothing had the normal dream-like quality, she was aware that she must be dreaming but couldn’t wake herself. The paralysis, the inability to speak or to wake up, together with a very “real” hallucinatory world, all indicate that this was an episode of sleep paralysis.
So we can understand what happens in terms of brain function: we can explain most of the sensations she felt, the imagery of the strange room, the mental “set” that produced the dream lover. If the story ended there, there’d be no need to look for any other explanation. But that wasn’t quite the end of the story, which now moves forward five years to the summer of 1975.
I had been having some heart muscular problems, and my homoeopathic doctor admitted me to a hospital for a month, during which time I fasted, rested, analysed myself and my life, trying to establish where I was at that point in my life and where I was going. I believe I underwent a tremendous psychological and spiritual change.
For some time I had been thinking of making some extra money through having a market stall. An old school friend was enthusiastic about the idea, and we started the weekend of 16 August. The next day, Sunday August 17, I felt some kind of anticipation. When the market closed, three or four of the other stallholders asked Sue and me to go for a drink nearby. A group was playing jazz and someone was selling wine and chilli con carne from a barge. We all went round and sat on the floor listening to the music and chatting.
After about ten minutes my attention became forcibly drawn over to the far side of the yard, where there was a man standing looking over at me. He looked just like Claude: dark hair, dark glasses, jeans, French-looking. Every time I looked at him he was looking at me, and I inwardly wished that he would come closer. As I thought this, so he started walking towards me. I then wished that he would take his sunglasses off so that I could get a better impression of his face. The next time I looked, he had taken his glasses off. Then he walked over to our side of the yard and came to stand right in front of our circle. He was carrying a packet of Gitanes. I asked myself, Why has he come over? I knew that there was some kind of interaction between us and that a meeting was inevitable. But before I had time for conjecture, I heard the man sitting next to me saying: “I like that guy’s shirt. I’m going to ask him where he got it from.” I was amazed. Not only is it extremely unusual for men to remark on other men’s clothes, but unheard of for a normal chap to go up to a stranger and ask him where he bought his shirt.
The next thing I knew the two of them were walking towards our circle and he sat down with our group. He had a slight foreign accent, and as soon as there was a pause in the conversation, I asked him if he was from France. He said yes, he had been living there. I asked if he was Jewish. “Yes,” he said, “but how do you know? No one has ever asked me that.” His name was Bene, a name I had never heard of before. I was quite astounded. He, too, looked just like a Gitanes ad. It was obvious that Bene didn’t really want to talk to the others, and he soon asked if he could come and try on a pair of the boots I was selling on my stall. These were, of course, either too big, too small or whatever—that is, he obviously didn’t want a pair of boots at all. But he did invite me out to dinner that evening. I actually accepted, and surprised myself. Normally, I wouldn’t accept an invitation that quickly, but there was nothing normal about this—the speed with which things were happening, for example. On a rational level I thought he was good-looking, but there was something rather odd about him, a sort of nasal voice, a strutting walk. I suppose I had a question mark about him. He was an artist and had a studio in the area, and so we agreed to meet at 8.30 p.m. after I had gone home to wash and change. I returned there later, quite excited at the prospect of the evening. Eventually, I found the right studio. He and I left and went to look for a restaurant. We picked a French one nearby which neither of us had ever been to before. As I sat down at the table and faced him properly for the first time alone, I was suddenly dumbstruck. His face was the same face as my “experience” five years before. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was going mad. Was it my imagination? I did not, of course, say anything to him, because I thought he would have thought I was bananas.
I tried to concentrate on the conversation, but my being was reeling, my heart beating overtime at the excitement and vulnerability that I felt at this totally new experience. As the evening progressed, it became apparent that we were very much “in tune.” We appeared to like the same things, think in a similar way about things and so on. Then he said: “Do you know, it’s funny, but I have this feeling that I’ve met you before? I feel I know you, you are very familiar to me.” I still didn’t say anything. He went on: “It’s strange, because usually I never go to listen to the band on Sunday, but today something drove me out there, and as soon as I got outside I only saw one thing: you. Or rather, I didn’t notice your physical form but I ‘felt’ you and knew that we had to meet. It was as if I was magnetised.” The conversation continued more normally. Then I asked him how he had got the scar on his cheek, a dark red thin line about three inches [7.6 centimetres] long. “What scar?” he said. I pointed to it. “But I haven’t got a scar,” he said. But I can see it, I thought. Then I dropped the subject. Some time later he said: “Have you noticed the décor here?” I hadn’t, because I had been totally spellbound by his face. I looked around and was taken aback. Swords and shields on the walls, bits of armour, stone flooring, etc.—the same sort of period as I had seen in my “vision.”
Bene said: “I would have liked to have lived at that time. I can just imagine myself as a swashbuckling cavalier . . .’ By this time I was bursting to tell him. So I started, “Well, actually, I think you did live then,” and went on to tell him of my experience. I was a little apprehensive about what his reaction would be; it is not every day that one meets a girl who tells you that you have been her lover in the sixteenth century! But he seemed to take it quite coolly, neither outraged nor overwhelmed by it. He just said that he did not know if it were true because he had not had his own recall, but he did know that he was irresistibly drawn to me, felt that he knew me, and that he had had a recurrent dream in which a girl would come up to him and say: “I’ve met you before, a long, long time ago.” I must add that by the end of the evening the scar that I had “seen” had disappeared. There was nothing on his cheek. Was I hallucinating, I thought?
Eventually, it was time to go home. I wanted to be alone. I could not take any more. When I did get to bed I couldn’t sleep anyway. It was as though I had been struck by a thunderbolt. The whole experience had shaken me. I’d never had such a strong, vivid and important experience before. I tossed and turned, trying to make sense of the whole thing, wondering what had happened, and what was going to happen. I felt that things were coming to me from the outside rather than things that I was instigating. Suddenly, in bed, my eyes being wide open and I was fully awake, a “face” appeared before my eyes—not a flesh face; it was what I can only call a spirit face, greyish white and non-material. I began to wonder if I really had gone crazy. Immediately, I intuitively knew it to be my paternal grandmother, who had died before I was born. Her name had been Catherine, which was my middle name. I say I “intuitively” knew it to be her because I could not recognise her in the usual way. I had only previously seen photographs of her but they were of material flesh. This vision did not look like her photograph at all. Again I thought I must be imagining it and I tried to alter features, which I could have done if I had been simply imagining it, but nothing could be changed. It was there, outside me, or outside my creative faculties, existing independently of me, and there was nothing I could do to make it go away. I inwardly asked why she was there, appearing to me, and I was left with the impression that it was she who had been responsible for the meeting with Bene that day. Eventually, that vision went, and I was left in even more of a confused state.
The next day, Monday, he rang and asked if I would like to go to Paris with him that evening. How exciting, but I, cautious as ever, refused, saying I couldn’t because of my other work commitments. He came round to my flat later that day with a bunch of flowers. We talked and talked, each being excited by the other, feeling very much in harmony. Neither of us had to explain what we meant by a word or phrase. There was mutual understanding. It seemed that I felt every sensation he had, or thought every thought, even before he voiced it. I knew what every facial expression of his meant.
How did the relationship progress? The initial intensity lasted only for a few weeks. Gradually, Rachel began to realise that this was not a story with a fairy-tale ending. The two still felt very drawn towards each other, but the relationship proved to be a difficult one. Bene was not an easy person; he was subject to violent emotional outbursts, and Rachel would bear the brunt of these. She still had a strong feeling, though, that they had been brought together for a purpose, but she realised that although it was a relationship that had something to teach her, or even something to teach them both, it wasn’t destined to be a lifetime partnership. They parted, then eventually came together again as friends before finally drifting apart altogether.
If Rachel had not had the dream, this part of the story would need no explanation. We’d see it simply as an immediate attraction of such intensity that the people concerned had to believe that they were destined to be together, an empathy so strong that it seems to have been built up over previous lifetimes. Even with the knowledge of the dream, an obvious explanation would simply be that Bene’s face wasn’t the face of the man in the dream, that she thought it was only because he was the same type of man—the type that Rachel often found attractive and would have noticed anyway. After five years she might not have remembered the dream face clearly, but a similar face might have triggered the memory of the dream.
But this doesn’t explain all the facts. It doesn’t explain Bene’s recurrent dream, or his feeling that he had met Rachel before, or the similarity of the restaurant to the room in her “vision.” For that we have to fall back on coincidence. Is it too much of a coincidence that she should have met that particular person in those particular circumstances?
Even if we don’t like the coincidence theory, or if we believe that Rachel was not mistaken—that Bene’s was indeed the face she saw in her vision—we don’t have to accept reincarnation as the only explanation. An equally plausible and equally non-scientific explanation would be that her first vision had been a precognitive experience of their future meeting. This would fit nearly all the facts except his feeling that he had known her.
Perhaps the real lesson to be learned from this experience is that you can’t rely on history to repeat itself. Common sense would dictate that even if you think you have met your soul mate, and whatever you believe went on between you in a past life, you’d be wise not to assume that it will be recapitulated in this. Even soul mates who have managed to find each other for a second time around have to be prepared for their relationship to undergo tough times as well as tender.