Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton, Becky Zins (Editor)

From the Publisher

Destiny of Souls by Michael Newton, Ph.D., contains interviews given by sixty-seven people under hypnosis discussing their experiences between lives on earth. The result is a book which proves, beyond any doubt, that who and what you are continues, grows, and evolves into something wonderful even after you pass on into the next world. Death, that amazing transition, will no longer be seen as an ending or something fearful. Rather, you will understand that it is merely a change, a beginning, a way-station for rest and recuperation before rebirth.

Dr. Newton holds a doctorate in counseling and is a master hypnotherapist. This book is based on his groundbreaking research into the afterlife. It will thrill and astonish you, and is ideal introductory reading for this subject, or if you have already read his best-selling first volume, Journey of Souls.

In Destiny of Souls, you will explore the meaning of existence and what life is like between lives. You will discover:

- Your purpose on Earth
- The truth about soulmates
- How spirits connect with and comfort the living
- Spirit guides
- The Council of Elders that interviews us between lives
- Why you choose a certain body to incarnate into
- What souls do between lives

Destiny of Souls will show you more of the hidden aspects of what happens after death and help you understand the incredible order and peace that exists within the afterlife. If you have ever wondered what happens after death, if you want more peace of mind and happiness in your life today, read Destiny of Souls.

Publishers Weekly

Newton--counselor, hypnotist and author of Journey of Souls--draws on his regressions of some 70 clients to explore the existence of souls between incarnations. The most affecting section of the book is the second chapter, where Newton turns his attention to grief and argues that between death and reincarnation, discarnate souls are able to contact loved ones and comfort them. Excerpts of his sessions with clients show people realizing that they have had one partner throughout many lives; that after previous deaths, the couple was reunited; and that after this incarnation, they will be together again. Elsewhere, Newton investigates the nonhuman manifestations of spirits on Earth, including elves, fairies and ghosts. Newton also takes on malevolent spirits; arguing that demons and the devil do not exist, he reports that after working with him, clients who initially thought they were possessed by a "malevolent spirit" usually realize they have miscommunicated with a benevolent spirit who was trying to reach them. A rich volume, chock-full of interviews and fascinating first-person narratives, this book is nonetheless not for the uninitiated; Newton sometimes fails to explain his terminology, so readers who do not know much about "lives between lives" may feel lost. More informed readers, however, will find this a feast, and Newton a charming host. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Product Details

• Table of Contents
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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

Chapter One

The Spirit World

At the moment of death, our soul rises out of its host body. If the soul is older and has experience from many former lives, it knows immediately it has been set free and is going home. These advanced souls need no one to greet them. However, most souls I work with are met by guides just outside Earth's astral plane. A young soul, or a child who has died, may be a little disoriented until someone comes closer to ground level for them. There are souls who choose to remain at the scene of their death for a while. Most wish to leave at once. Time has no meaning in the spirit world. Discarnates who choose to comfort someone who is grieving, or have other reasons to stay near the place of their death for a while, experience no sense of time loss. This becomes now time for the soul as opposed to linear time.

    As they move further away from Earth, souls experience an increasingly brilliant light around them. Some will briefly see a grayish darkness and will sense passing through a tunnel or portal. The differences between these two phenomena depends upon the exit speed of the soul, which in turn relates to their experience. The pulling sensation from our guides may be gentle or forceful depending upon the soul's maturity and capacity for rapid change. In the early stages of their exit all souls encounter a "wispy cloudiness" around them that soon becomes clear, enabling them to look off into a vast distance. This is the moment when the average soul sees a ghostly form of energy coming toward them. This figure may be a loving soulmateor two, but more often than not it is our guide. In circumstances where we are met by a spouse or friend who has passed on before us, our guide is also close by so they can take over the transition process. In all my years of research, I have never had a single subject who was met by a major religious figure such as Jesus or Buddha. Still, the loving essence of the great teachers from Earth is within the personal guides who are assigned to us.

    By the time souls become reoriented again to the place they call home, their earthliness has changed. They are no longer quite human in the way we think of a human being with a particular emotional, temperamental and physical makeup. For instance, they don't grieve about their recent physical death in the way their loved ones will. It is our souls that make us human on Earth, but without our bodies we are no longer Homo sapiens. The soul has such majesty that it is beyond description. I tend to think of souls as intelligent light forms of energy. Right after death, souls suddenly feel different because they are no longer encumbered by a temporary host body with a brain and central nervous system. Some take longer to adjust than others.

    The energy of the soul is able to divide into identical parts, similar to a hologram. It may live parallel lives in other bodies although this is much less common than we read about. However, because of the dual capability of all souls, part of our light energy always remains behind in the spirit world. Thus, it is possible to see your mother upon returning from a life even though she may have died thirty Earth years before and reincarnated again.

    Orientation periods with our guides, which take place before joining our cluster group, vary between souls and between different lives for the same soul. This is a quiet time for counseling, with the opportunity to vent any frustrations we have about the life just ended. Orientation is intended to be an initial debriefing session with gentle probing by perceptive, caring teacher-guides.

    The meeting may be long or short depending upon the circumstances of what we did or did not accomplish with regard to our life contract. Special karmic issues are also reviewed, although they will be discussed later in minute detail within our soul cluster group. The returning energy of some souls will not be sent back into their soul group right away. These are the souls who were contaminated by their physical bodies and became involved with evil acts. There is a difference between wrongdoing with no premeditated desire to hurt someone and intentional evil. The degrees of harm to others from mischief to malevolence are carefully evaluated.

    Those souls who have been associated with evil are taken to special centers which some clients call "intensive care units" Here, I am told, their energy is remodeled to make it whole again. Depending upon the nature of their transgressions, these souls could be rather quickly returned to Earth. They might well choose to serve as the victims of other's evil acts in the next life. Still, if their actions were prolonged and especially cruel over a number of lives, this would denote a pattern of wrongful behavior. Such souls could spend a long while in a solitary spiritual existence, possibly over a thousand Earth years. A guiding principle in the spirit world is that wrongdoing, intentional or unintentional, on the part of all souls will need to be redressed in some form in a future life. This is not considered punishment or even penance as much as an opportunity for karmic growth. There is no hell for souls, except perhaps on Earth.

    Some lives are so difficult that the soul arrives home very tired. Despite the energy rejuvenation process initiated by our guides who combine their energy with ours at the gateway, we may still have a depleted energy flow. In these cases, more rest and solitude may be called for rather than celebrations. Indeed, many souls who desire rest receive it before reunification with their groups. Our soul groups may be boisterous or subdued, but they are respectful of what we have gone through during an incarnation. All groups welcome back their friends in their own way with deep love and camaraderie.

    Homecoming is a joyous interlude, especially following a physical life where there might not have been much karmic contact with our intimate soulmates. Most of my subjects tell me they are welcomed back with hugs, laughter and much humor, which I find to be a hallmark of life in the spirit world. The really effusive groups who have planned elaborate celebrations for the returning soul may suspend all their other activities. One subject of mine had this to say about his homecoming welcome:

After my last life, my group organized one hell of a party
with music, wine, dancing and singing. They arranged
everything to look like a classical Roman festival with
marble halls, togas and all the exotic furnishings prevalent
in our many lives together in the ancient world.
Melissa (a primary soulmate) was waiting for me right up
front, re-creating the age that I remember her best and
looking as radiant as ever.

    Soul groups range between three and twenty-five members, with the average having about fifteen. There are times when souls from nearby cluster groups may want to connect with each other. Often this activity involves older souls who have made many friends from other groups with whom they have been associated over hundreds of past lives. Some ten million viewers in the U.S. saw the TV show Sightings, produced by Paramount in 1995, which aired a segment about my work. Those who watched this show about life after death may remember one of my clients, by the name of Colleen, who spoke about a session we had together. She described returning to the spirit world after a former life to find a spectacular seventeenth-century full dress ball in progress. My subject saw over a hundred people who came to celebrate her return. A time and place she had loved was lavishly reproduced so Colleen could begin the process of renewal in style.

    Thus, homecoming can take place in two types of settings. A few souls might briefly meet a returning soul at the gateway and then leave in favor of a guide who takes them through some preliminary orientation. More commonly, the welcoming committee waits until the soul actually returns to their spirit group. This group may be isolated in a classroom, gathered around the steps of a temple, sitting in a garden, or the returning soul could encounter many groups in a study hall atmosphere. Souls who pass by other clusters on the way to their own berth often remark that other souls with whom they have been associated in past lives will look up and acknowledge their return with a smile or wave.

    How a subject views their group cluster setting is based upon the soul's state of advancement, although memories of a schoolroom atmosphere are always very clear. In the spirit world, educational placement depends on the level of soul development. Simply because a soul has been incarnating on Earth since the Stone Age is no guarantee of high attainment. In my lectures I often remark about a client who took 4,000 years of past lives finally to conquer jealousy. I can report he is not a jealous person today, yet he has made little progress with fighting his own intolerance. It takes some students longer to get through certain lessons, just as in earthly classrooms. On the other hand, all highly advanced souls are old souls in terms of both knowledge and experience.

    In Journey of Souls, I broadly classified souls as beginner, intermediate and advanced and gave case examples of each while explaining there are fine nuances of development among these categories. Generally, the composition of a group of souls is made up of beings at about the same level of advancement, although they have their individual strengths and shortcomings. These attributes give the group balance. Souls assist one another with the cognitive aspects of absorbing information from life experiences as well as reviewing the way they handled the feelings and emotions of their host bodies directly related to those experiences. Every aspect of a life is dissected, even to the extent of reverse role playing in the group, to bring greater awareness. By the time souls reach the intermediate levels they begin to specialize in those major areas of interest where certain skills have been demonstrated. I will discuss these in more depth as we get further along in other chapters.

    One very meaningful aspect of my research has been the discovery of energy colors displayed by souls in the spirit world. These colors relate to a soul's state of advancement. This information, gathered slowly over many years, has been one indicator of progress during client assessments and also serves to identify other souls my subjects see around them while in a trance state. I found that typically, pure white denotes a younger soul and with advancement soul energy becomes more dense, moving into orange, yellow, green and finally the blue ranges. In addition to these center core auras, there are subtle mixtures of halo colors within every group that relate to the character aspects of each soul.

    For want of a better system, I have classified soul development as moving from a level I beginner through various learning stages to that of a master at level VI. These greatly advanced souls are seen as having a deep indigo color. I have no doubt even higher levels exist, but my knowledge of them is restricted because I only receive reports from people who are still incarnating. Frankly, I am not fond of the term "level" to identify soul placement because this label clouds the diversity of development attained by souls at any particular stage. Despite these misgivings, it is my subjects who use "level" to describe where they are on the ladder of learning. They are also quite modest about accomplishments. Regardless of my assessment, no client is inclined to state they are an advanced soul. Once out of hypnosis, with a fully conscious self-gratifying mind in control, they are less reticent.

    While in a superconscious state during deep hypnosis, my subjects tell me that in the spirit world no soul is looked down upon as having less value than any other soul. We are all in a process of transformation to something greater than our current state of enlightenment. Each of us is considered uniquely qualified to make some contribution toward the whole, no matter how hard we are struggling with our lessons. If this were not true we would not have been created in the first place.

    In my discussions of colors of advancement, levels of development, classrooms, teachers and students it would be easy to assume the ambiance of the spirit world is one of hierarchy. This conclusion would be quite wrong, according to all my clients. If anything, the spirit world is hierarchical in mental awareness. We tend to think of organizational authority on Earth as represented by power struggles, turf wars and the controlling use of a rigid set of rules within structure. There certainly is structure in the spirit world, but it exists within a sublime matrix of compassion, harmony, ethics and morality far beyond what we practice on Earth. In my experience the spirit world also has a far-reaching centralized personnel department for soul assignments. Yet there is a value system here of overwhelming kindness, tolerance, patience and absolute love. When reporting to me about such things, my subjects are humbled by the process.

    I have an old college friend in Tucson who is an iconoclast and has resisted authority all his life, which is an attitude I can empathize with myself. My friend suspects the souls of my clients have been "brainwashed" into believing they have control over their destiny. He believes authority of any kind—even spiritual authority—cannot exist without corruption and the abuse of privilege. My research reveals too much order upstairs, which is not to his liking.

    Nevertheless, all my subjects believe they have had a multitude of choices in their past and that this will continue into the future. Advancement through the taking of personal responsibility does not involve dominance or status ranking but rather a recognition of potential. They see integrity and personal freedom everywhere in their life between lives.

    In the spirit world we are not forced to reincarnate or participate in group projects. If souls want solitude they can have it. If they don't want to advance in their assignments, this too is honored. One subject told me, "I have skated through many easy lives and I like it that way because I haven't really wanted to work hard. Now that's going to change. My guide says, `we are ready when you are.'" In fact, there is so much free will that if we are not ready to leave Earth's astral plane after death, for a variety of personal reasons, our guides will allow us to stay around until such time as we are prepared to go home.

    I hope this book will show that we have many choices both in and out of the spirit world. What is very evident to me about these choices is the intense desire of most souls to prove themselves worthy of the trust placed in them. We are expected to make mistakes in this process. The effort of moving toward a greater goodness and a conjunction with the Source that created us is the prime motivator of souls. Souls have feelings of humility at having been given the opportunity to incarnate in physical form.

    I have been asked many times if my subjects see the Source of Creation during their sessions. In my introduction I said I could go only so far upriver toward the Source because of the limitations of working with people who are still incarnating. Advanced subjects talk about the time of conjunction when they will join the "Most Sacred Ones." In this sphere of dense purple light there is an all-knowing Presence. What all this means I cannot say, but I do know a Presence is felt when we go before our council of Elders. Once or twice between lives we visit this group of higher beings who are a step or two above our teacher-guides. In my first book, I gave a couple of case examples of these meetings. With this book, I will go into greater detail about our visitations with these masters who are as close as I can come to the Creator. This is because it is here where an even higher source of divine knowledge is experienced by the soul. My clients call this energy force "the Presence."

    The council is not a tribunal of judges nor a courtroom where souls appear to be tried and sentenced for wrongdoing, although I must admit that once in a while someone will tell me they feel going in front of the council is like being sent to the principal's office in school. Members of the council want to talk to us about our mistakes and what we can do to correct negative behavior in the next life.

    This is the place where considerations for the right body in our next life begin. As the time approaches for rebirth, we go to a space where a number of bodies are reviewed that might meet our goals. We have a chance to look into the future here and actually test out different bodies before making a choice. Souls voluntarily select less than perfect bodies and difficult lives to address karmic debts or to work on different aspects of a lesson they have had trouble with in the past. Most souls accept the bodies offered to them in the selection room but a soul can reject what is offered and even delay reincarnating. Then, too, a soul might ask to go to a physical planet other than Earth for awhile. If we accept the new assignment, we are often sent to a preparation class to remind us of certain signposts and clues in the life to come, especially at those moments when primary soulmates come into our lives.

    Finally, when the time comes for our return, we say a temporary goodbye to our friends and are escorted to the space of embarkation for the trip to Earth. Souls join their assigned hosts in the womb of the baby's mother sometime after the third month of pregnancy so they will have a sufficiently evolved brain to work with before term. As part of the fetal state they are still able to think as immortal souls while they get used to brain circuitry and the alter ego of their host. After birth, an amnesiac memory block sets in and souls meld their immortal character with the temporary human mind to produce a combination of traits for a new personality.

    I use a systematic approach to reach the soul mind by employing a series of exercises for people in the early stages of hypnotic regression. This procedure is designed to gradually sharpen my subject's memories of their past and prepare them to analyze critically the images they will see of life in the spirit world. After the usual intake interview, I place the client in hypnosis very quickly. It is the deepening that is my secret. Over long periods of experimentation, I have come to realize that having a client in the normal alpha state of hypnosis is not adequate enough to reach the superconscious state of the soul mind. For this I must take the subject into the deeper theta ranges of hypnosis.

    In terms of methodology, I may spend up to an hour with long visualizations of forest or seashore images, then I take the subject into their childhood years. I ask detailed questions about such things as the furniture in their house at age twelve, their favorite article of clothing at age ten, the toy they loved most at age seven and their earliest memories as a child between ages three and two. We do all this before I take the client down into their mother's womb for more questions and then into the most immediate past life for a short review. By the time the client has passed through the death scene of that life and reached the gateway to the spirit world, my bridge is complete. Continual hypnosis, deepening over the first hour, enhances the subject's disengagement from their earthly environment. They have also been conditioned to respond in detail to an intensive question and answer interview of their spiritual life. This will take us another two hours.

    Subjects who come out of trance after mentally returning home have a look of awe on their faces that is far more profound than if they had just experienced a straight past life regression. For example, a client told me, "The spirit has a diversity and complex fluid quality beyond my ability adequately to interpret." Many former clients write me about how viewing their immortality changed their lives. Here is a sample of one letter:

I have gained an indescribable sense of joy and freedom
from learning my true identity. The amazing thing is that
this knowledge was in my mind all the time. Seeing my
nonjudgmental master teachers left me in a glowing state.
The insight that came to me was that the only thing of
true importance in this material life is the way we live and
how we treat other people. The circumstances of our life
mean nothing compared to our compassion and acceptance
of others. I now have a knowing rather than a feeling
about why I am here and where I am going after death.

    I present my findings involving the sixty-seven cases and numerous quotes in this book as a reporter and a messenger. Before I begin every lecture to the public, I explain to my audiences that what I have to say are my truths about our spiritual life. There are many doorways to the truth. My truths come from a cumulation of great wisdom from multitudes of people who have graced my life as clients over many years. If I make statements that go against your preconceptions, faith, or personal philosophy, please take what fits well for you and discard the rest.