Swami Dhyan Giten: Light on
the Path
“Best Q & A Session.”
Balpallavi, India
– Comment on Giten’s spiritual blog on The Times of India
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“Very interesting and thought-provoking.”
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Mrityunjoy Chakravarty, India
– Comment on Giten’s spiritual blog on The Times of India
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Swami Dhyan Giten answers your questions on meditation and spiritual growth.
Light on the Path is an invitation, which can bring light on your path to inner awakening. It is an invitation, which can help you to discover the inner being, the meditative quality within, the inner silence and emptiness, the boundless and unlimited source of creativity, both in relation to ourselves, in relation to other people, in relation to creativity and in relation to Existence.
Your question will be published in Giten’s Newsletter, The Giten Blog and Giten’s spiritual blog on The Times of India. Your questions will be answered on these pages depending on when when Existence is ready to respond and the amount of questions.
The second question is presented below.
Question 2
Past life
– The Spiritual Journey to
Awakening
Very interesting and thought-provoking. But the reasons/causes for the desire/urge to mentally reach a higher level of consciousness,and who could be those fortunate ones needs to be explained/clarified.Obviously this path is only meant for a few who can progress and have the potential to reach the exalted goal of Bliss. Can past life experiences/knowledge have a role,and how to ascertain that?Shall be thankful for enlightenment on this.
Mrityunjoy Chakravarty, India
Dear Mrityunjoy Chakravarty,
What is past life? How do past lives and spiritual growth relate to each other? How can memories of past lives teach us to live more present in the here and now? We are all ancient people. Nobody is new here.
Life’s only law is change. Everything is continuously changing, evolving and developing. Hindus say that it takes 840 million lives to become a human being, which emphasises the precious gift of being a human being. But most people waste this precious gift of life. Instead of recognizing the possibility to search for God, for the divine, for true happiness, people waste their lives striving and fighting for power, money, position or fame.
We have been living lives as stones, flowers, trees and animals in order to develop our consciousness. Stones, flowers and animals also have consciousness. The more matter, the less consciousness. The more consciousness, the less matter. God is not a person, God is the underlying thread of consciousness in Existence.
The stones, flowers and trees live below the mind, the animals live by their instincts, man lives in the mind and the awakened one lives beyond the mind. All stones, flowers, trees, animals and human beings are on a spiritual journey to become awakened, to become enlightened. I remember sitting and meditating beside a slow flowing river in India, and I got the feeling that this river could teach me all the secrets of the mystery of life. If we learn to surrender to a stone, a flower or a river, it becomes a door to the Whole. The whole can be found in the part, and the part can be found in the whole. With this vision, we understand that every place is a spiritual place. A spiritual man is happy with the whole existence. He says “yes” to the whole existence.
The current climate change is an outer mirror of our inner consciousness. It is an outer mirror of our attitude to try to conquer nature, instead of being in harmony with nature, but in the end the part can never conquer the whole.
Try as a meditation, to be with a stone, a flower or a tree, and you will find that they have consciousness. If you become friend with a tree, you will find that the tree will welcome you as a friend. The tree will be happy to see you.
My basic profession is as an actor, and I have learnt much about life through working as an actor. Working as an actor is really a spiritual profession, since it means to create life on the stage. It means to play a role totally, while at the same time you know deep down inside yourself that you are not the role that you are playing. Working as an actor gave me early a spiritual discipline, which taught me a lot about awareness and meditation. Life is also about learning to play different roles, and learning to change between different roles with the same easiness that you change shirt.
It is the same situation with past lives. Through becoming conscious about different roles that we play in different life situations, we can create a distance to these roles. Memories from past lives can also make us aware that we have lived before, and that there is a part of ourselves that survive death, and which belong to the deathless and the eternal within ourselves.
The door to memories of past lives is to create a conscious relationship to death. To remember past lives, we need to develop a conscious relationship to death, since past lives, per definition, means that we die. The whole theme of past lives is often surrounded with fear, since it basically means that we need to accept that we die. Meditation is the way to create a conscious relationship to death. The key to meditation is commitment, regularity and a quality of heart.
Many times we can get an intuitive feeling that we already know a person, who we have just met. Through an understanding of past lives, we can find a relevant explanation for this feeling.
Nature is also wise in her gifts. Nature do not give gifts, which we are not ripe for, and which do not have meaning for us. Before memories from past lives has any deeper meaning for us, we first need to be clear with the basic themes of our life, for example our relationship to ourselves, our relationship to other people and our relationship to creativity. Past lives is not a way to escape from life, it is a way of understanding life and ourselves in a deeper way.
It is nothing sensational about memories from past lives, but it gives us a deeper understanding of life. We have not been more awake in a past life, than we are in this life. What keeps us in the continuous circle of life and death, of rebirth and death, is desires and identification with personality aspects. The door to freedom from being reborn is to discover our authentic inner being, the meditative quality within, the inner silence and emptiness, the capacity to surrender to life. Each life is like the pearls of a necklace, while the thread that keep the pearls together, is like the successive growth of the inner being towards spiritual maturity, towards enlightenment, towards awakening.
The whole meaning of past lives are that we grow and develop until we finally discover the inner being, our authentic self, where we already are one with life. From the limited perspective of a single life, and with our limited physical vision, different phenomenons in life can be difficult to understand. But with the understanding and perspective of past lives, we can see life in a another light. We can see life with a deeper vision and with a broader understanding. It is like the difference between seeing life from the limited perspective of the valley, and to view life from the vision of the summit of the mountain.
Buddha’s insight about past lives was that no real spiritual growth can happen before we know our past lives. It is first when we know our inner potential, and we know where we come from, that we know where we are going.
Pointers about past life
1. Past life has nothing to do with a belief in reincarnation, past life is about a direct insight. Through direct insight, no belief is necessary. There is not really necessary to legitimate memories as past lives. When we go deeper into ourselves, memories come up from the subconscious. These memories has meaning and relevance independent if we label those memories as past life or not. We do not really need to believe in past lives, we can just allow these memories to arise in our consciousness. Through not labelling these memories as past lives, and through staying open in a quality of “not knowing”, we can continue to be open for the truth.
2. Accept the fact that past life means that we die.
3. We do not need to engage ourselves emotionally in the memories of past lives. It is more about observing these memories with presence, understanding and awareness.
4. Memories of past lives often follow how we live our present life. If we, for example, live a safe and secure life in our present life, we will probably attract memories from safe and secure lives in the past. If we are angry and insecure in the present life, we will probably attract similar memories and experiences from past lives.
5. When memories from past lives arise in your consciousness, see what the life lesson is in that life. See what you should learn in that life. See also if there is a relation between themes in the past life, and in how you live your present life. See what you have chosen up to now, and what your choices and possibilities are in the present life.
My memories from past lives
A beloved friend since many lives told me that she had a consultation with a medium, and somehow they began to talk about me. I laughed when she told me that the medium had described me as “an old soul.”
A valuable insight through past lives was that I discovered that I consciously has chosen to walk the path of teacher since several lives to learn to teach and communicate with people on a subtle and deeper level. This conscious choice to walk the path of a teacher includes past lives as a Tibetan monk and counsellor in Dalai Lamas’s residence Potala, a district Pharaoh in Egypt, a medicine man among Sioux Indians in USA, a medical doctor in USA and two lives in England as an abbedissa at a convent and as a teacher at Oxford University.
My earliest memory of past lives comes from the ancient continent Atlantis, where I was very tall man. Atlantis was a culture of a very high spiritual and material development, which was divided into two different races: priests and workers. The priests had a average height of 2 meters, and had a trunk-like development around the nose through which they communicated by telepathy.
In Tibet, I sat in the reception in a religious monastery for 8 years. My work was to ascertain the spiritual development of the new adepts to see if they should be accepted into the monastery. After 8 years in the monastery, I became tired of rules and seriousness, instead of love and humour. After much conflict, I left the monastery. Frustrated I walked around India, searching for a spiritual truth which I did not really know what it was, until my death.
In the catacombs of Colosseum in Rome, I escaped as one of the first Christians and disciples of Jesus. Later I was caught and thrown to the lions.
In the Golden Town in Egypt, I was a districts Pharaoh, whose life lesson was to rule with love and compassion.
In the town Constantinople in Turkey, I was a seller of authentic carpets and a Sufi mystic.
In one life, I was a medicine man among Sioux Indians in USA. A wise 80 year old Indian with a stone face, who in periods went out alone in nature for three days to meditate and receive guidance from The Great Spirit to bring back to the tribe.
In the next life, I was a medical doctor and surgeon in New York. My office was full with Indian tools for healing, and I secretly healed patients despite the fact that this was strictly forbidden according to the regulations. I never felt at home in New York, because I had a strong longing to be closer to nature. That this longing came from living my whole past life out in nature was nothing that I was not aware of then.
I also lived in England during two lives. In one life, I was an abbedissa at a convent, and in one life I was a stern but much loved teacher for boys at The Oxford University.
In Scotland, I was a farmer, and in this life nothing more exciting happened except than drinking tea with my wife in the evenings.
In Paris, I was an artist, who committed suicide.
In my last life, I was a disciple to the Russian enlightened Master George Gurdjieff in St Petersburg in Russia. I also discovered that my early passion for theater in this life was because theater was the only spiritual discipline that I recognized early in this life. Gurdjieff used very intensive theater methods to teach his disciples in meditation.
Examples of aspects from past lives in individual consultations and courses
After first opening the door to remember my own past lives, the door also opened to see the past life of others. To see aspects from past lives is not something that I focus on during an individual consultation or a course, but if aspects of past lives comes up authentically during an individual consultation or a course, then this can be relevant and meaningful for the other person in his present life.
In the following two examples from individual consultations, aspects of past lives has been relevant for the other person and it has provided keys to understanding for the other person in his present life. It is also interesting to see that there may be conscious choices and patterns, which are like an underlying thread through several lives.
In these consultations, I made an intuitive and clairvoyant energy reading of the development of the other person’s chakra system and the balance between his inner man and woman to make a general assessment of the person’s general level of awareness and spiritual growth.
The human aura is the energy field, which surrounds a person and which also relates to the development of the chakra system. Different chakras can also have different colours, which stands for different psychological and spiritual themes and qualities.
What are the path of love and the path of meditation? There are basically two different paths to enlightenment. These two paths are The path of love and The path of meditation. The path of love is the female path to enlightenment and The path of meditation is the male path to enlightenment. The path of love is the path of love, joy, relationships, devotion and surrender. The path of meditation is the path of meditation, silence, aloneness and freedom. These two paths have different ways, but they have the same goal. Through love and surrender the person that walks The path of love discovers the inner silence. Through meditation and aloneness the person that walks The path of meditation discovers the inner source of love. These two paths are like climbing the mountain of enlightenment through different routes, but the two paths are meeting on the summit of the mountain – and discover an inner integration between love and meditation, between relating and aloneness.
Before I accept to work with a student now, I also make an intuitive and clairvoyant evaluation about which spiritual paths that the student has walked before in previous lives. This intuitive assessment give information about the spiritual level that the student has attained, and it also makes it easier to guide the person spiritually if he has followed a certain path in the past.
A female student of mine laughed recently when I told her that she had followed The path of love in several past lives. She commented: “You have told me three times now that I have walked the path of love and silence, but with my head I still do not understand it.” But this overall assessment of her spiritual growth until now, and of the spiritual paths that she had walked, made all the pieces of her life puzzle fit together – and brought a new, creative light to all her life choices in her current life. A male student of mine, who was a Tibetan monk in a previous life, walks The path of meditation, and I notice how I change my language and the methods that I recommend when I guide him along the path of meditation. I now work with students who walk both The path of love and The path of meditation, which also allows me to discover a deeper integration of love and meditation on my path to enlightenment.
For more information about how to ascertain past life experience and intuitive energy reading, I would also like to recommend my book “Presence – Working from Within. The Psychology of Being” (the book is available on the international book site Lulu.com).
For secrecy reasons, the names of the persons in these examples has been changed.
Example 1: Michael, 25 years
With Michael, I could see a pattern of 5 past lives, where he worked as a medical doctor and healer with focus on service to other people.
In one life, he was a traditional medical doctor and worked in a hospital in USA. His life lesson in this life was to learn what is basically healing in the relation between doctor and patient. In the next life he took a deeper step in this pattern, and worked as a natural doctor and healer on Hawaii. He worked close to people in a small village, where the mother’s came with their sick children. His ways of working in this life was psychic diagnosis, intuition and healing.
During the consultation with Michael, I could see that he had a very large and light-blue aura, which gave me the feeling of clarity and service to people. His heart- and throat chakra both had a green colour, and gave me a feeling of healing qualities.
Example 2: Bob, 32 years
With Bob, I could see that he had a great depth, and that he was an old and experienced soul, who had walked on earth many times.
When I first looked at his past lives, it was like playing a slot machine, and see the wheels turn life by life. But finally the wheels slowed down, and focused on two past lives. The first life was in Egypt, where he was a man with a lot of power and influence over people. The second life was his last life before the present life, where he was a captain on a ship in England.
I could see that he had a pattern of six lives in power positions, where his life lesson was to learn to handle power, and to learn that real power is love and compassion. I could also see that he would be attracted to similar positions again until he had learnt this life lesson.
In his aura, I could see that the largest field was light purple with two smaller green fields on the sides. From this I draw the conclusion that the green fields would mean a healing process of going deeper within himself. This would mean that the colour and the quality of the purple field would become darker. This gave me the feeling of a mystic, and that his next step in learning to handle power, would be through intuition and psychic powers. This would teach him that the active component behind clairvoyance is love and compassion.
Swami Dhyan Giten
The Giten Blog 