Vestiges of another life - an early appreciation of metempsychosis or first prelude to future healing
In this episode I discuss my early experience with metempsychosis, better known in the west as reincarnation. While it is a subject that draws disbelief and sometimes, harsh judgement, I offer up perspectives on my belief while examining a session from my teens where my mother's friend helps regress me to a medieval life. The results are fascinating and have repercussions in the real world. I also urge listeners to investigate further. In my blog, I have written further about the history of reincarnation (metempsychosis) and a defense of the therapy I underwent.
“We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law of nature.”
Bras de Seine près de Giverny, soleil levant (The tributary of the Seine near Giverny, sunrise), 1897 - Claude Monet - Musée Marmottan Monet - Such paintings I learned about while visiting my mother’s apartment where she had a small library of impressionist art books. Monet’s work, particularly, had a dream-like quality, reminding me of memories and perhaps, unconsciously, vestiges of past lives.
Magician
A wildfire each night
a rain on your fingers
and hands like streams
every mist that
clothed me
cloth of flame exchanged
for the liquid
ribbon of an alchemical
kiss
my nest of self
surging naked emerging
from the
woods nearest
your eyes
I was often smoke, a cathedral
Erupted in
a place of timber
applause gleaming
praise that grazed
my soul into becoming
a greedy fool
fiery plaudits and
shining coins
Thrust into my hand
this was the
fiery, arching bough
I reached for,
never extinguished
In my breast.
A fire never to
die, the
journey through a round of
Stars
strings, music
more vast than
the beating of hearts
between us, breathing
back and forth, like
a pendulum, this
enchantment
between the liquid jewel of
your eyes, this
head to my shoulder
and the next favour
Each candle you lit and doused
you could
not be strong enough
for the final
Burst of stubborn flame
You could not put down
That last burning
ember
This my burning
My burning
And the tower
I slept
in, after my inflamed
demands, having
received the
happiness for my work
my entertainments but no
weight in my palm
no metal flicker to
warm and pacify skin and self.
I slept defiant
burrowing regret
I was snatched
Strange
hands wretched and dirtied
from my slumber
Asunder, in the presence
Of the prince
Hours earlier I spat,
his cheek with the
dribble of my arrogance
rewarded, here
with knives, walls bloodied
torn, and
thrown in pieces
into the river.
There I was no
More
only the burning
ember in
my world’s
after trails
The lost coals
crying for the
previous shelter
of the rising flame
Or for the calming
liquid
of your hearth, your
Eyes, fingers, hands…
2019 - (c) Christijan Robert Broerse
Du im voraus – Rainer Maria Rilke
Du im voraus verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene,
nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind.
Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt,
zu erkennen. Alle die großen
Bildern in mir, im Fernen erfahrene Landschaft,
Städte und Türme und Brücken und un-
vermutete Wendung der Wege
und das Gewaltige jener von Göttern
einst durchwachsenen Länder:
steigt zur Bedeutung in mir
deiner, Entgehende, an.
Ach, die Gärten bist du,
ach, ich sah sie mit solcher
Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster
im Landhaus—, und du tratest beinahe
mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,—
du warst sie gerade gegangen,
und die spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler
waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken
mein zu plötzliches Bild.—Wer weiß, ob derselbe
Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns
gestern, einzeln, im Abend?
‘You, a little beyond’ (Im voraus)
You, a little beyond
Beloved, long lost, never to arrive
I don’t know the songs you love
Given up, my search for you in the approaching wave of the
next moment. Still, these images
in me - landscapes ever-widening with
unsuspecting turns in the path
cities, towers bridges
and the lands with their gods intermingling
forever trembling -
all rise up with this one meaning:
You, my elusive one.
Ah, you are gardens
I looked upon wistful with such
Hope. An open window, yes,
in a country house – and you, ever pensive
nearly stepped out, as if only for me. Streets I found myself in
you had been there in passing.
And sometimes the windowed mirrors of the merchant shops,
Joyfully spinning from your reflection became startled,
All at once, due to mine. – who knows whether
The same bird sang through us,
Yesterday, alone, in the evening.
Translation - (c) Christijan Robert Broerse