Amy’s evidence. A case of suicide and headway through the library of Life Books.
In the following story of one of Dr. Michael Newton’s patients, who here is called Amy, she goes through a past life in which she commits suicide because she is single, pregnant, and her boyfriend has died in an accident in Victorian Britain.
Her soul remains bogged down for about one hundred years, in order to think about what she has done, until she comes to a library of Life Books. There she has a conversation with the soul of one of the librarians, an expert instructor who helps her to carry on her path of spiritual evolution.
Case 29. Amy’s evidence. A case of suicide.
Amy had recently returned to the spirit world from a small farming village in England where she killed herself in 1860, at age sixteen. This soul would wait another hundred years before coming back due to her self-doubts about handling adversity. Amy drowned herself in a local pond because she was two months pregnant and unmarried. Her lover, Thomas, had been killed the week before in a fall off a thatched roof he was repairing. I learned the two were deeply in love and intended to marry. Amy told me during her past life review that she thought when Thomas was killed her life was over. Amy said she did not want to bring disgrace upon her family from the gossip of local villagers. Tearfully, this client said, «I knew they would call me a whore, and if I ran off to London that is exactly what a poor girl with child would become.»
In suicide cases, the soul’s guide might offer seclusion, aggressive energy regeneration, a quick return, or some combination of these things. When Amy crossed over after killing herself, her guide, Likiko, and the soul of Thomas were there to comfort her for a while. Soon she was left alone with Likiko in a beautiful garden setting. Amy sensed the disappointment in Likiko’s manner and she expected to be scolded for her lack of courage. Angrily, she asked her guide why life didn’t go as planned in the beginning. She had not seen the possibility of suicide before her incarnation. Amy thought she was supposed to marry Thomas, have children and live happily in her village to old age. Someone, she felt, had pulled the rug out from under her. Likiko explained that Thomas’ death was one of the alternatives in this life cycle and that she had the freedom to make better choices than killing herself.
Amy learned that for Thomas, his choice to go up on a high, steep and dangerously slippery roof was a probable one – more probable because his soul mind had already considered this «accident» as a test for her. Later, I was to learn Thomas came very close to not accepting the roof job because of «internal forces pulling him the other way.» Apparently, everyone in this soul group saw that Amy’s capacity for survival was greater than she gave herself credit for, although she had shown tenuous behavior in her earlier lives.
Once on the other side, Amy thought the whole exercise was cruel and unnecessary. Likiko reminded Amy that she had a history of self-flagellation and that if she was ever going to help others with their survival, she must get past this failing in herself. When Amy responded that she had little choice but to kill herself, given the circumstances of Victorian England, she found herself in the following library scene.
Doctor Newton: Where are you now?
Subject: (somewhat disoriented) I’m in a place of study… it looks Gothic… stone walls… long marble tables…
Doctor Newton: Why do you think you are in this sort of building?
Subject: (pause) In one of my lives I lived as a monk in Europe (in the twelfth century). I loved the old church cloister as a place for quiet study. But I know where I am now. It is the library of great books… the records.
Doctor Newton: Many people call them Life Books. Is this the same thing?
Subject: Yes, we all use them… (pause, subject is distracted) There is a worrisome looking old man in a white robe coming toward me… fluttering around me.
Doctor Newton: What’s he doing, Amy?
Subject: Well, he’s carrying a set of scrolls, rolls of charts. He is muttering and shaking his head at me.
Doctor Newton: Do you have any idea why?
Subject: He is the librarian. He says to me, «You are here early.»
Doctor Newton: What do you think he means?
Subject: (pause) That… I did not have compelling reasons for arriving back here early.
Doctor Newton: Compelling reasons…?
Subject: (breaking in) Oh… being in terrible pain – not able to function in life.
Doctor Newton: I see. Tell me what this librarian does next.
Subject: There is a huge open space where I see many souls at long desks with books everywhere but I’m not going to that room now. The old man takes me to one of the small private rooms off to the side where we can talk without disturbing the others.
Doctor Newton: How do you feel about this?
Subject: (shakes head in resignation) I guess I need special treatment right now. The room is very plain with a single table and chair. The old man brings in a large book and it is set up in front of me like a TV viewing screen.
Doctor Newton: What are you supposed to do?
Subject: (abruptly) Pay attention to him! He sets his scroll in front of me first and opens it. Then he points to a series of lines representing my life.
Doctor Newton: Please go slowly here and explain what these lines mean to you, Amy.
Subject: They are life lines – my lines. The thick, widely spaced lines represent the prominent experiences in our life and the age they will most likely occur. The thinner ones bisect the main lines and represent a variety of other… circumstances.
Doctor Newton: I have heard these less prominent lines are possibilities of action as opposed to the probabilities. Is that what you are saying?
Subject: (pause) That’s right.
Doctor Newton: What else can you tell me about the thick versus thin lines?
Subject: Well, the thick line is like the trunk of a tree and the smaller ones are the branches. I know the thick one was my main path. The old man is pointing at that line and scolding me a bit about taking a dead-end branch.
Doctor Newton: You know, Amy, despite this Archivist fussing about these lines, they do represent a series of your choices. From a karmic standpoint all of us have taken a wrong fork in the road from time to time.
Subject: (heatedly) Yes, but this is serious. I did not just make a small mis-take in his eyes. I know he cares about what i do. (there is a pause and then loudly) I want to hit him over the head with his damn scroll. I tell him, «you go try my life for a while!».
Note: At this point Amy tells me that the old man’s face softens and he leaves the room for a few minutes. She thinks he is giving her time to collect herself but then he brings back another book. This book is opened to a page where Amy can see the Archivist as a young man being torn apart by lions in an ancient Roman arena for his religious convictions. He then puts this book aside and opens Amy’s book. I ask her what she sees next.
Subject: It comes alive in three-dimensional color. He shows me the first page with a universe of millions of galaxies. Then the Milky Way… and our solar system… so I will remember where I came from – as if I could forget. Then, more pages are turned.
Doctor Newton: I like this perspective. Amy. Then, what do you see?
Subject: Ahh… crystal prisms… dark and light depending upon what thoughts are sent. Now, I remember I have done this before. More lines… and pictures… which I can move forward and backward in time with my mind. But the old man is helping me anyway.
Note: I have been told these lines form vibrational sequences representing timeline alignments.
Doctor Newton: How would you interpret the meaning of the lines?
Subject: They form the patterns for the life pictures in the order you wish to look at–that you need to look at.
Doctor Newton: I don’t want to get ahead of you, Amy. Just tell me what the old man does with you now.
Subject: Okay. He flips to a page and I see myself onscreen in the village I just left. It isn’t really a picture –it’s so real– it’s alive. I’m there.
Doctor Newton: Are you actually in the scene or are you simply observing the scene?
Subject: We can do both, but right now I am supposed to just watch the scenes.
Doctor Newton: That’s fine, Amy. Let’s go through the scene as the old man is presenting it to you. Explain what is going on.
Subject: Oh… we are going to look at… other choices. After seeing what I actually did at the pond where I took my life – the next scene has me back at the pond on the bank. (pause) This time I don’t wade in and drown myself. I walk back to the village, (laughs for the first time) I’m still pregnant.
Doctor Newton: (laughing with her) Okay, turn the page. Now what?
Subject: I’m with my mother, Iris. I tell her I am carrying Thomas’ baby.
She is not as shocked as I thought she would be. She is angry, though. I get a lecture. Then… she is crying with me and holding me. (Subject now breaks down while tearfully continuing to talk) I tell her I am a good girl, but I was in love.
Doctor Newton: Does Iris tell your father?
Subject: That is one alternative on the screen.
Doctor Newton: Follow that alternative path for me.
Subject: (pause) We all move to another village and everyone there is told I am a widow. Years later, I will marry an older man. These are very hard times. My father lost a lot when we moved and we were even poorer than before. But we stay together as a family and life eventually becomes good, (crying again) My little girl was beautiful.
Doctor Newton: Is that the only alternative course of action you study right now?
Subject: (with resignation) Oh, no. Now, I look at another choice. I come back from the pond and admit I am pregnant. My parents scream at me and then fight with each other about who is to blame. I am told they do not want to give up our small farm they worked so hard for and leave the village because I am disgraced. They give me a little money to get to London so I can try to find work as a serving girl.
Doctor Newton: And how does this work out?
Subject: (bitterly) Just what I expected. London would not have been good. I wind up in the streets sleeping with other men. (shudders) I die kind of young and the baby is a foundling who eventually dies too. Horrible…
Doctor Newton: Well, at least you tried to survive in that alternative life. Are any other choices shown to you?
Subject: I’m growing tired. The old man shows me one last choice. There are others, I think, but he will stop here because I ask him to. In this scene my parents still believe I should go away from them but we wait until a traveling peddler comes to our village. He agrees to take me in his cart after my father pays him something. We do not go to London but rather to other villages in the district. I finally find work with a family. I tell them my husband was killed. The peddler gave me a brass ring to wear and backs up my story. I’m not sure they believe me. It doesn’t matter. I settle in the town. I never marry but my child grows up healthy.
Doctor Newton: After you are finished turning these pages with the old man and have contemplated some of the alternatives to suicide, what are your conclusions?
Subject: (sadly) It was a waste to kill myself. I know it now. I think I knew it all along. Right after I died I said to myself, «God, that was a stupid thing to do, now I a going to have to do it all over again!» When I went before my council they asked if I would like to be retested soon. I said, «Let me think about it awhile.»
After this session my client discussed some of the choices she has had to make in her current life involving courage. As a teenager she became pregnant and dealt with this difficulty through the help of a school counselor and finally her mother, who was Iris in her life as Amy. They encouraged her to stand up for herself regardless of the opinions of others. In our session together my subject learned her soul has a tendency to prejudge serious events in her life in a negative manner. In many past lives there was always a nagging thought that whatever decision she made in a crisis would be the wrong one.
Although Amy was reluctant to return to Earth again, today she is a woman of much greater confidence. She spent the hundred years between lives reflecting on her suicide and decisions made in the centuries before this life. Amy is a musical soul and she said at one point:
«Because I wasted the body assigned to me, I am doing a kind of penance. During recreation I can’t go to the music room, which I love to do, because I need to be alone in the library. I use the screens to review my past actions involving choices where I have hurt myself and those around me.»
When a client uses the word «screen» to describe how they view events, the setting is relevant. Small conference rooms and the library appear to have tables with a variety of TV-size books. These so-called books have three-dimensional illuminated viewing screens. One client echoed the thoughts of most subjects when she said, «These records give the illusion of books with pages, but they are sheets of energy which vibrate and form live picture-patterns of events (…).»
Doctor Michael Newton. Destiny of Souls.