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'Old souls': people said to be incarnated 'angels' or other higher beings

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At a glance…

Many people intuitively feel, or are told by mediums / psychics / 'healers', that they're incarnations of angels or other 'higher' beings, or indeed extra-terrestrials. However, the Author's own experience suggests that a very different situation exists, and indeed that there's a real problem about believing in the existence of 'higher' beings or indeed non-physical beings at all, even if they manifest to you as apparently real beings.

Indeed, belief itself is a big part of the problem, because in the grips of belief no-one at all is able or willing to see what is actually there and actually happening.

Attention, please! Important!

A cursory reading and instant opinion isn't enough!

Over the years I've regularly looked in forums where people have posted about the contents of this and certain other pages on this site, and so far almost every time this has been a quite frustrating and discouraging experience. Why? — Because people are disagreeing with me?…
>>> Click to read more / less… >>>

— No, it's not that (although indeed, predictably, plenty of people do 'disagree' with me). It's because, with only the odd rare and isolated exception, so far I've seen no sign of anyone having read this (or the other respective pages) really carefully and without some sort of preconception that causes them to have a seriously distorted interpretation of at least some part of what I've written — even on the rare occasion when somebody does more or less 'agree' with what they think I've written.

It would be so helpful if people who come here would let go of their preconceived notions and read carefully what I'm actually saying — and then sleep on it and then re-read it to see where their interpretation of what I've written has actually turned it into something else, so that they can at least get a more accurate view of what I've written — whether or not they eventually choose to 'agree' with it.

I'd not mind so much if people at least took issue with what I'm actually saying, but they almost invariably go telling the world that I believe or am saying this and that and the other that actually I hadn't said at all*, or they radically change the meaning of something by taking it out of context, and typically a succession of people then go pulling the stuffing out of what I'd actually never said in the first place, then regarding me as some sort of deluded 'nutter' with very confused ideas, who is best steered clear of.

* A related claim sometimes made about my writings is the generally completely false one that I've obviously based my own insights on the views of a particular specified tradition, 'teacher' or organisation.

Let me emphasize here, as is really made clear throughout this site — at least for those who are genuinely prepared actually to look at what's there — that, apart from getting some useful initial prompts from Steve Gamble in April 2007 just to get me ditching the 'received wisdom' from the healing and New-Agey mystical traditions, my insights are NOT, to any material or really significant extent, based on any person's, tradition's or organisation's views or outlook. I've worked things out for myself, based on my own observations plus the results of my own inner inquiry supported by Helpfulness Testing. The fact that there are apparent overlaps between my own working model and the scenarios believed in by various teachers, traditions and organisations DOES NOT in itself mean that I've therefore taken on board ideas from them — though naturally I'd have got initial prompts from various views that I've seen or heard expressed.

The reality is that it's the people who keep misinterpreting and misrepresenting my writings who are the confused ones.

It would help so much if those who are about to make forum posts about any of my material checked carefully the accuracy of any supposed quote or interpretation of that material before making their post.

N.B. There's an inherent problem with forums generally, in that these are places where people discuss ideas. Unfortunately doing that is one of the myriad side-tracks that point people away from genuine self-actualization — for the 'forum-heads' forever consider and discuss other people's views and outlooks instead of turning to the one source of the vital information and insight that they actually need — their own deepest aspects.

So, asking another person, for example, What do you think of this fellow Philip Goddard? may be a fascinating pastime, but that sort of behaviour is also a virtually complete block to any genuine self-actualization direction.

I talk here NOT about right and wrong, nor should and shouldn't, but simply of cause and effect. What do you want in your life — forever fascinating discussions relating to various notions of self-actualization, or genuine self-actualization itself? The two are virtually completely mutually exclusive.

Also, a careful reader would understand from what I've written, that I hold no beliefs, and that what I present in my writings is a set of helpful working hypotheses (at least they've helped me greatly) — NOT a statement of categorical fact, apart from recounting actual observations / experiences of mine. So, anyone who says Philip Goddard believes that… is straightaway off the rails, simply spouting opinion, and isn't worth heeding at all.

It's in the light of this pervasive tendency to misunderstand and misrepresent my writings on this site that I indulge in apparent redundancy by frequently repeating certain explanations and clarifications. I appreciate that some readers may find this tiresome (indeed, I myself do!), but hard experience has shown this repeated-clarification approach of mine to be necessary in order to hammer certain points home to the many less receptive people, so with any luck minimizing the quantity of pointless come-back and misrepresentational forum posts relating to this site's contents!

Stop — Let's do a rethink here!

Sheep thinking 'WTF?!'

In mid 2007 I removed the original contents of this page, and removed altogether another page, Higher Beings, Old Souls And Their Origins. For an explanation, please see Channelling and clairvoyance problems — The safe alternative. That's not the end of the story, however, so please read on here because what follows is important information.

I had channelled a scenario in which many of us — albeit quite a small minority — were supposedly 'old souls' (something quite widely believed), and in which there was a range of different types of people according to their supposed soul origin and evolutionary history before arriving here on Earth.

Such differences between people are something that I clearly observe, and which appear to require an explanation. However, the problem is that in taking on the sort of explanation that I'd taken on, and the associated description of a hierarchical 'higher reality' with all its 'dimensions' and realms and types of non-physical being, we play into the hands of what for good reason I've come to call the garbage (mistakenly equated with 'forces of darkness', 'dark force', 'forces of evil'). This troublesome non-physical influence ensures that we receive distorted information and also seeks to get us hooked on illusory 'spiritual realities' rather than the fundamental reality of your innermost nature (naked awareness) and what's often called 'What Is'.

So, my counsel to people who believe that they're incarnations of angels, other higher beings or indeed supposed extra-terrestrials such as Pleiadeans or Sirians, or are simply wondering if they are, is that although we have no way of absolutely knowing that they aren't something of the sort, whatever has gone on for them in the past is just a story whose veracity they can never establish, and involvement with which would obstruct their progress to enlightenment and optimal self-actualization / self-realization, and indeed help to entrap them further in illusory realities in which they're under the control of the garbage.

I've learnt from my own difficult experiences that the garbage, posing as guiding higher beings, seeks strenuously to persuade particular people that they were some prominent person in a previous lifetime, or/and are incarnations of specific higher beings or important-seeming extra-terrestrials. I myself was told that I'd been, among others, the (purported) historical Gilgamesh, Roman emperor Trajan (supposedly father of Hadrian), the biblical Elisha and Jesus' disciple Simon Peter (indeed, for a couple of months I was told I'd actually been Jesus), and I was allegedly one of five current direct incarnations of Archangel Michael, and had lived for a long time in a Pleiadean civilization before coming to Earth 50,000 years ago, and was meant to be almost imminently a sort of spiritual world leader in an enlightened civilization here on Earth — that civilization brought about by a transformation of Humanity over a small number of years*.

* As is the way with the garbage, the stories that it gives us are typically distortions of actual situations (past, present or speculated future), and for a speculative discussion of what looks like being the real future for the human race, please see The future of humanity — Countenancing the unthinkable.

Then, in 2006, once I'd come to understand that the whole notion of angels and archangels was bogus*, I was told that I was the first of just a very small number of direct incarnations of the very first of the (six) Elohim to come into existence — effectively '10th-dimension' extensions of the 'Creator consciousness', according to the scenario that I was being given then. According to what I'd been told in my channelled information, that would make me the oldest (and supposedly most special) soul in the whole of Creation as well as being one of the very 'highest'-sourced. — Wow! Worship me quick before you go releasing yourself from such troublesome and completely unverifiable stories!

I'm not going so far as actually to believe that any particular elements of my previously channelled information was untrue, because neither I nor anyone else could know whether any of them were true or untrue, and so I've simply let go of it all, seeing it as just stories and not actually 'What Is'. We find out 'what is' simply through allowing our life experience to unfold, and clearing our distorted perceptions by means of self-actualization methods such as I enumerate in Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way; not by believing (or disbelieving) anything. I'm better off without any beliefs (or disbeliefs, which are also beliefs) at all, for that gives me at least an opportunity to see and get understanding what's really there and what's really going on.

So, you can be sure that anyone who claims to be an incarnation of an ascended master, angel, archangel, god, goddess or some other specific higher being or indeed prominent historical human has been misled, even if the particular current person is supposedly an enlightened teacher or 'master' or claimed to be a prospective world leader / teacher. Yes, it can't be completely ruled out that (s)he is an incarnation of a higher being (without a name), but as this could never be verified during our Earthly existence, and there's so much deception around, what point in believing anything about your or anyone's origin from before this lifetime?

Best simply to regard yourself as a manifestation (indeed incarnation) of the all-pervading awareness or fundamental consciousness of which all things both living and non-living are manifestations — as we all are — and to regard any angels, guides or other higher beings that do manifest to you as simply a particular type of illusion*, rather than anything objective and external — also being vigilant not to accept communications from such apparent higher beings because they will almost certainly contain covert garbage distortions or agendas.

* My understanding now is that what's really happening in ALL such cases is that, because we can't 'hear' our own deepest thoughts directly, the garbage exploits the situation because it can 'hear' them. What it does is to relay those 'thoughts' full of deep aware knowledge and 'clear vision' to our ordinary minds, at the same time often projecting an impression (visual or otherwise) of a guide, angel or other 'higher' being as the apparent source of the messages or information.

The relayed messages actually contain deletions, distortions and insertions to fit the agenda of the garbage in misleading the person and turning him / her away from true and full self-actualization. That situation is the basis of ALL channelling and nearly all dowsing. More about this in Channelling and clairvoyance problems — The safe alternative and The true nature of 'the forces of darkness' and its interference and attacks.

Thus the supposed higher beings are simply illusions created in one's mind by the garbage, using relayed and thus actually adulterated elements of your own deeper knowledge / awareness in order to give them credibility.

Similarly, I've let go of the channelled 'information' (i.e., story) concerning people who are supposedly 'old souls' having been incarnating for a long time in a purported Pleiadean civilization or indeed other extra-terrestrial civilizations before they came to Earth. Maybe such things have been happening, but maybe not.

Just having supposed past life memories to back up such scenarios doesn't help us know what the truth is, because we don't know where those 'memories' have come from — whether they were truly our own experiences or whether, for example, they're the memories of parasitic human consciousnesses ('lost souls') attached to us — which 'healers' and psychics wouldn't see because the garbage is responsible for such people's psychic perceptions and doesn't show such things as the parasitic lost souls to them, for the garbage's programming causes it to attempt to keep that phenomenon a closely guarded secret.

I'm as sure as can be, now, that all my apparent past life memories* were not mine at all but belonged to parasitic lost souls attached to me — this having been stage-managed by the garbage for a particularly pernicious purpose.

* Actually this needs qualifying. I have a whole subset of more subtle past life memories, better described as 'impressions' rather than actual 'memories', which I now understand to be ones related to non-sequential, non-karmic previous lifetimes, any of which could have been mine. I explain about the two types of reincarnation in The true nature of 'the forces of darkness' and its interference and attacks.

Other people would have these too, but they're mostly liable to pass unnoticed by anyone who isn't a no-soul person (that's explained in the latter link reference), and generally, except in very specific situations like when composing music, any memories from karmic past lives would hide the ones from non-sequential incarnations because of the karmic past lives' loading with traumas and emotional issues.

The subtle memories from non-sequential, non-karmic incarnations characteristically don't relate to trauma or problems, and because they're being retrieved from a databank that's outside our subjective experience of time, they aren't about 'story' as you'd get in memories from karmic, sequential incarnations. The garbage, however, can delve in those memories and use them to concoct no end of enticing but extremely unhelpful stories for you, as it was doing to some extent with me.

Also, even your own deepest aspects can't indicate for sure whether any such memory from a non-sequential, non-karmic incarnation was actually from an incarnation of yours or of somebody else's, for it's karmic and chronological connections (that are all created by the garbage) between incarnations that make different incarnations reasonably possible to recognise as 'mine' or 'not mine'.

In February 2012, I gained a whole new 'level' of understanding of this situation, in at last understanding the role of archetypes, and especially primary ones, in the means by which the garbage gives us 'story' and indeed is able to attack people. I now see that a high proportion of supposed past life memories of my own or anyone else's would be either archetypes or archetype-generated 'story'.

It's thus best that we let go of all attachment to 'star child' (or 'Indigo Child') or similar scenarios and stories about our purported soul origins and incarnational history, because we can never verify any of them; we can only either be attached to them and in some degree obstructed in our self-actualization process, or let them go and thus be free. I know which I prefer…

But several mediums and psychic people have told me I'm an old soul — there must be something in it!

Yes, as I say, there is indeed something in it — not all of which you'd like at all if you fully understood what's going on. The garbage will repeat a story or indeed lie through many people to seek to convince you of something, and I've experienced that myself*. There certainly is a particular quality of 'openness' and deep awareness about many people that I can readily detect and indeed came to associate with 'old soul'**, and undoubtedly this is what causes mediums and psychics also to call those people old souls. But is this interpretation correct? We can believe about this but can never know.

* In particular, please see the relevant section in My own self-actualization process or 'path' — Part 1.

** Please see the section below for an update on this.

All I actually know is that I can generally sense particular people's 'openness' and depth of awareness (which also reflects their openness as 'healers' and a certain openness and flexibility of outlook). A fair proportion of such people appear to my inner vision to have around them a silvery or whitish radiance.

I also notice that such aware and 'open' people seem to fall into several distinct types, with their respective levels of depth of awareness, and also tallying to a fair extent with the so-called character structures* (rather unhelpfully named schizoid, masochistic, psychopathic, oral and rigid) described by Barbara Brennan in her classic books on spiritual healing, and this undoubtedly could also tally with particular soul origins (if indeed there really are different soul origins at all!). However, we can't actually know about the latter.

* Please see The five human character structures — Their true significance for more precise and up-to-date information about that, including the apparent true significance of those so-called character structures.

You see, just suppose that you accept a 'reading' that you're an old soul or indeed an angel or Elohim incarnation, and take that as fact about you. Okay, it presumably feels good and may be the long awaited answer to an inner question that had been bugging you*, but what then? You're then simply attached to a bit of story about yourself, which, regardless of its veracity or otherwise, is a belief that would help obstruct your progress to optimal self-actualization.

* Almost certainly, when such a question is 'bugging' a person and consciously seeking to be answered, this is because the garbage is interfering with that person, seeking to get him/her taking on and believing a story about his/her past in order to ensnare him/her in an illusory reality — another great reason for keeping well clear of such stories, and indeed letting go of the urge to get answers to questions in one's mind about one's supposed past prior to this lifetime.

Contrary to widespread belief, self-actualization and enlightenment are nothing to do with knowing about or perceiving higher beings or supposed higher realities. The 'highest' reality of all is what you open to and perceive directly when you're enlightened — but as it's beyond concepts it can only be experienced — not described (though of course some of us do attempt to describe it in order to assist other people towards enlightenment).

An actually useful 'reading' might be something along the lines of You are fundamentally very open-minded and deeply aware and are a very strong 'healer' [or, more accurately, healing influence]. Those are observable and reasonably testable characteristics, so no belief needs to be held about that, and such a 'reading' may have a positive effect in that the person might be more motivated then to progress more speedily towards enlightenment and self-actualization and also develop their strongly positive effects on others around them.

2023 note, belated by a good few years
More than a decade ago I actually completely dropped putting an emphasis on people supposedly being 'healers' or having 'healing' powers. Please see "Am I a healer?" — Explaining 'healing' and the problems it causes.

"You're wrong in saying there are no such things as angels. I know I'm an incarnated angel because I have etheric angel wings, which people can see!"

Somebody wrote in to me to that effect. Also, that person was angry and embittered that people were not taking seriously his or her claim to have been the biblical Daniel, and (s)he clearly strongly wanted to be an incarnated angel and feel very, very special.

Okay, for starters please click on the link here to see what the epithet 'etheric' really signifies!

Also, if there really were any 'external' higher beings at all, as they're non-physical they'd have no need nor cause to have wings! — Obvious when you get your awareness grounded and think properly about the matter! Winged angels are just religious iconography.

Therefore, if you and other 'sensitive' people see you as having etheric angel wings, then that represents one of your problems, for part of your awareness has created those energy manifestations in line with a belief of yours, virtually certainly aided and abetted by some garbage interference. The garbage would be very ready to get you attached to the notion of your being an incarnated angel (and thus more special and divine than most other people)*.

* There's a very important point here. Am I saying that such people have nothing significantly special about them? — No, not at all! Generally speaking, the garbage distorts rather than creates or invents. In other words, it will recognise something special about the person — generally a particular underlying life task that would be detrimental to the garbage and its agenda if that life task were actually manifested.

Because the person's own deepest aspects are (usually more or less unsuccessfully) attempting to get that information into his conscious awareness ('ordinary mind'), the garbage relays that information to the person's 'ordinary mind', but in grossly distorted form, so the person will be given the story that he is 'special' in some different and actually highly problematical way.

I well know about this, because the garbage was doing it to me. My underlying life task, which appears to be to do what I can to promote genuine self-actualization and weakening of garbage influences*, got relayed to me as a whole gaggle of variants of me being destined imminently to become a great world spiritual leader / teacher or even 'king' (specifically, Gilgamesh II), and thus to be effectively a puppet of the garbage rather than being special in any genuinely useful way.

* Whoops, I understand now (in 2023) that that was only a relatively minor part of it. See:

So, if a person is being misled into an attachment to some notion of being 'very special', that's very likely indeed to be a result of the garbage sidetracking the person away from a special and important underlying life task of theirs, which in quite a few cases would be similar to or indeed the same as my own underlying life task relating to promotion of self-actualization and bringing about or at least helping in the bringing about of the eventual total elimination of the garbage.

Again, what could you do with such 'knowledge' if you came across it, but believe it and feel more 'special' and reinforced in your illusion of separateness and isolation from other people? Would that really be a happy situation for you? Would it benefit others? Is that really what you want? It's certainly what the garbage seeks for you!

Instead, how about working through your thoughts and feelings of wanting to 'know' that you're an angel incarnation (or indeed an incarnation of a biblical personality or an extra-terrestrial) and thus someone 'special', using The Work or, best and easiest of all, the Grounding Point procedure, to clear yourself of such beliefs or illusory realities?

Then, provided you carry out that work awarely and diligently, you'd become released from your belief that you need to know such things and instead you'd get in touch with your own deepest truth — that of your innermost true nature (the all-pervading fundamental consciousness) and 'What Is'). You'd also feel much happier and more 'connected', and your own genuine, intrinsic specialness, including your underlying life task(s) could then properly manifest.

 

And now, the most helpful understanding of the situation

Actually, in what I've written above I've been playing 'devil's advocate' a bit, because I wanted to hammer it home, that we need to let go of our attachment to 'story' concerning our backgrounds before this lifetime. In fact, the sort of information that I've been able to unearth about our true nature more recently by means of inner inquiry supported by some Helpfulness Testing is in a different league, because (a) it doesn't claim to be 'truth' or 'fact' but is simply a working model, and (b) it's proving extremely helpful for healing and self-actualization purposes — much more so than any theory or belief system that I'd previously encountered.

Within this particular framework of reference it can actually be extremely useful to 'know' certain things about your past (but in a speculative sort or way and not actually holding belief about any of it) — but NOT the details of any past lives that you may have had.

On the basis of this working model there are certain pieces of information that really can help you in understanding your healing / self-actualization needs and also your compatibilities or otherwise with particular people (extremely useful for harmonious and happy living). However, there's no need nor point in seeking to gain past life information, because the best self-healing / self-actualization methods don't require any of that, and they progressively release even the apparently most intractable past life issues 'as easy as pie' in a grounded and joyful way without having to re-live nor analyse anything, nor indeed know whether any particular issue was based in a past life (of yours) at all.

I thus gained the understanding that the real situation (as at least could be determined in the sense of what takes us forward most effectively on our self-healing / self-actualization process) was pretty well the reverse of what the vast majority of people on so-called spiritual paths believe. I then 'understood' that those who appeared to many to be the oldest souls were actually what would get regarded by me as incarnations of NEW souls (i.e., NOT old souls at all) — and, as far as I could make out, I'd be one of them.

This seemed to make perfect sense if one stopped and thought a bit more deeply than hitherto. We're ALL manifestations and thus incarnations of fundamental consciousness — 'the Ultimate' as far as anyone can tell — and thus those people who are new incarnations of fundamental consciousness would inevitably be the 'purest', least distorted and most aware — the most overt manifestations of fundamental consciousness. The more sequential soul incarnations a person has been through, the more distorted and unaware is that person. Stands to reason!

However, there was a catch about all this. Virtually universally, people haven't understood what the 'soul' really is. Strictly speaking, people who, until late November 2008, I'd have erroneously called incarnations of new souls are, according to my current (necessarily still speculative) understanding, are actually not incarnations of souls at all, so that they could be described as no-soul incarnations!! What they are, in fact, is direct incarnations of fundamental consciousness, which is 'the Ultimate' as far as anyone can tell.

WTF?! Has this Philip Goddard guy lost his balls altogether this time?

Quite possibly (He just has a quick check — but no, he still has the same old and creaky two of them!) — but, for every bit of madness in his method there's at least as much method in his madness! The point here is that I've come to realize that anyone who is truly outside the deceptions of the garbage, and is functioning well, actually has no soul — or rather, there would be no observations or experiences that point to there being such a thing, so the concept of oneself having a soul would be meaningless. What the soul really is, is a certain level of the incarnated being's consciousness that has got messed about with by the garbage, so causing the person to sequentially reincarnate from that 'soul'. In that way it does appear to be a real 'thing' and indeed a vehicle for our incarnations.

But to somebody who's incarnated straight from fundamental consciousness (in other words, who is what I'd been misleadingly calling an incarnation of a new soul), and who remains untampered-with so that (s)he can revert to fundamental consciousness upon death, there's just untampered consciousness and actually nothing within or about that, which one could define as 'soul'.

The soul, then, is one of the currently normal human dysfunctions. It reflects what's in effect a pathological state. No wonder so many of the religions regard the soul as so important!

The only thing that a person without a 'soul' (i.e., a no-soul incarnation), such as me, lacks, therefore, is an extremely serious dysfunction! In such a person, the 'substance' (consciousness 'energy') that would otherwise be a soul is simply healthily functioning consciousness, not distorted into a 'vessel' or 'vehicle' for the highly pathological type of reincarnation that the vast majority of people undergo.

Think of a person's sequential series of soul incarnations as being a pathological, hijacked extension of a single basic incarnation of fundamental consciousness, because the person has been prevented each time from dying fully and reverting to fundamental consciousness so that a true and full new incarnation could occur.

I explain in The true nature of 'the forces of darkness' and its interference and attacks how and why it is that no-soul people (i.e., those who I was previously mistakenly calling incarnations of new souls) are getting trapped by lost souls who've themselves got trapped by lost souls and programmed by the garbage. In this particular scenario, as I understand it, the executive aspect of the garbage, which interferes with us all, is actually nothing more than thought form complexes derived from people messing about in the astral non-reality (such as in astral travel, use of special powers and 'dark' practices); I explain more about this in the above-linked page.

According to this scenario (now as extended in early 2012), what appears to many to be past life experiences or traumas are actually broadly of two origins:

  • Memories and traumas carried by lost souls that are attached to the particular people, who latter may well actually be no-soul incarnations — that is, direct incarnations of fundamental consciousness.
  • 'Pseudo-memories' that are actually 'story' generated from archetypes and then insinuated into our mindspace by the garbage.

That certainly appears to be the case for me, and I can now see that my clearance of my apparently massive emotional traumas and entity / garbage interference issue had been tremendously held back by my accepting the notion of my being a highly evolved old soul carrying past life traumas that were my own. I was able to move forward much faster through seeing myself as a pure incarnation of fundamental consciousness with attached lost souls and active primary archetype connections that I was then in the process of clearing from myself.

I'm not saying that any of us need to believe that all this is true in an absolute sense, but I am saying that at least for many it would be a MUCH more helpful framework of reference for truly effective healing / self-actualization work than the notion of an evolutionary sequence of past lives that we've been through. So, for 'old soul' in the widely accepted sense, best to think 'no-soul or little-reincarnated soul incarnation'.

You can read more about this scenario in The true nature of 'the forces of darkness' and its interference and attacks.

Also, I give important information about and for no-soul people in No-soul and 'specialist' no-soul people — their great significance.

In Healing and self-actualization — The safest and quickest way I put forward a range of methods for clearing yourself of garbage interference and influence, and indeed for clearing any soul programming of your own and thus, if my understanding is indeed correct, becoming effectively a no-soul person once more.




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