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Life between life – Dr Joel Whitton and Joe Fisher

The Life Review

For the purpose of self-assessment, the soul is confronted with an instantaneous panoramic flashback which contains every single detail of the last incarnation. Emanuel Swedenborg dramatized this review as the recitation from a memory book of an individual's conduct between birth and death. But the experience of Dr Whitton's subjects is that the process is more immediate and all-enveloping, an absolute reliving of the last life. Said one subject:

It's like climbing right inside a movie of your life. Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall. And it all happens in an instant.

The Board of Judgement

The testimony of Dr Whitton’s subjects endorses the existence of a board of judgement…. If there is a private hell in the life between life it is the moment when the soul presents itself for review…. [for example] …. a woman who could not forgive herself for an act of betrayal in her previous existence expressed her burden of guilt with classical Christian symbolism . . .

I am on one knee holding a large cross over my right shoulder. My whole anima is convulsing with pain, remorse, sadness, guilt, mourning . . . I cannot look up at the Three for sheer shame. Yet all around me there is a glowing warmth of blue rays and peace, a peace I am unable to fathom . . .

Planning the next life

While at liberty to reject the judges' planning advice, the soul is ill-advised to scorn their counsel. For rejection of the recommendations means that reincarnation will take place without a ratified plan an open invitation to a life of unproductive and unnecessary trial and hardship.

To be reborn without a plan is also a matter of choice. The trouble is, with no script to follow, the soul becomes a reed shaken by the wind- a victim of fate rather than a participant in destiny. No penalty is incurred for failing to heed the Three save that of a particularly remorseful self-confrontation at the end of the life that, most probably, will have been wasted.

Recalling the Bardo ‘script

So is it possible to tell as life is proceeding whether we are being true to our between-life intentions? The answer must come from within. Those who are living out their ‘karmic scripts’, or have even exceeded them, have an inner sense that life is unfolding as it should. Those who have strayed from their blueprint feel, instead, that everything is out of control. Chaos rules. Like actors hopelessly unaware of their lines as they step out into the spotlight, they are forced to extemporize as the drama of life unfolds. Yet there are also people who appear to be placed precariously between destiny and fate, between scripting their lives and taking the stage as impromptu players. They have a plan, but the plan is open to an inordinate amount of improvisation.