Preface to the book Destiny of Souls

PREFACE TO MICHAEL NEWTON’S BOOK DESTINY OF SOULS

I spent a long time thinking about how exactly to introduce this book, because for me, Michael Newton’s Destiny of Souls is not simply a book about life after death.

It is the first primary source I encountered in which the testimonies of other people, even though expressed through various symbolic systems, spoke about exactly the same realities that had been revealed to me personally.

And perhaps it is only by looking at experiences of this kind through the lens of an understanding of the multidimensional nature of the spiritual world that one can even begin to imagine the reality that exists beyond our habitual human perception — the reality that I have been trying to translate into human language all my life.

Therefore, before you begin reading this book, I very much want to ask you to watch one video first. I sometimes follow scientific, philosophical, and metaphysical communities on Facebook. It was in one of them that I came across this video about different dimensions. Of course, it is highly simplified and conditional. But at least it offers a way of trying to visualize something that is practically impossible for the human brain to imagine: how reality itself changes depending on the dimension from which it is perceived. And so, although only approximately, perhaps this video will help you understand how I see my visions and dreams of the multidimensionality of the Soul, Consciousness, and spiritual reality.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CABrddLRZ/

What I like about this video is the basic principle of its model: a being existing within a particular dimension cannot directly imagine a higher dimension until it is given at least some new point of perception. This is similar to the analogy Rob Bell used of beings living on a plane: a two-dimensional being cannot directly perceive the third dimension and can therefore see only its individual manifestations within the limits of its available perception. If a three-dimensional object were to intersect its plane, it could try to explain what was happening using all the knowledge available to it, construct a theory, and identify a pattern. But it would not be able to see the entire three-dimensional object until it gained access to a new point of perception.

Human perception is much the same: it really is only a very limited vantage point. Our brains, bodies, and sensory organs operate within a particular range.

We already know that human perception does not show us the entirety of physical reality. We see only a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We hear only a certain range of frequencies. We do not directly perceive an enormous number of processes that exist all around us. Our brains constantly filter information because otherwise we simply would not be able to function. So even at the level of ordinary science, it has long been clear that what we directly perceive is not the whole of reality. It is only that part of reality to which we have access through a particular biological interface.

But what if human consciousness, in certain states, is capable of perceiving reality differently from the ordinary mode in which it functions? I am not saying that quantum mechanics has “proved” the spiritual world. But modern physics did long ago disrupt the very simple picture of a world in which reality consists only of separate solid objects existing independently of one another exactly as we see them. Mathematics comfortably works with spaces that we are completely incapable of visualizing. Physics uses models containing more dimensions than we can directly experience. And our ordinary perception of time — as a simple line running from the past into the future — is by no means the only possible way of conceptualizing it. Reality has turned out to be considerably more complex than our ideas about it.

This is where my world begins. Because, much like in this video, I have spent my entire life trying to explain my spiritual experiences at the three-dimensional level at which they were perceived. When we are situated within human perception and try to understand the Soul, we almost inevitably attempt to make it into something singular, bounded, and representable in three dimensions.

We say: Here I am. Here is my Soul. Here is one body. Here is one life. Here is death. Here is the next life — in the case of reincarnational religions.

But what if all of this is merely one possible projection of a much more complex reality? What if human consciousness perceives the Soul somewhat like a two-dimensional being perceives a three-dimensional object? It sees only a cross-section. A projection. One facet. But not the entire object itself. And the image within a given coordinate system is itself a language that must be deciphered. It is an interface between what consciousness perceives beyond ordinary human experience and what the human brain is capable of understanding. And this is extremely important when it comes to analyzing Michael Newton’s research.

Every person who went through his sessions described spiritual reality through their own perceptual system. Some saw space. Some saw light. Some saw buildings. Some saw schools. Some perceived their guides as specific entities. Some saw colors, shapes, energy fields, or symbols. And of course, I do not believe that all of this necessarily needs to be taken literally. Quite the opposite. It seems to me that what is happening here is precisely the same thing that happened to me. When consciousness encounters a phenomenon for which no human language exists, it begins to translate it. It uses what is already available within human consciousness: space, light, color, form, voice, faces, beings, movement, buildings, landscapes.

But if we remove each individual’s symbolic system and look deeper, we can see that the same principles emerge behind the different images. Different people may describe the same thing in completely different words. Yet behind those words are always the same structures: the evolution of consciousness, relationships between Souls, learning, development, free will, transition between different states of existence, the preservation of a certain wholeness beyond a single human incarnation, and the gradual expansion of consciousness.

I always try to separate the image from the phenomenon. For example, if I say that I saw the Soul as a Crystal, this does not mean that somewhere in the spiritual world a literal three-dimensional gemstone is flying around. The Crystal is the closest image my human consciousness was able to use to translate what I was perceiving. But even the word “image” is not quite right here. Because sometimes it was not something I saw with my eyes. This is precisely what has always been so difficult for me to explain. When I am in these kinds of states of consciousness, I am not seeing with human eyes. And although the experience is more often translated into a visual image, it is not always so. Sometimes I simply know. But even the word “know” is too small. It is not information. Not a thought. Not a theory. It is a state in which the phenomenon is perceived directly. Only afterward, when I return to my ordinary human state of consciousness, do I begin trying to translate what I experienced into human language. And then the words appear: Light. Energy. Consciousness. Dimensions. Crystal. Fractal. Unity. God. Love. But I always understand that a word is not reality itself. It is only a sign pointing toward it.

And although the “Soul Crystal” is merely an image, it is interesting that Richard Rohr also chose a similar construct to describe the structure of spiritual reality in Immortal Diamond. And naturally, he was also speaking about the very nature of divine reality — which, too, at higher levels, appears in a similar form and likeness.

> “God’s eternal patterns and presence. As St. Bonaventure put it: ‘God is an intelligible space whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. God is within all things but not enclosed. Outside all things but not excluded. Above all things but not aloof. Below all things but not debased. God is supreme one and all inclusive. God is therefore ALL in All.’”



> “Perhaps God, and Consciousness and Being are the same thing. This ever flowing abundance that we call God clearly loves and revels in endless manifestation for candor and diversity. The formless one is forever seeking new and fantastic forms. Just observe the nature.”



> “Christians were the most prepared to believe in evolution, and then we ended up being the ones who fought it the most. I think this reveals how little we reflected the actual Gospel accounts.”



> “Cosmology is now offering a wonderful reimagining of much of theology. The truth, first of all, is written in creation itself — our first and primary ‘Bible.’ And all of creation is saying from the beginning that things live and things die and things live again in shapes. Christians say Christ lives, Christ dies and Christ comes again and call it THE mystery of faith. Buddhists point out the same pattern. Emptiness is form and form is emptiness. We are both saying the same thing but in different metaphors. Ours is just personal and theirs is abstract and philosophical. We are both saying that all things die and change forms and that nothing is permanent in its present state and now science is saying it too. As a Christian, however, I’m not talking about reincarnation and resuscitation, but resurrection as such, which is quite different. Resurrection is not just changing forms but somehow into improved and advanced forms.”



> (Richard Rohr)



I am also not speaking of reincarnation as the return of the same form. No unique manifestation or form of incarnation in nature ever returns in exactly the same form. Everything develops through accumulation, transformation, and increasing complexity of manifestation at new levels. This is not at all about the same person endlessly returning in different bodies. Each human life is a separate, unique manifestation of a much greater wholeness that continues to exist, develop, and accumulate experience beyond any particular personality.

That is why I have always spoken specifically of in-carnation, rather than re-incarnation — a concept that, in itself, contradicts the structure of the multifaceted and multidimensional nature of God. Incarnation is therefore not a return. It is a manifestation. Not repetition, but further unfolding. Not a return to the starting point, but the continuation of consciousness along a trajectory of increasing complexity, integration, and Love.

It was precisely here that I once noticed the fundamental discrepancy in traditional ideas about reincarnation. Yet traditional Christianity, too, did not go beyond a certain point. And as I have reflected many times on why this might have been necessary, it seems to me that at a certain stage humanity needed much more to learn how to live according to spiritual truth on a moral and ethical level than to receive a detailed map of the structure of spiritual reality.

And perhaps Jesus understood this perfectly.

After all, he said directly to his disciples:

> “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”
— John 16:12



> “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”
— John 3:10–12



Jesus was not simply handing people a set of ready-made metaphysical facts. He constantly related the depth of what was being revealed to whether a person was capable of receiving it.

Someone might ask: “Well, okay. If multiple incarnations really are part of a much greater wholeness of our True Self, then why didn’t Jesus continue teaching people about reincarnation — especially since ideas of multiple lives already existed in other religious and philosophical traditions?”

Precisely because even those traditions that spoke about multiple lives understood the idea in terribly distorted ways, through a very primitive moral model: “Well, if I sin in this life, I’ll make up for it in the next by living as a worm,” — or everything was resolved through the same transactional sacrificial offerings to gods.

To continue along that line of belief would have risked leading people along the same old trajectory of misunderstanding. And while, on the one hand, reincarnational religions had also been given a glimpse of deeper knowledge, they translated it onto a very superficial, primitive level and, as a result, forgot the fundamental structural element that needed to be spoken about first and foremost — the substance of Love from which we are all woven, which permeates and connects us all.

So Jesus simply redirected the emphasis. By leaving aside, in his teachings, the detailed constitution of the spiritual world across its many dimensions — the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and so on — he went straight to the very essence: to the substance from which all elements of reality are woven at every conceivable level of organization — to the Source, to Selfless Unconditional Love (“liberated from the ego,” if translated into Buddhist language).

Because if a person truly begins to live according to love, compassion, freedom, responsibility, and unity with others, the very process of their inner transformation already begins to lead them in the right direction — even if they do not yet understand the entire structure of the reality of which they are a part.

This is precisely why Jesus’ manifestation became that very quintessence of the manifestation of God conveyed to us in human language. Because Love is not simply a moral rule for behavior within a single human life. It is a fundamental principle of the very evolution of consciousness.

And then it becomes clear why Jesus may not have given people a detailed “map” of spiritual reality across all dimensions and projections at a particular stage of development. Because if a person has not yet learned how to love, what would knowledge of the structure of the multidimensional Soul give them? If a person has not learned to see another as part of a unified creation, what would knowledge of how the levels of spiritual existence are structured give them? And if a person is not yet capable of taking in even simple spiritual truths, why give them something far beyond their current point of perception?

Perhaps that is precisely why Jesus said:

> “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”



But then he adds that the Spirit of Truth will guide them “into all truth”:

> “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth...”
— John 16:12–13



And even earlier, Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit:

> “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
— John 14:26



In other words, revelation does not end with what was spoken directly during Jesus’ earthly life.

And here I return once again to the perception of truth at different levels of Consciousness. The Spirit of Truth reveals it to us not simply by transmitting new knowledge, but through the gradual transformation of Consciousness itself — through Divine Love. The deeper we develop along this trajectory of Love, the deeper the meanings we become capable of containing, and the higher the dimensions of reality we become capable of perceiving. And then the truth itself does not change — the point from which we look at it changes.

Therefore, at a certain stage — a stage at which we are still living — Jesus’ task was not to hand humanity a complete metaphysical encyclopedia of the structure of the Soul, but to give human beings the right direction of evolution, through which they would eventually become capable of perceiving what they previously could not contain: a configuration and structure of reality completely different from the narrow perspective of a mind and heart confined to earthly existence and operating within the framework of the ego.

But the moment a person manages to free themselves from it — or at least shift to a point of Consciousness not limited by the ego — the possibility immediately opens up of perceiving other realities governed by completely different laws. As the video describes, each successive dimension is in one way or another limited by a certain boundary. But, as we can observe, with the addition of each new dimension, that boundary expands further and further. And one can only imagine how infinitely vast the nature of the limitless Consciousness of God must be.

We can glimpse the next level of the organization of reality through Jesus’ words when he answers people with that painfully familiar statement:

> “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”
— Matthew 22:30



Here a boundary is drawn between the human form of existence and a state of being that is no longer governed by the familiar categories of earthly life. In other words, through such “fundamental characteristics” of human existence as sex, marriage, and social roles, Jesus showed that these are not universal characteristics of consciousness beyond our present state.

And once again, this brings me back to that very idea of projection. We try to describe spiritual reality using the categories of our own dimension — body, sex, marriage, time, space, individual personality — even though beyond this form of existence, those very categories may themselves change.

Throughout my life, while studying different religions and teachings, I have observed how some of them managed to preserve certain knowledge about the organization of spiritual reality at higher levels of consciousness. Unfortunately, however, each of them tended toward distorting and literalizing the central message itself, and thus each religion inevitably “slipped back” into the same three-dimensional perception of the human being and their transactional relationship with the world.

So sooner or later, I simply stopped looking for the purity of the message where it had been lost, although I remember that this message was given to every tradition in the world in one form or another. I no longer want to dwell on which religion or spiritual tradition managed to preserve the highest percentage of the purity of this spiritual knowledge. Instead, I will simply return to my own empirical experience and, at least, to the level that was revealed to me directly — just as it was to many of Michael Newton’s subjects.

As for the symbolic system — just as approaching the study of the Bible in a strictly literal sense is one of the greatest misconceptions, or even crimes, so it is here. It is important to remember that Truth is always deeper than the image.

I think this is one of the most important principles with which I would like people to approach Newton’s book. Do not take everything literally. But do not dismiss everything simply because some descriptions sound too unusual either. Try to keep asking the question: What phenomenon might lie behind this image?

If someone says, “I saw a school for Souls,” perhaps it really was a school. But perhaps their consciousness was using the image of a school to explain a process of learning. If someone says, “I saw a guide,” perhaps they are seeing a specific spiritual entity. Or perhaps consciousness is translating a particular form of higher knowledge or connection through the familiar human image of a guide.

If I say, “I saw the Soul Crystal,” this does not mean that “truth has a crystalline form.” But it does mean that I perceived multiplicity, unity, interconnectedness, and at the same time the uniqueness of individual expressions of a broader consciousness. And this is much more important to me than the form itself. Because Truth always goes deeper than the image.

But I know one thing for certain: what I perceived did not look like one single spherical Soul existing somewhere inside one body. And certainly it did not look like a simple linear sequence: one life ; death ; next life ; death ; next life, and so on.

No.

I perceived the Soul as a living, multidimensional, constantly evolving structure of consciousness that exists simultaneously on different levels of its own reality. And even the word “structure” is misleading, because it can create the impression of something static. It was nothing like that. What I perceived was more like a living field that breathes, pulses, unfolds, expands, transforms, enters into new relationships, and forms increasingly complex configurations of consciousness.

And what appears unified from one level of perception turns out to be infinitely multifaceted from another. Each facet is not completely separate from the others. It retains its uniqueness. Yet at the same time, it belongs to something greater. This follows the same principle that can be observed when contemplating such a phenomenon across the fourth, fifth, and sixth dimensions. (Let us stop there for now.)

I am interested in comparing my own experience with what Michael Newton described. In his research, some subjects spoke about the possibility of simultaneously incarnating a certain portion of the Soul’s energy in multiple bodies. But, significantly, very few of the subjects who reached Michael were able to contain an awareness of such an incarnation.

In Destiny of Souls, I remember at least one such case, described through a hypnotized subject who spoke about his two present lives — one single Soul incarnated in two different bodies — in much the same way that I became aware of it through my own individual facet, Natasha. Or, in other words, the incarnation of his Soul Crystal through different facets, manifested on Earth in different human bodies.

It seems to me that because only a small number of people capable of containing the memory or awareness of consciousness being expressed through multiple bodies ever reached Michael, he drew his conclusions from the testimonies of the Souls who came to him. They spoke about a way of dividing the Soul’s energy, saying that one permanent portion always remains at the Source, while a certain percentage of the Soul can divide itself and contain the possibility of living in two bodies.

And this is where my own experience goes somewhat beyond Michael Newton’s observations. Because what was shown to me appeared considerably more multidimensional and, consequently, more multifaceted. And certainly, it was not about literally dividing percentages of energy.

Although I understand what the subject who perceived himself, his Self, his Soul Crystal, through only two facets was talking about, the point was that he was simply situated within the limited dimension in which his consciousness was capable of analyzing his own essence and incarnation. And because, on the spiritual level, “awareness of oneself in certain forms” = “incarnation in those forms,” his subjective perception of his own incarnation extended across those two particular facets — “which his consciousness was capable of becoming aware of” = “in which his consciousness was capable of existing.”

Well, to put it simply — yes, there is a certain capacity at particular levels of consciousness. But this in no way means that Consciousness can divide itself into only two parts, or that a Soul can incarnate in only two bodies.

No.

What was shown to me was much greater, much broader.

I would be very interested to observe similar hypnosis sessions conducted by Michael Newton, to see whether he ever encountered Souls that were also able to perceive the constitution of their Souls more broadly and exist at higher levels of the organization of Consciousness. But the people who reached Michael were the people who reached him, and he described the testimonies of his subjects without inventing or adding anything.

The visions I experienced, however, showed me a much more multidimensional picture. And this was far from being merely a matter of several parallel lives in the simple human sense. It was about the many facets of a single, constantly evolving Consciousness.

Imagine an enormous living Crystal.

Not physical. Not three-dimensional. And certainly not static.

Each of its facets is an expression of the whole. Each perceives reality from its own angle. Each receives its own experience. Each develops. But everything experienced by these facets does not disappear into isolation. It belongs to a broader field of wholeness.

And then human life ceases to be the Soul’s single point of existence. It becomes one of the ways in which a broader consciousness comes to know itself, manifesting at different levels of the organization of consciousness, as well as in physical and non-physical worlds where completely different laws operate.

But what remains unchanged is that energy is an eternal constant: it does not disappear anywhere, but merely transforms, while eternally remaining in the Source, even while incarnated in physical and non-physical worlds.

In other words, we are constantly in God, and God is in us.

> “The Divine Indwelling is total gratuitous gift, standing presence, and guarantee. It is the Holy Spirit living within us, sometimes called uncreated grace. It gives every human being an inherent dignity which I call your True Self and your Immortal Diamond. The Indwelling Divine image moves toward fulfillment in each of us. This was original blessing.”



— Richard Rohr

Fundamentally, at our very core, we are made of Love. The various forms through which we manifest are themselves incarnations — projections of Its energy. And of course, once we descend to the human level, it is not particularly difficult to imagine that a certain portion of that energy always remains in a spiritual state while another expresses itself through embodied life.

In general, this is precisely why even the ideas of reincarnational religions are quite far removed from the realities that I “remember.” (I would say “believe in,” but I cannot. I cannot, because I have remembered this from early childhood until the present day without ever being able to fully understand it, and my consciousness has never been able to completely translate it into human images. But at the level of the Soul, it is a kind of absolute knowing — access to which exists only through other dimensions of consciousness.)

Those traditions or teachings that attempted to translate such knowledge into human language encountered the paradox of its apparent incompatibility with the laws of earthly life. But the spiritual world was never meant to be explained by the laws of Earth. That is precisely why it cannot be fully perceived or understood through the familiar ways in which we ordinarily experience reality.

Because “past life” is a concept that exists only in relation to our linear perception of time. But if time is not an absolute reality in the form in which we experience it here, then what we call past, present, and future may be different ways of accessing one much more complex reality.

And then some expressions of a Soul Crystal may be perceived by human consciousness as past lives, others as future lives, and some as existing simultaneously with us but outside our ordinary range of perception.

Modern physics does indeed explore models of reality in which additional dimensions of spacetime are possible. Metaphysical language describes inner experience. And it is precisely the possibility of thinking multidimensionally that helps make such experiences intelligible.

Because what I perceived did not fit into one timeline.

It did not fit into one body.

It did not fit into one identity.

It did not fit into one idea of “I.”

When I was in these states, I did not feel that I was becoming someone else. Quite the opposite. Perhaps the strangest thing was that I felt more myself than ever before.

And this is what is particularly difficult for me to explain.

Because when I return here, to my ordinary human state, I once again feel density. Limitation. Separation. Time. Body. Name. History. Ego. Tasha.

But when I entered those spaces of consciousness, I did not cease to be myself.

I simply ceased to be only myself in the small sense in which Tasha exists here.

And after that, it is impossible to completely forget.

You can go back to ordinary life. You can clean the house, become ill, laugh, suffer, doubt, get irritated, and struggle with the ego all over again. But once you have experienced an expansion of consciousness, it is impossible to completely return to the belief that the human personality is all that you are.

Because you remember.

And perhaps this is precisely why the word Re-Member feels so close to me.

Not simply to remember.

But literally: to re-member yourself.

To gather the parts back into the Whole.

To remember yourself as part of that from which you were never truly separate.

Destiny of Souls is already Michael Newton’s second book in his series of studies of Life Between Lives. Journey of Souls — his first book — is, in many ways, a discovery.

In it, you can still strongly feel the moment of the researcher’s initial encounter with something that completely transcended his familiar picture of the world. And so there is naturally an attempt to explain, prove, persuade, to show the reader: “Look, this really exists.”

You can still feel Newton’s own astonishment there, the enthusiasm of a discoverer, his attempt to understand for himself: What exactly have I discovered? How real is it? How is this even possible?

But Destiny of Souls goes further.

It is more complex. More detailed. More richly layered.

There is less need to constantly convince the reader that the spiritual world itself exists. And there is more of an attempt to explore it: its structure, principles, the development of Souls, different levels of experience, relationships, incarnations, learning, choice, and purpose.

I think that for those who no longer need to be convinced of the existence of spiritual reality and its manifestations at different levels, this book can offer a unique opportunity to begin asking more interesting questions:

“If we assume that there really is some phenomenon here — how might it be structured, and how might it possibly be translated into a language I already understand?”