This is supposedly in conflict with the Hindu karma theory, but as it appears, the souls usually converge to take a view of their future life which more or less converges with the Karmic accounts of Hinduism. The souls, on their own seeking, choose to punish themselves for a mistake or purported sin in their next life to experience an emotion or difficulty to learn the lessons required for their spiritual advancement.

The rebirth of a soul is, therefore, planned and timed with the rebirth of other souls in the same cluster with whom the give-and-take account remains to be settled. Despite the preordained determinism about our lives on the physical plane, the same remains confined to the major aspects and events of our lives. Our free will and past life amnesia still cause us to keep chopping and changing with our life plans while interacting with the real life situations and reacting to the sundry societal and natural forces.

As told by many other studies and declamations on the afterlife, the souls in the Spirit World are usually clustered with their primary or secondary soul mates to review and plan their life. But it is possible that some of the souls, though belonging to the same clusters, may be grouped as different study groups because of less or an advanced level of the spiritual advancement of a particular soul. The Spirit Guides or Advanced Souls, interacting with the souls in these study groups, confine themselves to suggestions and counselling. But as the Spirit World is peopled by the souls bereft of the burden of a physical body and accompanying emotions, the souls under the guidance of their Guides take the most apposite decision as may be suitable for the advancement of their individual souls.

The souls also may decide not to take birth for a substantive period of time, spending more time in review, rumination and cogitation. The souls are said to have enough time and opportunity for recreation and amusement between their study periods. Many of the souls also prefer rebirth on other planets or dimensions, depending on the learning requirements. Against the long-held Hindu belief of a ‘soul’ being unborn and perennial, Newton’s subjects talk about the phenomenon of creation of newer souls through soul-splitting or energy restructuring who are first nurtured carefully before being sent to the different physical worlds.

Even though this author does not subscribe to the same, this somehow explains the rising population on earth though Hinduism explains the same in different ways including extinction of other life forms, rebirth from other dimensions and physical worlds. Newton’s subjects also talk against the possibility of humans reincarnating as animals, the latter being very lower forms of energy as also suggested by the studies conducted by Swami Abhedananda, Dr Brian Weiss or Dr Ian Stevenson. The other startling revelation in Newton’s book relates to the phenomenon of splitting of ‘soul energy’. Newton’s subjects say that most of the souls have the ability to continue to exist in multiple worlds simultaneously. Some souls also venture to two simultaneous lives in parallel physical worlds to speed up their evolution, but attempting two lives in the same family or same world is said to be wastage of one’s energy.

While a predominant majority of souls prefer existence in physical worlds, where there are still many who love to remain in spiritual, mental or extra- physical dimensions. The physical world is said to be as illusory as the spiritual world because of its ever-changing character, generally unfathomed by the living beings. The spiritual world, in fact, is said to be more real than the physical world as is the joy and fun of living in a spiritual life. The souls not only have all kinds of fun and recreation in the Spirit World, they are also able to live a life of their choice, slowly attempting to move up the ladder of spiritual evolution to get an opportunity to meet the Maker, literally.

As the souls advance, they also get to learn the skill of creating aspects of physical life or forms of life out of energy manipulations, modifications, or restructuring under the guidance of a Spirit Guide. All the mind-boggling beauty and diversities in the physical world, thus, appear to be the handiwork of intelligence. The souls are capable of creating anything out of their energy by merely thinking about the same. All the communication or movement in the Spirit World is said to happen through telepathy or teleportation. The souls usually project respective customised images of themselves matching their past life relations while communicating with other souls in the Spirit World. While communication does happen freely without any inhibition or complexity in the Spirit World, the souls still retain the ability to block certain thoughts to other souls as do the Spirit Guides or the Advanced Souls to avoid revealing the larger plan of the Supreme Being.

Rarely do souls use all their ‘soul energy’ during a physical life as the physical body may not take the load and circuits of the brain and might burst due to ‘energy overload’. They say that an advanced soul uses only 25 per cent of its ‘soul energy’ during its physical life, while a young soul uses as much as up to 70 per cent of the same. With more soul energy, the brain’s capacity to do the impossible gets enhanced as often reported for many clairvoyant and psychic individuals. Scientifically, it has been claimed that an ordinary human being uses only 10 per cent of one’s brain. Many of the great scientists are said to have accessed the Cosmic Consciousness, as the humongous interconnected database of all the soul consciousness of l the world in this cosmos because of which we have periodic scientific and intellectual progress in our lives. So, depending on the lessons to be learnt and difficulties expected to be faced, a soul carries a part of its energy to its physical life, while leaving another part in the Spirit World for continuing the life there.

This also explains how a newly-arrived soul in the Spirit World is received by his near and dear ones even though they may still be continuing their lives in the physical world. Depending on the level of a soul, it is also accompanied by its Guardian Angels who either take birth with them in one of the roles or who keep sending messages to the souls under their tutelage. This is why we always are more attached to a particular person/s in our life to whom we keep gravitating in our time of need and desperation. Many of our brainwaves, hunches or split-second escapes from disasters in our life are said to be the handiwork of these Guardian Angels or Guides in our life.

As most of the souls are said to be young compared to the life of the cosmos, the problems and chaos experienced in the physical worlds are supposed to get settled and fixed as the souls mature and become wiser. Most of our sparring and attrition in the world today is because of the fact that most of the souls are simply not aware of their purpose of being born because of which they keep running after mythical comforts than matters as may add permanent values to their spiritual journey. With the number of advanced and wise souls increasing, more and more development, expansion and extension of cosmic consciousness and life could be experienced on earth and other physical worlds.

Even though the account appears to be apocryphal and far-fetched, it does provide an insight into something, mostly unknown thus far. This corroborates many of the already-known phenomena and beliefs of the religionists or past life researchers. In the absence of any authentic or scientific confirmation of this aspect of our life, Newton’s books do venture into an uncharted terrain, affording a glimpse of the life between lives. One only hopes that with time, more and more people would find time to delve into this facet of our life to discover and reveal the real purpose behind the creation of this humongous cosmos.

(The writer is an IAS officer, presently posted as Commissioner of School Education, West Bengal. The views expressed are personal and dont reflect those of the Government)