Journey through the Stars, Awaiting a Body
Cosmic Memory and the Big Bang
Thakur Anukulchandra lived as an enlightened master in India teaching about the highest spiritual form of human life.
Enlightened individuals do not necessarily describe their memories of birth or their existence before this lifetime since they have all dissolved their egos and prefer to avoid discussing their private histories.
Therefore, we are grateful to Thakur for inspiring us with one of the most extensive accounts illustrating how much human memory may encompass. Thakur’s high state of enlightenment is an important consideration in the power of his memories. Few enlightened masters seem to share these memories, but more accounts may exist in the untranslated biographies of other masters.
Thakur Anukulchandra was a renowned Indian guru, physician, and founder of the Satsang ashram. Anukulchandra set up schools, charitable hospitals, engineering workshops, a publishing house, and a printing press. He was a prolific writer; noted among his ninety-four books are Satyanusaran, Punyapunthi, Anushruti, Chalar Sathi, Shashvati, and Pritibinayak.
Thakur was born in 1888 in the primitive village of Himayitpur where tigers, bears and poisonous snakes roamed freely in the streets even during the day. The village was situated on the bank of the river Padma, where crocodiles floated on the surface of water freely. As a young boy, Thakur used to swim in the River Padma along with the crocodiles. Very often he went deep to the bottom of River Padma to meditate for a long period and he never felt discomfort due to cessation of respiration. From early youth, Thakur frequently became absorbed in melodious songs to the Almighty.
At that time, his body temperature would rise above 110F. He had no pulse. In that stage of superconsciousness, Thakur felt as if he had been expanded to bear the whole Universe in Him. He felt responsible for all events happening in the Universe. He felt his existence among all living entities around him. In that stage of consciousness, a horse was beaten in front of him and the cane marks on the horse’s back appeared distinctly on the back of Thakur.
Thakur Anukulchandra recalls observing the entire process of creation, from the prime indivisible point to this widely evolved vast universe, the Creator and the created both:
“My journey to Earth involved traveling through a yet undiscovered system of celestial constellations. I traversed a vast distance in space, passing through 44,000 planets. While our planets rotate around the Sun, I observed that lakhs of suns rotate around a bigger sun.”
Next we share cross-cultural parallels to Thakur Anukulchandra’s memories. These parallels contain bits and pieces of his exhaustive memory.
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Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-1886), the great Bengali sage, shared his memories of how he chose his chief disciple prior to their births.
I was reminded of how I had selected Vivekananda while I was deep in ecstatic meditation one day. My awareness rapidly ascended through every illumined level of being, plunging toward the Mother Essence, the dazzling darkness of the absolutely unmanifest, beyond any possible experience.
My consciousness soared high and ascended a luminous path through the world of gross matter into the subtle world. I transcended the stellar universe, entered the subtler region of ideas, and witnessed the ideal forms of God.
When my mind reached the outer limits of that region, I encountered a luminous barrier separating the sphere of relative existence from that of the Absolute realm where form ceases. Crossing that fence made of light, my mind entered that realm where no physical form is visible. Even the highest celestial beings kept their seats far below and dared not peep into that sublime realm.
In the next moment, I saw the seven eternally liberated sages – a constellation of conscious stars, floating in boundless awareness beyond all heavenly realms. The light of pure consciousness constituted the bodies of these primordial, genderless stars of wisdom. They were unsurpassed in knowledge, holiness, renunciation, and love.
A bolt of radiance meanwhile manifested out of that undifferentiated luminous region and I condensed into a five-year-old golden boy. I approached Vivekananda, one of the seven brilliant lights sitting in the lotus posture in a transcendental state of equipoise. I climbed onto his lap and tenderly clasped his neck with my arms. My touch roused the venerable Buddha-like figure. Vivekananda gazed upon me with half-open eyes. I appeared as a flame dancing everywhere around him.
I whispered to Vivekananda: “I am descending into time. You, too, must come with me.” He gazed upon me, and although he remained mute, his beaming countenance revealed that I was the treasure of his heart.
Vivekananda once again became immersed in ecstasy. Next a fragment of Vivekananda’s body and mind, in the form of a bright ray, emanated from his right eye. As the ray of light descended to Earth, the light pierced each plane of existence like a needle a needle passing through layers of loosely woven cloth until reaching his birth home in Calcutta.
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Norman Paulsen (1929 – U.S.A.) American mystic and disciple of Paramahamsa Yogananda. His gifted memory exists in his consciousness as a visual memory recall with vivid images, sounds, and colors.
I descended toward a bright blue pearl of a Mother Earth. Her waters and land appeared like a celestial garden floating in the cosmos and drew me like iron to a magnet. My life energy and love merged with images of clashing waves, torrents of spray . . . clouds of mist, slowly settling upon glistening monoliths of stone.
Still searching, I flew East beyond the rolling hills and bright green meadows to a fertile valley. There a village greeted me and a silent street ran north and south. I watched for a house facing the rising Sun. Then, a picket fence, an open gate, and a green lawn sprang out beneath two tall palm trees to welcome him. Indeed, I found the home of the blind Buddha – my father-to-be.
Charles Paulsen was the newly elected judge of the city and county courts, as well as an American Buddhist minister. Deprived of earthly vision, Charles walked with a white cane sensing the ground beneath him. The blind man was stalwart and precise. Using his acute hearing, he heard the message of the whispering wind and the babbling brook as he extended his life outward into all beings and images around him. Silently my spirit approached the blind man by being as quiet as the wind. But like an ocean wave meeting another wave, our souls could not resist.
He found me standing there on the street in the midst of his life. My spirit-image flashed before his inner vision; I had startled him. He stopped walking to stand alert in a silent greeting. Time stood still for him. “You have finally come to help me, to be my eyes in the world.”
I explained: “Long have we been friends and again we meet. My spirit is fixed upon rebirth here. Our lives must be joined together for a time.”
Charles invited me into his home like any other guest. Although cheerful, Charles harbored reservations that blindness might accompany me if I was born in his family. Once Charles overcame his fear, he prayed:
“Man from the North, eyes for two, abide in my house with my wife and me; be my friend once more. Your name shall be Norman after the blood of our fathers: Nor (the) man.”
I answered the blind Buddha’s call on February 3, 1929, and lost no consciousness in entering the planetary body of the earth elements.
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Macrobius (4th – 5th Century AD Rome) – grammarian and Neoplatonist philosopher.
Souls come to Earth from the region of the fixed stars through the descending portal located where the Milky Way intersects the zodiac sign of Cancer. As souls descend from the top of the cosmos to the bottom, Saturn confers reason and understanding, Jupiter – practicality and morality, Mars – a bold spirit, Venus – passion, Mercury – eloquence and discrimination, Sun -sense perception and imagination, and the Moon – ability to procreate and nurture.
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Judeo-Christian Tradition (Genesis 28:11-19) – The biblical patriarch Jacob witnessed the ladder between Heaven and Earth:
Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!
And behold, the LORD stood above it [or “beside him”] and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.”
Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Our interpretation of Jacob’s Ladder is that the ladder is the bridge between Heaven and Earth and these are the angels who escort our souls’ descent from the heavenly world to be born on Earth and they also accompany us on our ascent to Heaven after earthly life.
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Sufism – Seventy thousand veils separate the spiritual and physical worlds. Our souls lose divine attributes as we traverse the first 35,000 veils of light. We then accumulate earthly qualities in our passage through the next 35,000 veils of darkness.
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Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 India) – The Time that my Journey takes is Long and the Way of it Long. I came out on the Chariot of the First Gleam of Light and Pursued my Voyage through the Wilderness of Worlds, leaving my Track on Many a Star and Planet.
Stories from the Cosmic Cradle, Spiritual Dimensions of Life before Birth interviews parallel Thakur Anukulchandra’s memory of piercing through layers, veils, starry heavens on the soul’s journey to Earth.
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Katarina (U.S.A.) mother of six children.
I traveled through space and time, which literally looked like flashing stars. It is a very fluid motion of space and time, from death to life and life to death. Obviously I did not have eyes and ears. I had nothing physical to perceive with. However my senses were in play. I became one sense. All the senses became one, traveling through space and time, and coming into the womb. So there was some entity that was myself that had these tools at its disposal.
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Glen Beicker (1929-2005, U.S.A.) a retired military officer raised in Christian religious background, recalls choosing his parents out of three possible couples. Next he felt himself enter a huge round tunnel;
I flew down through that tube at a terrific speed. Lights from a narrow light band flashed by. The lights wrapped all through that tube, like a red stripe on a peppermint candy cane. The light circle never broke. It went with me. It was dark except for the band of light. The light was on the outside of the tube and it was transparent, and you were looking through it, but you weren’t looking through it, it was just a band of light. The next thing I knew I was a little boy.
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Beverly Anderson (U.S.A.), mother, clairaudient, clairvoyant, and spiritual healer.
I clearly remember stars whizzing by, but there was no sensation of movement as we know it as humans. There was no density, no up or down, no left or right, no time, no sensations of colors, sound, or heat. You just were. . . . pure energy . . . surrounded by comfort and ease. . . . wonderful. I haven’t a clue as to “when” that was. There was no time associated with that because there was no space. Space did not mean anything. You just were.