Reincarnation, Dreams, And The Hidden Male And Female Within The Self

As I mentioned earlier, each person lives both male and female lives. As a rule, conscious memory of these is not retained. To prevent an overidentification of the individual with his present sex, within the male there resides an inner personification of femaleness. This personification of femaleness in the male is the true meaning of what Jung called the “anima.”

The anima in the male is, therefore, the psychic memory and identification of all the previous female existences in which the inner self has been involved. It contains within it the knowledge of the present male’s past female histories, and the intuitive understanding of all the female qualities with which the personality is innately endowed.

The anima, therefore, is an important safeguard, preventing the male from over-identifying with whatever cultural male characteristics have been imposed upon him through present background, environment, and education. The anima serves not only as a personal but as a mass-civilizing influence, mellowing strongly aggressive tendencies and serving also as a bridge both in communicating with women in a family relationship, and in communication also as it is applied through the arts and verbalization.

The male will often dream of himself, therefore, as a female. The particular way in which he does so, can tell him much about his own reincarnational background in which he operated as a female. Maleness and femaleness are obviously not opposites, but merging tendencies. The priestess, the mother, the young witch, the wife, and the old wise woman - these general types are archetypes, simply because they are “root elements” representing, symbolically, the various kinds of so-called female qualities and the various kinds of female lives that have been lived by males.

They have also been lived by females, of course. However, the women do not need to be reminded of their femaleness, but again, so that they do not overidentify with their present sex, there is what Jung called the “animus,” or the hidden male within the woman.

This represents the male lives with which the self has been involved - the young boy, the priest, the aggressive jungle man," and the wise old man. These are types, representing generally and symbolically past male lives lived by present women. Women, therefore, can learn much about their reincamational past as men, through studying those dreams in which these types appear, or in which they themselves appear as men.

Through the anima and the animus, so-called, present personalities are able to draw upon the knowledge and intuitions and background that was derived from past existences as the opposite sex. On some occasions, for example, the woman may go overboard and exaggerate female characteristics, in which case the animus or male within comes to her aid, bringing through dream experiences an onrush of knowledge that will result in compensating malelike reactions.

The same applies to a male when he over-identifies with what he believes to be male characteristics, for whatever reason. The anima or woman within will rouse him to make compensating actions, causing an upsurge of intuitive abilities, bringing a creative element to offset aggressiveness.

Ideally, left alone, these operations would result in a balance individually and en masse, where aggressiveness was always used creatively, as indeed it can and should be.

The animus and the anima are, of course, highly charged psychically, but the origin of this psychic charge and the inner fascination are the result of a quite legitimate inner identification with these personified other-sex characteristics.

They not only have a reality in the psyche, however, but they are imbedded in genetically codified data by the inner self - a genetic memory of past psychic events - transposed into the genetic memory of the very cells that compose the body.

Each inner self, adopting a new body, imposes upon it and upon its entire genetic makeup, memory of the past physical forms in which it has been involved. Now the present characteristics usually overshadow the past ones. They are dominant, but the other characteristics are latent and present, built into the pattern. The physical pattern of the present body, therefore, is a genetic memory of the seifs past physical forms, and of their strengths and weaknesses.

I will try to put this as simply as possible. There are presently invisible layers within the body, the topmost layer that you see representing, of course, the present physical form. But enmeshed within this there are what amount to invisible layers, “shadow,” latent layers that represent previous physical images that have belonged to the personality.

They are kept in abeyance, so to speak. They are connected electromagnetically to the atomic structure of the present body. To your way of thinking, they would be unfocused. They are a part of your psychic heritage, however. Often you can call up a past strength of a previous body, to help compensate for a present weakness. The body does not only carry memory biologically of its own past condition in this life therefore, but indelibly with it, even physically, are the memories of the other bodies that the personality has formed in previous reincarnations.

The anima and the animus are closely connected with these interior body images. These body images are highly charged psychically, and also appear in the dream state. They operate as compensations and reminders to prevent you from over-identifying yourself with your present physical body.

They are, of course, both male and female. When you are ill, in the dream state you often have experiences in which you seem to be someone else with an entirely healthy body. Often such a dream is therapeutic. An “older” reincarnational body has come to your aid, from which you draw strength through the memory of its health.

Reincarnational experiences are a part of the framework of the self, a facet of the multidimensional reality of the living psyche. These experiences will, therefore, be reflected not only in the dream state, but in other layers of activity.

The fabric of the present self is interwoven with these reincarnational “pasts,” and from them the present self draws unconsciously from its own bank of personality characteristics, activities, and insights. Often past life memories come to the surface but are not recognized as such, since they appear in fantasy form, or are projected into art creations

Many writers of historical pieces, for example, are writing out of direct experience with those times. Such instances represent an excellent working rapport between the present self and the unconscious, which brings these memories to the surface in such a way that current life is enriched. More often than not, true awareness of the situation often becomes almost conscious, and just beneath awareness the individual knows the source of his authentic material.

In dreams this reincarnational material is likewise cast into a dramatic mold very frequently. Beneath all this, the anima and the animus work together, again not opposites but blending characteristics. Together, of course, they represent the fount of creativity, psychically as well as physically.

The anima represents the necessary initial “inwardness,” the brooding, caring, intuitive, inside-turning characteristics, the inward focusing from which creativity comes.

The word “passive” is a poor one to describe the characteristics of the anima, in that it suggests a lack of motion, and this is hardly the case. It is true that the anima allows itself to be acted upon, but the motive behind this is the desire and the necessity to tune into other forces that are supremely powerful. The desire to be swept along, therefore, is as strong with the anima as the opposite desire for rest. The characteristics of the animus provide the aggressive thrust that returns the personality back outward into physical activities, triumphantly holding the products of creativity that the anima characteristics have secured.

The whole self is obviously the sum of these characteristics, and more. After the final incarnation, the physical, sexual type of creativity is simply no longer needed. You do not need to reproduce physically, in other words. In simple terms the whole self contains male and female characteristics, finely tuned together, blended so that true identity can then arise - for it cannot, when one group of characteristics must be emphasized over the other group, as it must be during your present physical existence.

There are many reasons why the separation has been adopted within your dimension. The reasons have to do with the particular way in which mankind has chosen to evolve and use his abilities; and I will have more to say regarding this point, but it does not belong in this chapter.

The projection of the man’s anima, or hidden female self, upon [his] relations is quite natural, and allows him not only to understand them better but to relate with the other female existences of his own. The same is true of the woman’s projection of the animus upon male relatives and friends. The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper then than Jung supposed. Symbolically speaking, the two together represent the whole self with its diverse abilities, desires, and characteristics.

Together they act as a built-in, unconscious stabilizing factor, operating behind the faces of your civilization not only individually but culturally.

Personality as you know it, cannot be understood unless the true meaning of the anima and the animus is taken into consideration. The reincarnational pattern is generally speaking an open one, in that within it there is room for diversity. Each whole self has its own individual characteristics. It can live its lives as it sees fit within the guidelines. There may be a series of male or female existences, unbroken. Such a choice has some drawbacks.

There are, however, no rules dictating the sexual development in varying incarnations, except that experience with both sexes must be taken on, and the various characteristics developed. This does not mean that an equal number of male and female lives must be lived. Some, for example, find it far easier to develop as one sex or the other, and will need more opportunities for experience as the sex with which they expe- rience difficulty.

The animus and the anima become even more important in these instances when a series of one-sex lives are chosen. The original pattern for the animus and anima comes from the whole self before reincarnations. The animus and the anima are born into the individual with the first physical life, and serve as an inner pattern, reminding the per- sonality of its basic unity. Here is another reason for the strong psychic charge behind these symbols and the godlike quality that they can transmit and project.

The male yearns toward the anima because it represents to the deep unconscious those other characteristics of the whole self that, on the one hand, lie latent, and that, on the other hand, struggle for release. The tension between the two leads him to temper aggressiveness with creativity, or to use aggressiveness creatively.

Now there are deep correlations between these symbols and the struggle in which mankind is involved. Your consciousness as you know it, your particular present kind of consciousness, is a statement of awareness brought about by a particular kind of tension, a specific kind of focus arising from the true unconscious of the whole self.

The true unconscious is not unconscious. Instead, it is so profoundly and unutteringly conscious that it bubbles over. The life that you know is simply one of the many areas in which it is conscious. In each facet of its consciousness, literally tremendous power and balance must be maintained to hold aloft this particular consciousness-experience from all others.

Your reality exists in a particular area of activity in which aggressive qualities, thrusting-outward characteristics, are supremely necessary to prevent a falling back into the infinite possibilities from which you have only lately emerged. Yet from this unconscious bed of possibilities you derive your strength, your creativity, and the fragile yet powerful kind of individual consciousness that is your own.

The two-sex division was adopted, separating and balancing these most necessary but seemingly opposing tendencies. Only beginning consciousness needs these kind of controls. The anima and the animus, therefore, are embedded deeply with their necessary complementary but apparently opposed tendencies, and they are highly important in maintaining the very nature of your human consciousness.

There is also a natural tension, then, between sexes that is based n far deeper causes than physical ones. The tension results from the nature of your consciousness that arises from the anima, but depends r its continuation upon the “aggressiveness” of the animus. I have to me extent explained the fascination that one has for the other, as suiting from the inner knowledge of the whole self, that strives to attain true identity as it struggles to combine and fulfill the seemingly opposite tendencies that are a part of it.

At the end of the reincarnational cycle, the whole self is far more developed than it was before. It has realized and experienced itself in a dimension of reality unknown to it earlier, and in doing so, has of course increased its being. It is not a matter, then, of a whole self splitting in half, and then simply returning to itself.

Now there are many matters concerning the nature of conception that should be discussed here. Again, however, there is leeway and many variations. Usually between lives you choose ahead of time your children, and they choose you as parents.

If you are to be bom as a male, then the mother serves as a stimulus to activate the symbol of the anima in you, so that the pattern of your own female lives becomes a portion of your next existence. Your mother, if you have known her in the past, will find at your birth an upsurge of dreams involving other existences in which the two of you were together.

These may not even be recorded consciously, but in many cases they are, and are then forgotten. Her own past male lives will help her relate to you as her son. In some cases new mothers may feel highly aggressive and nervous. These feelings are sometimes due to the fact that the male son causes an activation of the animus in her, with a resulting charge of aggressive feelings.

The atoms that compose the fetus have their own kind of consciousness. The volatile awareness-consciousnesses that exist independently of matter, form matter according to their ability and degree. The fetus, therefore, has its own consciousness, the simple component consciousness made up of the atoms that compose it. This exists before any reincarnating personality enters it. The consciousness of matter is present in any matter - a fetus, a rock, a blade of grass, a nail.

The reincarnating personality enters the new fetus according to its own inclinations, desires, and characteristics, with some built-in safeguards. However there is no rule, then, saying that the reincarnating personality must take over the new form prepared for it either at the point of conception, in the very earliest months of the fetus’s growth, or even at the point of birth.

The process is gradual, individual and determined by experience in other lives. It is particularly dependent upon emotional characteristics - not necessarily of the last incarnated self, but the emotional tensions present as a result of a group of past existences.

Various methods of entry are adopted. If there is a strong relationship between the parents and the child-to-be, then the personality may enter at the point of conception if he is extremely anxious to rejoin them. Even here, however, large portions of self-aware- ness continue to operate in the between-life dimension.

In the beginning, the womb state under these conditions is a dreamlike one, with the personality still focused mainly in the between-life existence. Gradually the situation reverses, until it becomes more difficult to retain clear concentration in the between-life situation.

In these circumstances, when the personality attaches itself at conception, there is almost without exception strong past-life connections between parents and child, or there is an unceasing and almost obsessional desire to return to the earthly situation - either for a specific purpose, or because the reincarnating personality is presently ob- sessed with earthly existence. This is not necessarily detrimental. The personality can simply realize that it takes to physical experience well, is presently earth-oriented, and finds earthly atmosphere a rich dimension for the growth of its own abilities.

Some personalities are drawn to enter at conception as a result of seemingly less worthy motives - greed, for example, or an obsessional desire that is partially composed of unresolved problems. Other personalities who never completely take to earthly existence may hold off full entry for some time, and even then always remain at a certain distance from the body. At the other end of the scale, before death the same applies, where some individuals remove their focus from physical life, leaving the body consciousness alone. Others stay with the body until the last moment. In the early days of infancy, there is not a steady focus of the personality in the body in any case.

In all cases the decisions have been made ahead of time, as I told you. The reincarnating personality is aware, therefore, when the conception for which it has been waiting takes place. And while it may or may not choose to enter at that point, it is drawn irresistibly to that time and point in space and flesh.

On occasion, long before conception takes place, the personality who will end up as the future child will visit that environment of both parents-to-be, drawn again. This is quite natural.

Between lives an individual may see flashes of the future existence, not necessarily of particular events, but experience the essence of the new relationship and in expectation remind himself of the challenge he has set. In these terms, the ghosts of the future are as real in your homes as the ghosts of the past.

You do not have completely empty shells of matter about to be filled, in that the new personality hovers in and about, particularly after conception and with greater frequency and intensity thereafter. The shock of birth has several consequences, however, that usually draw the personality full blast, so to speak, into physical reality.

Before this, the conditions are fairly uniform. The body consciousness is nurtured almost automatically, reacting strongly but under highly controlled conditions.

At birth, all of this is suddenly over, and [new] stimuli [are] introduced with a rapidity that the body consciousness has never to that point experienced.

It greatly needs a stabilizing factor. Previously the body consciousness has been enriched and supported by deep biological and telepathic identification with the mother. The communication of the living cells is far more profound than you imagine. The identification is almost complete before birth as far as body consciousness alone is concerned.

Until the new personality enters, the fetus regards itself as a part of the organism of the mother. This support is suddenly denied at birth. If the new personality has not entered earlier to any full extent, it usually does so at birth, in order to stabilize the new organism. It comforts the new organism, in other words. The new personality, therefore, will experience birth to varying degrees according to when it has entered this dimension.

When it enters at the point of birth, it is fairly independent, not yet identified with the form it has entered, and acting in a supportive role. If the personality entered at conception or sometime before birth, then it has to some extent identified with the body consciousness, with the fetus. It has already begun to direct perception - though perception has begun whether or not it is so directed - and it will experience the shock of birth in immediate, direct terms.

There will be no distance between the personality and the experience of birth, then. The newly entered personality, as a consciousness, flickers, in that there is a while before stabilization takes place. When the child, particularly the young child, is sleeping, for example, the personality often simply vacates the body. Gradually the identification with the between-life situation dwindles until nearly full focus resides in the physical body.

There are obviously those who identify with the body far more cormpletely than others. Generally speaking, there is an optimum point of focus in physical reality, a period of intensification that has nothing to do with duration. It can last for a week or thirty years, and from then onward it begins to dwindle, and imperceptibly begins to shift to other layers of reality.

Now. A crisis, particularly in very early or very late life, may so shatter the personality’s identification with the body that he vacates it temporarily. He may do one of many things. He may leave so completely that the body goes into coma, if the body consciousness has also suffered shock. If the shock is psychological and the body consciousness is still operating more or less normally, then he may revert to an earlier reincarnational personality.

In such a case, this is simply a regression that often passes. Here we become concerned again with the animus and the anima. If a personality believes that it is doing a poor job in a male life, it may activate the anima’s qualities, taking on the characteristics of a past female existence in which it handled itself well. Reversing the picture, the same can happen to a woman.

On the other hand, if the personality finds that it has so over-identified with its present sex that its individuality is deeply threatened, then it may also bring to the fore the opposite picture, going so far as to identify again with a past personality of the opposite sex.

The hold of the personality over the body is tenuous in the early years, and grows stronger. The personality, for its own reasons, may decide upon choosing a body that is not aesthetically pleasing. He may never relate to it, and while the existence will serve what purposes he had in mind, there will always be a basic sensed distance between the body and the personality within it.

Those mentioned earlier who enter at the point of conception are usually highly anxious for physical existence. They will, therefore, be more fully developed and show their individual characteristics very early. They seize upon the new body and already mold it. The control over matter is vigorous, and they usually stay within the body, dying either in accidents where death is immediate or in sleep or with a disease that strikes quickly. They are manipulators of matter as a rule.

They are emotional. They work out their problems in immediate, sometimes impatient, tangible ways. They work well with earth materials, and translate their ideas with great force into physical terms. They make cities, monuments. They are architects. They are concerned

with forming matter and molding it to their desire.

As a rule, now, those who do not enter your plane of existence until the point of birth are less able manipulators in those particular term s . They are the mean, if such a term can be used, the mean or average.

Now there are some who resist the new existence, even though they chose it, as long as possible. To some extent they must be present at birth, but they can still escape any full identification with the born infant. They hover within and about the form, but half reluctantly. There are many reasons for such behavior. Some personalities simply prefer in-between-life existence and are much more concerned with the theoretical solving of problems than the practical application necessarily involved. Others have discovered that physical existence does not meet their needs as well as they thought it would, and they will progress much better in other fields of reality and existence.

Because of their own characteristics, however, some prefer to set up a certain distance between themselves and their physical existences. They are much more concerned with symbols. They look upon earthly life as highly experimental. They approach it almost with a jaundiced eye, so to speak. They are not interested so much in manipulating matter as they are curious as to the ways in which ideas appear within matter.

Again generally speaking, they are always more at home with ideas, philosophies, and nontangible realities. They are thinkers always a bit apart, their body types showing a lack of muscular development. Poets and artists, while somewhat of this nature, as a rule are more deeply appreciative of the physical values of earthly existence, although they have many of the same characteristics.

The attitude toward the body will always vary, therefore. Various types of bodies may

be chosen, but there will still be overall preferences on the part of the whole self, and characteristics that will lead the whole self, so that generally the various lives lived will still have their own individual flavor.

It is almost impossible to speak of when the personality enters the physical body without discussing the ways in which it leaves it, for all this is highly dependent upon personal characteristics and attitudes toward physical reality. Decisions as to future lives may be made not only in between-life conditions but also in dream states in any given life.

You may have already decided for example, now, upon the circumstances for your next incarnation. Although in your terms your new parents may be infants now, or in your scale of time not even born, the arrangements may still be made.