The Mystery of Walk-ins

Walk-In Versus Possession

There are Tens of thousands of Walk-ins on this planet. Enlightened beings who, after successfully completing numerous incarnations, have attained sufficient awareness of the meaning of life that they can forego the time-consuming process of birth and childhood, returning directly to adult bodies.

A Walk-in is a high-minded entity who is permitted to take over the body of another human being who wishes to depart.

Since a Walk-in must never enter a body without the permission of its own, this is not to be confused with those well-publicized cases (such as were described in The Three Faces of Eve, The Exorcist, et al) where evil spirits are vying for possession of an inhabited body.

The motivation for a Walk-in is humanitarian. He returns to physical being in order to help others help themselves, planting seed-concepts that will grow and flourish for the benefit of mankind.

Some of the world’s greatest spiritual and political leaders, scientists, and philosophers in ages past are said to have been Walk-ins. But during these final decades of the twentieth century the pace has been steadily accelerating, and many more of them are entering mature physical bodies to prepare us for the shift of the earth on its axis at the end of the century, and the new age that is dawning.

Not all Walk-ins are towering leaders. Many are working quietly among us today, going about their unassuming task of helping us to understand ourselves, to seek inner guidance, and to develop a philosophy that will sustain us through the trying times ahead.

You may know a Walk-in in your office. Or in your community. They seldom reveal themselves, because to do so could imperil the good work for which they returned to physical being.

In fact, you yourself may be a Walk-in! Since the memory of their former existence usually is wiped clean, Walk-ins are sometimes unaware of their altered status for several years after the substitution has been effected.

Why have you never heard of Walk-ins before? A reader wrote:

Are you looking for ideas for future books? I would like to see what your unseen friends [meaning my Guides] have to say about the role of Walk-ins on the planet. As they will tell you, a Walk-in is a highly evolved entity who, always with permission, enters the body of a human who wishes to check out before completing the task he has begun. Sometimes the human has lost heart, or had taken on a task more difficult than he was prepared to handle. Sometimes it was the purpose of the departing human to begin the task and prepare the body for the new entity. The new entity then completes the task, or takes the body beyond the point where the first occupant left off, and then goes on to do what he must do on his own projects, which are really those of a gardener who plants seeds on the planet, helps those seeds to germinate, and then lets them grow in their own direction. If you ask, your unseen friends will tell you the names of some of the political, military, spiritual, and philosophical leaders who were Walk-ins, who inspired or led people, and who are remembered for what they started. Perhaps it is time to tell the story of these remarkable beings, who are human while they are among us, and who help us along the way in our own evolution.

R

Reader

I become convinced of:

• reincarnation
• spirits, under certain circumstances, briefly materializing before loved ones and then eerily dissolve

But Walk-ins? Human beings of flesh and blood who walk among us, confidently occupying a body, that previously belonged to another? It seemed rather much to swallow. Yet the thought continued to tantalize my waking hours, and even to color my dreams.

The correspondent, obviously well-educated and intelligent, had indeed planted a seed; and after several days of restless wondering, I finally decided to seek counsel from my Guides, those unseen spirit friends who have been dictating through my typewriter from time to time since 1960.

Readers from my previous books in the psychic field are familiar with Lily, the mysterious spirit who directs my automatic writing, and with Arthur Ford, the famous American medium who joined Lily in my charmed circle of spiritual advisors after his death in 1971.

They know that each morning after meditation, if I lightly rest my fingertips on the typewriter keys while still in the alpha state, the Guides write their messages and profound thoughts through me. Afterward, upon reading what they have written, I am invariably impressed by their far-ranging knowledge and by the accuracy of their verifiable statements, but I must confess that of late I had grievously neglected them.

For one reason, my fingers were blistered from an unknown allergy that rendered them too sore for typing. For another, the Guides had been persistently urging that I write a book to help prepare readers for the coming shift of the earth on its axis, which they say will occur near the close of this century, after a devastating war.

The thought, to me, is a chilling one, and since the Guides had touched on the subject in the closing chapter of The World Beyond, I felt deep reluctance to pursue it. (Could my unwillingness to cooperate have precipitated the allergy?) At any rate, the more the Guides persisted, the less tractable I became, until I eventually ceased the morning sessions altogether.

Then came the challenging letter from my unknown reader, whom I shall call Laura, and after mulling it over for a few days, I returned to the typewriter to consult the Guides. Are there, I asked, such things as Walk-ins on this planet, and was there any truth to the letter that I had received?

After my usual period of meditation, with eyes still closed, I touched the keys lightly, and the Guides began to write: “The so-called Walk-ins are superior souls who have gone on after many earthly lives, and some of them need not return but are doing so in order to help others. They wish to avoid returning as babies, and enduring the childhood state in which valuable time would be wasted, so they do indeed take over, with the permission, the bodies of discouraged or willing souls who are ready to depart.

Some are able to go directly to the purpose of their earthly return, and have become philosophers and research scientists, while some are as yet unaware that they were not always in the bodies they now inhabit. They make up a small but brilliant portion of today’s society, and they will come in increasing numbers as the earth approaches the shift of the axis during the last part of this century.

“In the past centuries Walk-ins have flowered and waned and come again, and they are a prime example of the immortality of the soul. Thus, those who attain to a sufficiently advanced level need not repeat the learning processes of birth, babyhood, and schooling in order to serve others. By electing to enter directly into an adult body no longer wanted by the occupant, they bring with them a deepened awareness, a fresher recollection of akashic records and goals to be reached, and are able to communicate personally with other earthlings, unlike spirit entities who are ever present but seldom seen or heard by those in physical body”

Here, then, seemed verification of the letter that had arrived at such a precipitous time, when I was devoid of fresh ideas, and seemingly on a dry plateau. But why had the Guides never mentioned Walk-ins to me before?

“Because we had no intentions,” they wrote, “of telling you about this subject until you were ready to receive the information and develop curiosity about it. It is an idea whose time has come.”

After the morning session, I was just beginning to read those words when the telephone rang. My editor Patricia Soliman was on the line, asking rather plaintively when I would be ready to get back into harness and write another book. Patricia and I always seem to be operating on the same wavelength, and after I excitedly read to her the paragraph from the letter that lay open on my desk, she exclaimed, “Ruth, you should see my goosebumps! I feel sure that the writer of that letter is a Walk-in, although in all of the manuscripts I’ve read in the psychic field I’ve never heard of them.”

The thought that a mysterious Walk-in might actually be in touch with me had not occurred until then, but after the Guides confirmed Patricia’s hunch at the next day’s session, I eagerly responded to the woman’s letter, making no mention of what my editor and the Guides had said about her, but asking if I might come to see her. After a short delay she graciously gave consent, and two days later I flew to an area several hundred miles from my home, taking the Guides written messages about Walk-ins with me.

The Guides had declared that Laura is a highly evolved individual who became a Walk-in a year ago, after the original occupant of the body, faced with a seemingly insurmountable marital problem, elected to withdraw. Laura seemed stunned as she read these words, and refused to confirm that she was a Walk-in; but after we had spent several fascinating hours together, her barrier of reticence slowly began to crumble. She said she had certainly not thought of herself as a Walk-in when she contacted me, but had felt a strong inner compulsion to write as she did, “dangling a carrot” to encourage me to investigate a subject that she had heard about.

“I trusted you, and felt strongly that some of your own Guides were among a group around my typewriter as I wrote to you,” she confessed, whereupon I showed her another message from the Guides that said: “We have worked with her (Laura) both on this side, and since she became a Walk-in last year.”

Laura then said that she had been made aware that two of her acquaintances were occupying bodies into which they had not originally been born, but she refused even to consider that she herself might be a Walk-in until the evening before my arrival, when two discarnates gave her the identical information that I had just brought her from my Guides. She permitted me to read excerpts from her private journal, which described the alteration to her personality and attitudes at the time of her divorce a year previously, and recorded that the evening before my visit, “I was told by discarnates that I had taken this body about a year ago. They who told me said that I needed this piece of information that I had just brought her from my Guides. She permitted me to read excerpts from her private journal, which described the alteration in her personality and attitudes at the time of her divorce a year previously, and recorded that the evening before my visit, “I was told by discarnates that I had taken this body about a year ago. They who told me said that I needed this piece of information before meeting with Ruth, in order to tell her questions with wisdom, for the greatest good of all.”

The new Laura recorded fascinating details of the gradual withdrawal of the old Laura, when for a time they seemingly took turns occupying the body, although never at the same time, until the substitution was completed to the satisfaction of both. But because she could vividly recall details from the old Laura’s childhood and college years, she would not accept that the new Laura was a Walk-in, even after another Walk-in, who recognized her changed status, explained that there is no break in the memory pattern of the withdrawing entity when the replacement takes over.

Since that day when I had the first of many conversations with Laura, I have been privileged to speak with other Walk-ins, explicitly identified as such by the Guides and by their own inner knowing, and have learned that no such persons should be publicly identified while still in flesh, because to do so could hamper the purpose of their return to earthly being. They do not need ego trips! They come, not as masters or authorities, but as servants and workers whose task it is to help others discover Truth for themselves.

It seems that certain Walk-ins of the past can be revealed, but only if they are not presently reincarnated, since even that disclosure could affect their anonymity. To illustrate, the Guides told me that a genius of the nineteenth century, whose name is a household word, was a Walk-in, and that his inventions which have revolutionized our way of life were “transferred almost directly from the spirit plane to Planet Earth through the gigantic ability of this man.” Yet I am not permitted to reveal his well-known name because although he died some years ago he is said to have returned to flesh, and is presently engaged in work that should lead to another tremendous breakthrough, this time in the field of medicine.

By contrast, the Guides readily agreed to name some other Walk-ins, because they are not presently incarnate. Among them are:

• Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948), “who rallied a slumbering giant (India) to action without benefit of sword,” thereby freeing that nation.
• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). The printer, author, publisher, inventor, scientist public servant, and diplomat, who had been called the first civilized American, and America’s first statesman.
• Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), taking over from a country lawyer, “who after several traumatic experiences and violent headaches withdrew in favor of the lofty entity who entered that body, signed the Emancipation proclamation and sadly led America in a divisive but necessary war to free the countless souls trapped in slavery.”
• Harvey Firestone (1868-1938), who virtually put the modern world on wheels by pioneering the manufacture of pneumatic and balloon tires.
• Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who, after having attained the highest pinnacle of scientific fame, “and propounding all that the world was prepared to understand or conceive at that time,” willingly gave up earthly fame and fortune to step aside, so that a transcendental soul might use that well-known body to teach the oneness of the spiritual world. The Guides say the new entity arrived after the experience in which the original entity (the scientist) saw the heavens opened wide, and realized that his own work was satisfactorily completed and that another would further the cause of mankind by taking over his physical body. “A prime example of the good that comes from Walk-ins arriving fully trained for their work as adults,” the Guides added.
• Meister Eckhart (1260?-1327), the German monk and scholastic mystic who taught that the goal of the human soul is union with God.
• Shankara (788?-820), the dropout from Hinduism and leading exponent of Advaita Vedanta.
• Joseph, the Biblical Canaan lad with the coat of many colors, who after being sold into slavery by jealous brothers, stepped aside for a highly evolved entity who interpreted the dreams of the Pharaoh, and rose to become a wise governor of Egypt.

The Christ Spirit, who according to the Guides, became the greatest of the Walk-ins “at the time of the Nazarene’s baptism, when God became manifest in the man Jesus.” The Guides will have more to say about this later, but it is interesting to note that Edgar Cayce, the seer of Virginia Beach, also said that the Christ Spirit did not enter until Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.

My spirit friends say that since a Walk-in automatically inherits the memories of the departing entity, he may continue for some time to identify himself with the John or Mary Doe he has replaced, but he will immediately begin to discover within himself a new awareness of life energies, deeper perceptions, clearer goals, and a love for all beings. The often muddled individual who vacated the body is replaced by one who intuitively knows how to solve the problems that blocked the other’s progress. The Walk-in for a time may believe that he has simply been granted a new insight, and because he has agreed before entering the body to complete the tasks begun by the walk-out, few of his associates will suspect the substitution of egos.

Yet as time passes, and the person becomes more energetic, hopeful, and dedicated, relatives and friends will remark on the great improvement in his attitude. Passivity is gone, and with it the previous reluctance to attack new problems and find a way out of the despair or boredom. When such improvement occurs, associates at first will marvel at the alteration but then will come to accept that the person has successfully passed through a period of depression.

Gradually as old projects are completed, the Walk-in will move into new pathways, and when he realizes that he was not originally born into the body he now occupies, he will be irresistibly drawn to other Walk-ins who are already at work raising the level of humanity. In fact, they will seek him out, and help him in his adjustment.

And what of those who choose to vacate their bodies in favor of a Walk-in?

The Guides stress that a Walk-out is not a cop-out. No karmic penalty attaches to such a decision, for unlike a suicide, he is not destroying life.

In A World Beyond the Guides explained how a soul, before reincarnation, elects to be born into a situation where he has the best opportunity to pay off old karmic debts and learn needed lessons. They have now lifted another curtain on the mystery of reincarnation by reporting that a soul who has wearied of the debilitating ailments of old age, after several lengthy lives, will sometimes volunteer to repeat the life cycles of babyhood and childhood, learning new lessons specifically to prepare the body for a more advanced entity who can enter it as a Walk-in. Sometimes, they say, a Walk-in will exchange places with an injured soldier on the battlefield or with a prisoner on death row in order to erase an entangling karma from a previous lifetime when he himself caused another’s violent death or injury.

Ordinarily, however, the cases are less dramatic. Perhaps a person is discouraged by his seeming inability to resolve a distressing personal relationship, or he may be desperately ill. He may have lost a loved one through death, separation, or divorce, and have thereby lost his will to live. The Guides say of this situation: “Walk-ins are careful not to enter bodies where strong emotional ties to others are still present. In this way they avoid too-close alliances that may get in the way of the pursuit of their higher goals. In fact, those with strong ties to another living person are seldom ready to walk out of their bodies and let another step in. Those who are free from such intimate ties are more willing to make way for another to complete the life cycle of his physical body.”

Whatever the reason, a Walk-out has always reached a point of transition before abandoning his body. And whether the person is a battered wife, a husband driven to distraction by a carping wife, a cripple, or one who has simply lost the will to live, a Walk-in cannot replace him unless he is willing to take over his unfinished tasks and master the problems, before launching his own projects.

Fully aware of the danger of a disturbed person’s mind being taken over by one or more evil entities, I asked the Guides how one who is willing to relinquish his body could protect himself from that terror.

“By remaining God-centered, loving the Creator in oneself and others,” they replied. “To protect oneself from evil spirits, mentally place a circle around oneself filling it with golden light and breathing into it love and peace. The subconscious is a powerful instrument for helping us picture situations which we wish to develop. This aura of golden light enveloping one in the perfect circle of eternity is important in many ways, warding off evil and filling ourselves with tranquility. It erases fear, and protects us, and is a good course to follow each day at the beginning of meditation.

“When one decides to make his body available for a more highly evolved entity, he should picture himself floating off into space, while another sets up housekeeping in his vacated body. This will alert those on this side who wish to become Walk-ins, and will further expand one’s own awareness. It is unnecessary to do this more than a few times before a high-minded entity will begin to make its presence felt. Warmth and love will radiate from it. But the vacater should not practice this unless he has definitely decided that he would like to return to spirit, and is willing to have his present reincarnation carried on by another. The process is not a lengthy one.

Depending on the condition of one’s body and the readiness to depart, a few months at most are required by the Walk-in to study the akashic records of the departing soul, determine how to master the body, and understand the best ways for solving the dilemma in which the Walk-out has found himself.”

Rereading this message at a later time, I was not sure that the directions were clear, so I asked the Guides if they could be more explicit. They wrote as follows: “If one wishes to become a Walk-out, there are several methods to be employed. The wish is paramount, for until one willingly relinquishes his body none other of high moral perception may enter. There is a changeover period during which each ego occupies it in turn, but not simultaneously. As the entity who wishes to enter makes the other aware of his loving presence, they will from time to time exchange places while the newcomer becomes acquainted with the bodily mechanism. This may occur at night during sleep, or in daydreams, or during waking periods when one is lonely or wrenched. To prepare for a Walk-in, first surround oneself with the golden protective light. Then, as one begins to feel the presence of another, he may invite him in by taking leave of the body for short periods. The best time for this is while lying in bed or on the floor, so that no injury would result from a brief period of unconsciousness while the entity slips into the vacated mind. To insure that the right entity, or one on the same wavelength, is entering, one should remember that this feeling of ‘rightness’ is the real test. If he feels relaxed and comfortable, with no sense of panic or remorse, it is satisfactory to proceed with the tentative experiment, for it need not be final until one has said in so many words, ‘I will go now, and leave all in your hands.’ Then he will rest for a time, before opening his spiritual eyes to the spirit plane.”

The same day that the guides typed this message, on August 23rd, 1978, an article in the Washington Post reported as follows: “Suicides among young Americans have tripled in the last twenty years. About 5,000 Americans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four take their lives every year. The phenomenon has affected a startling cross section of youth from all social, economic, and racial backgrounds.”

If the Guides are correct, then surely the method they describe is a more ennobling way to withdraw from an intolerable situation than to quench the flame of life and incur karmic penalty through suicide.

The Guides phrased it like this: “Walk-ins are helping others find their way to self-understanding, quietly assisting them to look within, to find that core within self from which all knowledge flows. They are at work in a variety of ways, as physicists, truckers, teachers, scholars, writers and housewives, for until they are freed of tasks undertaken by the original owners of the bodies, they will not advance their own work, which is that of trying to bring peace and understanding between peoples.

Those who would contemplate suicide might better give thought to permitting these superior souls to use their bodies, and let them take over during sleep or sickness, withdrawing into spirit to rest for a time and reassess their own goals.