Christian Sundberg Transcript: Pre-Birth Memories, Veiling, and the Purpose of Incarnation
Summary
The discussion explores pre-birth memories, the limits of language and belief, and how people might come to know realities beyond ordinary physical experience. It also examines fear as a response to separation and the possibility of growth through facing painful experiences.
Questions This Interview Explores
- How can we distinguish deeper spiritual knowing from belief or intellectual understanding?
- Why might fear arise from a sense of separation?
- How can facing painful experiences contribute to personal growth?
- What role can skepticism play in spiritual exploration?
Key takeaways
- Spiritual ideas are best explored through direct inquiry rather than accepted as beliefs.
- Skepticism can support honest spiritual exploration without dismissing experience outright.
- Fear can arise when we identify with separation and perceive ourselves as unworthy, powerless, or unloved.
- The ego tries to compensate for the insecurity created by feeling separate.
- Meeting difficult experiences with acceptance and intention may support deep personal growth.
Transcript
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done about 610 of them now. If this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com and look under the Past Interviews menu, or you’ll see them organized in several different ways.
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My guest today is Christian Sundberg. Christian lives in the Erie, Pennsylvania, area. When he was a young child, he remembered his existence before coming to Earth. While that memory left him completely for his early adult life, it spontaneously returned at the age of 30 as he took up a meditation practice and went through a personal awakening journey. He also began to have out-of-body experiences, which we might refer to as OBEs.
Christian has worked for over 15 years as a professional project manager for complex nuclear pump and valve manufacturing products—Homer Simpson’s old job. Christian has also presented at over 80 public speaking events, as he now seeks to remind others, at least in a small part, of who we all really are beneath the human play. So welcome, Christian. Good to have you.
I’ve really enjoyed listening to your entire book. Let me hold it up here. It’s A Walk in the Physical. I converted it to audio and listened to the whole thing this week while walking in the physical, for the most part, the physical woods. I felt like I was totally on the same wavelength as you in terms of my kind of metaphysical or philosophical understanding of things, and that every point in your book could be a springboard for a conversation about something.
But one question I thought I would start with, before you even tell your whole story about how you ended up doing what you’re doing, is: How is it that we know this stuff? You speak quite authoritatively, even though not dogmatically, about all kinds of points that most people would consider mystical, hypothetical, philosophical, religious, or something. But there’s a certain confidence in your tone. And I can resonate with that. I mean, I kind of believe these things, too. But do I believe them because I’ve read a lot of metaphysical books over the years and I’ve been meditating for a long time, or am I actually tuning into some deeper knowledge, and that’s why it makes sense to me?
This stuff doesn’t make sense to everybody. A lot of people would think we’re nuts with the kinds of things we’re going to discuss today. So, how do we know this stuff?
Christian: Well, the deeper parts of us are not just this experience that we’re having, this physical experience in this character. The deeper parts of us know. We all sense deep down that we may be very deeply veiled for a time. Human experience is a relatively extreme experience in the direction of separation—apparent separation. But who we really are, the substance of what we are, the substance of our spirit or consciousness, knows. We all sense deep down, in some way that seems inarticulatable, what we really are.
And I understand, I recognize that I may have made certain statements in the book that sound confident—very confident, most of the book is. But that knowing is not from some—it’s really hard to describe it. When one is knowing one’s true nature, these things are simply deeply known. It is not a matter of reading a book or coming across some new intellectual understanding.
And I understand, I recognize that I may have made certain statements in the book that sound confident—very confident, most of the book is. But that knowing is not from some—it’s really hard to describe it. When one is knowing one’s true nature, these things are simply deeply known. It is not a matter of reading a book or coming across some new intellectual understanding.
Intellectual understanding—human intellectual understanding—is its own limited subset of a much larger understanding that takes place within us. When we’re veiled, we tend to associate very deeply with the limited human understanding, and almost exclusively, perhaps even for an entire lifetime. But the deeper parts of us that transcend even some of the very fundamental properties of our reality, like linear time and discrete location, do exist right now. We are already connected to and a part of those.
Rick: Would you say that atheists, skeptics, or people who might listen to the conversation we’re about to have, or read your book, and say, “This is all bollocks. None of this makes sense to me”—would you say that they have that attitude just because they’re more heavily veiled or shrouded than other people?
Christian: I don’t want to pigeonhole it by saying yes or no in that way. I actually relate very much with atheists, sometimes more with atheists than with those who are very dogmatic, because it is important to have a skeptical mindset. I mean, that is a very important part of our journey: to be able to look at things objectively and to really evaluate them hard, with a hard-hearted evaluation.
✨ Consciousness and the resting point of awareness
I do feel that the more we focus on the physical, on our understanding of the physical, and on our beliefs and interpretations within the physical, the more deeply wrapped in it we become. The veil is kind of organic. The longer we’re here, the more focused in it we become, the deeper and deeper it gets. In fact, that’s what it’s meant to do. It is actually quite natural, when we’re here, to have almost no consciousness at the human level. We do have consciousness at a deeper level, but at the human character level, it is quite common not to have conscious awareness of our deeper nature.
When that’s the case, of course, materialism appears on the surface to be quite real and practical, and the be-all and end-all. But that’s just the nature of the simulation—a very good simulation. I don’t want to categorize the type of person that might feel that way. Like I said, I very much respect those who are very skeptical, and atheists. I think that’s just fine; there’s no need to have an intellectual model.
But for those who are interested in exploring, these things are very real. They’re much more real than we can put into words in a book or say to each other in the physical, because they transcend the physical entirely. We’re very limited in what we can say. I think it’s important that we share, nonetheless.
Rick: I kind of agree with you. I also respect atheists and skeptics. I like listening to Sam Harris, for instance. And, in a way, I have a lot more respect for him than I do for the sort of people who just indiscriminately buy into any woo-woo idea that comes down the pike.
I ran into a woman last summer. We’d had a big storm in Iowa called the derecho, which did billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Somehow that topic came up, and she said, “Oh, that was the Pleiadians. They came and caused that derecho.” I was thinking, “Whoa, really? Must have been teenage Pleiadians on a boring afternoon: ‘Let’s go 500 light-years and do some damage in Iowa.’” People who think in goofy ways like that, I’d much rather listen to Sam Harris.
Christian: I understand. Yeah, I can relate to that. I mean, I think we’re very quick to grasp onto some new belief. It doesn’t matter if it’s this dogma, or this New Age belief, or maybe it’s this guy in this video—maybe now I can believe him. It’s important that we don’t just believe things.
In fact, the truth of what we are so transcends earthly content that we almost have to step away from belief in order to really experientially touch the truth of what we are. We have to be willing to rigorously investigate what we really are: awareness itself, which transcends thought.
In fact, the truth of what we are so transcends earthly content that we almost have to step away from belief in order to really experientially touch the truth of what we are. We have to be willing to rigorously investigate what we really are: awareness itself, which transcends thought.
A belief is in thought. It’s grabbing the new thought-form and being like, “Okay, now that, I’m going to grab onto that. I’ve got to figure it out. The storm must be caused by this other thing, and now I’m going to attach these two things. Now we’ve got to figure it out.” Humans are very quick to then proclaim, “Oh, I’ve got to figure it out. Here’s the truth now. Let’s share it.”
A belief is in thought. It’s grabbing the new thought-form and being like, “Okay, now that, I’m going to grab onto that. I’ve got to figure it out. The storm must be caused by this other thing, and now I’m going to attach these two things. Now we’ve got to figure it out.” Humans are very quick to then proclaim, “Oh, I’ve got to figure it out. Here’s the truth now. Let’s share it.”
It can’t be done, and I think that’s one of the hardest things about any of these kinds of conversations, because if you touch that substance of what we are, you know it cannot be said; it cannot be put into form. It’s just so daunting to attempt to. In fact, I feel like even just saying one sentence, or writing one sentence, I’m just wrong. I just—it’s almost like I shouldn’t even try.
But on the other hand, there is great value in the exploration process, and it is important that we proceed in the process of personal growth and evolution. That means considering new ideas and intellectually evaluating these things. So that’s why we should share.
Rick: Well, if the kind of experience that you’re going to be talking about here were common, if everyone had that kind of experience, then we probably could talk about it a lot more because we’d probably have much more of a common language for it.
Like, if you go to a convention of people who like Italian food, you could get into big discussions about this kind of pasta and this kind of pizza and things like that, and they all know what you’re talking about because they’ve had the actual experience. But if you went and talked to some Eskimos about it or something, they wouldn’t have any idea what you’re saying. It’s a little bit a matter of how rare or common subtle experiences are, whether or not we can converse about them.
Christian: Yeah, it’s interesting that you use the words “subtle experiences.” I know on the surface they appear to be subtle, but when they are actually known, they’re not subtle. But anyway, I agree very much with what you’re saying.
It is one of the reasons I very much enjoy conversing with near-death experiencers, or NDEers, or pre-birth experiencers. There’s a shared language, like we can jump to the end of the alphabet and have a real dialogue. There are a lot of people who are not familiar with it, and that’s okay. That’s the nature of what we’re doing here.
Rick: Alrighty, well, you and I could actually go on for two hours like this without even talking about your story. But let’s hear what happened to you, and then we have some interesting questions that have come in from people. We’ll talk about all kinds of things. But tell us your story.
🕊️ Christian’s memories before birth
Christian: Sure. Okay. I’m going to attempt to share the story, even though we’ve already identified that it cannot be said. I just feel it’s very important to say that because our true natures and the higher realms from which we come are just so beyond language that, like I said, as soon as I put a word on it, it pigeonholes it. It’s just wrong, but I’ll still try. Like I said, I think it’s important that we share this information with each other and remind each other who we really are because, whether or not we all consciously remember it at the human level, I feel that we all have had experiences like this, at least to some degree, and they’re in there. Whoever you are listening, they’re in there somewhere.
Okay, so I’ll start at the beginning of what I remember from my pre-life. But even the order is difficult, because while these memories do have a sequence, they also transcend linear time. They’re all kind of happening all at once, right now. They’re more like they’re alive. They’re real now, not just in the past, even though they do feel extremely ancient at the same time. It’s difficult to put an identifier on that.
But I remember long ago, before I had ever been physical, coming across a being who had been physical. This being was so beautiful and overflowing with joy and power. I felt that from him because, in those environments, you share what you feel, and who you are is shared with those around you. It’s a telepathic exchange that’s quite perfect. I asked him, “My goodness, do you feel the depths of joy that I feel that you feel?” He shared it with me and kind of let me go into it and feel it and dive into it. I was absolutely amazed. I said, “What did you do? What could you possibly do to become this, to be this, to have this quality of essence or nature?”
He shared with me several things, but chief among what he shared with me was that he had lived physical lives. He had had one physical life in particular where he had suffered very deeply for years, for a long period of time. The way that he chose to meet that experience, and the acceptance and quality of intent—that’s the Tom Campbell term that I love—the quality of intent that he brought into his experience there was so beautiful that it allowed a certain refinement of his being, of what he was.
I also asked him, “How were you healed?” Because I could sense how deeply he had been—not truly damaged, but damage is the only word I can think of—temporarily damaged through this deep experience of wounding, the wounding that he had had in this physical experience. He shared with me that he was healed, and I felt the depth of this healing. I said, “I want to do that. I’m going to do that. I’m going to do that.” I was just so moved and inspired. He said something to the effect of, “Yeah, that’s what they all say.” I’m sorry. Go ahead, sir.
Rick: What you’ve explained so far implies that people in the realm in which you were living, people who had had physical lives, were somewhat rare, because you ran into this guy and it was like, “Whoa, what happened to you?” Apparently, you didn’t run into such beings all the time. Is that a true observation?
Christian: I mean, from the one specific memory that I have, yes, that would be true. We were with many beings at the time, and he shone with a brilliance that was very unique and definitely got my attention. I don’t know how frequent it is. I do have a sense that there are far more beings who do not incarnate into physical experiences of separation like this than there are that do. We are the minority, I would say, but I wouldn’t dare to guess.
Rick: I pretty much assume that they couldn’t be identified in some geographical or spatial location. It’s more a dimensional thing, right? It doesn’t necessarily even overlap with our geography here, with our location on Earth. Is that right?
Christian: Yeah. Well, all I can say to that is there is a vibrational geography. There are many different reality systems, and the way that we experience them is rather unique, very different, depending on the rules of reality. Most of our thought-responsive Earth is much less so; it’s still thought-responsive, but much, much slower. Because here we learn—
Rick: Because it’s so dense.
Yeah, Earth is an extremely dense experience by comparison. So here on Earth, we experience spatial distance. That’s one of the root qualities of what we experience here. That is not a fundamental thing. In fact, distance is an illusion; physical distance is an illusion. There’s not really a physical distance. There’s the experience of distance. There’s a big difference there.
Christian: Yeah, Earth is an extremely dense experience by comparison. So here on Earth, we experience spatial distance. That’s one of the root qualities of what we experience here. That is not a fundamental thing. In fact, distance is an illusion; physical distance is an illusion. There’s not really a physical distance. There’s the experience of distance. There’s a big difference there.
I don’t think I’m going to try to identify how those places are separated, but I would say that there’s a vibrational distinction between them that is very unique and potent, and perhaps very unearthly. I mean, where I was at the moment I remember coming across this being, I was moving across what I can only describe as a landscape. I remember a visual experience of being with many, many other beings of light. I perceived all of us as beings of light, and this being was with us, doing the same thing. But his quality was hard to miss because of what he was energetically.
Rick: Interesting. Well, I suppose I won’t ask too many questions right now because I want you to continue with your story, but could it be that many of the beings you hung out with had had earthly lives, but this guy was a much more highly evolved being among them, and that’s why he shone so brightly?
Christian: I’m only speculating if I try to speak to that. I don’t know. I guess it could be. But all I know is that I remember his nature being significantly—just breathtakingly beautiful—compared to what I had sensed and to who we were around us. I mean, if you want to put it in very crude terms, you could say I was, but I don’t like these terms, a young soul by comparison, something like that. I mean, we had less experience; at least, we had not done that before in that way. And I feel that many of the others that were there in that environment, in that moment, were similar to me, whereas he was dissimilar. But I’m not going to try to speculate.
Rick: That’s okay. All right, please get on with your story.
Christian: Yeah, sure. So he encouraged me to go talk to my guides, and I did that. Then I lived many lives. I don’t know how many, but at least in the hundreds. I went back to him later, and I found him and shared with him, “See, I’m doing this. I’m in the process of doing this.” And he was encouraging.
Rick: So, between the time you first met him and the time you went back to him later, you actually went through hundreds, or a hundred, earthly lives?
Christian: I don’t know if they were earthly. I just know that I was—
Rick: Incarnate lives somewhere.
Christian: Yes. Some kind of physical, incarnate lives. I don’t know what they were.
The majority of this pre-birth memory, though, takes place at a time that is somewhat immediately preceding this life. I had taken a long break after a previous incarnation. I just decided I was taking a long break—metaphorically, like being on a long weekend that you’re not willing to give up, or a vacation where you’re just like, “I’m not going back to work. I’m not doing that.” And I remember this guide coming to me over and over again, like, “Are you ready to go back yet? Are you ready to go back yet?” and me putting them off repeatedly, over and over. Eventually, he came back: “Are you ready to go back yet?” And I said, “Yes, okay, I’m ready.”
Rick: Can I just interject again? Are these guides people like you and I who have had earthly lives and now we’re doing a stint as guides on the other side? Or are they of some other nature and being? Maybe they haven’t even ever been incarnate beings. Or don’t you know?
Christian: I don’t know. I only know the quality of the nature of the being. Because everything—okay, when we interact with each other on that side, it’s very personal and exposed and true and colorful. And so the nature of the being that you’re interacting with is known and felt by you. I don’t know if this being was physical. If I just had to guess, I would say probably they have been physical, but I don’t know that.
Rick: All right, I’m sorry. Continue.
Christian: No, it’s okay. This being and I reviewed my state—who I had been, what I was, what I had known, what I had done. It was kind of like—this is really hard to explain, and this is a very crude metaphor, so please forgive the metaphor—but it’s like if you looked at a bar chart or something, like a vast bar chart. It was obvious what the thing was that I needed to work on. I don’t even like the words “work on,” but the thing that it would be best for me to engage, integrate, and grow through was apparent. There were many qualities that I had, that I knew and understood, that were part of me. But there was this one area that was just blatantly obvious. There was no careful discernment needed; it was just right there, glaring, like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve really got to do something about it.”
That thing, the best way I can describe it, was a fear that had overcome me in a previous physical experience. This fear was so dark and so low-vibration in this previous physical experience that it had led me down a path where I eventually died a physically agonizing death. I knew after that life that the fear had led me into this place where I experienced much pain. It just bested me, is the best way to put it. I was bested by this certain experiential vantage point, a certain low-vibration fear.
I was super excited at the opportunity to re-engage this because I knew that if I could meet this fear and integrate this experience, if I could do that, the expansion of being, the expansion of who I was, and even the expansion of all that is, would be just unfathomably beautiful. It would be the most wonderful, beautiful thing to be able to do that. But I also knew even then that it was extremely low-vibration. So I asked the guide, “Is this even possible? Something this low, this far from Source—has any being, in all of creation, ever integrated an experience of this vibration?”
I was told yes, and that I had all of time available to me to do so, and there was no hurry. So I knew—and this sounds so strange to me now from the human perspective—but I remember knowing deeply who I was: “Well, if it can be done, then I will do it. If it can be done, I will do it.”
Rick: Someone named Susan from New York sent in a question related to this very point you’re making, and perhaps it’ll help you elaborate on it. She said, “Christian has said he knows he is here to face fear. He’s also described it as facing pain, and if he can meet the challenge, it will result in the development of great freedom. I’d personally appreciate it if he would try to explain what the fear is, what the pain is. I think that would be helpful to me and to others in trying to understand our reason for being here.”
Christian: Sure. Okay, so when we’re physical, we like to think of fear in terms of fear of some thing, like fear of spiders or fear of leaving the home or fear of heights or something. But fear is actually a vibration, which is very dissimilar from our native state. So it is a self-perception that is not in alignment with the truth of who we really are. When we perceive something like, “I am not worthy of love,” and we believe that, we suffer, we feel pain, and fear can arise because the truth is we are worthy of love. Or we might feel, “I have no freedom in my life,” or “I have no power.” These perceptions that we buy into are not in alignment with the truth of who we really are, and so they prompt fear.
Rick: There’s a line in the Upanishads which says, “Certainly all fear is born of duality.” So, when you refer to what we really are, would it be true to say that what we really are is beyond duality?
Christian: Yes.
Rick: And because we have kind of stepped out into the dualistic field, fear is kind of at our root. There’s a certain root fear that we all possess.
Christian: Yes, I think so. If you want to identify—I’ll get back to the original question in a moment—but to speak to this root fear idea, the root fear is that separation is not our natural state. When we come, we’re veiled right now. When we’re veiled, we experience being separate. Everybody here feels separate from the objects around them. Most people feel separate from the objects around them and from each other, and there’s this unnatural disconnectedness. Our native knowing is gone. We feel like we don’t know, we’re in the dark, and we’re not connected to each other. So that state of separation is something very non-native.
While we’re here, fear arises naturally, and then the ego is just the portion of us that arises to try to fix the problem. Because now there’s this big problem, right? Now we’re separate. I don’t like it; it doesn’t feel good. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t have any power. I don’t feel loved. I don’t like it. So the ego is just grabbing on to whatever it can. Okay, now I have power because I can do this, or now I have value because I belong to this group, or whatever trick the ego is going to play to try to fix the problem.
So that’s the broad-brush version: that state of separation prompts a root fear in us because now we’re in duality. Now we think that duality is fundamentally real, when it’s not. So, in my case, this fear can best be described as the fear of being in a state where I perceive that I’m unable to escape pain, mixed with a feeling of being too proud to suffer. So I reject this suffering: “I can’t tolerate this. I’m not going to tolerate this. I’m too proud for this.” That vibration of rejecting my experience and not being able to escape pain is the fear.
Trauma, Pain, and the Intention to Face Fear
When I was 22, I had a traumatic experience in Qingdao, China. I had a heat stroke, and I was in a Chinese hospital for four days. Whether it was the many bags of potassium they gave me or something else, I don’t know, but I experienced this neurological burn. It was extremely physically painful, and that led to extreme psychological pain because I could not escape this pain. So I was traumatized because, at the moment, I could not tolerate it. But I rejected it entirely and blocked it all off.
I went through counseling for seven or eight years to try to process that experience. I went layer by layer through what’s called EMDR therapy, meeting these many layers of fear that I had, which really went back to my childhood but climaxed at this grand traumatic moment when I was 22. After years of counseling, I did end up finding the root fear of that terrifying moment when I was lying in a Chinese hospital bed, feeling like I was going to die. I had no power to escape the agony I was in after my heat stroke. I can see it now, and I can talk about it now, but at the time, it was breathtakingly painful even to look at.
So that’s my description of the fear. But it has to do with a vibration, because the truth of our being is total freedom, total love, total joy, total peace. So, this is a crude metaphor.
If the source is like—I don’t know, this is a duality; I’m presenting this in duality, so it’s automatically not going to work, but I’ll try—if our source is where we start, and then we can go this far away vibrationally to this type of experience, or maybe even this far away, or maybe even this far away, the further we can go in experience space, vibrationally, if we can integrate that experience and process it—and when I say integrate, I mean meet it in such a way that, not just intellectually but in our being, as Tom Campbell says, at the being level, at the who-you-are level, you totally engage that experience and process it and come to terms with it and accept it and integrate it into who you are in such a way that it is no longer painful.
If you can do that all the way out here, then there’s this expansion of being that is breathtakingly powerful, because we’ve come so far away in the physical that doing that here enables a fantastic amount of expansion, a huge amount of expansion that is not possible in other reality systems that are less strict.
Rick: So this actually relates to a question that Frank in Norway just sent in. It says, “How do we contribute to creation with human creativity in ways spirits do not?” In other words, what you’re saying is, as a non-corporeal being, we just don’t have—I mean, we gain something in physical reality that we just couldn’t without gaining a physical body. So there’s an evolutionary purpose to our coming here and being faced with challenges, sometimes extreme challenges.
Christian: Exactly, yeah. So that’s very difficult to put into words, but I’ll just use a crude metaphor. This is so crude, but it’s very difficult to think of physical ways to express this. Okay, if you’re sitting on your living room couch, watching television, it’s super comfortable and nice. You can sit there all day; you could sit there forever. Then eventually you say, “I think I’m going to go for a run.” Why would you ever voluntarily get off the couch, go outside, run, put your body under stress, and maybe suffer for a while while you’re running? Why would we ever voluntarily do that? Well, there’s some growth available only under the stress of the run.
Here, what we are experiencing is the stress of the counterpressure of circumstance, the counterpressure of duality. When we know pain, we know real pain here. We really experience pain here, sometimes a lot of pain. What kind of choice-making, what kind of intent—that’s the key—what intention can we bring forward even in that circumstance, when it’s hard, when it’s painful? Can we love the person next to us even when we hurt, or even when they’ve been unkind, or even when our bodies are failing, or whatever the circumstances of life? Can we do that? Because this is the place to do that.
When we can bring forth that quality of intent, even in the rich contrast, that allows a refinement of who we really are, which transcends the physical. So when the physical is over, now you’ve stepped out of the highly constraining environment, but you retain the qualities of your consciousness that you developed while you were engaged in the physical. I don’t like to pigeonhole this as just personal development, though. There’s a huge amount of development. He goes into purposes that are greater than that, but I’m just focusing on this one idea for now: when we drop the physical and the dense constraints are no longer a part of us, all that we developed in who we are while we were here remains. Now it is being actualized in systems that are far less constrained.
Rick: What about children who are born into very difficult circumstances and undergo a lot of suffering and die before they’ve even reached a level of maturity at which they have volition? Do even they gain something from going through an ordeal like that?
Christian: Yes, absolutely. Now, it’s the human portion of us that typically thinks success means achieving some level of maturity, whether physical or societal or something, and then getting something done. The spirit is consciousness. It knows experience. Experience is the currency—that’s a bad word; experience is the stuff we’re working with. If you can be a child for one year and have that experience, and then you pass, that’s something amazing. That’s an amazing experience. Also, for others who were affected by you and experienced being with you here in this context, it’s amazing for them because you added to the context for them.
Rick: This is actually a good segue for you to continue telling your story, because you had one lifetime in which you didn’t even live to be born. You died in the womb. So continue with the story.
Christian: Yeah. Okay, so that’s the next thing. After reviewing this, they brought me a life—not this current life, but an immediately preceding life—that was perfect for my intention. I reviewed that life, and I accepted it because it was super appropriate for my intention. The life had to be vibrationally appropriate and work circumstantially with what I wanted to do, what I wanted to experience, and it was very appropriate.
Okay, so then I had to accept the veil for this life. This is the thing that I remember most: the process of allowing the veil to come over me and feeling the vast plummet in vibration of what I am, down into the physical vantage point. I like to describe it like a pitch: if you have an amplifier that’s producing a pitch, then you turn the knob down. When you get to the bottom, turn it down some more, more and more and more. Turn it down, keep turning it down some more, and then when you think you’re at the bottom, turn it down a few more times.
That’s how it felt in the body of my consciousness, to go from all connectedness and all knowing down, down, down, down, down, down—this incredibly deep drop into the comparative darkness and separation of being in the womb. I felt all of what I was being like it was being erased, being cloaked. Then, when I arrived at the physical place, as a physical body in the mother that had not been born yet, it was very separate and dark and alone. I didn’t have my knowing, and I did not like it.
So within a few seconds, I reacted very strongly in fear. I mean, this goes back to your question about the root fear: that root fear arose mightily in me, and I was like, “I am not doing this. This is so dark, this is so low-vibration. What? I am not doing this.” So I mustered my might, and I smote the veil. I fought my way out; I pushed past it. And as I did that, I became aware that I had inadvertently killed the fetus that was to be my body.
Rick: Do you have any idea what stage in the gestation process the soul enters the body, like three months or something like that? It’s an interesting consideration, because you weren’t just a little zygote. At that point, you had actually developed enough, perhaps, to occupy a body that—
Christian: I didn’t develop enough. The body did. I mean, I was just becoming the experience, the bodily experience. So, I had a life review. I became aware of that super-short life. I don’t know how long I was there, but it was not very long. I became aware of how I had very negatively impacted the mother. And not only the mother, but I felt these ripples, like hundreds of other people who were negatively impacted because of the sorrow that I had imposed on her. It was like I felt that I had heaped difficulty on the mother and hundreds of other people. I knew them all. They were all my family, my friends, and these players in the game who were playing the human game and things. I had so much respect for these other beings who were willing to be human, and I had only made their journey more difficult.
Rick: Good going, dude.
Christian: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, that’s how I felt. From the other side, you know everything is okay. You have a very tangible—it’s very clear that it’s just a play, it’s okay. But I was like, “Oh, man, I got to do something about this. I have so much fear; this is too much.” So, I knew that I wanted—I still had my intention to face and process this fear. But that life opportunity was wasted.
I spent some time in what can be called a veil-acceptance simulator. It’s just a—I mean, I don’t know what it is, but it’s a place that I went. It was like a room where you can practice surrendering to the veil. It’s not a real veil. It’s like a mock veil. It’s kind of like jumping into a dark pool or something and having them plunge you under the water. You just practice letting go and being okay with being under this dark water. And you can cry uncle if you want to get out, because it’s not real.
Rick: I’m kind of thinking of a flight simulator for pilots.
Reviewing the Possibilities of a Coming Life
Christian: Yeah, like a flight simulator for incarnation. Okay, so I did that for a while. And then they brought me this current life. I reviewed this life in incredible detail. I reviewed what can only be described as a vast flowchart of millions and millions of possibilities of how this life might unfold and what it would be like to experience it and be it.
It wasn’t just physical events; it was more like, who would I be? What would it be to be Christian as a human at these various stages? It was kind of like if you took a tree and laid it on its side, and the trunk was very thick and the branches were thinner. You started at the thick part, and then you worked your way out as the life progressed. It was like that, except there were millions of possible branches, some that were extremely likely and some that were much less likely.
I reviewed all that, and I also asked for certain things. I made certain requests for the life. For instance, I said, “I would like to be intelligent again in this life,” because I knew I had been intelligent in previous lives, and I preferred that trait. They said, “Yes, you can do that.”
I also knew that my parents were important; they would bestow certain qualities on me. For instance, I knew that my father would instill confidence in me. That confidence would be paramount to me being able to have a rock to stand on to meet this fear.
I also knew that my parents were important; they would bestow certain qualities on me. For instance, I knew that my father would instill confidence in me. That confidence would be paramount to me being able to have a rock to stand on to meet this fear.
I also knew that it was important that I’d be male—not in any way judging anything about the sexes; it’s just that the two sexes have different energetic qualities. There was something of an obtuse edge, even, some kind of edge, that being male would be helpful for me to meet this primary intention of mine to meet this fear.
I also knew that it was important that I’d be male—not in any way judging anything about the sexes; it’s just that the two sexes have different energetic qualities. There was something of an obtuse edge, even, some kind of edge, that being male would be helpful for me to meet this primary intention of mine to meet this fear.
So, I reviewed all that, and I was super excited. If I could communicate one emotion that was the key emotion, it was incredible excitement. And I felt so deeply honored that I was being given the opportunity to be a human and to play human life. It was like being given the most precious gift in the universe. There are only so many slots, only so many precious character opportunities, and to be given one of those is like, “Oh, my gosh.” It was just like being given the most precious gift in the world.
Okay, so I remember there having to be a moment to accept the life. I don’t remember that moment. But I do remember that the next thing was being in this place where they were preparing. Okay, well, actually, just before that, I was in this waiting area, waiting for it to start. And I remember this guy coming to me and suddenly grabbing my attention, almost rudely—not rudely, but just very abruptly, like, “Go now, now you’re on Earth time, you’ve got to go now. If you want to do this, now.” He was jogging me out of higher time or something to get me focused in the right place.
I was then with these beings in this place that I can only describe as—these beings were like technicians, and this place looked like a pit or something. These technicians, these mechanical beings, do this thing where they apply the veil to you. Because a life has certain qualities, and the body has certain qualities and limitations, and the soul has many rich personal qualities, they do this thing where they make the veil fit somehow. It’s organic, and they make it jive.
They asked me one last time, “Are you sure?” I knew that this was the last moment. If I said yes, then there was no going back. This is like, once you press this button, you’re in the roller coaster for the whole duration of the ride. So, I said yes, and then I remember the veil coming over me once again. And it was a huge, huge, huge plummet in vibration: down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down; lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower.
This time, I was basically trying not to fight it. Just don’t fight it. Just let go and let the veil do what it will do. Let it take hold of me, like surrender my control to it. It was important to surrender to it. So, I let that happen, and then moments later, I was here, deeply in the darkened, separated state of being veiled. Dark is not the right word, but separated. And I sent one message back to the technicians: “Did it take? Did the veil take?” And they sent one message back: “Yes.” So, I was super excited, like, “Okay, I made it. Awesome. I’m here.” Okay, then I was there for a while.
Then I said, “I’m not doing this.” Once again, I was like, “This is so dark. This is so separate. This is so ridiculously low-vibration. I am not going to tolerate this.” Once again, I began to muster my might to find my way out.
As I did that, the most holy moment in my whole earthly life happened. The Spirit of God, or whatever word we want to use for it—the Great Spirit of the I Am, the light—came to me and showed me experientially all that I really was: the stars and universe, the galaxies. I felt our own Sun, the Sun of Earth, turning within me. And it was turning in bliss. It was just like this burning, rich, deep bliss being. I felt connected to all things again.
Spirit said, “This is still what you are. You can never not be this.” So, that moment is the most precious moment in my physical walk, and it calmed me. I was like, “Oh, that’s still what I am. That’s beautiful.” So, that allowed me to just relax in the womb, and so I was there for a while.
Rick: I get the feeling that the reason it makes you so emotional to think of that was not only the profundity of the experience, but the sense of love you were feeling, the amount of love for you that this intelligence who showed you the experience has.
Christian: Yes, that’s true. Love is our very nature, what we are.
Rick: Yeah, it’s beautiful.
Christian: And it was like what I was afraid of losing: what I am. I sensed that I had not lost who I was.
Rick: Right, and you could actually say that to all seven or eight billion people on the planet, right? I mean, theoretically, they could all have that experience and realize that that’s what they are. And it would be true. It’s just that it’s rather rare for people to have an experience like that, but it’s nonetheless true.
Christian: I think it’s not rare. It’s just veiled.
Rick: Yeah, well, in other words, yeah, it’s veiled. So, it’s—
Christian: Yeah, it’s there unconsciously.
Rick: It’s actually there, but it’s covered over. Yeah.
Christian: Yeah. The next memory I have is of being born. I remember the shock of being born: the temperature, cold, touching, light, sound—just a stimulus happening, and I had no idea what was going on. I had no intellectual understanding at all. I was just dumbfounded. I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going on, but this is intense. There’s people touching me.”
I remember looking at the nurses, who I now know were the nurses. At the time, I just knew that there were these beings taking care of me and dressing me somehow. I was like, “Oh, who are these beings who are taking care of me?” I felt so much love for them. I remember feeling an intense amount of love from just everyone in the room.
I remember looking at the nurses, who I now know were the nurses. At the time, I just knew that there were these beings taking care of me and dressing me somehow. I was like, “Oh, who are these beings who are taking care of me?” I felt so much love for them. I remember feeling an intense amount of love from just everyone in the room.
I have just one visual memory of the day I was born: the layout of the room, where the bed was, where the window was, where my mother was, where the heating grate was. Then, after that, no memories for quite a while. I mean, I have some spotty memories of being in my crib here and there.
When I was about three or four, I remember being aware of my pre-birth experience and assuming everybody knew we were just visiting, like this was just a neat place to come visit. I had assumptions that certain things that are true in the other realities would be true here. For instance, I assumed that we would be able to feel each other’s emotions here. That’s not how it works; you can’t do that. Most of the time, we feel separate.
I remember assuming that teachers or leaders, anybody in a position of authority or power, would be loving and wise, because in the other reality systems, any being that’s in a position of—I don’t want to use the word authority, but in a position of help or leadership—is loving and wise. That’s why they’re in that position, because they’re loving and wise. Man, it’s taken me my whole life to really come to terms with how untrue that is many times on Earth. It’s just not how our society is actualized yet.
So, that’s a summary of the experience. I had that memory until I was about five; I definitely lost it by the age of six or seven. So, I had no memory of that. I grew up. I had my traumatic experience at age 22, and then, at the age of 30, I began meditating.
After a few months of meditation, I began to have grief at first, but then very impactful, nonphysical experiences that were very eye-opening. They were not subtle, like, “Shockingly, how could I experience that? That was crazy.” Then, as those experiences started, I also began having these memories return. But as they returned, it wasn’t like, “Ta-da!” It was like they were always there; I could just see them now. I was like, “How did I ever forget that? It was the most natural thing in the whole world.” It was just always there, but I just didn’t see it.
I did not share this experience for the first seven or eight years. I felt like it was not the right time. I just felt like the ground wasn’t fertile. And a few years ago, I felt like, “Okay, you should share.” So, I’m doing it. I’m sharing that message, because that’s what we really are. We’re not just this human character walking around, living these lives where we feel fear and limitation. We are so much more. And I feel like if we can just remind each other of that, then, man, that can go a long way to helping that love, that higher nature, come into this very dense place and actualize that for each other. I mean, that’s a great thing if we can do that.
Rick: Yeah. I was reminded, as you’re speaking, of a quote from an Indian saint named Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. He said:
Christian: Wow. I love it. That’s right on.
Rick: Like that. A whole bunch of questions have come in, and I want to be sure to get to them. It might cause us to jump around a little bit. One is from Martine in Belgium, and I think you’ve already kind of covered it. She said, “Do you remember your existence before this birth?” Obviously, you’ve just been describing it. Was it human or as a being? Maybe you can say a little bit more about that second part, because I’ve heard you say that, fundamentally, we’re not human beings; we just happen to be those at the moment. But our deeper, more eternal existence is not actually human.
Christian: Right. Yeah. So, human is something we experience. It’s not something that we are. We experience being. It feels like we’re it. Who are you really, then? You are the you that feels like you to you. You are you. You are your consciousness, and that you, when not bound to the limitation of the human experience, is far, far, far more than just these associations that we have while human.
We tend to think of everything from our earthly experience as a reference point, so we see humans and objects and animals and wonder, “Well, what are we?” The forms are something that we experience, that we entertain. The forms are like the tools and toys of creation. Who is it that uses the tools and toys? You are. The you that feels like you to you is what you really are.
In those other systems, people want to know, “Do I have a body? What do I look like? What can I do?” I try not to speak too much about that because usually it’s the ego that wants to know that kind of stuff. But also, you just can’t put words on realities that are so very different from ours. There are Earth-like, thought-responsive reality systems that are very Earth-like, and we can do extremely Earth-like activities. But there are also states of being in which the activities, so to speak, that we’re doing are so vastly different from what we can even imagine within the human limitation.
🕊️ Past lives and spiritual development
Rick: So, if you had been a cow in your past life, let’s say, obviously you weren’t a human being; you were a cow. But for the cow’s subjective experience, there’s something that feels like you to you, to use your phrase. It feels like, in the sense of sort of self or something.
Christian: Yeah, it seems the same exact self. I don’t have many specific memories of past physical experiences, but I do have a few. One of them, I remember—it sounds pretty wild. I’m going out on a bit of a woo-woo branch here, but I remember being a migrating bird. I remember the stress of flying for ridiculously long distances. I remember this very spiritual quality of it. But it was also very dissimilar from human awareness. There was no cognitive power; it was just experiential. That’s hard to explain. But that was still the same me.
So then, when we return to our higher selves—that’s just the term we use, “higher self”—it’s still you. “When you know the fullness of what you are” is a better way of saying “higher self.” You are the one being who did all these things. It’s just like—this is another very crude metaphor—but it’s like if on Monday night you went and had dinner, on Tuesday night you went to the movies, on Wednesday night you played golf, and on Thursday night you took a hike through the woods. Well, were you different people? No, it’s the same you.
The difference, of course, is that in this reality, we remember doing the things each day of the week, whereas here we specifically veil ourselves, become veiled on purpose, so that we can have such a very specific, deep, immersive experience of being a human character for a while. But it’s still the same you who does those different things.
Rick: Interesting. It kind of reminds me of actors. They say, for instance, Leonardo DiCaprio gets so into his roles that he stays in character even when they’re not shooting the scene, because he just wants to be so deeply immersed in it. Of course, he doesn’t forget that he’s Leonardo DiCaprio, but it’s kind of a metaphor for it.
Christian: It’s very much like that. It’s kind of like if you see an actor in movies, they play different roles, but there are certain qualities about that actor that always shine through. I feel like Tom Hanks, for instance—Tom Hanks, I think, is a fantastic actor. I love watching Tom Hanks. He plays very different characters, but it’s always Tom Hanks. That’s kind of how we are as souls. We may play different human personalities for a while, but the real, who we really are, true or deeper qualities shine through.
We may have qualities that are specific to the local human, or limitations, even—biological limitations, or whatever else, or circumstantial limitations from how we were raised, or whatever—but who we really are shines through those characters and is persistent from character to character.
Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting that we’re talking about this because last week I interviewed a woman named Eva Netanya, who’s a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and scholar. We talked a little bit about reincarnation and everything. She was saying that, from the perspective of that tradition, there isn’t a discrete being that moves from life to life and just assumes different bodies. Rather, there’s—it’s hard for me even to repeat it, because it doesn’t jibe with my understanding—but there’s some kind of stream. There’s no person, really, but there’s this sort of stream of karmic tendencies or something that moves through life to life.
But that kind of contradicts the more Vedic perspective, like in the Bhagavad Gita and all, where they talk about the kind of things you’re saying: that you are being and you move from life to life the way we change clothes in this life, and the whole purpose of this sequence of lives is to evolve, sort of higher, to higher and higher scales of enlightenment.
Christian: I think they’re both true. It’s just that there are a good number of things that, when we talk about them from the earthly perspective, can sound paradoxical when two things are both true, because we believe in duality. So it’s kind of both. We are discrete; we have a discrete experience of being this person in this being. And yet there are karmic, if we want to use that word, energetic themes that run from experience to experience.
Like this fear that I’m here to deal with: it’s an energetic theme that I’m engaged with. It’s too big for one experience, so it runs with me. I’m responsible for it. Put it that way: we are responsible for who we are. I think that’s an important point about this idea of karma. It’s not like you’re being punished. It’s just, you are who you are. And look, now that you went and had this experience, you actualized who you are, maybe in a way that hurt others. And now that you did that, that’s part of you too.
Now that that’s part of you, it’s best, if you can—and these things are really hard to explain or describe—to meet that part of yourself that would benefit from evolving through that limitation and growing. That’s why karma is helpful, actually. It’s just that you are being led to the places that you—I don’t like to use the word “need”—but that would be best for you to engage with.
Rick: Okay, that’s a good explanation. Regarding the veil, I was thinking about that while I was listening to your book. I was thinking maybe a good metaphor would be—see if you agree with this—that if you went to school, for instance, and throughout your schooling you were just sort of given the answers to all the tests you were going to take, so you didn’t actually have to study for them, you could get very good grades in school, but you wouldn’t really come out knowing anything. You wouldn’t really have done the work necessary to learn it because you were shown the answers.
So it’s like, if it weren’t for this veil—give us some reasons. Maybe that’s part of it. Give us some reasons why we do get blinded by this veil when we come into this life and why we don’t normally have the kind of memories that you have. And are you at any disadvantage for having these kinds of memories compared to the rest of us?
Christian: First of all, I’m very veiled. I’m still extremely veiled. And I’m very thankful, actually, because it can be very painful to have some of this awareness. It’s like there’s a homesickness that accompanies it, which is ridiculously painful. So I’m very veiled, and in fact, I have felt called many times to focus physically so that I can deepen my own veil, so I do that.
First, I want to make a comment about your point about knowing the answers to the test. What we’re doing here is not intellectual learning. It’s experiential learning. The goal is not to get 100% on a test when the server or the system already knows the answers to the test. That’s not the goal.
The goal is to experience being the person who’s taking the test and growing as a result of going through the process, not just achieving some end. The experiences themselves are teaching. They are like a language for the soul.
The Veil and the Human Perspective
So, then, the first reason: Why do we become veiled? How would you be a male named Rick who gets up in the morning and has to go to the bathroom, eat your breakfast, worry about your next guest and scheduling it, and maybe your wife said something to you today that you’re thinking about, or whatever else is part of the context? You wouldn’t be that perspective if you were the higher perspective. You would be the higher perspective.
So the veiling is very additive, actually, because it allows a fresh personality to develop within a specific context that is immersive. The immersiveness of the experience is meaningful for the quality of the experience. Now, can you have an experience that’s not immersive? Yes, of course. There are many reality systems that exist where spirits will engage in experiences that are not veiled, or maybe less veiled.
Even this type of experience is far in the direction of apparent separation. We’re not actually separate. We’re never actually separate from each other or from source; it’s not possible. But we do have an experiential distance. We’ve come really far. It’s like we’re pushing the boundaries in this universe: Can we go—can we take it to this next level of rigorous separation? Because it is in that contrast that the very value lies.
One reason we’re veiled is that it allows you to be the human character and protects you from homesickness. Because if you remembered and consciously knew the beauties of higher realms and what you really are, you wouldn’t be going to work in the morning. It’d be a mess, because the reality of that is so, so rich and so beautiful.
And, tying all this together, the third reason is that it allows you not to get distracted, because you’re focused completely on this. Yeah, so I guess that’s the best way I can put it. I do mention a few other ideas in the book, but I feel like those are the high-level explanations.
Rick: Okay.
Christian: For as I understand it—I mean, I’m not claiming to have all the answers—I just remember knowing that. Another part of my previous memory that I didn’t mention is that I remember, again, this is going to sound strange, but I’m just going out on a limb here. I remember that when our universe was to be created, there was this moment when this intent was being issued forth from source, and we were all involved.
It wasn’t—it was like a big, huge collective, “Yes, next level time!” Like there’s this huge in-breath and out-breath of the manifestation of universes. We’ll say it that way. So we’re getting ready for the next level, like, “Okay, we’re going to take it up a notch and make it even more—we’re going to go even more deep, rich, separate.” Like, so exciting. So exciting that we’re going to do this. The level of excitement is just off the charts.
Now, I wasn’t around. I was doing something else. I don’t know what I was doing. I was doing something else at the very beginning. But I remember coming early and sailing among the stars, and just reveling in the idea that we would actually get to be these things—not just people, but anything in the universe that we wanted to experience being—and that we would actually be able to fully immerse and have those perspectives.
And that was the most exciting, beautiful, additive—so additive, such a creatively additive process—that we were going to be able to participate in that. And the veil is required for that. That’s kind of a long-winded answer, but I remember knowing that was important.
Rick: Two questions. One is, do you feel that everything that everybody experiences, small or large, is sort of intelligently orchestrated to provide some opportunity for evolution, and that nothing is trivial or random? Everything is pregnant with possibility.
Christian: Everything is pregnant with possibility. I am careful to say that it’s all intelligently orchestrated. There is a great intelligence that has orchestrated the novel simulation, and it knows everything. But I’m saying it that way because there’s a novelty to the human experience. What I mean is, unanticipated outcomes can happen.
We’re all making free-will choices, and because of that, there is such a thing as, “Oh, that wasn’t anticipated. Look, now that’s exciting. So now we have to deal with this new circumstance. Wow, we didn’t even think that could happen, maybe, but now it’s happening.” That’s part of the creative power. And is every one of those experiences full of possibility? Oh, absolutely. Every experience, every breath, every second lends to evolution and towards the integration of that experience, since the expansion of what is.
If you think about all that is—with a capital A, T, I: all that is, what is—all that is becomes more when new things can happen. So everything that happens within it tends to lead towards more, and that is a beautiful thing.
Rick: Second question. When you’re talking about being around at the start of the universe, do you feel that our souls, our individual souls, are eternal? Or did they somehow come into being at some point in time, perhaps as little, tiny seed souls that get to be butterflies or something, and then they evolve up and become, occupy more and more complex life forms?
Christian: Well, okay, I think it’s both. The soul is eternal. The ocean of the whole, of what is, is eternal. The soul is metaphorically like a drop in the ocean that has been made sovereign and given free will.
But to limit the journey of the soul to some kind of physical incarnation cycle is an inappropriate limitation, because the soul can and does engage in many, many other types of experience and evolution that are not based on a physical incarnation cycle process. The physical incarnation cycle is just one highly specialized, very potent possibility.
But the original question is both: the soul is eternal, and also, these are topics where any language will immediately fall short—incredibly fall short. But I do feel it is simultaneously eternal, and that it’s like—I think you sort of seed, like planting a new seed. There is a seed of possibility that is born from the substance of what is, and then that seed goes on its own journey to evolve in its own way. It has its own free-will choices and its own ability to choose and grow. And that is what’s additive about it: that individual piece of the whole makes its own choices, goes through its own growth, and adds to what is by doing that.
Rick: The Hindus, at least some of them, believe that the universe is cyclical: that we have a universe, and at some point it collapses down and then we don’t have one. There’s a period of rest, which they call pralaya, dissolution, and then eventually another universe comes out. But they say that all the beings in the universe actually go into that rest state at the time of the dissolution, and then the very same beings come out again and resume whatever level of evolution they had when they went in, and pick it up from there.
Christian: Yeah, that sounds appropriate to me, with the memory I’m describing about the creation of this universe. There was a period of deep rest, and then there was the creation of this new, like, simulation. I can’t speak to what we were doing or anything. I mean, this is just so beyond language now. But as a basic metaphor, I think that’s about right.
Rick: And so obviously, you’re on board with the notion of free will. It kind of sounds like, well, the play is scripted, but there’s plenty of room for improvisation.
Christian: Ah, no, the play is not scripted. It’s just that the system knows us really well.
Rick: Well, like you said before, you came into this life, there was a great deal of planning, with, like, a big database with branches and all possibilities.
Christian: Yeah, that’s not a script, though. That is a prediction about how it probably will go. But it’s not scripted. Scripted, to me, means pre-established. It’s not pre-established. Free will happens. And it’s just that, as Tom Campbell puts it, the system has all the data. It knows all your history, knows your choice-making and the choice-making of everybody else. And importantly, there are energetic themes that not only the individual is going through, but—the human collective consciousness, in a given simulation like Earth, goes through eras, shall we say? Energetic eras where it explores a broad theme, and then moves on and explores another broad theme.
I’m generalizing, but I’m just saying that there are these kinds of energetic seasons that occur within a given place or a group. So the system knows that that’s happening and that that is the general direction. Those are the general energies at work. It can predict very well what is likely to transpire once the free-will participants are let loose within the context. The context is known; everything about the context is known. Every detail about the context is known. The decision-making that will happen is anticipated, but still free.
Rick: I interviewed a guy named Rob Schwartz, and one of the things he says—you can feel free to disagree with him; he wouldn’t be offended—is that the major events of our life are kind of, not predetermined, but we kind of review them before we’re born. All right, well, I’m going to get hit by a car, or marry this person, or get this disease, or whatever. But then, once we get into the life, there can be all kinds of fine-tuning and changes, even changes in plan.
Perhaps if we work out the karma for getting hit by the car, then we’ll just stub our toe instead, or something like that. But there are certain major things that are set up—an event. Even things like, “I’m going to be a murderer or an abuser,” or something: we agree to take a certain role because it might serve some kind of karmic purpose, even though it would be seen as very odious.
Christian: Yeah, so in my previous experience, I knew that it was extremely likely that I would suffer a trauma in my early 20s that would crush me and allow me to reengage this fear. And indeed, that was integral to my purpose. So that was, in a sense, pre-established.
And of course, there are—when I say free will, I don’t mean free will to choose any choice in the entire universe. Once you’re here, you have to choose within the context. You have to follow the rules; you have to choose things within the context.
Rick: But you have your wiggle room.
Christian: Yeah, you make choices from what’s available to you to make choices, and what you know you can make choices. I mean, a lot of people have a lot of choices available to them that they don’t see. Now, that’s quite normal, too. But anyway, as an example, in this case, I knew that this body has a physical limitation that other bodies don’t, and that many spirits would pass it up. I actually knew what it was like, but for my purposes, I knew it was very helpful because it would cause a day-to-day discomfort in my experience that would pressure my ego. It would make sure that I did not become an egoic monster because I would suffer. And I knew that was helpful, actually.
So now that I’m here, I have the ability to choose what I’m going to do within my decision space. That’s Tom Campbell’s term, “decision space.” But I still have this limitation in my body, and that was known beforehand, just as the trauma that I would very likely experience was known beforehand. So, I don’t see any disagreement with Robert Schwartz. I read part of one of his books. That was very interesting. I don’t really see a disagreement with that, from what I experienced, and I can only speak to what I experienced. I have not analyzed Robert’s interviews with many people about pre-birth experiences. I don’t have that kind of research under my belt. I just know what I reviewed before I came here.
Rick: Okay, good. Incidentally, I’ve interviewed this Tom Campbell you keep referring to, and people can find that on BatGap. There’s a lot of other stuff of his online. He wrote a book called My Big TOE. TOE stands for Theory of Everything, and he’s a very interesting guy. Let me get to some more of these questions. Here’s one from Nick Cush in Oregon: “On the other side, are there parallels to the organizing principles behind earthly society? Here we have external forms of government and social institutions that regulate and harmonize life, all held together by many roles and functions that must be fulfilled, as otherwise we’d live in anarchy. Any idea how beings that aggregate together on the other side organize and collaborate on a large scale?”
Christian: I can only speak to what I remember. I will say that there are many different systems of reality. What happens in those realities is highly dependent on the ruleset of those realities—what things are like and how they work there. In most realities, there is a sharing of being that is telepathic and complete. And so that alone changes very much how things happen, because here on Earth, we have an incredible inefficiency in our ability to communicate with each other and organize effectively. Just communicating takes us a huge amount of effort, whereas there, there’s almost no effort at all. So that affects very much how things happen.
I will say, just as a general example—and I’m just picking out one specific memory, and I don’t know the context of how this one place fits into other places because, like I said, there are many different realities, and they may have different contexts—I remember that it was very common to basically focus on what you want to focus on. And there’s no such thing as being rude if you just leave because that’s not interesting to you anymore.
So, if there’s a group of beings doing some activity, and it’s not interesting to you, you’re not going to hang around and just be polite. No need for that. Because you’re exactly you, and they’re exactly them. They know exactly what you’re feeling; you know exactly what they’re feeling. If that’s not interesting to you, you go off to something else. That’s just a simple example. In our society, we have a lot of convention about what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to behave.
I don’t think I can get more specific than that. I will say, I guess I’ll just at least add that there is, like I said, not an authoritative structure. But there are beings of love and wisdom that guide us and help us, and they know us very well—like, incredibly well. So, there’s help in that. And if you want to call that an institution, I mean, I probably wouldn’t call it an institution. But there are guides. There are many guides at work right now, actually, within our Earth system—many nonphysical guides that work with us and help us. I won’t try to speak to any kind of institutions or anything like that.
Rick: I know some of the ancient traditions, like the Tao Te Ching, for instance, talk about how the more enlightened a society is, the simpler a government can be, or the less government it needs. I imagine that these higher realms, however they are governed or organized, are a far cry from the United States Congress.
Christian: Yes, I would say that’s probably true. It’s not even a comparison.
Rick: Here’s a question from Lisa Teasley in Los Angeles: “How does your work as a product—project manager for complex nuclear pump and valve manufacturing products—contribute to the evolving of your soul, as well as evolve your relationship with the Earth?”
Christian: It’s a good question. I recently lost that position I had for 16 years. I was a project manager for nuclear valve projects. My company closed the facility I was working at, so I’m currently in between jobs. But to speak to your question: I need to play the human role, like we all do. I seek to do the best I can for my family, which includes earning a living. But I also feel that presence can be brought into any role. It’s not just a matter of doing one thing or the other; there is a possibility to be present and to bring a quality of awareness into any context. I seek to do that. I don’t know what future work I will end up doing. I’m open to whatever happens.
As for the Earth, I don’t know if we want to get into a conversation about nuclear power. I personally feel nuclear power is quite safe, not bad for the Earth. I feel it’s a good alternative. That’s just my opinion because I’ve worked in it.
Rick: Well, yeah, we have had Chernobyl and Fukushima and Three Mile Island, which are extremely problematic, to say the least, but perhaps more—
Christian: I don’t discount those happening. That’s true. Fukushima was quite a disaster.
Rick: Still is. But I have heard—we won’t go off on this tangent—that there are potential nuclear technologies that would actually use up all the waste fuel that we now don’t know how to store, and it could be very safe, and so on. So maybe something like that will come along.
Christian: Well, I don’t feel strongly about that topic. I’ll just say that it’s more that I have played the human role, as we all do, and I’m hoping to succeed for my family. I did it in a way that I don’t think there was any harm, at least in fulfilling that role as a project manager in nuclear.
Rick: Okay, good. Jill, or whoever asked that question, if you want to ask a follow-up, feel free. This one is from Jill in California: “Since we are all part of the One, how did it come about that some souls get more evolved than others? Did we not all start out at the same level? Perfect?”
Christian: Well, we are perfect. Yeah. Okay, so this is something that sounds like a paradox.
Rick: I like your use of “paradox,” by the way. You keep bringing up paradoxes in your book, and I really like the way you do it, because somebody actually sent me a T-shirt that had “paradox” on it, because I’ve said so many times that I really appreciate that word.
Christian: Yeah. Well, this is a good example of paradox. Are we perfect, or are we evolving? And the answer is both. The substance of the soul is perfect. How it actualizes within manifest experience is evolving. So, when the soul—I don’t want to use the word “begins,” because, again, we transcend linear time—but the soul needs to make its own choices and grow and evolve in its own way. That is where the rubber meets the road.
We, you may—you could say that we work in evolution towards the perfection of the whole, and the whole itself is ever refining also. Now, I don’t want to say Source is imperfect. I’m not going to say that’s not true, either. But it is ever refining. There is a never-ending process of evolution taking place, which is constantly adding to the joy and the love and the creative manifestation of what is. And you and I are participating in that process now. Being able to be you in the rich context of this life and actually make the hard choices—that is where the rubber meets the road for that very real growth. This is a real system. It’s real. It’s a real thing. It has to make real choices in real environments that could be real difficult at times.
Rick: There’s a British friend of mine, a philosopher named Tim Freke, who’s been on BatGap a few times. He has this belief that somehow God is coming into existence as the universe comes into existence. St. Teresa of Ávila, in fact, said, “It appears that God himself is on the journey.” I kind of argue that, well, to even have the universe, you’d have to have all the laws of nature that give rise to it in some kind of latent form within the unmanifest field from which it arises. They’d have to sort of be able to function perfectly as they emerge, or the universe wouldn’t be able to emerge.
Then there’s this fine-tuning argument that intelligent design people use, or people like Robert Lanza, with biocentrism: There are so many variables that have to be just right, or we wouldn’t either have a universe, or we wouldn’t have a universe with any life in it, and so on. So, I don’t know. Can you riff on those ideas that I just brought out?
Christian: Yeah. The law you’re talking about—what Tom Campbell calls the ruleset of the reality. If you imagine you create a video game and you create rules, how does the game work? Well, Source has had a heck of a lot of experience over many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many iterations of experience. It very much knows and understands what works. Of course, it’s going to set the rules in such a way that there can be evolution.
And so, once it is initiated, free-will participants apply themselves within the context—the context being the ruleset now that we have to work with. That’s our physics. Now we choose; now we play biological creatures. How do we—what are we doing today? We’re having this conversation over video. Now we’re choosing how to actualize here through the physical, and this physical maintains and sustains and continues to operate because the rules have been set forth for it.
But it’s just like Tom says: It’s like a virtual environment; it’s just the way it was made. It evolves as we evolve because it gets kind of let loose, set loose, and then it transpires: manifestation happens, evolution happens. It’s a beautiful process, a rather huge, beautiful process.
Rick: Are you saying that Source is this vast repository of knowledge and experience and data, or whatever we want to call it, and that it actually, despite how vast it is, is continuing to evolve? Are you further saying that the universe itself—or universes, perhaps—is the means through which it evolves? There’s that saying, “I am one; may I become many,” or is the becoming many a way that this Source actually becomes even more than it already is? The entire shebang is like this huge evolving thing.
Christian: Yes. Though I don’t want to pigeonhole the purpose of physical creation just to say that Source has to evolve, so it’s going to do this thing. It’s not about need. It’s about love and joy.
Rick: Love and evolutionary—
Christian: Yes, evolution continually happens because joy and love are good to know and experience. What I’m saying is that evolution through manifest creation is an expansion of love and joy. The ability to make choices within this context—to be these characters and make these beautiful choices every day, through all of our contexts—is a beautiful process that ultimately adds to love and joy. That happens through us, who are the individuals who are part of the one. So, yes, that is true.
Now, we’re also incredibly creative as spiritual beings. We are so powerfully creative that we really enjoy seeing what we can do. There’s a curiosity element to it, almost like a very simple, beautiful creativity: a curiosity to see how creative we can be in this kind of a way. That’s also part of why there’s so much manifest creation. Like I said, the forms of our lives are tools and toys of spirit, of consciousness. This is just an example of, “Wow, let’s see. Can we really do this? Can we really take it to this extreme separation and get super dense? Let’s try.” There are many beings who won’t risk—I won’t use the word “risk,” but who won’t choose to have this kind of level of separation. But those of us here who are human are the ones brave enough to do that.
Rick: Yeah, we’re creative. It’s said that man was created in the image of God. But when you look at God’s creation, it’s a heck of a lot more creative than we are. I mean, look at anything: look at a fly’s wing or a single cell, and look at how incredibly, vastly complex it is, far beyond our understanding. Then think of the entire universe, going out in all directions with the same level of intelligent, functional creativity anywhere you look throughout the whole vast thing. It’s mind-boggling.
Christian: It’s mind-boggling to the human mind, which thinks of one thing at a time and is very small-focused. To the spirit—
Rick: It’s all in a day’s work.
Christian: Something like that, yeah. Something like, “All in a day’s work.” This is what we are: incredibly creative, vast beings. That’s just this universe you’re pointing to. I’m being kind of cryptic when I keep referencing other reality systems, but that’s just this place. It’s much bigger than that.
Rick: Yeah, we could think of that in two ways: maybe like bubble universes scattered all around, like bubbles in ginger ale. Or certain traditions talk of different levels. The Vedic tradition speaks of seven levels of heaven and seven levels of hell, and so on. There are all these other dimensions that are just done on different wavelengths.
Christian: There’s a point that I think is worth mentioning there, and I know this is going to sound very strange.
Rick: You keep saying that. [Laughing]
Christian: I keep saying it because I know how these things sound to the mainstream person.
Rick: Well, this isn’t the mainstream audience.
Christian: Yeah, probably not. The physical universe is taking place within us, not the other way around.
Rick: No, yeah. Perfect. Yeah.
Christian: It feels like you are in a body. No. The body is an experience happening within you. What you? The body of your awareness that feels it’s alive right now. That living field of awareness, that living presence: the body is happening on and in it. In fact, the entire physical experience is happening on and in it, just as it is happening on and in the consciousness of every other participant as well. That’s really what it is: a shared virtual experience taking place on pre-existing consciousness. It’s not that your consciousness is stuck in some kind of real object called a body. If there are all these other realities, they also take place within consciousness, and they are also within you. You can’t actually be separated from them, because there is no separation.
Rick: Yeah, I’m glad you said that. Because as we were talking about bodies evolving through various lifetimes and so on, I could sort of hear people saying, “Yeah, but what about the universal self? You’re just talking about the individual self.” It’s one of those paradoxes where, on the one hand, our individual expression evolves, but then unbounded awareness, which is what we ultimately are, actually contains everything, and so on. Okay, more questions. A lot of great questions are coming in today. I want to keep moving so I don’t miss any. Sharon Ridder from Maine said that one afterlife expert, in quotes, told me, “Not all angels and spirits believe the same thing.” Is this true? Are there various beliefs and perspectives, even in the heavenly realms?
Christian: Okay, we like to put the whole afterlife into one bucket. We tend to be like, “There’s Earth, and then there’s the other side. How is it over there?” That’s a little bit like throwing every location on Earth into one place. Earth has a lot of different locations. Our physical universe has a lot of different locations; other universes have a lot of different locations. I’m saying that in the context of the question because it depends on the state of being in which it’s happening, in a given reality.
But in realities where there are personalities walking around with manifest experience—walking, maybe not literally walking, but where there are beings with manifest experience—yes, of course, they have unique experiences. They have unique perspectives. They are unique. Where there is uniqueness, there will be a difference in perspective. It’s quite natural.
Now, that doesn’t mean there will necessarily be disagreement, because in those states, we tend to be able to share all of what we are, all of our perspective, with the other. It’s just seen, and actually, it’s a really beautiful, wonderful, even blissful process to share your perspective with someone else and to feel their perspective and their history. You share who you are, and they share who they are, and wow, it’s amazing. So there are multiple perspectives that can coexist, which is something we don’t typically experience here on Earth.
Rick: Good. Here’s one from Akshay in Pune, India: “When does spiritual experience occur? Does deep understanding lead to experience? Or perhaps it is not in our hands to bring about this experience? If I make an effort, is that not the ego?”
Christian: Okay, so first, this is going to sound like a cop-out, but this is important. There’s no such thing as an experience that’s not spiritual. It’s all spiritual. Every single thing is made of consciousness. Everything is happening within consciousness, by consciousness, of consciousness.
Now, what happens is that we experience being separate, and the separate self operates through an ego. So when it grips onto that ego and is trying super hard, that tends to create more of a distance—even though there isn’t actually a distance. It tends to create more of a perceptual distance, because now we’re deeply associated with this need: “Oh, well, I’m separate. Now I’ve got to find this answer.”
So if we let go and look at what is already there, with no need, there’s no requirement on you. There’s no stress. You just look; it’s already there. Does that mean it’s something you can go do? No, I mean, I agree that as the separate self, you can’t sit down and go do it. I can’t sit down and meditate and make myself have an out-of-body experience. That’s not how it works, because that’s my separate self. That’s not how it works.
But if one is willing to be fully alert and to feel everything, to be fully present with reality, those larger parts of ourselves can rise up on their own. Then they’re just there; they were always there. It’s just that we were so deeply associated with the story that we couldn’t see them.
I personally feel that meditation—people say, “What’s the activity I can do? What can I do?” There’s not really an activity, but if you want to name one, it’s meditation, because meditation is simply setting aside the time to investigate, very objectively and rigorously: go look, go look at your awareness. Go explore what consciousness is when you’re not lost in the story, not associated with the constant thinking.
Now, when someone can know what they are without the thinking—the thinking is like dreams; thoughts are like dreams—we associate with this thought and this thought. Our whole day, I’m thinking this and thinking this, and by the time the day is done, we’ve had about a thousand dreams, all these individual thoughts. It’s all “I am,” and we hurt and suffer because we’re associating with all these thoughts.
Well, it can be beneficial to spend time associated with a deeper awareness that knows the thoughts. If we do that, all on its own, our higher nature can gradually rise up, and we gain experiential familiarity with the fact that we are not our thoughts. There is an incredible, incredible freedom in it. I don’t know if I answered the question successfully.
Well, it can be beneficial to spend time associated with a deeper awareness that knows the thoughts. If we do that, all on its own, our higher nature can gradually rise up, and we gain experiential familiarity with the fact that we are not our thoughts. There is an incredible, incredible freedom in it. I don’t know if I answered the question successfully.
Rick: No, that sounded good. Better answer than I would have come up with. Also, I would say that if you do a practice of meditation that’s effective, then the oppressiveness of your thoughts diminishes over time. They become less cluttered, less frequent, because usually the mind is full of all kinds of chaotic static that doesn’t really serve any purpose. All that stuff goes away.
But then also, thoughts are not so gripping and dominating as they might once have been. If an inappropriate thought comes up, it’s possible to nip it in the bud or catch it near the source from which it arises, and not have it carry you off on an undesirable tangent.
Christian: Exactly.
Rick: Here’s a question from Wesley Morton in Oregon: “I sometimes wonder if the Earth is a prison planet. The energy is so dense, with so much darkness; so many people are living hard lives. Australia was initially colonized with British prisoners and social outcasts. Is the Earth analogous? Is this a dimension where outcast beings get sent to do hard time?”
Christian: I feel the answer is no. What’s interesting about the Earth experience is that we get to apply the meaning. If we see a world that is trapped, and we see examples of that trappedness in our own history—Australia, for example—we tend to impose that interpretation on the experience. Then we wonder, “Am I understanding that correctly?” because we’ve interpreted it that way, based on what we’ve seen, our own perceptions, and our own pain.
But that’s a rather duality-focused idea. It’s kind of Earth-learned, and who we are transcends that duality. Typically, when a spiritual idea is—like, I recently heard this idea: “Don’t go into the light because reptilians are using us to reincarnate over and over, and they’re siphoning our energy off.” I’ve heard that a few times. That’s another example, I feel, of: well, we see a world of duality and struggle, and then we interpret it and impose that interpretation higher up. We think that’s the way reality is, so the higher reality must be that way too. No, the higher reality is based in total freedom, love, and joy.
We tend to take the painful interpretation we’ve gone into and impose it up the ladder, so to speak. The good news is, we are actually free to apply the interpretation and reevaluate it. So that’s a really key point. It may not sound so important, but it’s very important that we have the ability to apply the interpretation onto this experience. It is super dense, super low-vibration by comparison, but the Earth experience is also neutral. Out of our fear, we apply so much negative, fear-based interpretation because we have yet to evolve to integrate all of it. It’s just high, high contrast, but neutral.
Rick: Yeah. And what you’ve been saying is that living in a dense dimension, a dense planet, is not a punishment; it’s an opportunity. That’s why you came here. That’s why we come here: because there’s something that can be achieved here that can’t be achieved just by hanging out on the other side. I guess, just to put a lid on that, the whole purpose of our existence is evolution, right? It’s to continue to evolve to higher and higher levels of evolution. If we could do that by remaining as sort of angels or spirits in some kind of heavenly realm, we would probably do that. But we obviously can’t, because we don’t. So I just kind of feel like—oh, go ahead.
Christian: I just want to say that it’s fair to say the purpose of what we’re doing here is evolution. That’s okay. But, in the context of what you’re saying, I would actually take it a step down, even one step further: the purpose is love. Evolution is just what happens when love and joy express and grow through choice. Love is really why; it’s really about love. Love is the real reason. Love is our purpose and our reason, and it is the power. Evolution is the more neutral term for the process of us growing and evolving, and it’s happening. I’m not discounting that; I just want to point that out.
Rick: Perhaps you could define evolution as the process through which we become capable of expressing more love. We become conduits for greater and greater amounts of love that we can sort of infuse into the world.
Christian: Yes, I agree with that. It is simultaneously what we already are, and it is something that grows and refines as we integrate manifest experience.
Rick: Sure, if we already are that, fine. But if we can’t live it, if it’s not a living reality, if it’s not something that we can experience while engaged—I mean, let’s take a step back. Why did the universe manifest in the first place? Wasn’t it sufficient to be sort of unmanifest and just chilling all on its own, the source? I think perhaps there’s something to be gained in having become a living reality: some kind of expansion of happiness, expansion of love, which just didn’t happen, wouldn’t happen otherwise.
Christian: Yes, it’s an expansion of what is. An expansion of all it is. We do that because we are immortal, loving, creative, powerful beings who are going to do even that. We are so loved and so free that we will even come and be human, to integrate this level of contrast. I’ll even go to a place where I’m going to get so grumpy and upset because this world hurts so much, and I’m going to wail and rage for 80 years. We’re so loved that we’re able to make that choice.
It’s so very important, then, that while we’re here, we make loving choices, now that we’re here, because we came all this way. It’s like that quote you read. It’s a waste of a precious opportunity if we can’t make this place better, bring love to each other and into the world, and grow in the love of what we are. That’s a loss. But if we can do that, oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful, because that’s what we are. It’s all about love. It’s all about love, even in the small ways. It doesn’t need to be something big and huge, like, “I moved three mountains and made a million dollars.” I mean, it’s nothing about that. The smallest act of love is, unto itself, worthy of the whole universe. For the whole universe, one act of love—just one act of love—the whole universe celebrates and is celebrated when there is one true loving act. Just one. It’s beautiful.
The smallest act of love is, unto itself, worthy of the whole universe.
Rick: In your book, I heard you discuss people who do bad things when they’re on Earth, and then what happens when they die, and so on and so forth. We don’t have to dwell on the horrible things people do; we hear about them on the news every day. But, in your understanding, what awaits those people when they drop the body and cross over to the other side? Do they get a pat on the back—“Hey, a great lifetime”? Or is there some kind of retribution or learning or something they have to do to atone or to learn, so as not to do that kind of thing again? Or what?
Christian: There are two very important points that are simultaneously true. Once again, this might sound like a paradox, but these two things are 100% true, both of them. First, we are unconditionally accepted and loved. Unconditionally loved and accepted, no matter what. That’s the first thing.
Karma and Responsibility for Our Actions
The second thing—and this is also 100% true—is that we are completely responsible, 100% responsible, for every single thing we have done: every thought, every intent, every bit of energy that we wield. There’s an energetic accountability for who we are, because it’s a part of us. Sometimes we call that karma. It’s a general word. The idea is, you don’t escape who you are and who you’ve been.
What that will mean for any given person is very unique and very personal. But if someone leads a very fear-driven life and hurts many others, that’s not something they just escape. That’s what they are, and now they need to deal with it. In my case, in the life where I died an agonizing death, I was a very unhelpful person. I was a very hurtful person. In this life, I have experienced a great deal of suffering. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a punishment; it’s just that I have that much fear. I have that much fear, and fear hurts.
But even that is an opportunity. You see, this whole system is built within a bedrock of unconditional love, which furthers the growth of love. So even that ultimately serves the expansion of love. There’s no such thing as fear having true power and now you’re screwed. No, it’s all within love. It’s just that we benefit from being energetically accountable—that’s the only word I can think of—for what we have done and how we have affected others. That can mean future experiences that could potentially be very painful, whether in a nonphysical environment or another physical environment—not as a punishment, but as a process that is just a part of our experiential growth.
Rick: Yes, and certainly not any kind of eternal hell or anything like that. I doubt that you would say that either hell or heaven, although they may exist, are eternal.
Christian: Well, there’s no such thing as an eternal hell. Absolutely not. That is a super-good example of how, on Earth, we like to take the extremes of duality and see how far we can take them. Now millions of people believe in eternal punishment. Like, holy cow, can we think of something more terrible? Are the limits of our creativity such that we will even come to an experience like Earth where we can try to perceptually get our heads around the idea of eternal punishment? Wow, we’ll even consider that idea! That’s how bold we are in our expansion.
But as for heaven being eternal, it depends on what you mean by the word “heaven.” But I will simply say that our true nature is bliss and joy and freedom, and it is eternal.
Rick: I think I would establish here that there’s said to be a very, very subtle relative realm that’s celestial and then heavenly, and that there are worlds comprised of that, where one could dwell. But since they are relative, they are not eternal. Then the Self to which you allude, the Brahman or the Supreme Self, is beyond the celestial. It’s absolute, and therefore doesn’t come and go. And we all are that always.
Christian: I agree with that. The eternal self can engage in the temporary. Anything, any experience that is a manifest experience, is limited by definition because it’s manifest. It won’t—it’s not forever, because that’s not what manifest means, not what limited means.
Rick: Good. Here’s an interesting question from Rob in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Any knowledge about different types of earthly veils? Do we all, regardless of our life’s path, have access to our higher self? Or are there paths where the veil is so thick that any attempt to seek is severely muted to suit the incarnation purpose?
Christian: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I can’t say with certainty, but I know from what I felt in my pre-birth experience that the veil is organic and unique to the individual. And it does suit the incarnation purpose. That, to me, implies at least that a veil could be thicker or thinner. It’s pretty crude language, but it implies to me that a veil could be purposefully thicker or thinner.
In this case, I asked to have a very small amount of memory, and I did. That was intentional. They told me it would make this life even more difficult if I had a small amount of memory, but I knew that even that contrast was an opportunity for growth. I imagine that in some instances, perhaps even a more rigorous veil would be helpful, potentially. I don’t know for certain. I just know that the veil is not like a hard rule. It is a personal, organic thing.
The depth to which we associate with the stories of our life is the depth to which we’re veiled. Children, when they come in, aren’t super-associated with any stories yet, so their veil is quite permeable. They’ll come and go pretty commonly. But then, as they get older and learn their identity, eventually it’s like, “Oh, this is all there is.” By the time you get to be an adult or an elderly person, you have a whole lifetime of associating with certain earthly ideas and stories that makes the veil feel thicker, because that’s the nature of it. The more we associate with it, the deeper it feels.
But is it ever fundamentally obscuring us? No, no, no, no. Our true nature is always what it is. The veil can only obscure; it can’t actually change what we are. The fact that you’re listening right now and you’re conscious means that you exist beyond the veil. Consciousness is already connected to all things. You are already your higher self. The higher self is not someone else; it’s you.
Rick: Here’s a question from Suzanne Stroud in Sugar Land. I guess that’s Texas. I think there’s a place in Texas called Sugar Land. In your experience, how can we become more consciously aware of our connection to God or the universe?
Christian: That question is incredibly personal. It’s very difficult to speak to—
Rick: Personal meaning it’s different for different people?
Christian: There are so many, because each soul, when we look around at each other, we see a bunch of humans who all look kind of the same. We’re all male or female, living our lives and eating food and all that. Souls—every soul is so unique. Every one of us is so incredibly unique, and then we’ve converged into this kind of shared experience.
I say that in the context of the question because the soul is so unique, and because our experience is so personal, each person’s experience with the Divine is very unique and personal. It’s important that we honor that process. I have a short section in the book where I try to give some general points to consider about that. But I’ll just make a couple of points.
Christian: One, follow your intuition, because the deeper parts of you know whether or not you’re willing to look at your own crap enough to see what’s actually blocking you from the love and joy of who you really are. That’s another matter: whether you’re willing to actually look and listen through intuition. There is guidance there. We’re always being guided, not only by ourselves and our nonphysical friends, but by spirit in general.
The second thing is, I’ll just mention meditation again, because, as you mentioned before, Rick, meditation helps you not associate so firmly with these dense thoughts. They become less oppressive, and each thought has less of a grip on you. That is a move toward what you really are. When you lessen that grip, you’re not grabbing onto the story so tightly. You’re letting go. As you let go, what you really are is able to rise up to the surface on its own and be known. What you really are is divine, always, and that process can be very personal.
I found it helpful—there’s one thing Tom Campbell said in one of his videos, about ten years ago, that really helped me. He said this one sentence: “You’re already on the other side of the veil right now.” Like, what the heck? Really? I am? Wait, I don’t see that. But with that in mind, when I meditated, I really became aware of it. Indeed, I wasn’t actually here. Our own assumptions keep us separated. We believe so much in distance, and we believe so much in, “I’m this, this is my name, this is my job, and this is who I am.”
If we’re willing to let go of that and be fully present with exactly what the present moment is, we’re not making anything up. There’s no need to make up any stories. You don’t need new thoughts. You don’t need a new belief. Just go and experience: What is your loving awareness right now? I think that can be really helpful as one seeks to experientially find the divine part of oneself.
I think the most important thing I can say is that I want to remind whoever’s listening today that you’re so deeply loved. It’s not just some faraway fairytale thing. It’s not just a religious belief. There is such a profound, universe-shattering love for you specifically. I know when we feel veiled from that. Please, please be reminded of that, and maybe even feel some of it within you today, because we are not the fearful stories of our lives. We’re not.
I think the most important thing I can say is that I want to remind whoever’s listening today that you’re so deeply loved. It’s not just some faraway fairytale thing. It’s not just a religious belief. There is such a profound, universe-shattering love for you specifically. I know when we feel veiled from that. Please, please be reminded of that, and maybe even feel some of it within you today, because we are not the fearful stories of our lives. We’re not.
We get wrapped up in these deep roles. I know it’s very deep. It’s very convincing, but this is a heck of a thing we’ve got going on here in the physical, and it’s not really what we are. We all have permission—not from anybody else, just within ourselves. We have it because we’re us—to let go of the fear, feel everything within us, and meet reality with openness, acceptance, and joy. That’s what we are. If we can even do that a little bit, we will have come a long way.
Rick: Yeah. Do you yourself meditate in some form every day?
Christian: I do try to meditate every day. I have periods of time when I feel more deeply called to meditate, and other times when I don’t. I can feel that if I don’t meditate for a while, I become very physically oriented again, and I become lost in the human personality stories again.
But I have this little sticky note above my desk. When I was in an experience where I knew it, I wrote to myself, “It is an illusion.” I taped it above my desk, and I can’t tell you how many hundreds of times I’ve looked up and gone, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s an illusion. I forgot again.” That’s the way it is. We just get veiled.
I do try to meditate every day to help that awareness. And there’s actually nothing more fun, in my opinion, because there’s so much joy in just the aliveness that we are. It’s wonderful. I don’t always find it as easily, but I do feel it’s important to do every day, if possible.
Rick: Yeah, I agree, and it certainly helped me. I just mentioned it because I can’t imagine, in my own experience, having gone through life without a practice like that. I don’t know where I would have ended up. I was already dropped out of high school and arrested a couple of times and stuff by the time I learned. I don’t think I would have lived that long.
When you mentioned people going through tough times, I think, well, you definitely need an element in your life that gives you access to that inner reality—whatever you can do to connect with it—because it’s there. It’s like somebody’s begging on the street and starving, and yet they’ve actually won the lottery but don’t realize it. They’ve got the lottery ticket in a sock drawer or something, and they’re still begging. We’ve all got that lottery ticket, and you can cash it in, but you just have to go through some steps to do—
Christian: Oh, man, I love what you’re saying. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. It’s a Rumi quote, something to the effect of, “We go from room to room searching for the diamond necklace that is already around our neck.” I mentioned meditation, but I want to confirm what you just said: whatever form it takes for the individual is good, is important, because we are in a world of form right now. Not everybody benefits from going straight toward formless awareness.
Religion has a great place for many people. If there is a practice, a discipline, a learning, or a teaching that’s helpful, absolutely follow your intuition. Different forms work for different people at different times. That’s fine. That’s wonderful. I think it’s a good process.
Rick: Sure. And BatGap is kind of a testament to that. I mean, it’s like a smorgasbord of all these different people who’ve followed all these different paths and arrived at something, gotten some benefit from it.
Christian: Yeah, man, I agree that your show is amazing. I’ve really respected your work, and told you this before we started talking. I’ll just say publicly that I feel you’re doing amazing work. It’s very helpful for people to consider these kinds of perspectives, because this doesn’t need to be a religiously charged conversation. These things are real. Being able to approach them in an intellectual way and evaluate them carefully and openly, without any kind of dogmatic charge, is a big service. I mean, I think Earth is going through this awakening right now, and your work is helping. You’re a part of that.
Rick: Oh, a little part of it. We’re all holding up our sticks. But like you say, it’s not a religious thing, and nobody really has to believe in anything in particular. You can just take it as a hypothesis that maybe some of the stuff these guys are saying is true, and let me see if it is. Let me explore a little bit and see if I begin to experience some verification of exactly what they’re saying. If I don’t, then no big deal. But if I do, it could be extremely valuable.
Christian: Exactly. I feel strongly in that way, too. It’s not about getting a new belief or something. It’s like, okay, go find out. Is there any merit to this? And if this kind of conversation does—
Rick: It reminds me of a quote from the Buddha. He said, “Don’t believe anything because anybody says it, even if I say it, the Buddha. Work it out for yourself and go by your own understanding, your own experience, and prove it or disprove it, but don’t take it on faith.”
Christian: Exactly.
Rick: Good. Well, I guess that’s a good enough note to end on. All right. Thanks so much, Christian. I knew I was going to enjoy talking to you. I certainly enjoyed listening to you for many hours by listening to this book. I’ll have a link to it on your page on batgap.com, and people can hop over to Amazon and get it if they want to.
Christian: I want to interject. I can say that the book is available for free, too. It’s definitely not about money. It’s all on Google Books. If you go to my website, awalkinthephysical.com, go to the Books page. The third link down is a link to the Google Books entry. Just click “Read for free.” It’s all there.
Rick: Make sure I have that link, too. I can put it on your BatGap page. Can you download it there, or do you have to—
Christian: No, you have to just read it on your screen.
Rick: Okay, great. Don’t let me forget to make sure I get that link. Oh, wait a minute. One more question came in from Sammy. What does Sammy have to say? Oh, let’s read this. This is from Sammy in Aurora. Could be Aurora, Illinois, I don’t know. “How has this awareness affected your closest relationships?”
Christian: Yeah, that’s a good question. It can be very difficult because you see that a lot of relationships are built on a story. I actually have some rather conservative in-laws, so it has affected my family that way. That’s one of my own personal challenges.
Rick: You’re the wacko son-in-law.
Christian: I am. That’s just how I’m perceived. That’s okay. But I feel like there is simultaneously a relationship. There is no need or room for fake relationships very much anymore, because it’s not necessary. Some relationships can fall away easily, but others can arise, even with what we would call complete strangers, and be very deep.
I meet people and just can’t believe the beauty of some of them, and the quality of those relationships is really important. I feel like I’m learning so much. I feel like I’m just at the very beginning. I’m a newbie student. There are so many of these people out there; I have so much to learn from. I really love being able to have those genuine relationships where I can—oh my gosh, there are so many masters out there. Put it that way: there are so many people out there who have mastered certain things. It’s beautiful to be able to see past the crap and actually try to engage with those people in that way. It’s just a really cool thing.
Rick: Yeah, a lot of spiritual traditions place great emphasis on the importance of the company you keep. They say that if you hang out with the wrong crowd, so to speak, it’s going to be an impediment to your spiritual evolution. They really advocate associating with the wise, associating with people who have the kind of values you aspire to.
I know, in my own case, when I first learned to meditate, all my friends were taking drugs and so on, and not really going anywhere. I just kind of—it wasn’t a big, hard decision—I just gravitated away from them. For quite a few months, I just hung out with the dog and took walks every day down to the beach. After a while, of course, I accumulated new friends and a whole new life.
But people shouldn’t be—I’ve heard, I’ve actually spoken to people who say, “Well, I don’t want to get too spiritual because I don’t want to lose my friends. I want to stay on their wavelength.” But it really, I don’t know. Go ahead. Do you want to comment on that?
Christian: I really relate to what you’re saying. Yeah, it’s really important to have—it’s interesting, because I’ve thought about how, in the nonphysical realities, we do not tend to, so to speak, hang out with those that we don’t resonate with.
Rick: Like you say, you just walk away if it’s not—
Christian: You just walk away, go over, you resonate. We each resonate with certain things, people, places, and energies, and we tend to very naturally gravitate to like attracts like. That old law of attraction thing. In nonphysical systems, that happens very quickly. We get together with those who we resonate with very easily. Here on Earth, it can be harder. We have relationships that we can be bound into, or whatever. But it is very important to keep—and it’s funny because sometimes you would think, “Oh, I should stay around this person because maybe I can really help them.” But I was just talking to my wife the other day about how important it is to sometimes make distance. If there’s someone that you’re not resonating with, and they’re not being helped by your presence, and you’re not, vice versa, it’s actually sometimes the better thing to just not spend time with them.
Rick: Yeah, tough love. You can’t necessarily walk away from your in-laws; you’re going to go there for Thanksgiving and have various interactions, but you don’t have to be in their face with the kinds of things you like to talk about.
Christian: We’re on the same team. We’re 100% on the same team. They’re deeply spiritual, faithful people.
Rick: Right.
Christian: And I respect that very much. We’re on the same team. There’s no—there’s not really a conflict, only a perceived conflict.
Rick: Right. Sounds like what they’re into, they feel like what you’re into kind of clashes with their religious beliefs or something.
Christian: Very much.
Rick: But you know it doesn’t.
Christian: I know. Yeah, we’re all—it’s just a role that we’re playing. There’s not even a need to—I mean, my ego does get triggered, but there’s not really a need for any conflict because they’re just playing their role. Here we are playing these roles. We’re all totally, deeply engaged in the human thing. I get it. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Rick: Just tell them you happen to know that Jesus loves you.
Christian: And them. I actually thought about, in my 20s, before I went through this awakening, there was a period of time when I considered being a Lutheran minister because that was the only way—I sensed something was going on. I didn’t know what it was. That was the method that, at the time, seemed the most reasonable to me. I was very active in my Lutheran church throughout my life. I was an assistant minister for 20 years, I was on the church council, and I taught confirmation class. I’ve experienced a different side of religion now, being the one who is now opposed. Even though I’ve always been, like, the church guy—genuinely so—I’ve always been. Now I have no need to associate with any term, no affiliation. It’s not required. I mean, I’m okay; I like going. Sometimes we go to church. We go to a Presbyterian church now. I speak at a Unitarian church. But that’s all just—they’re all great.
It’s just form; we get to use it how we wish.
Rick: Yeah. And it seems like if your in-laws feel like you’ve gone astray, you could have deep theological discussions with them. With your background, you can quote scripture right and left, and maybe put them at ease. Anyway.
Christian: Perhaps not. That’s okay.
Rick: Yeah. Anyway, okay. Thanks a lot, Christian. It’s really great getting to know you. Like you were saying, you meet these wonderful people. I feel like I’ve met a wonderful person in meeting you, and hopefully we’ll be in touch from time to time as we go along.
Christian: I feel the same way about you, Rick. I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the work you do. It’s very meaningful.
Rick: Well, thanks so much. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching, and we will see you next week. Next week, I’m going to interview a guy named Clay Lomakayu Miller, who is Native American. I haven’t interviewed too many Native Americans. There’s an upcoming interviews page on BatGap where you can see the other people we have scheduled. Thanks for listening or watching. If you want to go to the BatGap website and poke around, you’ll see various things you can do there, and subscribe to the mailing list or the audio podcast and so on. There will be a page on the website about this interview where we’ll have a link to Christian’s book, both the kind you can buy and the free one that he mentioned. Don’t forget to send me that, Christian. You can go to his website, and you probably have some kind of—I know you do a blog where you write different things and thoughts and so on.
Do you ever do any kind of webinar or private consultations with people, or any kind of one-on-one things like that?
Christian: I’m happy to do one-on-ones. I certainly don’t charge anything. I’m happy to help if I can somehow. If anybody would like to email me, it’s awalkinthephysical@gmail.com.
Rick: Great. You could be a little busy after this interview.
Christian: That’s okay.
Rick: Good. Anyways, thanks, and we’ll be in touch. Thank you, everybody.
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