Recently I had began to have weird dreams, ones I could not ignore and I needed to speak to someone about it. So I asked one of the elders I respected a lot to make some time to speak to me after the meeting one night. I knew it would be a conversation that would take awhile, so I told my family to drive in a separate car, which allowed me not to worry about how long they were waiting for me. I set through the whole meeting, thinking about what I wanted to say and when we finally stood for the last song, I was feeling a slight anxiety of how the elder would handle my descriptions of my dreams. When the final prayer was said and everyone went about talking, Brother Allen came up to me and asked, "Charles, would you like to speak with me right away?" I immediately said yes and we went to the back room.
We set down and he brought out a note pad, something that made me slightly nervous, as I did not exactly want my thoughts used against me. He had a kind look on his face and he looked directly at me, "So, what exactly was bothering you that you wanted to speak to me?" I paused for a moment, to get my thoughts together and began to describe why my dreams concerned me so much.
"Recently I started noticing my dreams were having certain themes to them. They were not the ordinary dream of flying, or maybe visiting some far away land. Instead they were centered around seeing out of the eyes of certain people from the past. Three people I have identified. One is a french man in what I think is the dark ages, as he lives in complete poverty and I often feel his concern for looking for food for his family, and feeling sadness as I watched my children dying while I can do nothing to help them. On other nights I am a soldier in the Revolutionary War and I feel nervous as I enter my first battle, not knowing if I am doing the right thing and feeling like I could be killed at any time. Then recently I have been having dreams of farmer in the Midwest in what looks like the 1940's. All three would not seem like that big of a deal to me, if it was not for the fact that I dream about them all the time. So much so, I have began taking notes on their lives. I even know their names, the french man is name Jacques Bernard, the soldier is Alexander Rollands and the farmer is named James Perrish."
The elder spoke up, "So what are you trying to tell me here, do you think you are seeing in to the past or something or are you just having an active imagination?"
"You see that is just it, I don't know? I would just write the whole thing off and think nothing off it. But every time I see it happening each night and it is something different. I wake in the middle of the night and turn to wife and say things like, 'We need to milk the cows' and then another night I am waking and telling her 'I am so sorry we have nothing to eat.' She laughs at me and tells me I am just stressing about things in life and there is nothing to worry about. I can not get it out of my mind though, and the other day I was watching television and they had this thing on past lives and I knew that is something that is wrong, but the thoughts they mentioned just rang true in so many ways."
Brother Allen rolled his eyes, "Look Brother King this is not something I can accept, and not something you should even be considering. We all know, we live one life and when that life ends, we do not return to live again and again. We sleep in death, until Jehovah resurrects us back to life in the new system. These dreams are nothing, your just dwelling on them and making them in to something more then they are. It has even been shown that these television programs can convince us of things like this, mislead us away from the truth and let Satan in to our lives. I can not sit here and listen to you telling me you think you have past lives, and accept that."
I smiled, "I know and I knew you would say that. I have just been having things happen that I can not ignore. Things that make no sense and seem impossible. Like the other night I woke up and said something to my wife that troubled her." The elder stopped me, "Like what, feed the chickens or something?" I laughed, "No, I wish, I said 'Où sont les enfants." The elder looked at me, "What is that?" I paused a minute and explained, "It is french for, where are the children?" The brother paused for a minute and drew his hand to his chin, "So, you speak french?" I shock my head, "No, I don't." The elder stood, "Well this is just getting out of hand, and I have to tell you, pray to Jehovah often, and look around your house and see if you have anything that might be attracting demons. This is just not something you should be experiencing and you need to act on it immediately. I just want you to stop dwelling on it, and watch what you are putting in to your mind from the television. This could lead to a lot of trouble for you, if you do not put an end to it." I set there, feeling a little foolish and agreed with him. We prayed together and he left the room. I felt frustration that he would not listen more, but understood why he was concerned for me and told me to end this line of thought. It truly could lead to trouble for me, as both a man and a Witness. I decided to close my eyes and pray hard to Jehovah for support. Then I heard a loud voice.
"So how did the Jehovah's Witness react to no one believing him?" I opened my eyes and looked at a man sitting in a small metal walled room across from me, he was dressed in a suit and taking notes. I shock my head for a minute and looked at a wall where a calender read out the year 2335. I then responded to the man, "I felt in that life I was very much alone and no one listened to me, like I was crazy and not one to be trusted." The man spoke up, "I looked up that religion and I think I know why you dream about him so much, they wanted a paradise earth and felt that is what the future held. They wanted everything perfect, without war and with everyone loving one another in peace. Isn't that something we desire?" I smiled and found myself agreeing but added, "But it seems so real to me, I feel like I knew the man and knew who he was and what he felt, as if I was him." The man looked at me sternly, "Look, past lives have since been dis-proven and shown to be nothing more then things of superstition, smoke and mirrors. Get over this, you probably just read something about this religion in some history book and took on this character to have a positive hope in your dreams." I agreed with him, as I knew my thoughts were sounding foolish and decided not to share any more thoughts. I grabbed a bag I carried in with me, and left the room.
I left his office and walked down a white and rather boring looking hallway to a large open room at the end, it was a break area and several people were in the room with me. I walked to a large window at the end and looked down upon the earth as I knew it. I could not believe that this world, that was miles below me, as I floated in space in the only world I had ever known, was once a place people hoped would be a paradise. How nice it would have looked, and not all dead and brown the way I saw it now. No life, no green and void of any areas that could sustain life. Just a barren rock, that we lived above and wished we could one day fix. A friend tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to sit down and have a drink, so I left the window and went back to sit at one of the tables.
He pulled a old tattered book out of his bag and set it on the table, "I know you have been troubled lately and mentioning all this nonesense about past lives. I was in the artfact library the other day and found this old book I thought you would get a kick out of." I looked at it, it was very old and almost hard to make out the title, my friend read it out loud too me before I could figure it out myself, "Why I Know I Lived Before" and he laughed, "Oh those ancient idiots, what were they thinking?" He then opened the cover and the faded picture could be seen of the author and he laughed some more, "Wonder if this fool ever did live again," and then pointed out the name and spoke it "Charles King. Yeah right. He does not look like anyone I know" I leaned over and looked at the photo, all faded, but still familiar and looked at him with a smile and said, "Who knows, he might be around up here somewhere."