Meet Your Higher Self

By Alan Vaughan

Venture Inward, Nov/Dec, 1996

Alan Vaughan, who lives in Los Angeles, is a parapsychologist, an intuitive, and author of many books.

Just what is the higher self and how do we know when we are in contact with it?

The field of psychical research supplies abundant evidence that we exist simultaneously in two dimensions - with our spiritual being inhabiting a dimension beyond our physical senses. That spiritual aspect of ourselves is capable of seeing beyond space and time, of communicating psychically with each other at a distance, and of retrieving information about those who have died.

In metaphysics the term higher self means the God-aspect of ourselves that has knowledge of past lives and that plans our present life. Emerson called it the Oversoul. It is allied to what Carl Jung called simply the Self. Others use the term superconscious. It is through the higher self that we can contact any other consciousness in the universe. An excellent example is provided by Edgar Cayce, who channeled his higher self to contact information about medical treatments, past lives, the future, and metaphysical teachings. The body of Cayce's trance readings - over 14,000 of them - support the idea that through his higher self he was able to contact not only the higher selves of those who wrote for medical help but also the consciousness of medical experts, who often gave excellent advice on treatments. The material on past lives in the Cayce readings seems to have come also from the higher selves of those who requested the information.

Everyone is in contact with the higher self from time to time. Did you ever find yourself speaking with greater wisdom than you knew you had? Did you ever experience a flash of insight or creativity that was accompanied by a surge of energy? That was your higher self making contact. Contact with the higher self typically produces positive, joyful, and loving emotions. It is an ennobling experience. Shirley MacLaine described her encounter with her higher self, who appeared as a tall androgynous being, as "an extraordinary event, a milestone in growth and understanding, and an experience that flooded me with joy." The energy channeled to us by our higher selves sparks intuition, creativity, and healing. When we sense being truly alive and vibrant, we can be certain that we are making contact with our higher selves. The higher self takes on special importance in creative projects. Shirley MacLaine describes how she contacted her higher self to write Dancing in the Light:

"I found that if I entrusted the writing to my higher self, I could work 9 to 12 hours a day without tiring. In fact, it didn't feel like work. It felt more like free-flowing expression. I was beginning to understand how the ' creative principle of trusting one's own higher knowledge worked. I was simply getting out of my own way. I wrote the first draft in five weeks."

A friend told me about taking MacLaine's higher-self seminar and announced that, after two years of studying channeling, he had made a breakthrough. "I finally saw my higher self!" he exclaimed.

"What did it look like?" I asked. "Yoda in Star Wars." We laughed.

Yoda the wizened spirtiual master of a far planet, might indeed be a good symbol of your higher self. He possesses great wisdom and strength of mind and knows the secrets of the universe. In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda instructs young Luke Skywalker how to accomplish miracles of mind, such as seeing into the future and exerting mental control over his environment. When Luke fails in using his mind to lift his sunken spaceship out of a swamp, Yoda shows him how it's done.

"I don't believe it!" exclaims Luke.
"That's why you fail," says Yoda.
We must believe in the powers of the higher self before we can activate them. And, as in the movie, we have to make a great effort to go where the higher self lives. The path to the higher self is often obstructed by fear, but fear may have its uses.

The Uses of Fear

Many people have a deep-seated fear of contacting the unknown. They fear losing control; they fear evil influence; they fear being haunted; they fear being possessed. If they have been watching such Hollywood movies as The Exorcist and the Poltergeist series, they might fear demons in the night.
Those fears have their use. In The Exorcist the little girl's possession began when she worked a Ouija board. A seemingly innocent child's game opened the doorway to ultimate terror. Hollywood, as usual, is exaggerating, but there is good reason to have a respectable fear for what can happen with Ouija boards. If we are not protected by our higher selves, we become vulnerable to any entity that might want to use us. It's rather like opening up the telephone directory and calling someone at random to come visit you. It could be dangerous.

Spiritualists believe that there are earthbound or astral entities who are earthbound or astral entities who are attracted to the material realm. It is these low level entities that seem to crowd around Ouija boards when they are used by the spiritually uninitiated. For instance, in 1933 Mattie Turley shot and killed her father because of the Ouija board's command. The board told her that she would not be punished, but she served six years in Arizona State Industrial School. So many horror stories have come to light about the Ouija board that British spiritualist organizations have lobbied to ban its sale at toy stores. Teenagers buy more Ouija boards than anyone else and, as a group, are most likely to be unprepared for what they might meet.

The best way to allay such fears is by first raising your own consciousness to contact the higher self before seeking contact with any other entity. The higher self not only protects you, but it may well offer the best guidance you will ever find.

An interviewer once asked my opinion of a certain channeler and commented, "I think she's only channeling her higher self."

"What do you mean only?" I shot back. "She is channeling her God-self! You can't get much higher than that!"

Contact with the higher self should definitely be the first stop on the spiritual bus line. For many, it need be the only stop.
Here is my own channeled guidance on why we should channel the higher self:

Channeling the Higher Self

Channeling your higher self is the very best thing you can do. Some persons, without realizing it, channel their lower self. Their lower self, their emotions, their physical desires completely control their lives without thought for the direction of the higher self. The higher self has been around many incarnations throughout time and space. And so the higher self has great wisdom, great knowing. The higher self knows of the reasons that prompted you into this life in the first place. It was a decision made by the higher self.

When you come into physical incarnation, you forget this, for you have to discover it moment by moment in this life. But the higher self's plan is geared not only to equalize karma from past lifetimes, but, more important, to promote the lessons in life that are most necessary for the soul. These lessons very often revolve around relationships, but also about certain types of accomplishments and honors that individuals want to work for, the types of debts that they need to pay or realizations they have to consider.

The higher self realizes that you have many earthly things to accomplish, yet there must be a higher spiritual purpose behind it all for all life to have any meaning. And so it is truly from the higher self that the meaning of life comes. So when you channel your higher self, when your consciousness becomes higher, it vibrates at higher rates. As you merge with your higher self and automatically begin to follow this plan, you move toward manifesting your destiny.

When you grasp the wisdom and the knowingness from the higher self, then you see the track of your life lit up, proceeding to the future like stars into the night. They form a beautiful pattern. Channeling your higher self will make your life more bountiful, more meaningful, and certainly more fulfilling. Those who tune in to the higher self come closest to manifesting their plan in perfection.

Illumination comes through the higher self. That connection with God comes through the higher self and the connection with other entities in our dimensions. It is, of course, a connection with a great consciousness, with a God consciousness that partakes of all knowledge, all wisdom, and all of eternity.

And so in many ways the higher self is the doorknob that opens the doorway to enlightenment, to wisdom, and to perceptions of things that are most meaningful.

More and more persons are reaching up, raising their vibration level, and attempting to channel the wisdom of the universe, the laws of karma, and the laws of love. As they do this, they create a vibration that enhances the whole planet, which raises the whole planet's consciousness.

It is in this way that the earth and its peoples will quickly reach a higher understanding and be able to put these principles to work, to construct a truly spiritual society - a society that brings love and wisdom to the side of law and justice.

Spirit Guides and the Higher Self

When asked about the difference between spirit guides and our higher selves, my channeled guidance replied:

The difference between your guides and your higher self is like the difference between your mother and your aunt. The higher self has primary responsibility, where the others are merely friends who have a good interest in you and sometimes a relationship to you.

There is a matter of responsibility here, for the higher self has, in fact, produced your physical organism and brought you into life. So it is the primary one responsible for how close you come to carrying out your life plan. The others are teachers, aides, helpers, those who would inspire you, and those who will sometimes prompt you when you need it. But it is the higher self that is always with you when you need it.

If the spirit guides of the mediums and channelers I have met were to be assembled in one room, it would look like a fantastic masquerade ball from all of history. I must confess that when I first began to encounter these entities, I was quite skeptical. At the College of Psychic Science in London (now called the College of Psychic Studies), I encountered The Messenger, channeled by Elizabeth Bedford. Although he often used a pseudonym, Mrs. Bedford told me that he was an Englishman from the 16th century and that he had dictated a book through her about his life. Chiang, as channeled by the late British medium Douglas Johnson, also claimed to be a historical person. He said that he and Johnson were brothers in an ancient Chinese incarnation. Johnson told me that during a sitting with a woman who had lived many years in China, Chiang spoke Mandarin Chinese with her. Johnson had no memory of this himself, as he had gone into an unusually deep trance. Johnson was, in fact, astonished when she remarked after the sitting that she had not expected Chiang to speak in Chinese. That was the only time. Chiang tends to specialize in channeling philosophy and advice. Another of Johnson's guides, Zola, specialized in bringing messages from discarnates. Working with his own clairvoyance, Johnson had a distinguished career in providing ESP evidence for researchers. For me, he accurately predicted many events several years in the future.

A Los Angeles medium, also named Douglas Johnson, has a guide named Aunt Hazel, who is a flapper from the 1920s. Reflecting Johnson's interest in Hollywood, Aunt Hazel is very much up on what is happening in the entertainment industry. She once accurately predicted the circumstances of my working with a TV production company.

I first met Dr. Peebles through the mediumship of another Los Angeles medium, Thomas Jacobson. Dr. Peebles claims to have been a Scottish doctor who emigrated to San Francisco in the late 1800s. Records of him were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. 1 was quite intrigued when Peebles said that he had made a special study of coincidence and that he knew me (in a past life) as a colleague in the study of coincidence. Jacobson did not know that I had published a book on my own study of coincidence a few years before. He told me that he began to channel Dr. Peebles while studying with medium William Rainen, who also channeled Peebles. When I watched a TV show on which Rainen channeled Peebles, I had to admit they sounded just alike.

A British medium with whom I had many sittings had several trance entities. Harry was a cockney. Atonga was a Brazilian Indian who was forever warning people not to take early morning airplanes. Although Atonga seemed on the ridiculous side, through him I received some highly evidential survival evidence of a deceased friend of my mother's. I had no knowledge of that person until the evidence was confirmed by my mother.

Are spirit guides ever traceable in modern times? The guide of the late medium Ina Twigg, who became world famous after Bishop James Pike wrote about consulting her, was her own deceased father. Another medium consulted by Pike, Arthur Ford, had a guide named Fletcher, who was a French Canadian whom Ford had known slightly in his early years. After his death, Ford reputedly served as a spirit guide to author Ruth Montgomery, whose best selling books were automatically written at the typewriter. In an interview he gave me shortly before his death, Ford offered no hint that he might be willing to serve as someone's spirit guide. He even complained about Ruth Montgomery using his name so much. But, who knows? Death may have a marked effect on people's points of view.

Outer-space entities or space brothers, as they are often called, seem very much "in" these days. In Los Angeles Daryl Anka channels Bashar, who claims to be from another galaxy. Anka's channeling experience began soon after he had a UFO encounter.

Space brothers began coming through medium Ray Stanford of Austin, Texas, over 30 years ago. Stanford told me: "Since 1957 when I began to go into a semiconscious state, a number of entities came through who called themselves brothers. I thought to myself, well, perhaps my unconscious is masquerading these beings; oh well, if they give good information, what's the difference? But on April 13, 1961, one of the brothers materialized physically in a brightly lighted room at John and Gareth McCoy's house in Austin. It was witnessed by five of us, including the McCoys. We weren't trying to cause anything to happen; it just happened spontaneously. This being was over seven feet tall. He was actually glowing, even his robe was glowing blue light. While he was in the room a glow of light about 18 inches in diameter hovered near the ceiling. That experience erased any further doubt I had about the reality of the brothers.

"In 1958 in Phoenix, another of the brothers materialized in a brightly lighted backyard in the presence of 14 people. We all saw him. He was about six feet tall, white robed, with long blond hair parted in the center. His robe was blowing in the wind, just as physical as the rest of us. We were all shocked out of our wits. After a while he began to flow a pure golden light, swirling from the area of his solar plexus. The light grew brighter and his body seemed to be transmuted into gold; then it melted into a vapor of gold and condensed onto the ground and spread out to a 14-foot diameter circle. We walked around this, kicking it into the air. It was physical - just like a golden fog."

Stanford reported a number of UFO encounters prior to his development of mediumship. One of the brothers told him when and where to expect a multiple UFO sighting, so Ray and his friends were on site in July 1959 with two movie cameras to film them. Stanford told me that the air force has labeled their film "unidentified."

You can't judge an entity's validity by how convincing his or her cover story might be. Even if a spirit guide were to give absolute proof of identity, that would not give it credentials as a knower of higher wisdom. As more than one cynic, including myself, has said, "Just because you're dead, it doesn't make you a genius!" These days, one might add: 'Just because you never had a body, it doesn't mean you're more spiritual than anyone else!"

We might hypothesize that the transition of death does enable individuals to return to their higher self, which includes wisdom gained from many life times and an extradimensional view point. Also that when a person returns as a spirit guide, he, she, or they might, therefore, be quite different than they were in life - and might possess an expanded awareness. To judge material channeled from any spirit guide, we have to abandon presumed earthly credentials. We have to go to square one: Does the material help us in any way?