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Nov. 16, 2014 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:01:34
Edition 182 - Robert Schwartz

Robert Schwartz thinks who we are now was determined before we were born...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Many thanks for your recent communications and thank you very much if you've made a donation recently as people in the United States, in Germany and in the UK have done.
Gratefully received, you know who you are and thank you.
Feedback still coming in on recent shows, Lionel Fan Thorpe, the last one, Robert David Steele and the very controversial Heidi Hollis.
More of her in a moment.
Just a few shout-outs though.
I say a few.
Quite a few.
And I'm sorry if I can't get round to you this time.
I've tried to reply personally to as many emails as possible and I'm going to do a few shout-outs now.
Luis in Mexico, very kind email.
Who says Felicidades?
Felicidades to you, Luis.
Nice to hear from you.
Peter in Manchester thinks that I am not awake.
And he says, if you were awake, then you would stop posing 1960s type questions and standards upon yourself.
And you'd be more interesting than fuddy duddy and not with it.
Boy, Peter, first time I've ever been accused in my lifetime of being fuddy-duddy.
Boy.
Bernard thinks that I did well with Robert David Steele, but thought that he was a hard person to interview.
Thanks, Bernard.
James likes the show, says some guests madden him, some enlighten him.
He thinks, and I think, that's why the show works.
And he says, never stop doing this work.
Thanks, James.
Shauna in Tyler, Texas, thank you for your comments and a good guest suggestion.
Yes, I have heard of Chad and Alta Dillard.
So try and get onto that.
Kevin wants Alex Jones on this show.
I have tried many, many times.
Alex Jones, here is a challenge to you.
Come on this show.
You know, come and explain yourself here and try not to shout.
And maybe we can have a conversation.
The last time you came to the UK, you went on the BBC, you went on a big show and shouted the interviewer down, who then dismissed you as mad.
Why not come on this show and let's talk?
You came on my radio show, you don't reply to my emails, and I have phoned up.
Come on, Alex Jones.
I know you're busy.
Why not come on this show?
Mladen Indubrovnik, Robert David Steele, he says, your belligerence to him here was really hard to understand and completely misplaced.
Oh boy, Mladin, I promise you I was not belligerent towards him at all.
In fact, he would tell you that he enjoyed the experience of being on this show.
And I booked him as a guest.
I wanted him on here.
So I really wasn't belligerent towards him.
And you say that I poked fun at the leader of the UKIP political party, Nigel Farage.
Don't think I did, because I don't have political views of any kind that I expose on this show.
And that wasn't the point.
Margot thinks that Robert David Steele comes across as arrogant and wants to know how I do the interviews.
Well, mostly by phone or Skype, but there are some other digital means that we use.
It depends on the kind of gear the guest has, Margot.
Don in Vancouver wants to hear the author Robert Crottenden.
Thanks, Don.
Jay in Austin, Texas says, howdy, makes some good and interesting points.
Good to hear from you.
Gina, longtime listener, reminds me that fall, about which we had a debate here recently, is originally an English word.
Because I got a bit of stick, a bit of criticism for using an American word on the website, the word fall.
And apparently that word is originally from the 1600s and it's English.
Fred says some of the things that Heidi Hollis mentioned really resonated with me with regard to the impact of religious figures against aliens and shadow people.
Mike Lazorczak, fan of the show, no fan of Heidi Hollis.
P.J. Tolley in Mississippi, uncomfortable he was made by the Heidi Hollis interview, thought it was a bit biblical and reminds me that Art Bell had a rule, no biblical verses.
I have to say, PJ, I was very surprised that she took the conversation down that road and we weren't there for very long, but it's not what I was expecting.
And I think you could hear the surprise in my voice.
I didn't edit the conversation.
What you heard is what was said.
But I was surprised that there were some religious overtones there that I just hadn't expected.
Sean describes Heidi's stories as baloney.
Denise in Seattle thought Heidi was a terrible guest, but loved Linda Moulton Howe.
Veronica in Calgary, no fan of Heidi Hollis, but likes the unexplained.
Michael Cruz in Norway thought Heidi was a bit too far out for this show.
But Dan in London thinks he has evidence that Heidi Hollis is right.
Lewis Benson makes some good points.
Would like to hear longer shows.
Thanks, Lewis.
Van, I think it is, loves the show and says that Van is devoted.
Thank you.
Hilly, thank you very much.
I understand what you were saying about polywaffle on some podcasts and how we try to avoid polywaffle here.
Jeff in Huntington, UK suggests I might sell some merchandise to generate revenue to keep this going.
That's a thought.
Edward in Portsmouth, UK, heard a lot of my shows when he was away on a diving course and makes some good points.
Thanks, Edward.
Kelly in Auburn, New York State.
Nice comments.
Thank you.
Steve Maddox in the US listening to the show while he works out.
Shelly, nice to hear from you.
Tara in Alaska.
Noted your comments about the poll, Tara.
Thanks.
Elliot in Birmingham.
Hello.
New listener, Michael Collins.
Good to hear from you.
Nino in Mikhail in Birmingham.
Want a shout-out, Nino and Mikhail.
You have been mentioned.
Bent in Stavanger, Norway, longtime listener, one of my first listeners.
Always makes useful and intelligent comments about the show.
Good to hear from you, Bent.
Joshua, new listener in New Hampshire, wants me to talk about submarine objects.
Christian in Australia says, why are there Egyptian-style obelisks everywhere, but nobody talks about them?
And says he thought that Heidi Hollis's stories were interesting and scary.
Clinton Canberra wants me to mention a charitable effort that he's involved in in Australia.
It's called Lures for Cures, and they're auctioning handmade fishing lures to raise money to help beat that disease.
And there's a website, if you want to know more about it in Australia, it is luresforcuresoz.com.
That's luresforcuresoz.com.
Clint, I hope that helped.
And Nikki Fenderson in the US, I'm still laughing about your email, Nikki.
Thank you very much.
She says, honestly, ISIS, Ebola, global warming, underwater aliens, Chupacabra, drone strikes, the CIA, Rennie Zellwerger's new face, a third Bush presidency.
There are about a billion other things to be concerned about other than whether or not a Brit uses the word fall instead of autumn.
You're still making me laugh, Nikki.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for your emails very much indeed.
You can go to the website, www.theunexplained.tv, and send me an email from there.
Also, take part in our poll if you haven't done so.
Be very grateful if you did.
And thank you to Adam Cornwell, as ever, at Creative Hotspot for his hard work on the website.
Right, let's get to the guest this time.
His name is Robert Schwartz.
You suggested him.
He's in the U.S. And this man believes that what we are here is pre-programmed before we even got here.
We'll also talk about the space between lives.
As I say, guest that you suggested.
So over in New York, Robert Schwartz, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
You're welcome, Howard.
It's an honor and a pleasure to be here.
Well, you've been suggested to me by a number of my listeners, and I do respond to requests.
I've got a long list of them, and you were on that list.
So I'm glad we were able to connect.
I'm fascinated by the idea, and of course we'll get into this over the next hour or so, of what becomes of us in life is not happenstance.
That is going to be a revelation, I think, to a lot of people.
Well, it was a revelation to me when I first found out about it as well.
I should explain my background to your listeners, Howard.
You know, I'm now an American author and hypnotherapist, but years ago, I was in the corporate sector.
I have an MBA, which I imagine is atypical for the author of a couple of spirituality books.
And back in 2003, I was self-employed as a marketing communications consultant.
I had always been a fairly spiritual person, but I had never even heard of the idea that we ourselves plan our lives before we're born.
And I was very unhappy with this corporate work that I was doing.
You know, I used to say to people at that time that I had the feeling if I were to fall off the face of the earth, my clients wouldn't even know that I were gone.
They would just plug someone else into my role and carry right along.
So did you feel like a lot of people feel that you were a bit of a wage slave back then?
Very much so.
But at the same time, I had the distinct sense that there was a higher calling or a higher purpose to my life.
I just didn't know what it was, and I wasn't even sure how to figure out what it was.
And so in my attempts to resolve what you could call this existential dilemma, on May 7th of 2003, I did something I had never done before.
And that is I had my first session ever with a psychic medium.
And I remember this date, Howard, May 7th, 2003, because that was really the day on which my life changed.
I went into this session with the medium, basically just looking for career guidance.
It was something as mundane as that.
And the fact of the matter is I've got friends who work on Wall Street and many friends in America.
And a lot of these people are, yeah, okay, they're driven and successful and all the rest of it, but a lot of them are looking for purpose.
And it doesn't surprise me at all that you went to consult a medium because I think some of these people do that, whether they do it through astrology or whatever it is, they do.
What was the catalyst?
Before you tell me what the medium told you, what was the catalyst that pushed you to do this?
Did somebody suggest it to you?
No, well, it depends what you mean by somebody.
It was not somebody in body.
But knowing what I know now, I have to believe that it was a spirit guide whispering the idea in my ear.
You know, I come from a very conventional background.
I grew up in a conventional suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, here in the States.
I come from a very conventional family.
I have a conventional education based on the scientific method.
So mediumship is not part of my background.
It's not something I would have thought to do on my own.
But this idea just came to me, go see a psychic medium.
And I thought, you know, why not?
I'm not able to figure out my higher calling any other way.
So why not invest an hour of my time and a little bit of money and see what happens?
So I go into this session with the medium, not having any idea really what mediums do or what's going to happen.
And she asked me, do you know what a spirit God is?
And I said, no, I've never heard that term before.
And she explained, well, a spirit guide is a highly evolved, non-physical being with whom we plan our lives before we're born and who then guides us through our lives after we come into body.
And then she started to channel my guides.
Now, coming as I did from such a conventional background, I would not have believed that any of this was legitimate, except that very early on in the session, probably to establish their legitimacy, the guides said something quite profound to me.
They made reference to a prayer I had said five years earlier, alone in my own home and silently in my own mind.
And the prayer was very simple.
It was, dear God, I can't get through this alone.
Please send help.
That was at a time in my life when I was going through a divorce and other personal issues.
I had forgotten that I'd even said this prayer, but my guides knew about it.
And through the medium, they reminded me of it.
And then they said, your prayer was answered, which I later understood to mean that additional non-physical guidance and help had been sent to me.
So as you can imagine, when beings make reference to a prayer that you said five years earlier, alone in your own home and silently in your own mind, this gives them a fair amount of credibility.
And so they hadn't been the victim of a fishing expedition by the medium.
They hadn't asked you pointed questions that you answered and you perhaps didn't realize you gave them that information.
No, no, no.
This was early on in the session.
I deliberately had not told her anything about myself because I was very skeptical.
And if something was going to come out of this session, I wanted to be certain that it was 100% legitimate and authentic.
So when they made reference to that prayer, I was absolutely astounded.
And as you can imagine, it opened me up to everything else they said from that point on.
Well, the next thing they said was something that really changed the course of my life.
They said, you planned your life, including your biggest challenges, before you were born.
And of course, I just shook my head and I said, well, why in the world would I have done that?
And they said, you did this for purposes of spiritual growth.
And then we went on and talked about what my major challenges had been.
They already knew without me telling them.
And they were able to offer explanations as to why I had actually wanted, before coming into body, to have those difficult experiences.
So it was nothing short of a life-changing moment.
And it sent Me on the path to writing two books on this subject.
The first, Your Soul's Plan: Discovering the Real Meaning of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born.
And then the new book, Your Soul's Gift, The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born.
And there are large excerpts which your readers can read for free on my website at yoursoulsplan.com.
Did you believe at the time that you were going to communicate this message to people when you were there with the medium?
It sounds to me like it was a light bulb moment for you.
But did you start to feel then that perhaps your path was not just to take this on board for yourself, but to pass this message on to other people?
It was at that point that I started to first entertain the idea, but it didn't really crystallize until a few weeks later when I had what is to this day the single most profound spiritual experience I've ever had.
And I'll share it with you briefly because it really is pivotal in my life.
I was home in my apartment in Chicago, Illinois, in the middle of a week afternoon, having an average workday.
And I decided just to take a break and go for a walk.
It was that simple.
So I'm walking down the sidewalk in Chicago in the middle of the afternoon when suddenly I was overcome by this feeling of overwhelming unconditional love for every person I saw.
And when I say unconditional love in this context, Howard, I don't mean the kind of love you might feel for a parent or a child or a romantic partner.
This was a transcendent experience.
It was truly an experience of divine love.
So the first person I saw was this cab driver who was sitting behind the wheel of his cab waiting for a fare to come along.
And I looked at this man who was a total stranger to me.
You didn't tell him you loved him, did you?
I did not, no.
But I certainly felt that profound unconditional love for him.
And then I looked up and there was a man's barber shop on the corner.
I looked through the window, saw the barber cutting the client's hair, felt that same profound unconditional love for both of those people, turned around and then saw a young woman, a mother, pushing an infant in a stroller down the sidewalk.
And again, there was this profound unconditional love for them.
Everywhere I looked, every time I saw another person, that love was present.
I understood intuitively in the moment what was happening, which was I was in some kind of enhanced, immediate communion with my own soul.
So it's as though my soul were saying to me, this love is who you really are.
This is your true nature.
And what I later discovered is that my soul gifted me with that experience that day because when I went on to write Your Soul's Plan and then later Your Soul's Gift, and I researched people's pre-birth plans and why they had set up before birth these very difficult experiences, every pre-birth plan I looked at was based on unconditional love, no matter what was being planned, even when another person was agreeing to play a quote-unquote negative role.
If I had not had that experience of myself, of my own soul as unconditional love walking down the street that day, I would still have had the same results in my research for the books.
But I think there would always have been this little voice at the back of my head saying, how do you know this is true?
How do you know that the life plan is based on unconditional love?
Well, I know because that was my experience of myself walking down the street that day.
And that's why I can say to your listeners today with complete confidence and certainty that I believe that we as souls are made literally from the energy of unconditional love because that was my experience walking down the sidewalk that day.
I don't want to sound like Mr. Hardhart because I have a lot of sympathy for all things spiritual, being very much a part of my life.
Were you certain in your own heart and in your mind that you weren't having some kind of breakdown?
Absolutely.
That's a very fair question.
But I was 100% certain.
I can't tell you how I knew that.
I just knew.
I was 100% certain that this was an experience of the true nature of my soul.
And as I said, I later found out why my soul created that experience that day.
I've been told by people in my life, listen, I know you've had your experiences, which you told me about.
We all go through our challenges.
You know, I've had ridiculous setbacks and knockbacks and people I thought were friends in the media industry that I've worked in, who turned out not to be friends, people who truly did me down.
And I spent a lot of my time, you know, most of the experiences have been good ones, but I've had some rotten ones.
And I spent my time sitting there questioning, how can this be?
And a few people, because I do this show and have contact with some, quote, spiritual people, have said to me, this is all part of the plan.
And you knew about this before you came here.
You have to overcome all of these challenges and that's part of the deal.
Now, let me tell you, and maybe you resonate with this too, it's the hardest thing to accept when somebody tells you that.
You say, come on, what on earth would I have set up?
A whole bunch of challenges and all of this garbage that I nearly used another word there.
All of this garbage that I've been through.
Why would I set this up for myself?
You know, we could spend hours talking about that, but let me just quickly point out that there are some crucial differences between your perspective once you're here in body and the perspective you have on the other side.
One of the key differences is that when you're back in spirit, on the other side, you are acutely aware of the fact that no one is permanently harmed by anything that happens here.
When you're in body, that may not be so clear, but it is clear to you when you're back in spirit.
You are also very much aware, even more so than you are while you're here in body, that all of this tremendous growth and learning and wisdom and healing can come out of the most challenging things that happen in a lifetime.
And you also know, when you're on the other side, that all of that growth and learning and wisdom and healing become part of the soul literally for all eternity.
That perspective may or may not be clear to people while they're here, but it is clear to them while they're on the other side.
Of course, to accept this, and I'm sorry to interrupt, to accept any of this, you've got to accept reincarnation, that we come back again and again.
A lot of people do not accept that.
That's true.
You do have to accept reincarnation as a prerequisite for this idea of rebirth planning.
If somebody doesn't accept reincarnation, then I would suggest to them that this idea that we plan our lives is not for them and they probably should set it aside.
But do you think that their lives Have been planned anyway, even if they don't believe it.
I myself believe that, yes.
And you believe that those people who are skeptical about it, they too are on the same path.
They're just not enlightened enough to see that.
I do believe that they are on the same path and that they plan their lives, but I don't know that I would describe them as not enlightened enough to see that.
And let me explain why.
I believe that every pre-birth plan is based on tremendous wisdom and unconditional love.
So if you plan prior to coming into body to be someone who is not going to believe in reincarnation or not believe in this idea of pre-birth planning, in my belief system, there's a very good reason for doing that.
I have nothing but the utmost respect for everyone and for their life plan.
So if someone has chosen to be the type of person who does not resonate with this kind of material, I believe there's good reason for that and I bless them on their path.
What about, and I know you've probably been asked this question a million times, but here goes for a million and one.
Adolf Hitler's life plan, Saddam Hussein's life plan, Osama bin Laden's life plan.
Do they plan to be what they were?
I have not specifically researched bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, but I have asked in the channeling sessions about Hitler.
So let me explain, let me share what my understanding is.
My understanding is that Hitler's soul planned before he came into body, believe it or not, for him to be a great spiritual leader.
He was given by his soul certain gifts that would facilitate this.
Gifts of charisma, oratory, rhetoric.
Now, we all have free will once we get into body.
You can choose to deviate from your soul's pre-birth intentions anytime you want to, as much or as little as you want to.
Hitler, as you may know, had a very, very difficult upbringing, and he responded to that emotional pain using his free will by going 180 degrees removed from what his soul had planned for him.
So he took those gifts of charisma and oratory and rhetoric and diverted them in the opposite direction.
Now, everybody always asks the question, well, where is Hitler now?
What happened to him?
My understanding is that he is back in spirit and is continually recreating his death, which apparently was very painful.
He is doing this, again as I understand it, as a form of self-punishment because on some level he knows now that he deviated from his soul's pre-birth intentions.
But I want to make clear, he's not being punished by God or some sort of counsel or being external to him.
It simply doesn't work that way.
If there are hellish experiences that are created on the other side, they're temporary and they're self-created.
Now he is loved unconditionally by God or source through the universe, whatever term you want to use, just as we all are.
He's surrounded by guides who are sending love and light to him.
Eventually, someday, he'll see that light, he'll move fully into it, and then presumably at that point, he'll have a tremendous amount of karma to balance.
A lot of people are going to find what you just said very hard to accept.
When I do these shows, Rob, I have to walk a very fine line between accepting what people say and being overly challenging to them.
So I'm trying to walk that line right now with this.
I mean, to me, it sounds fascinating.
But of course, the man was a monster.
And from what you say, over on the other side, he's had to come to terms with the fact that he was a monster and do something about it.
Is that so?
He's in the process of coming to terms with that.
Eventually, as I said, he will perceive the light that is being beamed to him by his guides, by the angels.
He'll move toward it and then fully into it.
He'll stop inflicting this punishment on himself.
Then he'll have a life review, as we all do.
He'll see exactly what he did.
And presumably at that point, we'll be highly motivated to come back into body a large number of times, I would imagine, to balance, to make up for what he did.
Of course, what he did was so enormous, and so we don't even have to rehearse it here because, well, the world will never, ever forget, nor should it.
It was so enormous that I wonder if you can ever, even with divine and infinite love and all the rest of it, if you can ever begin to, I won't even say atone or make amends because I don't have a word for this, but he's in a process of doing something, but I'm not sure whether there is anything you can do for crimes as heinous affecting as many people as his.
Well, it will probably be a very, very long process requiring many, many incarnations over what we would consider to be an extended period of linear time.
But, you know, this concept of evil is one that I've asked about in the channeling sessions I do for the books.
In the second book, Your Soul's Gift, I do a number of channeling sessions.
When you talk about, I think we have to explain before we get into that, what is, for those who don't know, and for those who need to know the way that you use this, might have heard the term, what is channeling and how do you get into a state where you are channeling?
There are two types of channeling.
One is in which it's called a trance channel.
Basically, the person's consciousness steps aside, sometimes even literally leaving the physical body, and another consciousness comes into the physical body and utilizes the person's vocal cords.
That's trance channeling.
There's another kind of channeling in which the channel's consciousness stays in the physical body, another consciousness speaks through them, but the person is fully aware of what is happening and what is being said.
Now, in my second book, Your Soul's Gift, I work with a channel in the Netherlands, Pamela Crebet, who channels Jesus.
And I've discussed with him extensively this concept of evil.
We talked about Hitler and so forth.
And I said to him at one point, I myself do not believe that there is such a thing as evil.
I believe that there are people who are in tremendous emotional pain, and out of their pain, they do things that we consider to be evil, that we give that label to.
And his response was, yes, basically, that is correct.
We in spirit do not judge anything at all ever.
We do not consider There to be evil per se, just as you have said, beings who are in tremendous pain, and out of their pain, they do things that are labeled evil.
Boy, well, that's a hard thing to take on board when you're flesh and blood, isn't it?
It is.
It's tremendously difficult.
And I just want to say here: you know, my work is not an attempt at persuasion.
It's an offering.
It's intended to help people see the deeper meaning, the deeper purpose of their life challenges.
And to the extent that people find that it's helpful with that, I encourage them to pick up the ball and run with it, so to speak.
But it has never been intended to be an attempt at persuasion.
That, I think, would be profoundly disrespectful.
So what sorts of people come and seek your help then?
As a hypnotherapist and as the author of two books about pre-birth planning, the average person who comes to me is someone who says, I would like to know the plan for my life.
I would like to know the purpose for my life.
So we answer that question by doing something called a between-live soul regression.
Probably some of your listeners are familiar with past-life regression.
It's a similar kind of process using hypnosis, but the induction that is used is much, much longer.
It takes the client into a much deeper trance state.
We actually do an abbreviated past-life regression as part of the larger between-life session.
But whereas a standard past-life regression would end at the end of the past life, we keep going.
So the client leaves the body in the past life, transitions back into spirit, which I know sounds a bit ominous, but it's actually the easiest, safest, most natural thing in the world.
People have already done it thousands of times.
They leave the body, go back into spirit.
At that point, a lot of different things can happen, but about 80% of clients are met by one of their guides.
They talk briefly with the guide about the past life they saw.
The guide explains why they were shown that particular past life and how it's relevant to the plan for the current lifetime.
And then most people at that point are escorted by their guide to what is called the Council of Elders.
The Council of Elders consists of the very wise, loving, and highly evolved beings who oversee the cycle of reincarnation on earth.
They know everything about the client, everything about their past lives, everything about the plan for the current lifetime.
So it's a potentially life-changing experience in which the client can ask the council literally any question on any subject, and if it's for their highest good, get an answer.
So people will come out of those sessions and they'll say, you know what, Rob, I have no more questions about my life.
Every question I asked was answered.
And the sorts of people who come to you, are they serious professional people or what are they?
It's every facet of society, lawyers, doctors, the so-called serious professionals, people who are more alternative in their approach to life.
Every spectrum of society is represented.
In my life, and I know other people who probably feel this way too, there are a good 20 questions, probably more, that I would love to ask somebody or some being in that position about why has it had to be like this.
But I think I would want to see some practical benefit.
What would the practical benefit be?
There are a lot of practical benefits.
One of the most profound and most common is that when you come into an awareness that you yourself planned your life and your biggest challenges, it has the effect of pulling you out of victim consciousness.
So I think for the average person, when something quote-unquote bad happens, we tend to feel that we are being punished by God or the universe or society or another person.
But when you understand that in all likelihood you yourself planned it, you can't look at it that way anymore.
So it empowers you to understand that you are the powerful creator of your life and what you experience.
This is very important because victim consciousness is a tremendously disempowered way to approach a lifetime.
But when you know that you are the powerful creator of what you experience, then you can go about learning the lessons in a much more conscious manner.
And so very often a discussion with the Council of Elders will revolve around what are the lessons here?
What were the underlying reasons why this seemingly bad experience was planned?
And when you know what that is, then you can learn the lessons in a much more conscious manner.
And do you find that people who have experiences of a bad kind for the process of learning that perhaps they didn't consciously understand it was all about that, but do you find that they tend to get brought back to the same difficulties time and time again until they learn something?
That is something that people say a lot, isn't it?
That you get brought back to the same situations time and time again until you learn, then you move on.
That is very much something that I've seen in my research for Your Soul's Plan and Your Soul's Gift.
And I'll share a story with you that illustrates that very clearly.
I interviewed a woman.
Her story actually didn't get into either book, but she's now in her 40s.
And in her interview, she described an experience where when she was in her 20s, she and her daughter, who at that time was about seven years old, were at a swimming pool one summer.
The daughter was playing in the water.
She was lying in a lounge chair in the sun next to the pool.
At one point, the daughter leapt up out of the swimming pool, ran over to her mother, and mind you, this is a child who previously had never said anything unusual.
All of a sudden, she runs over and says to her mother, you're not waking up the way you and I planned together before we were born, so you're going to have to have a really bad accident.
Well, of course, the mother was aghast, partly at the idea of having to have an accident, partly because her daughter was speaking in such a strange way.
But sure enough, shortly thereafter, she had a car accident, which did not trigger a spiritual awakening.
Then about a year later, she had a second and worse car accident, which did not trigger a spiritual awakening.
And then about a year later, she had a third and even worse car accident, which finally triggered a spiritual awakening.
This kind of pattern, where something keeps cycling back around like that, and especially if it comes back in increasingly intense form, That is something to really pay attention to.
If you see that kind of pattern in your life, it's your soul trying really hard to get your attention.
So, this kind of pattern I've seen many times with many different clients, and it's interesting, Howard, they often express it in the same way.
They will say, The universe hit me over the head with a cosmic 2x4.
I've heard that phrase again and again now, and people use it to refer to this phenomenon where something recurs in increasingly intense form.
I wonder why the daughter was employed in that way to be a sort of harbinger of it.
That's interesting, isn't it?
That is interesting.
One of the things I see in my work is that there are a lot of kids coming in now who have partial or in some cases complete memory of their pre-birth plan.
And I don't know specifically if the daughter just suddenly had a flashback to the pre-birth planning as she was in the pool that day, or if perhaps she had remembered it all along and simply never said anything previously.
But it's not that unusual now for children to be coming in with at least some memory of what they planned.
What about the process of dying, of leaving here?
How does that fit in with the plan?
My understanding is that we all plan what are often called exit points, and you plan several for a lifetime.
So you might have an exit point in your 20s that occurs through, let's say, a car accident or some other kind of accident.
Maybe there's another exit point in your 50s through an illness.
Maybe another one in your 80s also through an illness.
Whether or not you take a specific exit point depends upon two things.
Your soul will take an exit point if you have done everything you came here to do, or conversely, your soul concludes you will not be able to do what you came here to do.
And by the way, if it's the latter, the soul has no judgment around that.
The soul's attitude is simply, well, let's try again.
But there is no judgment of the incarnate personality.
Why do we have to keep coming back here and being given this set of circumstances that have been pre-planned?
We have free will within those, so we can mess it up if we do.
And then we might decide at the end of it all, well, it's time to go now and come back and we'll give it another go.
That seems to be a very odd process for beings who are very clever.
That seems to be a very unintelligent way of doing things.
I hear you, and I understand what you're saying, and I have felt that way myself at times.
But this is essentially the nature of balancing karma.
Balancing karma can be a long slog over a long period of linear time.
But understand that when we're back in spirit, there is no linear time.
There's just the eternal now.
So when we're in body, particularly if we're suffering, it may seem that the suffering goes on endlessly.
And we wonder why in the world would we keep doing this to ourselves.
But again, when you're back in spirit, you know that nobody is permanently harmed by anything that happens here, that the wisdom that comes out of a lifetime is yours for all eternity.
And because there's no linear time, your perspective is that a lifetime is very brief.
It's here and gone like a clap of thunder.
So from that perspective, it actually does make sense that you would come back again and again.
Every so often, the journalist in me comes out, and I apologize for this, but I kind of have to say that it's fascinating, and part of me thinks this is what is happening with all of us.
But if you realize that, and if you realize that nothing much matters really, that no real harm is done through anything, what would be to stop somebody who was, say, a murderer or an embezzler or somebody who set fire to buildings using that as a justification?
Well, actually, even though, yes, I did set fire to that great big building, no real harm was done to anybody.
Well, even though no permanent harm was done to anybody, I don't think it's correct to say that it doesn't matter.
So if you were the person who had set the fire, particularly if that were a free will choice and not something that was agreed upon by everyone involved prior to birth, your response to having done that, when you see it in the life review, is most likely going to be one of tremendous shame and remorse.
Because basically what you are doing, you are a portion of your soul's energy placed into a physical body.
And you come here to, we could call it a process of clarification or purification, which means it's a movement from being a combination of light and dark towards being more light and eventually all light, all love.
That's what you are doing on behalf of your soul.
And as you do this, your soul raises in vibration.
So when you do something that harms other people from the perspective of the personality, your response to that in the life review is that you didn't accomplish what you came into body to accomplish.
And then you will most, this is what karma is, then you will most likely want to come back into body and somehow make amends to the people that were affected by your actions.
And do you believe, have you seen evidence of this being the case with murderers and people who maybe find themselves on death row or serving long jail terms?
You know, I haven't specifically researched murderers or people on death row, but I've seen many, many examples of people wanting to balance karma, make amends, so to speak, to people that, from the perspective of the personality, that were hurt in certain ways when somebody was here in body.
This is very, very common.
Just to give your listeners a very simple example of how balancing karma works, let's say that two people had a past life together in which one was ill and one was that person's caretaker.
When they go back into spirit and have their life review, as we all do, they may have a sense of unbalanced energy around that relationship.
And so they will balance it simply by trading places.
The caretaker plans illness.
The one who was ill plans to be the caretaker.
And that simple trading of places for those two people balances the karma or the energy.
How fascinating.
I've heard people in my time doing my own researches say, in a previous existence, I rescued you from some fast-flowing river, whatever it might be.
In this existence, You've got to rescue me.
So, there's a balance in that way.
There is a balance in that way.
But the important thing to note here is that it's the people who are involved who are deciding for themselves whether or not they're complete with an experience in a past life or whether they want to balance something in another lifetime.
Again, God is not making that decision.
There's no tribunal external to you that's deciding.
You yourself decide in your life review, am I complete with that experience or do I want to do something to balance it?
You use the word God.
Not everybody subscribes to there being a God.
Is that what you believe?
You believe there's a God behind all things.
I believe that there is a God behind and within all things.
I think of God as the ground of all being.
So I believe that everything that is in existence, both physical and non-physical, is part of God.
Okay.
You sound very assured about all of this.
And I just, I wonder what is the scale and depth of proof that you personally have had.
You had that experience in Chicago that you told me about.
The medium told you something that was very hard to explain rationally.
There must have been more than that.
The proof, if you want to use that word, is simply my own intuitive knowing.
Nothing more, nothing less.
You know, one thing I say in the introduction to my second book, Your Soul's Gift, is that perception requires the right instrument.
And I go on to say that trying to perceive higher spiritual truths with the mind is like trying to perceive weight with a thermometer or temperature with the bathroom scale.
It's simply the wrong instrument.
So what is the right instrument?
It's the heart.
It's the intuitive knowing.
My heart, my intuitive knowing, tells me that there is truth in this concept of pre-birth planning.
Your previous existence in corporate America that you told me about, what were you doing there?
I mean, how big a transition?
I should have asked you this at the beginning.
How big a transition have you made?
It was a complete 180.
I was very focused on making money.
That was my primary objective.
That was what I was taught from childhood on was a tremendously important and valuable thing to do.
And then as an adult, I discovered that this was not nearly as fulfilling as I had been taught to believe.
And so I started to cast about to look for something that would be more fulfilling.
Again, I didn't know for a long period of time what that would be, but certainly in my current work, I've now found it.
And people come to you to be regressed.
You do hypnotherapy.
There must be people who will come to you who are perhaps disturbed.
They've been upset.
They're not thinking you're behaving rationally.
And I suppose the judgment call for you to make is not an easy one.
I suppose in every case, you don't actually do it in every case, is what I'm saying, really.
I'm not saying it very well.
But there will be people for whom it probably isn't a good idea to do this.
Is that so?
That's true.
You know, I actually get very few people that I would call, quote-unquote, disturbed.
The people who are coming to me have usually read one, if not both, of my books.
And these are long books that really require some thought and sitting with this idea, particularly if you've never heard of the idea of pre-birth planning before.
So I tend to get people who have been on the spiritual path, at least for some period of time in their lives, and who are very contemplative and introspective and thoughtful and really searching for deeper answers.
It's unusual that someone would be quote-unquote disturbed.
And if I felt that someone were, I would simply say that I didn't think regression was appropriate and refer them to someone else.
Do the people that you see mostly go out feeling better about their lives?
The vast majority do.
I think every regression therapist has some clients who don't go into trance.
You know, going into trance is a skill, and like any skill, people become more proficient at it with practice.
But certainly the vast majority come out of the sessions feeling that they've gained at least some helpful insights into their life plan.
I saw a hypnotherapist once.
I was interviewing her, and she offered to do that for me.
I was very uptight about my work.
I was very young, and I used to get very nervous about it all.
And she offered to give me some hypnotherapy, pure hypnotherapy.
And I have to say, Rob, that I wasn't susceptible.
And I never completely went under.
I don't know what that's like.
There must be people like me who are just, as you said, they're not suggestible.
You can't do it to them.
You know, there's controversy in the field of hypnotherapy as to whether or not literally every person can do it.
There's a school of thought that says everyone can do it.
They simply need enough practice and they need to learn to relax, which is really the key to the whole thing.
Then there's another school of thought that says there's a certain minority of the population who simply can't do it.
I honestly don't know which of those two schools of thought is correct.
But one thing I can tell you is that I do see among people who try more than once, if they don't go into trance the first time, some of those people will succeed in subsequent attempts.
Okay.
In your publicity material, for want of a better word, I saw a phrase that I've seen referred to a few times, and I've wanted to do a whole program with somebody about this, but let's get into it a little.
The space between lives, that little interregnum or long interregnum between this life ending and the next one beginning.
What's that like?
You know, I think that the experience one has in the between lives state depends, first of all, on what you believe is going to happen.
According to people who have had near-death experiences, their initial experience is exactly what they expected, exactly what they believed would happen.
So if they expected to see angels, they did.
If they expected to be greeted by Jesus, they were.
If they expected to be punished for something they had done that they thought was quote-unquote bad, they were.
But what we understand is that among those who had the so-called negative experiences, it's very similar to what you and I discussed in regard to Hitler.
It's a self-created, self-inflicted punishment.
No one external to them is creating it.
It's not what you would call ultimate reality.
So eventually they move out of that self-punishment and into the realm of love and light that everybody else experiences initially upon crossing over.
Most people, everyone as I understand it, has a life review.
Most people make plans for the subsequent life based upon what comes up in the life review.
Again, it's you deciding, did I do what I wanted to do?
Am I complete with this experience?
Or do I want to do something to balance it?
As I understand it, we engage in a lot of activities on the other side that are similar to what we have here, but you could say more joyful.
These would be classes, games which are not competitive in nature.
They're everyone wins sorts of games.
People set up homes for themselves.
These are not physical homes in the sense of being third dimensional, but they appear similar to homes that we have here, except that people describe them as being alive.
They will have, for example, paintings in which the artwork is alive.
It has a consciousness of its own.
So it's a place they belong.
Very much so.
People describe how the colors are so vibrant.
Plants have a consciousness that is palpable.
So it's similar to Earth, but it's a higher vibrational version of it.
Speaking as my conscious physical self in this real world here, speaking to you on a London evening as we head from autumn into winter, really, on a conscious level, I would feel that if this process happened to me, I really wouldn't want to come back.
Would I have any say in that?
Would there be somewhere else I could go?
Because this world is, I've learned a lot about it.
I've seen an awful lot about it.
I'm not actually quite sure whether I would want to see any more.
Well, I think that that's a very common and understandable way to feel.
First, let me say that all of us have lifetimes in other physical dimensions and on other physical planets and non-physical lifetimes as well.
And these are interspersed among your incarnations on Earth.
So you are doing these other explorations anyway.
But in terms of having to come back to Earth, what I found in my research for the two books is that the soul plans the upcoming incarnation and then creates the personality, which again is a portion of the soul's energy.
The personality is then informed of what the life plan will be and in almost all cases agrees.
In a small percentage of instances, the personality begins to feel very human emotions like fear and worry.
At that point, the personality is assured by the guides and by the soul that the life plan is based on great love and unconditional wisdom.
And so the vast majority who express concerns are reassured to the extent that they agree to the life plan.
But if you continue to express doubts and actually say, no, I don't want to do this plan or this portion of this plan, then the plan will be revised according to your wishes.
So I would have a chance, if I really did think that way after having spent some time up there, I'd have a chance not to come back if I really, really felt that way.
My understanding is yes.
And would I have to have a plan to do something else?
Presumably, I'd have to go to the powers that be and say, for my greater development as a spiritual being, I want to go here and do this, but I don't want to go back to earth and live another life like the one I had before.
I don't think it's so much that you would have to say that and do that so much as you would want to.
Because my understanding is when we're back in spirit, when we're back on the other side, so to speak, we want very much to continue our evolution.
And so if you felt that your evolution was best served going somewhere other than Earth, you would request that.
And if you weren't sure where it was best served, you would consult with these wise beings and they would make some recommendations.
And then you would be free to choose among those recommendations.
Over on the other side, are you and I recognizable as us?
Are we the same sorts of people, for want of a better word?
Is our character, the way we look at things, the same?
My understanding is yes.
But when you say recognizable, the recognition comes through, I use the term energy signature.
Every individual, every soul has a unique energy signature, which is made up of the agglomeration of all the experiences you've had in the last lifetime and all your previous lives, both physical and non-physical.
So you would recognize me by my energy signature, and I would recognize you by yours.
Right.
Okay.
Now, you speak with great authority about all of this.
How have you got to learn all of this?
How does it come to you?
You said to me at the beginning of this process, you felt that a voice had spoken in your ear.
How do you get this information?
The information that's in the two books, Your Soul's Planning, Your Soul's Gift, comes through sessions with mediums and channels.
I screened a large number of mediums and channels, chose several who I thought were particularly gifted and whose gifts complement each other.
And so I would interview someone about a particular life challenge, all the most common things we experience here.
And then those people would have one, two, sometimes three sessions with the mediums and channels in which we would ask Spirit, did this person plan this experience before birth?
And if so, why?
And then in the books, I present all the information that came through.
Now, after Your Soul's Plan came out in early 2007, I started getting emails from people all around the world saying, I'd like to know what my life plan is.
Can you tell me?
And for several years, I would write back and say, I'm not a medium or channel.
I'm just the author.
If you want this kind of information, go work with the mediums who are in the book.
But then I discovered between lives regressions, and I realized this was a way in which I could help people get the information about their life plans themselves.
They wouldn't even have to ask someone else.
It was a direct experience.
And so I trained, became a past life and between lives regression therapist.
How do you train to do that?
Well, there's an individual you may have heard of named Michael Newton who wrote a couple pivotal books, Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls.
Newton was a conventional hypnotherapist years ago, I think this was back in the 90s, when he had a client who suddenly Spontaneously went to the between-lives state.
And he started telling Newton about all the things we do when we're on the other side.
Newton immediately realized he was onto something, and it brought about a career change for him such that he pioneered the entire field of what he called LBL or life-between lives regressions.
So there are different people who are quite experienced in the field and who train others to do this kind of work.
I trained with someone who was trained by Newton himself.
And now this is a very large portion of what I do is to take people to the between-lives state and to the Council of Elders.
I had a phase before I started doing shows like this one of questing and trying to find medium shopping, really, trying to find good mediums.
I found an awful lot of people who I look back on now and feel may not be quite what they were claiming to be, and one or two who truly could do something that I could not explain.
It's a minefield, isn't it, though, this?
Finding people who are credible and have some sort of ability.
There are a lot of charlatans and a lot of deluded people out there.
You know, I get people writing to me all the time, Howard, who say, I am a medium or I am a channel, and I'd like to be considered as a collaborator for one of your upcoming books.
And when I screen these people by having personal sessions with them, I don't find actually that they're charlatans.
I have never run into anyone who, as far as I know, was attempting intentionally to deceive me.
But what I do see is what you just said.
There's a tremendous amount of variability in terms of the skill level.
So if you are someone who wants to work with a medium or channel, you do have to be tremendously discerning as to who you choose.
I think charlatan maybe was a bad choice of word.
I've come across quite a few people, especially in my younger life, who maybe had some kind of ability or had simply deluded themselves that they had.
I don't think I've come across, unless I'm very silly and very stupid, I don't think I've ever come across anybody who was intentionally setting out to rook me and rip me off.
I don't think that's something.
I'm sure there might be people like that.
But mostly I've come across people who perhaps are deluded themselves or don't have the skill level that they believe they have.
But there again, I've come across a few people in this life who have ability that I cannot explain and I'm still questing to try to.
And the ones who are gifted can really do some extraordinary things.
Again, people can read the work of the mediums and channels for free on my website, yoursoulsplan.com.
I encourage people to take a look.
There are some very gifted mediums in the books.
Well, I'm not in the business of recommending mediums, but I hear what you say.
What do you want to do next then, Rob?
You sound like you're in a very peaceful, comfortable place for yourself.
What will be the next step on your journey?
What do you want to do here?
The next thing I would like to do is start writing my third book.
This will be a book focusing on pre-birth planning in regard to relationships.
I'm not sure exactly where it will go.
I'll let Spirit direct me as I go along.
But I would just like to delve more deeply into human relationships from a pre-birth planning perspective.
So any of your listeners, if they would like to share their story, and as part of doing so, they would receive a free between lives regression so that we can find out what their life plan is.
I would encourage them to contact me either through the contact form at yoursoulsplan.com or by writing to rob.schwartz, S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z at yoursoulsplan.com.
Tell me a little bit about yourself, focusing on your relationships with other people, and I will get back to you.
Well, always a fascinating thing, isn't it?
Who we have in our lives, how they get into our lives, and why we gel with them or not, or whatever issues we might face with them.
That perhaps is one of the greatest things, if not the greatest thing, that we have to face here, our interactions with other people.
That's certainly the major tool through which we learn.
And then that's why I want to write a book about that.
Well, how long do you think that will take?
You know, I take my time.
I'm much more concerned about quality than speed.
So I think we're talking about a five-year process, most likely.
Well, let me know in five years.
You live, are you in New York itself, or are you outside New York?
I'm not in New York State, actually.
I'm in Cleveland, Ohio.
Are you?
Okay.
I thought, I'm sorry, you told me you were on New York time.
I assumed you were in New York.
You're in Cleveland, Ohio.
Yes.
Okay.
When you leave your office or your home and you step out into the ordinary world, is it a stretch and a strain for you to reconnect?
You know, it really isn't.
But the effect that it has is that it has completely changed the way I look at everything.
So if someone I know is going through a difficult time, if something quote-unquote bad has happened to them, I'll ask myself the question, if they planned this before birth, why might they have done that?
Or if something quote-unquote bad happens to me, I'll ask myself, if I planned this before birth, why might I have done that?
And I think when you ask the question, if I planned it, it doesn't even require a prior belief.
Just by phrasing the question that way, it helps people to get at the underlying meaning, the deeper purpose.
And so I'm always looking for that.
And therefore, my interpretation of events is quite a bit different than the average person's, and probably certainly quite a bit different than what it used to be in my own life.
Are you so connected with all of this now that it is completely your life, or are you able to switch off and take a break from it from time to time?
It's very much part and parcel of who I am.
It's just interwoven inextricably with the fabric of my life.
But, you know, it's not something that I feel a need to take a break from because it's not a burden.
It's not an effort to look at life this way.
It brings more joy, you know, when I can look at things that are happening and see a deeper meaning and not feel, as I often used to, that this is arbitrary, that it has no deeper meaning.
That was a difficult way to live that I needed to take a break from periodically, but this is not.
And what would you say to the skeptics who might say, well, you've just found a way to rationalize the unrationalizable?
In other words, why is this life like this?
And what am I doing with myself?
And suddenly, here's a great explanation for it all.
I would say if this perspective does not resonate with you, you can and you Should put it aside.
Again, it's not an attempt at persuasion.
It's simply an offering.
And there are other people, you mentioned Michael Newton, who have been very much involved in this sort of thing, but it's not a mainstream area, is it?
It's not as big as some of the areas of analysis.
It's not mainstream yet, but I think it is certainly moving in that direction.
Whether or not it will be, quote-unquote, mainstream in my lifetime, I don't know, but it's certainly moving in that direction.
And I think two to three, maybe four generations from now, the idea that we ourselves plan our lives before we're born will be common thinking.
Well, there's a certain amount of peace to be found in it if you can buy into it.
I think the buying into it is the difficult thing.
And as you say, if it doesn't work for you, don't do it.
You're not there to persuade people to.
That's exactly right, Howard.
What do the people who you left behind in the corporate world make of what you're doing?
That's hard to say because I don't know if they're telling me what they really think.
But my guess is, my sense is that some are genuinely intrigued.
And occasionally somebody from my old life will pull me aside and say, you know, I always wondered about this, or what do you think of this from your new perspective?
But I think there are others who think that the whole thing is just sort of silly.
And all of that is fine, because again, I believe that if someone planned to be the type of person who would find the idea of pre-birth planning to be silly, then there's good reason for them to have planned to be that way.
And I respect that.
So as you say, you're not trying to sell something to them.
You're not trying to force something down their throat.
It's their way, and they should go their way.
I believe that whatever path someone has planned is best for them.
And if that means they never believe in the idea of pre-birth planning, then that's the best path for them.
If it means that they have a conversion at some point in their life and they go onto this path, then that's best for them.
Whatever path they've chosen, I feel is for their highest good.
Robert Schwartz, food for thought.
Thank you very much for speaking with me.
Thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
Robert Schwartz, if you have thoughts about him or you want to make a guest suggestion or tell me anything about the show, please go to the website www.theunexplained.tv.
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