Good Karma, Bad Karma—Beyond Karma!

three past lives. Yes, there's adventure, there's intrigue, but there's so much more to past lives than just riveting tales of the past. Why do we study past lives? A study of past lives can also help heal your pain points today, giving you freedom from old habits, fears, attitudes, even desires, which originate from the past but still limit you today. When we replace those limits with love, we get spiritual freedom, and that can lead to the most fulfilling life

you could ever imagine. Anyone can achieve spiritual freedom, and we're going to tell you how. And for those of you interested in the study of cycles, we have a bonus segment on 12-year cycles and how they can be helpful. There's so much to talk about. So let's get to it. A warm welcome to our guest today, Jason Young. Jason is a husband, a father of two girls, and a lawyer by trade. Jason has been a student of Eckankar for 35 years. Welcome, and thanks for being on the show, Jason.

preferences, or fears. They show things gained or lost in the past. Travel is a chance to revisit what helped make you who and what you are today. It can help remind you that you are eternal Soul and have lived before."

So Jason, did you believe in past lives and reincarnation before this road trip?

other forever. Or the extraordinary talents of some children like Mozart, who was composing his first symphony when he was eight years old.

real for you?

and I had been married. And one of the first things that happened was we were camping near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and one of the other campers asked us, "Hey, are you guys on your honeymoon?" And I thought it was really strange, but it sort of stuck out for me. And I was thinking this is some sort of waking dream, something to alert me to something, but I wasn't sure quite what yet, but I just kept it in my mind and .

. . You know, a waking dream is an outer world-type experience that sort of is like a wake-up call. It's a way that Divine Spirit can speak to us and help lift us to a new state of consciousness, and I'll tie it all together here in a little bit. One of the next things that happened was, the next day or so we were driving on Interstate 80, and we were exactly one range of mountains to the west – or to the east, I'm sorry – of Salt Lake City, of the Wasatch

Mountains. And as I'm driving along, all the sudden this mysterious illness just came upon me and I started feeling – in a way I would call it delirious? – and this fever coming upon me, and I pulled the car over and I told Susie, “Look, you're gonna have to drive us through the mountains and down into Salt Lake City. I don't know what's going on.” So she drove and got us up through the mountain and down into Salt Lake City, and I was like, let's find a camping space

right away. And all of the sudden in my inner vision I was seeing these flashing blinding kind of nightmarish light. Usually light in your inner vision is a really positive and uplifting thing. But for some reason, this was -- I would describe it as nightmarish. And we found a place to camp, and it was the middle of the afternoon. I was like, "I just got to go to bed." So I got in a sleeping bag and woke up in the middle of the night and the illness was gone. It had vanished and had broken.

And I was better. But it was one of those really unusual circumstances. I had heard about people where traveling, something unusual might happen and maybe it's connected with a past life. And I kind of thought about that, but I had no clue yet at this point what it could be. It was almost like a cellular memory from a past life. Somehow when I incarnated some sort of memories coming up and something was being triggered, and creating this illness is kind of

how I thought about it. So the third waking dream was after we had continued on a few days later and we had made it to Reno and took a little side tour down to Lake Tahoe and it was late at night. We thought we could easily find a camping spot, but we couldn't find anything. And we took some side roads and weaved our way back up onto Interstate 80 and we found this rest area. So we just parked the car there at the rest area, and it was probably after midnight. We were exhausted.

Susie slept across the front bucket seats. I got into the back of this little Ford Escort where we had the seats down and we had the big ice chest and all our other other gear. I just sort of put my sleeping bag on top of the ice chest and slept there. I was so tired I was able to fall asleep. But when we woke up in the morning we got out and we saw signs that we were on Donner Pass and there was a sign about the Donner party at this rest area. And I didn't know

anything about history. My girlfriend was a history major and she knew that the Donner party was this group of immigrants that had emigrated from Illinois to California back in the 1800s. And they ran into a lot of trouble, which I'll explain in a moment. But we got back in the car and finished driving to the coast in California, and when we got to the Pacific Ocean we were there together and it felt like

such a relief. It felt like parts of the trip were difficult, but we finally made it, like it was a huge accomplishment, which was also a little strange. Like, we're just driving to California. What's the big deal, right? But I started thinking about it and these waking dreams, and I was wondering, could I have been an immigrant and maybe I had died in a past life trying to get to

California? But I thought for sure there's no way I was part of the famous Donner party, where there's a lot of books written about it and movies and stuff like that. So I ran some books at a bookstore a year or two later in a mall, and they had a whole table set up about the Donner party. I was like, wow, this is really interesting. There were all sorts of books. I picked up one of the books, I looked in it, and there was a list of the names of all the

people involved. And there was one person, his name was Jay Fosdick. I was like, if I was anybody, I was probably him, but I knew nothing about it. And I didn't buy a book at that time. But some several months later I decided to look into it more and got some books and read about the Donner party and found out a lot of very interesting things. So, for example, Jay Fosdick wasn't part of the original Donner Party. And he joined a wagon train in April of 1846

from Illinois. And he did this the day after he got married to a woman named Sarah Graves. And so their whole trip out west was like their honeymoon. So it related to that first waking dream where someone at this campsite had asked us, "Are you guys on your honeymoon?" And so there was this honeymoon. So there was one connection. I was like, Well, you know, maybe, maybe I could have been him. But what else? And so I learned more about him and the group he was traveling

with. They made it to Fort Bridger, Wyoming, in August of 1846. And they had heard about this other group called the Donner party that had just left a day or two before and they were taking a shortcut through the Wasatch Mountains instead of the Oregon Trail up north. And supposedly this would take a whole month off the trip. They'd get to California quicker. And so they decided, Hey, let's catch up to them. And we'll join

them. And so they did. They headed out and they caught up with them in August of 1846 at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. And interestingly, it was August of 1990, or 144 years later, twelve 12-year cycles later, when I actually pulled the car over with this mysterious illness that just came up in the same

location. And I know we're going to talk about cycles a little bit later, but, and the significance of those, but this was where all their troubles really began, was right here at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, because they were led to believe that there was a trail through the mountains to be able to get their wagons through, but there wasn't. And so they had to cut down trees and rig these elaborate pulley systems to get their covered wagons over these huge boulders.

It was a ton of work, and exhausting. It put them a month behind schedule. And when you're traveling back in the 1800s, you gotta be right on schedule to get where you want to go before the winter sets in. But they made it into the Salt Lake Valley, like I said, about a month behind schedule. And then the desert was much longer than they had anticipated as well. They thought it was maybe 40 miles or so, but it was twice as long.

And they lost a lot of oxen. And a lot of people in the Donner party experienced this sun blindness when you're out in the sun all day and this blinding sun in the desert. And I attributed it that that seemed like this blinding light I was seeing in my inner vision. And people would experience delirium. So I was like, Hmm, another connection. Wow, is this just a coincidence or could I have really have been Jay Fosdick. And then . . . (thunder) Wow, did you hear that thunder?

over 22 feet of snow. And there's actually still tree stumps you can see in that region cut off at like the 12-foot level where they had been holed up that just shows how deep the snow had been at

different times. But in December of 1846, some of the healthiest people in the Donner party -- about 17 people, there were 10 men, five women, and a couple of boys -- they had made snowshoes, and they were going to try to snowshoe through the mountain path and get in the Sacramento Valley to try to get help, because otherwise they'd probably starve to death throughout the winter. So they took off, and all the men actually ended up dying as snowshoers except for two of them. And Jay Fosdick was

the last one. He died frozen and starved to death. His remains famously were able to be used to help the others actually survive. And the rest survived. All five women survived and two of the men, and they made it to the Sacramento Valley. Sarah Graves, whom I was married to then, she became a school teacher. Interestingly, in this lifetime, she's a school teacher

as well. So there were all these connections, and I just knew without a doubt with all these connections, that, yeah, absolutely, I was Jay Fosdick. There are other interesting things that happened too. Jay Fosdick had a violin on the trip. If you read any of the books, it talks about his violin. And in this lifetime, as a youth I played the violin and was in a symphony. So another connection. Also, when I was growing up I never wanted a watch that I could put on my

wrist. I wanted a pocket watch you could flip open. And he had this gold pocket watch, one of those fancy pocket watches, and when I was a kid I always had those. I actually used the watch pocket in my blue jeans.

They're just coincidences. You know, how do you go from sleeping on an ice chest to I froze to death ina past life?" What would you say to that?

this lifetime? We had begun a trip in the 1800s. We didn't get to finish that honeymoon trip, but we came back together 144 years later and we got to finish the trip. And we got to make it to the Pacific Ocean together. The relationship in this lifetime didn't last much longer than it did in the 1800s, for various reasons, but it helped explain -- Why did we come together? There's actually kind of a release and a sense of freedom when you resolve the karma. It's like, "You know what? I'm done

with that now. I can move on. And I've learned my lesson." It's not like a punishment kind of thing. It's more education to help us grow and be more present today.

out." And as Soul we have that ability to go straight to the source. There are spiritual tools we can use to look into the deeper reason for the events in our lives. Later we will try a universal spiritual technique that can help anyone get the answers to their own burning questions. So Jason, now you're equipped with this understanding

of karma and reincarnation. You knew that there was more to your story of Soul. What happened next?

I'm probably not pronouncing it correctly. I call it Teotihuacan. There's these huge pyramids, the largest ones in all of North America, I believe. And there's this Temple of the Moon, Temple of the Sun in this large complex, and I was there visiting it and climbing on the pyramids and checking it out. And a person was selling his crafts and stuff and he had this flute that he tried to sell to me. And the flute is a strong

spiritual symbol for me. In Eckankar the sound from the Soul Plane is like the single note of a flute, this inner sound of God that can uplift and purify us. The flute was colorful like the Aztec culture, but it had a dark side to it too. The colorful side was made out of this beautiful pottery and had these Aztec images, like a man in this eagle costume riding the flute. And he had an opal on his heart and there was tiger's eye and other gemstones on there. It was

very beautiful. But at the end of the flute was a sharpened obsidian stone, much like what Aztec priests would have used to sacrifice people. And I declined purchasing it. It was like, Well, no, I don't need that. I just want to enjoy the site. But he kept following me around and asking me, and when I left he caught up to me again. And so I decided I'll just offer him a low amount of money and he'll probably just leave me alone. But he accepted it and basically said, "Look, this flute is

yours. It's supposed to be for you." So I took it and I bought this flute. But within a few days, I had this splitting headache. And I'd never had a headache like this before. And I had it on the airplane even on the way home back to the United States. And it forced me to go within to find out, "Well what's going on?" Again, there's this thing happening in the body, some sort of possible cellular memory of something or something trying to give me a message to awaken me

to a higher consciousness. So in contemplation at home, my inner spiritual guide helped me see that I had had a lifetime in which I was trained to be an Aztec priest to sacrifice people so the sun would rise another day. But I knew it was probably a lie, right? But it was a way to control people. And I had a choice in that lifetime to say, "No, I'm not going to do that. It's not true." And I might have

been sacrificed myself. But I followed the cultural norms that I was brought up in and did what was expected.

And there's an advantage in having a guide through life. And I think back to my whitewater rafting days when I used to go through class five rapids with these huge waves, and you have to do these complex maneuvers to get through so you don't flip and get injured. But my first time through that section of a river, I didn't do it on my own. I had a guide who knew the area,

who had been there before. And so having a guide that has God realization and has gone through this working off of karma and resolving past lives, all this type of work, it can save you a lot of wear and tear. So that's what I'm grateful for having.

coach. He's been there, he's seen the road of what God consciousness looks like, and he can come back and coach me on how to walk my life better in this lifetime. He won't walk it for me. There's no worship. But like you, I've seen the amazing things that can happen. And working off karma in dreams is one of those things the Inner Master, the Mahanta, can help us do. And it's such a beautiful benefit to these teachings.

This was so that I could make this connection and understand better who I am today and resolve these other lifetimes. So we may have a ton of karma in this big pile that's basically part of one lesson. And working with this inner teacher, once we learn that lesson the rest of that can just be passed off into this spiritual stream and dissolved. We don't have to keep incarnating for thousands of

lives to get it all out. It's an amazing, wonderful gift that we have in this lifetime on this planet today to be able to work with this teacher.

headache. And one of the things I did and got the nudge from my inner teacher to do was to take this flute and figure out -- How can I turn it from something which is a symbol of a split consciousness to a symbol of a unified consciousness? And so what I did was I painted that obsidian stone, I think I painted it purple, and I put

this golden heart on it. To me the golden heart, it's a symbol of getting outside of the world of polarity, of good and bad and of being in the area where there's just boundless love. This is the true nature of Soul. And I put HU, the letters H-U, in that golden heart. And HU is an ancient mantra, and we learn to sing it in Eckankar for spiritual upliftment and purification to settle into that part of ourselves where we’re in the area of unconditional love

in our life. We can shift to that higher consciousness and see the higher perspective. So with my obsidian stone now with this golden heart and the HU on it, I could tap into the Divine Love in my heart, and with that unity of consciousness, no longer a tool to . . . You know, these kinds of things were used to sacrifice people in the past? Now it's a tool for spiritual upliftment. My headache went

away. It was gone. And I realized that that lifetime as Jay Fosdick in the 1800s was a way to pay for the karma that I created as an Aztec priest. His life as Jay Fosdick, it was a shorter life and just into his 20s, but it actually helped other people survive, as we mentioned earlier. Another thing -- that trail that was created through the Wasatch Mountains by the Donner party, including Jay Fosdick, was used a year later in 1847 by Brigham Young and his

Mormon followers. And, in fact, they even have a monument in Salt Lake City about the Donner party in their gratitude, because it helped them get settled into the Salt Lake Valley in enough time that they could actually get some crops in the ground and grow them and harvest them before they may have had starvation. So his lifetime, a lot of the work, it was a sacrifice itself. But it resolved this karma as the Aztec priest.

in action. Personally, I like to think of karma as a divine system of ethics and justice, and nobody is above that spiritual law, which for me really is a comforting thought because I can leave the judgment out of life knowing that everything is in its perfect place. But Jason, forgive me. These stories are, they're a little dark. And where's all the good karma in this? Like, where's the love?

feel so free. I'm sure when I left that lifetime as Jay Fosdick I was like, "Thank you! I'm so glad to just have that over with and resolved."

So I did a spiritual technique where I shut my eyes, I imagined a conversation with my spiritual teacher, Sri Harold Klemp, the spiritual leader of Eckankar -- and of course anybody can look to any guide they want to -- and I asked to understand, "Why did I have that Aztec life?" And I had a series of contemplations and these little insights would come. I don't know how to explain it, but you can get into the Soul consciousness. One of the attributes of Soul is knowingness. Beingness, seeing.

These are attributes of Soul. And in that state, I was brought to England, perhaps in the 1300s or so, and shown that I had been a religious hermit where I lived a solitary life and prayed most of the day. And at that time, a hermit was actually kind of a respected occupation. Communities would help support a hermit, you know, make sure they had food and everything they needed to survive, a place to stay, because they thought someone close to God living near them would help protect them from

famine and war, disease. But I had a very strong connection with Divine Spirit. I could hear this inner sound, I could see this inner light, and I could feel it coursing through my body. And in Eckankar we call it the Light and Sound of God. It's Divine Spirit in its purest elements. I could hear this heavenly singing within, this music, and it was uplifting and beautiful. I wouldn't even, sometimes I wouldn't go to church because I was like, the sound here on the

physical is too coarse. I just want to be home and listen to this inner sound. But despite having this very strong connection, I had some character flaws, and one of them was being judgmental. (thunder) I hear the thunder, like "Yep, you got it." So, this person whom I was would actually make public pronouncements and say something like, "I would rather die the most awful death than to offend God one bit." And this is telling people who are publicly drunk and committing other

vices, if you will. And he judged people. He didn't really understand that God's true love is unconditional. And so I was given the opportunity after that lifetime to be an Aztec priest and to prove -- Would I really rather die the most awful death than to offend God one bit? We talked about how karma teaches us responsibility for all our thoughts, words, and deeds?

move beyond their present circumstances into a life of greater love. So how do we change our fate? Is there a way off this crazy ride called karma and reincarnation? The answer is yes. Helping people resolve karma and gain spiritual freedom in this lifetime is kind of Eckankar's sweet spot. On this spiritual path, one can work off tremendous amounts of karma both in the dream state and through

the spiritual exercises. The spiritual exercise most commonly used in ECK is the HU, an ancient mantra and sacred sound. And Jason had mentioned this earlier as a tool that he used. It's easy yet powerful. HU has been used for centuries to uplift people spiritually. It works as a tuning fork to the spiritual current. HU doesn't change your beliefs, but it can enhance your spiritual practice. Now, a daily practice of singing HU opens us up to the higher perspective so we can make

better choices. Better choices means less karma, and less karma means more freedom. Who doesn't want that? And when karma feels like too much to bear, HU can tune us in to divine guidance that can lead us through those dark nights of Soul and into a life of fresh opportunities. So to start this exercise, we'll play a short audio excerpt from Sri Harold Klemp. Then we'll sing HU. Feel free to listen or

sing along. In this short clip, he talks about Soul's relentless journey on the wheel of karma, and he offers an exit strategy. Let's take a listen.

singing HU with love. That's where you begin. That's the doorway to a new life, to a life of love.

purifying and uplifting Soul. I just let it wash through me and uplift me and feel so wonderful. I can definitely notice a difference in my day if I miss it one day. It's a wonderful gift.

that's coming out. When I was 37, I went through a lot of changes -- through a divorce, moving to Minnesota, leaving a good-paying job, starting law school, etc. and that was when I was 37 years old. So I had just completed three 12-year cycles, through age 36, and now I'm in the first of a new 12 year cycle. And it's just amazing how it works. Anybody can look at a significant event in their life and either go backwards 12 years or forward 12 years

and try to map it out. You can do it from birth or from a significant event. But I was really excited about this 144 year cycle, because twelve 12-year cycles. That seemed really significant. So it was also in 1990 that I got what is called the second initiation in Eckankar. And what this is is after a spiritual student has studied the Spiritual Living Courses for two years, they can

take the second initiation. It's a very simple ceremony that happens outwardly, where you're given a secret word to chant that's all your own. And inwardly, there's an experience with the Mahanta, the inner teacher that we talked about earlier, and a connection with this Light and Sound of God, this full linkup with the Light and Sound of God. And then after that you get the opportunity to work off all your karma this

lifetime. That's where the Master takes on your karma, feeds it back to you in a coherent, gentle way that you can understand, make the connections, do the learning with, and without wearing out your body too much. And I thought about, how are these connected? And I had had this connection as this hermit in England, religious hermit there, with the Light and Sound, but probably not such a good connection for several centuries thereafter. And finally now, in

1990, I got it again. It was like it had to be earned, because there's that responsibility that goes with the connection. In 1991 I traveled from Colorado to Minneapolis to listen to a talk by Sri Harold Klemp. And Sri is just a word of respect in front of his name given to the spiritual leader. And he still gives these talks today. Today. Every year in Minneapolis. And I was sitting

in the audience. And I used to have this connection with this current in me where I could just feel it at the top of my head, like the crown chakra. But as I was sitting there listening to him talk, there was this light that lit up within the middle of my head and radiated out in all directions. I could feel the warmth in my cheeks. It was this wonderful, beautiful experience. And as soon as the talk was over, I hurried to the bathroom.

I wanted to look in the mirror, see if I could see this light. It was like, "Can other people see this? Because, man, I can really feel it. It's really strong." No, you can't really see it, but it was there. And it was the Light of Soul lighting up within me. Meeting the God man and having sung HU in my spiritual exercises, it lit up to me. It's not something you can force to happen. It's like an experience of grace. But a lot of people report these kinds of

experiences at seminars. Some people have had healings and beautiful out-of-body experiences in the inner worlds with the Light and Sound, etc. So it's a wonderful gift to have the God man here on the planet. The end result of all spiritual growth is service without expecting anything in return. That's . . . when we get to that point, that's when we're beyond karma. That's the goal.

discoveries there. Well, this brings us to the end of our journey for today. Jason, thank you so much for being here and sharing your experiences and insights with us.