In Another Time and Space

Four-year-old Elizabeth picked up her dolls, all five of them, and ran into the garden. It was a beautiful garden, full of flowers and bushes. Elizabeth put the dolls down on a wicker chair that came from Mexico. The dolls had to sit down properly because they were going to receive a lesson. She was going to show them how to make mud pies.

Elizabeth climbed into her sandbox. Oh, how she loved to touch the sand and let it roll through her fingers. The sand was warm because the sun had been shining all day even though the clouds sometimes tried to hide it. The sun gently touched Elizabeth without her noticing it.

"Now, dear students, I will show you the best way to make pies," teacher Elizabeth said to her attentive audience.

She began to form her first mud pie. It was to be for her daddy.

But the scene was about to change. She was still playing in the sand, but now she was on a beach and there was sand all over as far as she could see. The sand was warm, much warmer than the sand she had just played in.

She was not afraid. Everything looked so familiar to her. She was at home in this scene. There was also her loving mother speaking the words of the language she knew so well. And the flowing water… It was the River Nile! She loved to swim in it.

And then suddenly, Elizabeth was back in her sandbox. She jumped up and ran to find her mother.

"Mother! Mother! What happened to me? she cried. "I was in my sandbox and then suddenly I was by the River Nile, the river on the world map you and Daddy gave me. It felt like home. My mother was there, but she was not you."

"Sit down and calm down," her mother urged her.

Elizabeth climbed into a chair, eager to hear what her mother had to say. Her mother took Elizabeth's hands in hers and began to explain.

"You have remembered a past life. We have all lived before. We are sent here with a purpose and a plan. But it takes many lifetimes to finish the work we must do. Our body is a coat we wear. And when it wears out, we get another."

"So we get a new mommy and daddy too?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes, we get a new daddy and we come back in another mommy's tummy. The soul is born once but it gets a new coat when it needs one. And when we come back again, the storybook of our life continues with the next chapter."

"Wow", Elizabeth sighed in amazement. She had lived before! That was for sure. And now she had even experienced something from her distant past. Life was so full of wonders.

Based on the book by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, In My Own Words: Memoirs of a Twentieth-Century Mystic. Gardiner: Summit University Press, 2009, pp. 48-51, quotes in italics, p. 49.