Dear Soul Arcanum:
I was trying to learn to read my own aura by looking at myself in a mirror when a very strange thing started to happen. I looked into the mirror at my forehead and looked past that point. I saw very little by the way of an aura, but I did see something weird: I began to see faces superimposed over my own. The first couple of faces were kind of scary looking, and then they began to change rapidly. I saw a wide variety of faces, including some that looked like they weren’t fully human, like homo erectus or something. Can you tell me what was happening?
– Justin
Dear Justin:
This is such a common experience given what you were doing that many people gaze into a mirror in order to initiate this very phenomenon. Great instructions on how to try this can be found at near-death.com.
The most common term for what you’re seeing is “transfiguration,” which of course means a marked change in one’s appearance. Transfiguration is also a type of physical mediumship in which spirits use the etheric energy of the medium to project their image over the medium’s own face.
It’s quite possible you were seeing either the faces of spirits who are attached to your aura, or the faces of spirits who want to communicate with someone in the physical dimension who can perceive them. This happened because you were in an altered state of consciousness and able to see into the fourth dimension. When you became able to perceive subtle energies (such as your aura or the energy of spirits), earthbound entities rushed forward in hopes of being seen and heard.
There is another possibility, however. My own experiences have led me to understand that we can also perceive our own past selves and the past selves of other people in a similar way. This is because those other selves don’t exist in another place and time but rather in a parallel dimension. We are living all sorts of lives simultaneously, and by becoming aware of other dimensions, we may interact with ourselves in other forms. If we aren’t aware of this possibility, we may assume that these faces must be the spirits of so-called dead people.
The first time I experienced transfiguration many years ago, I had never heard of anything like this before. I was sitting with my friend Charlie, with whom I had a very powerful spiritual connection. At the time this event occurred, it was late at night, and we were both exhausted from arguing about our relationship, which we believed to be ending. We were sitting on the floor at his apartment, and were across the room from each other with our backs against facing walls. The room was very dim.
After we’d run out of things to say, we just sat staring at each other for a while. Then as I gazed at him, his face began to change. I saw a series of faces, one after another. Some were male, some were female, and some looked inhuman. One of the last faces I saw resembled a Spanish conquistador with dark hair and a long pointy beard. Just then Charlie broke our trance by gasping in alarm.
When we shared what had just happened, we learned that we had experienced the exact same thing: we had both seen a succession of different faces superimposed on the other’s. At the end, he had also seen me as a man with a pointy beard, but because of his Catholic upbringing, he had interpreted this to be the devil, which had scared him. We were dumbfounded and wondered if what we’d seen was how we’d looked in other lives we’d shared. As you might imagine, this experience made us instantly forget about arguing!
I’m also reminded of a story I read years ago in which a woman described how she was warned of danger by her own future self. She was in a hotel room with some very bad men who wouldn’t allow her to leave, and when she went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, she saw her face change to one that was different yet familiar. The woman in the mirror told her she had to get out of there, and she even told her what to say to the men in order to do it. She did as directed and escaped. About twenty years later, she was looking in the mirror when suddenly these two events came together: she suddenly found herself remembering that event and felt the pressing need to warn her younger self of danger. She then realized that the face that had warned in her the mirror was her own face aged some twenty years – that’s why it had seemed different yet familiar.
When we ponder the idea that time isn’t linear, all sorts of explanations become possible for this sort of phenomenon. Thus the faces we see may be the spirits of departed loved ones, earthbound entities who are drawn to us because we’re of similar vibration, or even our own “spirits” from other lives.
We can learn a great deal about ourselves and others based on the faces we see, for they reflect our own unconscious natures. If, for example, you see a lot of angry faces, it suggests repressed or unresolved anger issues because when someone is full of angry energy, they attract entities of a similar nature. When we become conscious of some repressed or buried issue, we begin to process it and release it or clear it out. As we then change, we naturally attract more positive energies. So by reflecting on what we see, we can become conscious of repressed issues and work through them.
As for why some of these faces may seem inhuman, it’s because they are from dimensions where such beings exist. I even believe that people can live parallel lives that aren’t human because I have had very vivid “dream” experiences of my life as a dolphin. Perhaps you have a parallel life as a “homo erectus,” as you put it. Of course, it’s also possible these images are not part of “us” but rather beings that exist in another dimension.
While it’s absolutely mind boggling, maybe sometimes what we are seeing with transfiguration is past lives when we’ve shared an identity with someone else. Think about it: at the highest level, we are all of one soul, and since everything and everyone exist simultaneously, some of the people we are close to in this lifetime are part of ourselves in other lives.
It’s a bit like cellular division: We begin as one soul that divides over and over again into new incarnations. Since time isn’t linear, we continue to exist both as our individual selves now and as the selves we were before splitting off into our current personalities. If two people tune in to a higher dimension together, they may thus access lives in which they were aspects of the same person.
This means it’s possible that what Charlie and I saw that night was identical because we were seeing other lives that belonged to both of us prior to us splitting into separate entities in this lifetime. This idea resonates with me because if there was a purpose to what happened that night, it certainly felt like we were being guided to quit arguing by recognizing that our perceived differences were nothing compared to our deep spiritual kinship.
– Soul Arcanum