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W B Yeats – A Vision

In the Dreaming back, the spirit is compelled to live over and over again the events that had most moved it; there can be nothing new, but the old events stand forth in a light which is dim or bright according to the intensity of the passion that accompanied them.  They occur in the order of their intensity or luminosity, the more intense first and the  painful are commonly the more intense and repeat themselves again and again.

In the Return, the spirit must live through past events in the order of their occurrence, because it is compelled by the celestial body to trace every passionate event to its cause until all are related and understood, turned into knowledge, made a part of itself.  All that keeps the spirit from its freedom may be compared to a knot that has to be untied or to an oscillation or a violence that must end in a return to equilibrium

 Sometimes the spirit under the  influence of the celestial body and what are called Teaching Spirits – may not merely dream through the consequences of its acts but amend them, bringing this or that to the attention of the living...............

 The spirit can not only tap the minds of the living but examine letters and books, once they come before the eyes of the living, although it can see nothing that does not concern the dream, for it is without reflection on the knowledge it is dead.  If the event was shared by many, those many may seem present and yet be but the figures of the ' dream'.  Each must dream the event alone. ..............

The more complete the Dreaming back the more complete the Return and the more happy or fortunate the next incarnation. 

Where the soul has great intensity and where those consequences affected great numbers, the Dreaming Back and the Return may last with diminishing 'pain' and joy for centuries. ....

During the Dreaming back the spirit is alone with its dream; during the return in the presence of those who had a part in the events explored in the dreaming back..............

But knowledge of the past is not sufficient.  The second stage contains in addition to the Dreaming Back and the Return what is called the Phantasmagoria, which exists to exhaust , - not nature, - not pain and pleasure, but emotion and is the work of the Teaching spirits.
The physical and moral life is completed, without the addition of any new element that the objects of hope may be completed, for only that which is completed can be known and dismissed.  Houses appear built by thought in a moment, the spirit seems to eat, drink and smoke, the child appears to grow to maturity, or perhaps with the help of the teaching Spirits a Christmas Tree is created... i[but] f the life was evil, then the phantasmagoria is evil, the criminal completes his crime...The Phantasmagoria completed not only life but imagination.....

If a spirit cannot escape from its Dreaming back to complete its expiation, a new life may come soon and be, as it were, a part of its Dreaming back and so repeat the incidents of the past life.  There are stories Asiatic and European of those who die in childhood being reborn almost at once...

The more complete the expiation, or the less need for it, the more fortunate the succeeding life.  The more fully a life is lived, the less the need for – or the more complete is – the expiation.