Talking with Twentieth-Century Women
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A Book of Spiritual Interviews
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Compiled by
Peter Watson Jenkins
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Channeled by
Toni Ann Winninger
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©2008 Celestial Voices, Inc. Published at Smashwords.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008902059
ISBN: 978-0-97989-2-4
Celestial Voices, Inc.
13354 W. Heiden Circle, Lake Bluff, IL 60044 USA
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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you share it. If you’re reading this book and did not buy it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
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Contents
About this Book
Glossary
Jane Addams
Marie Curie
Helen Keller
Georgia O’Keeffe
Amelia Earhart
Marian Anderson
Golda Meir
Margaret Mead
Rachel Carson
Carmen Miranda
Mother Teresa
Ella Fitzgerald
Judy Garland
Maria Callas
Marilyn Monroe
Anne Frank
Sylvia Plath
Barbara Jordan
Wilma Rudolph
Sharon Tate
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez
Living Souls
It’s exciting to find out about famous people we admire. Some fans collect pictures of their idols, go to movies telling their story, collect newspaper articles, autographs, and programs in a scrapbook, and even buy items of the clothing the famous people once wore. We visit websites put up by their fan clubs, or those whose authors want to honor their memory, just as we do. But when our idols die, their book of life closes.
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Or does it?
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What if it were possible to talk with famous people after their death? What if they could tell us more about themselves and their life? What if Amelia Earhart could actually give us details about the mysterious end of her pioneering flight around the world? What if Sharon Tate and Selena Quintanilla-Pérez could tell us what it felt like to be murdered, and Marilyn Monroe could reveal whether her death was accidental or deliberate? What if Mother Teresa could tell us if it felt overwhelming to be admired as a “saint”? Does Judy Garland enjoy life more now that she’s living “over the rainbow”? Does Rachel Carson worry about global warming? Does Georgia O’Keeffe still visit the mountain in New Mexico that she loved to paint? With 21 famous women to interview we had tons of questions to ask!
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Well, we really can talk with them, and we really can find out their answers. It’s what this book and its companion book on Twentieth Century Men are all about.
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In Talking with Leaders of the Past, volume one in our series of Dialogues with Masters of the Spirit World, we interviewed 15 leaders born in the nineteenth century, including: Pope John XXIII, Florence Nightingale, Oscar Wilde, Eleanor Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. They answered questions we shot at them, talked about themselves, and discussed their life at “Home,” which is the place in the universe where people’s souls live after they have died—which people sometimes call “the Other Side.”
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A lot of what we learned from these souls blew our minds. It was all so different when they talked about God, Heaven and Hell, the purpose of our life on planet Earth, why human beings suffer so much, and lots more.
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Our first book was organized in cooperation with a group of Master Spirits, who live at Home. Then the Masters encouraged us to produce two follow-up books of famous people of the twentieth century. The interviewer was Peter Watson Jenkins, MA. He’s an author and former parish minister now working as a clinical hypnotherapist. Peter drew up a very long list of famous people, mostly American, and presented them to the Masters for review. For many different reasons a lot of these people were not available for interview, so they were deleted from the list. Souls are not idle at Home; they are involved in life reviews and have further spiritual training to undertake. Some act as guides advising the souls of people on planet Earth, or helping newly arrived spirits settle in after their time here. After being at Home for a while they are usually given the option to return to planet Earth. Even former princesses get busy—we had to drop Princess Grace and Princess Diana from the list, as well a lot of other notable people, but we know those who were chosen are outstanding subjects, both interesting and informative.
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So how did these dialogues take place?
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Contact with the spirit world was successfully made by a leading American channeler, Toni Ann Winninger, JD. The Masters first asked her to start channeling just a few years ago, when she was getting ready to retire as a prosecutor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago. Toni’s training as a lawyer has given her a real gift of mental accuracy, and her regular practice of very deep meditation has resulted in her amazing ability to allow the thoughts of those souls whom she channels to flow through her mind with little or no interference from her. Toni spends much of her time as a psychic advising private clients. She enjoys working with the same large group of Enlightened Masters, which includes both spirits who have finished their task of coming down to planet Earth, and celestial beings (whom we call “Angels”) who have never been down here in physical form.
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Yes, we do know people are skeptical of channeling!
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Psychics are really a mixed lot. Some of them, such as Echo Bodine, Sylvia Browne, Sonia Choquette, John Edward, Esther Hicks, Judith Orloff, and James Van Praagh, have fine reputations and deservedly have achieved great popularity. Many “street corner” psychics are also quite trustworthy, but, sadly, there are also many wannabees and frauds who cheat and manipulate innocent people. But that’s unfortunately true for every profession—even in churches, temples, and mosques—isn’t it?
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As authors, we are more skeptical than you might expect, believing that we need to “test the spirits” as the Bible says, and also to test the claims of human psychics. We understand that some readers may prefer to treat this book as a work of fiction, but we sincerely believe that it is absolutely true and, with Toni’s channeling, Peter really did converse with the souls whom we have named. We stake our reputations on the claim that what is reported in this book is an accurate record of our conversations. Those who have read the books of Dr. Brian Weiss, and of other pioneers in this field, will know how important it is to put your reputation on the line. We honor Dr. Weiss for his courage in publishing Messages from the Masters.
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What if I don’t know anything about these women?
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It’s easy! The questions that Peter poses fill in a lot of historic information, so we have not detailed every person’s life story in this book as we did in volume one of the series. If interested, you can easily find out about each one for yourself by typing their name in an Internet search engine and harvesting the results.
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We want to help readers discover how and why these famous people came to be who they used to be, what influences affected them, and if they were influenced at all by their past lives. As we talked together we asked them to tell us a little about themselves as they are now, to explain in what way they like to remember their most recent physical life, and also to comment on our life on planet Earth today from their spiritual perspective back Home.
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Note
We have used italic type to indicate Peter’s questions and comments during each discussion. Replies are in roman type.
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Glossary
Advisors. Souls who are given the task of advising incarnated souls.
Angel. A human term for a celestial being who, after being separated from Source, acts as a guide to those upon Earth, but may or may not at some later time choose to experience an Earthly body.
Archangel. A human term for a celestial being that is very advanced and experienced as a guide, whose soul has never incarnated.
Council. A group of guides who help us decide what lessons we wish to experience, and who help us make best use of the lessons we have learned.
Creator. See “Source.”
Dimension. A waveband or stratum of vibrational energy. Planet Earth is at the third dimension. Home is at the fifth and higher dimensions.
God. See “Source.”
God-Force. See “Source.” Sometimes used as meaning “all souls.”
Guides. Souls given the task of advising incarnated souls.
Heaven. See “Home.”
Hell. A state of mind on Earth.
Home. Not a physical place, but an energetic dimension of unconditional love and of conscious connection with Source. It is where each soul works with its guides and council. Every soul who is not incarnated is consciously within the dimension of Home.
Incarnate. A soul who has gone down to planet Earth and is now in a physical body.
Shell. The living physical structure inhabited by a soul. No human or animal body can live without some connection to a soul.
Supreme Being. See “Source.”
Souls. Individualized pieces of energy split off by and from Source, in order to have unique experiences outside the perfect. They are all particles of Source, so each and every soul is also Source. All souls are equal regardless of the human shell they have chosen to inhabit.
Source. The point of origin of all that is known by human beings, and all that exists. It is the energy of unconditional love, the highest vibrational energy anywhere, and is found in everything. The Source makes no judgments and does not reward or punish souls.
Transition. The soul’s move from life in the body to life at Home. Physical death.
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“The people we worked with were so rich in their culture and their work ethic but their needs were being put aside by those who had the means not to have to deal with mundane things.”
Jane Addams
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Laura Jane Addams, you were quite a sickly child with a severe curvature of your spine. Then, after your heart attack in 1928, when you were 68, until your death seven years later, you suffered terrible ill health. How do you look now on your experience of physical frailty?
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Physical frailty, not being able to do what normal people did, was one of the lessons I wished to experience. The sense of having to sit back on the sidelines and watch as the world went by, so to speak, made me acutely aware of everything that was going on. I devoured literature, I devoured the newspapers of that time, and I keenly sought information about the outside world, from which I was semi-removed. I was also a keen observer—one of the things I saw was the way people interacted. I saw how the various types of people, because of their personalities, placed themselves in situations where they lacked the benefits others enjoyed because of a social classification which either they had given themselves, or someone else had given them. This made me long to find a way to level the experiences people had, giving them an opportunity to enjoy that which they had previously denied themselves or which other sections of society had denied them.
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So your reforming zeal came directly from your being on the sidelines?
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Quite certainly—it is what festered within me. When I was physically able to go out and do something about it, there was already within me a sense of urgency and the inkling of a plan of what could be done.
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Did you fulfill the demands of that experience of ill health?
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I know that I have learned what it is like to have such experiences in physical form, and I knew why we need to experience them when I came back Home again.
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Do children with physical problems usually choose those problems prior to coming down here?
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Yes. We plan our lives before we come down here in terms of the major things we wish to experience (though not exactly how we will experience them), but still they are major issues or lessons. My desire was to be in a position where I had problems with my body and was confined and restricted. This could have been accomplished (as in fact it was) with my spinal difficulties, or it could have come through having polio, or it could have resulted from an accident. I did not determine the exact way it was going to happen to me, just the fact I was going to have some physical restrictions.
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Your father, a very positive force in your life, was an Illinois state senator, an officer in the Civil War, and a friend of Abraham Lincoln. Tell us about your relationship with him.
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I adored him. For the large part, he was my eyes out there in the world. He indulged me with whatever type of information I wanted to have. He would give it to me even if it was thought to be unseemly for a young lady to be concerned with such things. He treated me as if there were nothing wrong with me, and would let me ride upon his knee in the carriage as he went to various places, and support me. He was my hero!
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He taught you about the demands of work.
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He taught me the value of time—you didn’t twiddle it away and waste it by day-dreaming, as so many people do. You have a plan, a goal, and if you are day-dreaming it will be about ways to implement the plan that you want to see brought to fruition.
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Your plan was to study medicine. At the Rockford Seminary for Young Ladies you were a good student and quite a leader. What happened to your desire to study medicine?
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Not everybody was as indulgent as my father. There were several forays that I made into the field of medicine, when I went to hospitals and observed what was going on (Daddy had all kinds of connections and could get me into those places), but I was—even considering who I was and who my father was—treated with disdain, across the board, that I should wish to enter the male profession of medicine. I saw that, while I could accomplish things there, the medicine of the day was primarily reserved for the rich, for those who could pay for treatment. There were those who treated the indigent in the clinics but they were very few and far between. I wanted to help people at ground level and did not feel that medicine would allow me to do that.
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After that disappointment you went to Europe, but on your return your father suddenly died. You became gravely ill and had surgery on your back. Was his death or frustration with your life in any way the cause of your illness?
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All illnesses in the physical body are a result of what the whole body is going through. The whole body includes the mind, the spirit (which encompasses the emotions), and the way they impact the energy within the body. So, yes, I simply walled myself off in my grief for my father, and in so doing I stopped the flow and process of balance within the body. As a result I became gravely ill.
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Was the surgery you received reasonably effective?
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The surgery was something new, which had been recently developed. Its purpose was to go back to my initial physical problems and correct the malformation. It put me where I was in much less pain and had a greater degree of mobility.
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Which lasted the rest of your life?
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Yes.
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On your second tour of Europe, with your school friend Ellen Gates Starr, you discovered Toynbee House in the East End of London. It was the very first settlement house, where middle-class reformers went to live in a poor neighborhood, providing direct aid to the people around them. What did that experience mean to you?
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It showed me that some of my childhood dreams of equality for all were being put into action in a way that really helped everybody. It gave me ideas of what was missing back home. It gave me the desire to bring to people whom I had seen on the streets what was being offered to them in Europe, humanely and without that degradation which “helpers” make indigents feel, as if they were a plaything or just an indulgence of those with means.
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Samuel Barnett, one of the Oxford University founders of Toynbee House, said they aimed “to learn as much as to teach; to receive as much to give.” What gave you and Ellen the confidence to go and establish Hull House in Chicago, which was the first American settlement house?
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We knew that we could provide for the people, and as Samuel Barnett stated, that it would be just as much a learning experience for us as for them. The people we worked with were so rich in their culture and their work ethic but their needs were being put aside by those who had the means not to have to deal with mundane things. The hope and the striving of these people…
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Who were mostly European immigrants?
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Mostly from Europe, but sometimes second- generation folk who had been in situations such as house fires where they had lost all of their money. There were many instances of women who were widowed with children, who because of the way they had been raised, and who had always been provided for by their husbands, did not know where to go. So we educated them as well as helping their families.
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In 1889 the two of you bought a big but dilapidated mansion owned by Charles Hull, a rich Chicago businessman. You opened Hull House as a kindergarten, then added a day nursery, a care center for babies, and further education classes. How did you find the money and people for all that?
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First we used our own money, but there were a lot of wealthy people in the Chicago area who had a conscience, and we were more than happy to let them assuage it by keeping our doors open. [smiles]
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Three out of the four richest women in Chicago supported you?
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That’s correct. At first it was done very secretively, until they could sell their husbands and families on the concept of what we were accomplishing.
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Then Hull House added an art gallery, a coffee house, a gym with a swimming pool, a boarding club for girls, arts and crafts, a library, and an employment bureau. Were you trying to bring middle class culture to the working class, or did the drive to have these facilities come from them?
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It was a bit of both. We wanted to provide opportunities for people to experience things which might give them a passion to go beyond where they had thought they could go. To them certain things, like art, music, or simply swimming in the pool, were things only done then by the rich. We showed them the pleasure they could get out of their experience, how it could be an integral part of their lives, and how they could benefit from it. A number of our first swimming students became life guards, which gave them an employment. Our employment agency dealt with things outside the realm of our teaching, a large portion of which was to introduce people to possibilities, say, within the field of art. We trained people to have an eye for things. Instead of walking blindly between home and work they began to see the city, the beauty that was in the world, and to know from that vision that they could enrich their life and, in some cases, be paid a salary.
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During the depression of 1893 you fed hundreds of people every day at Hull House. Was it this experience of people’s poverty that caused you to campaign for new labor laws?
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A lot of things led to the campaigning. From the very beginning it was apparent in working with our people that they worked long, hard hours for very little pay. They were so desperate to bring home any money, however small, that they settled for ridiculous remuneration for the amount of work they did. It became very obvious to me that we would not have people in this position if those who had the money, instead of putting it in their own pocket, would pay a decent wage to those people whose work was actually putting the money in their pocket.
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Two of the causes you championed were industrial safety and the protection of immigrants from exploitation. From your place now at Home, how do you view these issues in America today?
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[Laughs] Humans are humans! If they are in a position of power and think they can exploit people without having to pay them, they will. It is incumbent upon governing bodies or the general public to rise up and fight against exploitation of any kind. It is still for the strong and the rich to do as much as they can to help others, although their practice is to do as little as they can. There are many parts of the world where the problem of sweat shops, child labor, and actual slave labor is still the norm.
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You also campaigned for Women’s Suffrage. Women got the vote, but does anyone’s vote count for much against the powerful business interests in the government of America today?
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From an overall perspective, if enough people get disgusted with enough things, and they put their energies together, they can have an influence. If the general public is nonchalant about the abuses brought down on them, nothing is ever going to be accomplished—and that is generally reflected by the fact they don’t even care to vote, saying that they don’t think their vote is going to count.
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You campaigned for peace in the first world war, and in 1915 you founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Your opponents struck you off the list of the Daughters of the American Revolution as a result. How do you view the effectiveness of people’s witnessing for peace in today’s world?
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There’s a very complex energetic equation governing this situation. We must explain it in terms of how people’s intentions affect the direction of the energy on the planet. Let’s suppose there is a group which is constantly putting its energy into praying for peace and having vigils for peace. All the energy upon the earth is a dichotomy. So the more people pray for peace the more war you have to have to bring the scales into balance. So the very action of praying for peace can create war.
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So, if nobody prayed for peace we’d have no war?
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That’s correct.
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Then your efforts in the peace movement were useless because you only created more war?
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Only created the energy for war. If instead of praying for peace—because praying for peace is saying there isn’t peace, which is war—we had spent our energy in saying how grateful we were for peace … in order for us to be grateful for peace it would have to take from the energy for war.
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But isn’t this having gratitude for a peace which is yet to exist?
It will come into existence by siphoning off the energy for war. So, if instead of praying for peace (which means there isn’t peace) we say we are grateful for peace, peace comes into existence.
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So the peace movement campaigns for peace and tries to shout war down. Is that effective or non-effective?
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It’s non-effective because although they may not use the term “pray for peace,” they are still working with the energy that there is not peace. And if there is not peace, there is the opposite, which is war.
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You helped to found the NAACP and the ACLU as well as the Settlement House Movement in America. Some withdrew financial support from Hull House for your support of workers during the 1886 Haymarket riot. Do our spirit guides actively encourage our becoming involved in reforming enterprises such as these?
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[Laughs] There is a misunderstanding about our spirit guides. They assist us and help us see different things, but they don’t interfere with our choices. They show us what there is but they don’t campaign for anything. They leave it up to us to make our choices and then move forward in the direction we want to go. The mention you made of funds being withdrawn was because I was making people uncomfortable. When I was a lady who helped the rich assuage their guilt for being so nasty, making money off the poor, it was fine. But when I started to attack the various means by which they made their money, which would shift part of their funds out of their pockets into the pockets of the people of whom they were taking advantage, they decided that they did not need to support us any longer.
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Did you ever have a previous life as a reformer?
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Yes. I was very active during the French Revolution when I was a young nobleman who was not part of the ruling set but I had the funds to get the masses of people together to help break the bonds they were under. Also I was back in the time of the Black Death. What I did there was to help people to understand that it was conveyed from person to person. The reform I did then was in the medical practices of disposing of the infected bodies.
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People may have called you a socialist, an anarchist, and a communist, but toward the end of your life you received numerous awards, including that of being the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What do you remember as your finest achievement?
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Bringing a sense of purposefulness to those who felt they were totally worthless, and were totally controlled by others. In particular, to be able to help children raised in an environment where they believed that they were just scum, and to then see them accept themselves and better themselves. To see them getting all the education they could possibly get, and then going out and exceeding the expectations of themselves, and their parents, and their grandparents. That was my greatest achievement.
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Are you planning to return to planet Earth anytime soon?
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I may possibly be back within the next twenty years, by your time standards.
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Thank you, Jane Addams, for talking with us.
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Commentary
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Toni: Jane Addams had a very demure energy but it was as if there was a blow torch inside and if you turned it just the right way—look out! Then there was this dainty little porcelain figurine of the sick child. My feeling was that people had found her voice quite mesmerizing. She was like a preacher, someone whom everybody wanted to help because they felt they would be helping themselves. That was the way it was presented: help yourself, feel good about yourself. She made her appeal in that manner both to the poor people and to the rich.
Peter: Jane gave us a hard lesson in how the spirit world and Earth’s energy works. It is already a well-established part of the reincarnation story that we all come down to Earth from Home with a clear life purpose and a set of life experiences that we agree to undertake, sometimes including physical weakness such as that which Jane suffered both as a child and toward the end of her life.
What is poorly understood is the issue of Earth’s energetic balance, which she discussed. Her illustration of this essential balance had to do with war and peace. If we pray for peace, she said, we say in energetic terms that there is war (a lack of peace-energy). Statements like that strengthen rather than weaken war-energy. To diminish war-energy we must make a statement of our feelings or prayers of gratitude for whatever crumb of peace there may be in the world (a lack of war-energy), because by so doing we strengthen peace-energy.
This same energetic balance is involved in the issue of personal health. We can deduce some of this from Jane’s breakdown after her father’s sudden death. To pray, for example, for our cancer to be cured serves energetically to say that cancer exists in our body and, so, strengthens its energetic force. To express the conviction that our good health is restored, with gratitude for whatever healing has been accomplished (or is in the process of taking place), strengthens the energetic health of our body. This need to balance the opposing energies may baffle us at times, but is the way of the universe. So Jane, from Home, now sees her activity for peace as somewhat ineffectual, but her work to help poor people relish their new-found opportunities was done in exactly the right way.
One of the best historical examples of the energetic balance principle was put into practice by the study of auto-suggestion by the French pharmacist Emil Coué (1857-1926). His famous mantra, which people could repeat many times daily, was: “Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.” With such a powerful statement (always providing it is said without an inner contradiction of thought), he concluded anyone’s positive energy could not possibly fail to strengthen. The problem lies in human dismay, doubt, and lack of awareness that the core of our humanity—our soul—is a powerful, eternal, energetic being. After seeing what was being done in the East End of London to help the poor, Jane Addams appears never to have doubted the possibilities. Hull House Chicago, with its national legacy, proves the power of her positive energy which has lasted until our own time.
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Note:
You may wish to examine more of the Masters’ teaching on healing and prayer contained in their powerful little booklet Healing with the Universe, Meditation, and Prayer (Celestial Voices, Inc. 2007).
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“The highlight of my work with Pierre was being able to be with him every day.”
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Marie Curie
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Marie Curie, you were born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw. When you were 24 you emigrated from Russian-dominated Poland to France, learned to speak French, changed your name to Marie, became a French citizen, married a French physicist, and after your death the French people buried your ashes at the Pantheon in Paris as a national hero. What was the special appeal of France?
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There were a number of things that appealed in France—a freedom present there which was not present in Poland. There was a sense that, providing women were understated in what they did, they would be given their head and could go forward into activities such as science (which was not allowed in my birth country). Also, there was a sense of romance—being near the water and having that free-flowing energy that was there. It was quite smothering in my homeland at that time—opportunities were given to me which I would never have had in Poland.
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Your parents were well-educated teachers and you seem to have inherited a powerful memory and a furious addiction to schoolwork. Tell us about those early days.
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Mama and Papa were all about letting your imagination direct where you wanted to go. They didn’t push me into any particular thing; they got me excited about what learning could do for me. I used to talk with Papa about his reading, writing, and experiments, which engendered in me a desire to explore and go deeper into some of the things I had read about. Across the energy of our family there was the desire to improve life, to make it better for ourselves and those around us. It was a quest to explain the unexplainable and in so doing make it so practical it could be used by all.
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You suffered a real loss when first your sister and then your mother died while you were quite young.
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It was very trying for me, but its effect was to force me inward and I became totally immersed in the books that were around me. It was probably the biggest driving force for me to dig into the depth of things in the way that I did. I took care of my loss and my depression by filling myself with exciting new ideas so that I wouldn’t think about my mother and sister.
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After graduating at the top of your high school class you were totally exhausted and went to the countryside to recover. Did overwork, followed by physical exhaustion and depression, become a pattern in your life?
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I didn’t know when to stop! When I was on the trail of something, just like a bloodhound, my nose was down on that line until I got where I was heading. I didn’t think about sleeping. I didn’t think about nourishment. I didn’t think about balance. All I thought about was the target I was going toward, and what I was trying to accomplish. When I would complete whatever it was that I was chasing, then it was as if you had pulled the plug out of me and I was thoroughly drained. That was when I went to the country.
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You were not permitted to go to university but you attended the illegal “Flying University” instead, and then left Warsaw after being involved in student protests. Tell us about that experience.
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The student protests were for women and for those of lesser financial backgrounds. University was only for men who were rich or who had connections. I protested that women should be allowed in, and that those of high intellect should also get the opportunity, because training such people always led to the betterment of society in general if they were given the chance. I was not looked upon as bringing myself into compliance with what was desired by the government and the ruling parties.
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Then you and your elder sister Bronya came to an arrangement. You worked as a governess for several years to pay for her studies in Paris, then she in turn supported yours. Your goal was to take a teacher's diploma and then to return to Poland. How well did those plans work out?
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In Paris we found new ideas, that life as we had been introduced to it in Poland was not the only life that existed. We discovered that with hard work you could accomplish whatever you wanted. We also sensed that, were we to go back home, all of the gains we achieved would be for naught because we would not be able to put our newfound education into practice. To be a teacher was a very noble thing, something I thought early on that I would like to do, because it was semi-accepted as a woman’s role. But when I got into my education I became excited by the possibilities of not being restricted just to learning sufficient to instruct others, but being able to fly beyond what was currently accepted and written in the books.
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At age 24 you moved to France and lived in an attic on a shoestring. You started at the Collège Sévigné, then studied physics and mathematics at the Sorbonne, later becoming the first woman to teach there. What gave you the impetus to go into science?
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It was something that had the biggest question marks for me, as if I had to find the answer to things. Physics was a ride! It defined who we were, and could also be used to explain all of the advances that I saw being made in the world around me at that time. I wanted to be a piece of it—to be one of those who contributed to those changes.
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So in 1893 you were top of your class for your physics degree, and then you excelled in your master’s degree in mathematics at the Sorbonne. Was this confirmation of your life purpose?
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It was confirmation that I could accomplish what I had set my mind to do, though it came with a price. That was when I first began to be a workaholic, as they say now. I did very little but spend time with my books and my ideas.
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With your present perspective, would you say it was your life purpose to be a physicist and chemist?
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It was my life purpose to go beyond the trends of the times, beyond my station in life of being born a woman in a semi-oppressive country, and to be able to recognize that I did not need to remain within it—that I could do whatever I wanted providing I had the time and faith in myself to accomplish it. My life purpose, as you call it, was to discover the potential within me and to develop my self-confidence, then to go beyond that and to implement it all.
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Had you lived lives before which contributed to your skill as a scientist?
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I had a number of different lives prior to this one. Some of them had to do with what is known by us as “spiritual studies.” I was also a very skilled pick-pocket when once I was a gypsy. That gave me a sense of yearning to mix in and become a part of something instead of being a vagabond. I also did early mathematics, which I studied with Copernicus. At that time I got my desire to discover how things worked and were interrelated.
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Did you know Galileo Galilei?
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Yes, but unfortunately I was then one of the hierarchy who debunked what he did. Yet even in debunking something you get to know more about it, because you know what it is that does not work, or does not exist. So that was another way in which my desire to look into things was stimulated.
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In 1895 you met and married Pierre Curie, who was also a physicist. Two years later your first daughter, Irène Curie was born. She went on to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. Had you known either Pierre or Irène in past lives?
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Pierre, yes, we were soul mates. We had been in many lives together. It was for him to be there and for me to be with him so we might collaborate in bringing new information to the world that would change the way things were seen (I refer to our experiments with x-rays and radiation). We needed each other to stimulate and to direct a pattern that would set the standards down for everyone else in the future.
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But you did not know the soul of Irène?
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We had been together but never as intertwined as Pierre and I. Irène came to us because she wanted to be born into a family that was all scientific. That was what she wanted to experience, and she wanted to have the encouragement and the work ethic which she knew coming to us would instill in her as she grew up.
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How much do genetics, as opposed to the environment into which we are born, play a part in determining our direction as human beings?
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Genetics have something to do with it. There is a “soup” contributing to who each person is in their physical form. The ingredients of that soup are the physical genes which give predispositions for some things to be easier than others. There is our learning done in past lives, held in the Akashic records. There is the environment the soul chooses to enter, which may either stimulate or supplement the genetic mix which predispositions our physicality. Over all, there is the soul who is the major ingredient to give the basic flavor of how that entire life is to be lived; and there is the amount of awareness and recognition that the physical body allows the soul to have within that lifetime.
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Then you and Pierre guessed that pitchblende contained traces of a previously unknown substance that was far more radioactive than uranium. You spent years refining tons of pitchblende to concentrate the elements. Finally you isolated radium chloride and two new chemical elements: polonium, and the strongly radioactive substance radium. Was this immense work the highlight of your partnership with Pierre?
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The highlight of my work with Pierre was being able to be with him every day. The academic highlight of our career? Yes. We were both intensely workaholic—it was as if we were like one body with four arms as we did our work. The fact that we were able to share what we were doing was the highlight.
Why did you and Pierre decide not to patent the radium isolation process?
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It was too cumbersome, and we were aware that there had to be an easier way to do it. Were we to patent the process it would tell people that this was the way they should do it, and it would not allow them to experiment and go further. We also had moved on to other things by that time.
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So it wasn’t an act of supreme generosity on your part?
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No, we hadn’t considered that at all. We thought afterward, during our physical life, that it was a mistake as we could have received additional financial help from a patent, but that wasn’t what we had gone into the experimentation to do.
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Did you realize at the time the immense danger of handling radioactive substances?
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No. We were not certain what the effect would be. We were in virgin territory, so to speak, of how the human form might deal with such things. This was not a time when people were aware of the interconnection of toxic substances and the frail human body.
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Later in your life you criticized physicians and cosmetic manufacturers who used radioactive material without precautions. How do you view the dangers to consumers of radio waves today, such as in mobile phones?
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When I became aware of the dangers of repeated exposure from the physical ailments I observed, it struck at my heart that, since I had this knowledge, I must convey it to those who did not have the experience (just as we didn’t when we first began). When I saw the potential problems and saw the casual way in which various companies and groups of people subjected themselves to this potential danger, I regarded it as my duty to make them aware of my knowledge. When they would not listen to me [laughs] I became a little forceful at times, and maybe not subtle with them. It was the way I did it, and maybe it was saving lives, which is what all good scientists do.
As for the potential dangers to which the current population are subjecting themselves, these vary with the amount of use, the overall vibrations within which people allow themselves to exist, and the vibration of the body itself. So to be able to say that exposure to a cell phone tower will do this amount of damage to a person, or the damage of holding a cell phone to your skull will impact your brain in such and such a way, is not as formulaic as people would like you to believe. It varies with each individual. Is there potential danger? Yes, there is potential danger to everyone from these microwaves. The extent of the danger depends on the individual human body, exposure level, duration, and any one of a number of factors, but it is like any potential toxin—user beware!
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In 1903 you were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Pierre and your mentor Henri Becquerel for your “joint researches on the radiation phenomena.” Do you feel that human science has made good use of your discoveries?
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[Laughs] They did for a period of time but they have moved beyond our accomplishments. The importance of radiation and x-rays in their use for diagnostic purposes opened things up from archaic methods to what you might call space-age ideas. But the whole field has continued to progress. The thing now is magnetic resonance, which can be used on the body with minimal impact. Whereas the potential in radiation is still damaging in use for diagnostic purposes, magnetic resonance is not. But, in the opposite direction, based on our initial experiments with radioactive substances and the deleterious effects radiation can have on the body, things have now been turned around for treatment protocols where it is necessary to kill cells, such as cancer cells. So things have come full circle, beyond what we had established. It has been replaced as a diagnostic tool in favor of a treatment.
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A year after your first Nobel prize, your second daughter, Ève Denise Curie was born. Then, two years later, Pierre was run over by a horse-drawn dray in Paris and died instantly. Do you know now why he died so young?
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He died as an agreement with me so I might go beyond even where I had been.
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Was that a prior agreement made between your two souls?
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Between our two souls. I had become as a part of him, not as myself. We played this little game that some of the time he was the author and the leader, so far as the general public were concerned, and sometimes I was the star.
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In your past lives?
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In past lives and even in our life together as the Curies. One would be recognized as the lead researcher, so to speak, in one particular area, then the other would be recognized as the leader. In point of fact I was blessed by having the majority of the ideas, but I shared them with Pierre. Our spiritual agreement was that I was going to be put into a situation where I had to recognize my own potential. Also I would be re-visited by the feeling of being abandoned as I had felt when my mother and sister left. So it was another lesson for me to experience while in the throes of all of my research and while I was trying to raise the girls.
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Four years after losing your twin soul Pierre, your name appeared in the press in a scandal. It was alleged you had had an affair with a married physicist, Paul Langevin. Historians have suggested that the press were especially hard on you as a Polish immigrant. What is your opinion?
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First, Pierre and I were not “twin souls,” who are those souls who complete each other. We were soul mates, those who are very close but not the other half (the Siamese-twin half). The affair was not all that the press made it out to be. It was a very close working relationship that grew in respect and then, in times of joy, was released for both of us. There were those who believed my awards at that time were things that I stole from Paul. They thought that I was using his name to further my nefarious affairs, he being a native of France. So it was partially because of where I had come from, and I was not French.
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In 1911 you won a second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, but one month later you went to hospital with depression and kidney trouble. Was this the first sign of the effects of radioactivity on your body?
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The depression was because I was in a break between being totally immersed in something and, having completed it, was stepping back. During those periods when I stepped back I became immersed in thoughts of all that I had done throughout my life, and what had been done to me and with me, such as gaffs and illnesses. It was one of those periods. The kidney trouble was the effect of toxic radiation. The result was a hardening of tubes entering the kidney.
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You lived until 1934 when you died at the age of 67 from aplastic anemia, a form of leukemia. You were almost blind, physically exhausted, your fingers burnt and scarred by radium. Were your discoveries worth the price of your suffering and the subsequent suffering of other people from radiation?
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The sickness I endured was part of who I was. It was part of my experimentation, part of what needed to be gone through for us to recognize the potential of the dangerous substance with which we were dealing. It became a map for other people of what not to do. Some of those who were harmed by it had carried our experiments further to find out what else could be done with radioactivity. Those who were the subjects of treatment with radiation (done by others) understood that it was something new. For them it was the person who managed their experimental treatment who was to blame, not our initial work. What I was able to provide for humanity has saved thousands if not tens of thousands of lives, and has impacted millions as a diagnostic tool. Was my life worth that? Very definitely it was worth everything that I endured. To be able to impact beneficially one, ten, or one hundred people was quite enough reason for everything I undertook.
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Marie, you were raised in the Roman Catholic Church but later, like many scientists, you became an agnostic or atheist. What can you say to scientists about your understanding now of the Creator and of life in the universe?
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My withdrawal from the Catholic Church was because it had no true understanding of the power of the interconnectedness of nature and the universe. I could not live by what I knew was not correct because of what I was doing with my science. At one time the Church had believed that the Earth was flat, then that the sun revolved around the Earth. As a scientist I knew such ideas were disproven—even I disproved some of their beliefs! I went through a period when I was an atheist and did not believe there was anything but matter. To me, rays of energy given off by radium, though unseen, were still material because of their impact on things. I thought that everything could be explained with the realm of what we could measure, and that if we couldn’t measure it, then it didn’t exist.
Toward the end when I stepped back from my pure scientific research and took a look at everything else in the universe, I softened into believing that some power existed outside of us and became what is considered “agnostic.” Then I believed there was some power beyond us but I didn’t know how it interacted with us. Now I know that all energy is connected and that there is a point of origin, a supreme Source which is part of anything and everything. As a particular belief pattern this does not mesh with anything you have on the planet at this time.
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But it is a reality?
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The word “reality” is difficult to use between my sense of being and your sense of being, because a reality for a soul is the illusion you create in the moment. As my illusion at one time was Roman Catholic, and then my illusion became first atheistic and later agnostic, my illusion now is what some call spirituality—that spirit is in everything and is interconnected.
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You wrote, “You cannot hope to build a better world without improving individuals. Each of us must work for (personal) improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity.” What improvements do we humans most need to make?
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I was speaking only of physical improvements then because I did not believe in anything beyond the physical. That was my reality at the time. In order for people to expand and grow they must become aware of the interconnection between their physical and their non-physical self, their soul. They must realize that they experience the physical in order to experience lessons by which the soul grows. The perspective I now have is of the non-physical witnessing the physical. My statements then portrayed precisely what our physical side needed to do. The non-physical needs to become aware of itself.
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Thank you, Marie Curie, for talking with us.
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Thank you for having me.
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Commentary
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Toni: During the interview I had the sense of Marie Curie’s having several personas. One was enmeshed in scientific experimentation, obsessed by everything to do with it, and very concerned by its impact on other people (and by the impact other people had upon her). Then there was an extremely physical person. The third person gave out a nervous energy, fringed with anxiety that she wouldn’t be understood and would not be able to accomplish all she needed to do. Then, finally, there was another quite different person, whom I felt as a distinct shift in her energy took place toward the end. She was totally peaceful, looking at all of the steps which she needed to accomplish while in physical form in order for her to be in the place she is in right now, a place of total balance and tranquility.
Peter: We have experienced a number of variations in the way subjects carry on the dialogue with us. Marie had adopted France and its language, and she often puzzled us with her use of formal repetition and by the apparent French construction of her sentences. To make what she said a little more plain for modern English readers, these characteristics have been smoothed somewhat in our editing, which has met with her subsequent approval.
It is somewhat amazing to observe the nonchalance with which painful human experiences are viewed from the vantage point of our spiritual Home. It is difficult not to suggest that Mme. Curie’s stoical attitude to the agonizing end of her physical life is a spiritual rationalization: “Was my life worth that? Very definitely it was worth everything that I endured.” Her bravery took place only in the context of her physicality. Spiritually speaking, the suffering that Marie endured was all part of a plan worked out before she came down here, just as she had a contract with Pierre’s soul that he (whom she loved so intensely) would abandon her by dying suddenly in a street accident.
If all this seems foreign to you, keep on reading. We have found that attitudes adopted by souls are constant and loving. It is we who must be open to allowing a shift in our thinking so we may accept the very different view they have of human life, its hardships and difficulties. Marie starts us off by showing us a new angle on life to which few people have ever been so exposed. The manner in which souls at Home (living within the energy of unconditional love) reason about life is hugely different from the way we human beings (living within the polarized energy of planet Earth) look at things. Perhaps we should recall the scripture: “For now we look through a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” (I Cor. 13:9 - RSV)
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“I felt that my physical restraints were unjust—even though I know now they were things I chose to experience.”
Helen Keller
Helen Keller, thank you for being with us. The doctors never identified the childhood illness that resulted in your deafness and blindness. Was it scarlet fever or meningitis?
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It was scarlet fever that attacked the nerves.
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You wrote, “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” Will you tell us what you had in mind?
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Well, the first door that we access as an incarnate soul is that of being able to live in the world with all our physical senses—being able to see, being able to hear, being able to interact with things, knowing the near, and knowing the far. When that door closes we have to interpret everything from inside ourselves, to find the strength that we have within us, and not be dependent upon what we can grab hold of, or lean on. During the time after it was discovered that I did not have my normal senses, my parents indulged me in every way, shape, and form. I became quite a brat because I was allowed to. Everything I wanted, I could have. I did not have to learn any of the normal proprieties or anything else. Because I couldn’t hear disapproval from anyone, there was no realization of my going beyond the norms of society. Since anything I tried was in essence rewarded, I thought my behavior was normal. It wasn’t until dear Anne Sullivan arrived that I discovered there were rules that applied to me as well.
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You were under two years old when you fell ill. Much is made of your childhood anger (you just called yourself “a brat”), but by age seven you had actually invented more than sixty different signs to communicate with your family. Had you already begun on your own to open the door to your future?
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I guess you could say that. I had an insatiable need to be able to interact with people, and communication is the only way to do that. Not having had, at that point, formal training in any organized or recognized means of communication, I found ways to make myself known and to be understood by other people. If you look upon it as substitution for what I later learned, sign language and Braille, then yes, I was on the way to a form of communication that opened a door of interaction with other than the recognized five senses.
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