Past Lives of Famous People Gallery

My Story—David Bengtson

David Bengtson and His Adventures

1944—2013

• B.S. Social Work	• Adventurer
• Vietnam Veteran	• Green Beret
• Sandblaster Tradesman	• Family Man
• Honorable and Loved Person

David Bengtson grew up in rural San Diego North County in Southern California. His father was a journeyman finish carpenter and veteran of WWII. His mother was a beautician who worked for the Hollywood studios when she was single. As the oldest of three children, David cultivated a charismatic personality and acheived many leadership skills. He was an all-league football player and state champion wrestler—undefeated for two years—and was awarded Outstanding Athlete of Vista High in 1962. He could even play an impressive blues harmonica!

After graduating from high school, he worked in construction, attended Palomar College, and traveled the world. He lived for a year in Mexico and perfected his Spanish, meanwhile developing a fondness for Frontera music. He was drafted in 1965, joined the Special Forces and served his full term in Vietnam. During the summer of 1968, he filmed a canoe adventure down the entire Yukon River that he made with a fellow veteran.

In time he became a father, construction tradesman, and author. He achieved his Bachelors degree from San Diego State while still running his sandblasing business and raising his two children as a single parent. Married three times to beautiful, well-educated, and talented women, he found family happiness and stability with lovely wife Denise. Together they reared their patchwork family of four children, then retired and explored the world.

David enjoyed nature, especially the deserts, mountains, and oak trees of the west. He was a natural teacher with a great love for history, art, and America. He had a quiet and passionate Christian faith which he exemplified through moral conduct, a forgiving nature, and calm, wise, kind speech. A guiding phrase of his was: “the Attitude of Gratitude.”

He died peacefully, surrounded by his family, on September 5, 2013. His wife, friends, children, and grandchildren remember him with with deep affection.

As I describe in the introduction to my book, Past Lives of Famous People; Journeys of the Soul, an awareness of past lives has been a constant experience of mine from early adulthood on. Over the years I have learned to practice a type of “focus” meditation which allows me to tune in to the Akashic Record, “the record of lives”.

Beginning in the early nineteen seventies, I started keeping a meditation journal. In my meditations I would occasionally experience an unusual, direct visual inclusion into past times, scenes, and places. This is a type of waking lucid dream state. Eventually, this inner meditative experience of historical times and places began to include an awareness of, and intuitive insights into, past lives of historical people. What began as a general meditation journal many years ago eventually evolved into more extensive past life journals.

After receiving a vision, or as it is sometimes called, “a word of knowledge”, concerning a past life of some historical person, I would note the name and connections, then I would go to a local library to compare those notes with existing biographical records. I didn’t feel sure of the connection until I found solid intuitive confirmation in researching the biographies. I was fascinated by what I found. Usually the historical people (who I had connected in terms of reincarnation) had comparative lives that seemed to dovetail with one another in spiritually comprehensible ways. Most often I would discover these details after the fact. In researching historical biography I was able to find many telling connective points that were not known to me before I began the study. I often found interesting patterns of psychic correspondence or similarity—including, for example, occasional phonetic correspondences in names and places, and other subtle psychic connectors bridging between the lives, across centuries

Seeking inner recognition of past lives of famous people in history has been a passion for me, a hobby which I call “akashic mining”. Akashic mining is the process of sifting through the “pool of akashic memory” in meditation, discovering “gems” of historical past lives, researching the existing historical record (to find good comparative biographies) if possible, and also locating good images of these people.

Every day is a day of discovery. I love the big questions of life. I want to know why life seems to be the way it is. What are the important metaphysical realities that sustain this chrysalis of life in which we live? What dimensions of spiritual reality exist behind and beyond the veil of physical nature? What is physical nature?

Over the years my journal notebooks have grown to a substantial collection. By now this collection includes insights into the past lives of hundreds of historical people. I hope that with this work many will discover the joy of learning about past lives in history.

The Power of Portraits and Images

I was inspired to start collecting photos and historical portraits of past lives of famous people only after seeing an interesting article in the National Enquirer (of all places) in the mid 1980’s. That National Enquirer article presented two other lives of President Richard M. Nixon, complete with portrait images of these past lives as reported by a woman, I think from California, who was an akashic reader. (I am sorry to say that I didn't note her name). Sadly, I didn't keep a copy of that article.

Richard Milhous Nixon
(1974— )

James Madison
(1913—1994)

Former President Richard M. Nixon had been a favorite case study of mine for some years prior to seeing that article in the National Enquirer. My interest in Nixon was strong, in part because I knew how much of world history was represented in his past lives, (for better or for worse). I had already perceived and noted this series of past lives presented in the National Enquirer, before I read the article. I knew, for example, that Richard Nixon was the reincarnation of a former American President. I knew that his soul history was intimately connected with the American national experience. And I knew the article was right.

It impressed and even amazed me to see Richard Nixon’s past life connections openly discussed in a magazine. But what most impressed me was the impact of the historical portraits that were run with the article. Until then, I had not realized how powerful personal facial images can be for generating psychic contact with inner soul realities. It had not occurred to me (before then) to start collecting such portraits. The Gallery of Past Lives is designed to demonstrate the power that such images have in connecting past lives. When you visit the Gallery, you will see what I mean.

How Do I Do It and Why?

For me, seeing images in the akashic light is halfway between a dream and a full vision. I retain memory of what I have seen, but it is still a “secondary” memory and not always perfect.

For example, if I close my eyes, in real time, after driving through part of a city, I may be able to describe what the advertising bill boards along the road said. In this ordinary use of memory, I may be able to recall, city streets and buildings, pictures and the faces displayed on the advertising, and I may remember what these advertisements were communicating, but I might also miss some details. What I am doing in my work with the lucid akashic recall is to draw insights from these memories, and then to give comments on general highlights, or “road markers”, if you will, that I recall seeing in my meditations. Famous lives become basic “markers” in terms of times and cultures, which are recorded along the “highway” of history.

After one of these meditations I can recall glimpses into past life connections of very famous people easily. I can recall other lives they may be associated with, partially because the subject interests me so much. But I can't remember everything, and I may forget something important, only to rediscover the same thing over again months later.

How does this awareness come to me? What exactly is it that I do? Do I have a special method? Actually I am unable to explain it all that well. I do not consider myself a teacher of any particular method. I am only responding to an inner “calling” to make public certain glimpses or insights into past-life history. I see myself as a witness to history, as an observer in the theater of life. Furthermore, I do not think that self-assessment is very trustworthy. So I will simply stick to examples of what I perceive. In presenting these examples of past lives I will continue to try to explain how this awareness comes to me. The student must draw his own conclusions.

In offering this explanation I am trying to communicate some idea of what it is like to have awareness of the past through contact with the Akashic Record. Sometimes this awareness includes insights concerning those around me. Sometimes they are “instant insights” based on some connection from the popular culture; but mostly my examples are drawn from actual historical research, carefully done in connection with quiet meditation.

Conscious experience of the record of life does not happen to me at will every time I try, but only occasionally, and usually only during periods of intense concentration. These active periods (an hour here, and an hour there) may come and go for a few weeks; then the visions, and the thought that accompanies it, will grow silent for a few weeks of quiet reflection on the experiences.

The process (to me) of akashic recall is an intuitive one and not a matter of any secret formula. My background is one of Christian mysticism. I am a mystic; my approach to inner spiritual matters is one of spiritual attention to the higher powers of divinity, and the Angels of God (as messengers of our awakening), rather than through some specific exercise. Nonetheless, there are some exercises that I have used in the past which could interest the reader. In the section titled Your Personal Journey I will discuss this some more.

What I know for sure concerning akashic history is that a study of past lives of famous people can inspire genuine soul growth. I don't know how this works exactly, but it does. I think it has to do with an increased intuitive sensitivity which then strengthens the influence of the soul-mind over the personality. There is much more to say on this subject. Visit the Halls of Learning to find discussions of many principles of metaphysical and spiritual importance.

In my early twenties, I had help from the well known Christian mystic and accomplished clairvoyant, the Reverend Flower A Newhouse. Her vision and mystical insight provided me with some very good dynamic beginning points for akashic meditative work. I was helped by meditating on many past life connections of famous people mentioned by Flower. I would have loved, at that time, to have had access to an even larger resource of past life connections (such as this one) representing the work of someone who had spent a lifetime recording akashic insights and past life connections. I am presenting now what I would have liked to have found many years ago. As we say, “what goes around, comes around”. So here it is. I present a thirty year collection of akashic “gems”. This accumulated work is for those that are interested in this subject, and for future generations.