Dear Mr Fusion,

Esoterically speaking, there are old teachings that indicate something similar. The basic idea (as you will well know) is that there are many levels of sentience from Universal Consciousness on down. And conversely, from us on up.

The level called The Monad can create from itself up to 128 souls (very binary) if I remember rightly. Those souls originally incarnate as individuals, but after suitable experience here, they each become an over-soul, and can split again. Not all lowest level splits are in incarnation at any one moment, though I suspect most want to be here at this seminal time.

I guess the idea of soul family also comes from an aspect of this rather pyramidal structure. Maybe the being in the book you mention refers to a Monad being, or higher?

Then, of course, there is the spiritual meme 'We are all one'. Undoubtedly true in the sense that we all ultimately come from the same source. But this meme is rather in danger of missing the point: we all came here to become individuated and develop many skills and faculties of our own. Oneness is a sound concept, but I for one don't think our purpose is to work our way back into some kind of high frequency primordial soup called God (or whoever). Rather, I see the universal consciousness as being the sum total of all developing sentient life-forms.

So, your book may well be right - and these ideas are not mutually exclusive, they are just being seen from different levels of consciousness.

All best,
Xavier Hermes

: But that is ridiculous, right?

: I came up up with that thought after reading the old SF novel

: Timeliner by Charles Eric Maine. But I wouldn't want to
: spoil it by revealing why it gave me that idea.

: