Understanding how your brain works, how it gives and receives messages, and how all parts of it connect and correspond in a very precise manner, is not easy. Dream studies themselves have had years and years of research and theories applied to them.  But all we really need know, is that just above the medulla – the back of the neck – are specific areas of the lobes, whose job it is to control, among other things, memory and individuality.

It is believed by most regression therapists that your past-life memories are stored in the subconscious mind. You begin each life with a new conscious mind, while retaining your previous subconscious mind. Therefore you cannot readily recall previous lives, because you have no conscious memory of them.

When you sleep, you enter into cycles of approximately 90 minutes in which you dip in and out of the phases of sleep known as beta, alpha, theta and delta, and of course REM. You cannot recall your dreams while we are in beta, just as you cannot recall your past lives in that state. The connection between the two is already pronounced.

It is important to realize that scientific knowledge is not the only form of knowledge. Beyond it, there is mental knowledge and contemplative knowledge. So let’s compare and contrast.

Some of you believe in your dreams. Some of you believe in your past-lives. Both are experienced while out of the beta state. Both seem removed, yet oddly familiar, from your current life. Both often fill you with questions and answers.

In the book Our Dreaming Mind, Robert Van De Castle suggest: “If an impressive correspondence between a dream and some highly unlikely incident exists, it offers evidence that your dreaming mind didn’t just imagine, but actually perceived the incident, even though that information lay outside the apparent sensory boundaries within which we operate during our waking hours.”

Carl Jung referred to dreams as a “drama taking place on one’s interior stage”. And his premise of the collective unconscious led him to subscribe to the notion that it contained information that predated any individuals’ personal existence, and, that it functioned far below the level of the individual unconscious.

The similarities are great. We have evidence to support healings, elevated symptoms, and overall betterment, using the process of past-life regression therapy. Whether one believes in the concept of reincarnation or not, healing can, and does, take place.

Van De Castle goes on to discuss the same spontaneous healings associated with dreams: “Some people have reported dreams in which healing spontaneously occurred while they were dreaming: suggestive evidence that organic disturbances that are not picked up in waking consciousness can sometimes be represented fully in our dreams”.

The explanations of the unexplainable again.

Whether you believe past-life memories are actual memories, or dreams, or merely fantasies, if it works, is there really a need to question it? 

The induction techniques of regression therapy merely involve deep relaxation, breathing, and gentle focused words. There is absolutely nothing mysterious about it. Any apprehension is a session does not lie in the induction, but in the need to “try” and “find” a past-life.

I always tell my clients that the harder they try to experience a past-life, the more difficult the process will be. The ability to let go and simply be, is all that is required both for regression therapy.

Astrologer, teacher and author Jeanne Avery: “Memory lies closer to the surface of our minds than we care to believe. With only a small amount of permission and guidance, the subconscious appears eager to unload the burden that has been carried around for centuries, perhaps eons. The profound relief that most people experience after such a session is reason enough to delve within.”

If there is a previously selected lifetime that the client wishes to explore, we certainly attempt to locate that memory. But often with the simple request to find a significant lifetime to the one they are currently living in, releases events quicker, easier, and often more clearly focused.

For example, if we are in the market to purchase a new vehicle, we may be in the process of doing research on selecting the appropriate one. Our eyes may be suddenly noticing select cars around us whenever we are on the road.

When we have narrowed our selection, we may now find that we begin to notice that particular car every time we go out. Our selection viewing is in action. What is on our minds is in our chosen focus, and how we view that image is also up to our critical mind.

Therefore, when I make the request that has current relevance to the lifetime they are living at present, their minds selective viewing quickly focuses and chooses for that is what it does best. It is far easier to find a past-life if the mind is allowed to bring up a memory of an event that is affecting it in its current life.

Psychiatrist and author Brian Weiss also insists that the process does not always reveal what we might think we want. Many who don’t want to go to past- lives, go to past-lives, and others, trying to go to a past-life, remember traumatic experiences from childhood. I couldn’t agree more! Dr. Weiss concludes that this may indeed be the best explanation for the popularity of exploring past-lives, because it brings a new understanding to our current lives.

So, locating a past-life is not a difficult process, especially if one is attempting to find resolution to a current problem or issue. Careful wording of the direction we want the subconscious mind to go in, is fundamental, and from there, a client may move backward or forward in time, or in that particular memory, in order to clarify or deepen the impressions he is experiencing, until all the blanks are filled in and complete memory emerges, exposing all the complexities and indeed simplicities that it encapsulates.

In almost every regression that I have conducted, the past-life memory mirrors a conflict or issue in the person’s current life. Regression work allows us to arrive at the root of the issue quickly, instead of spending hours going over the problem in this lifetime alone. 

Literature is filled with gruesome tales of death and decay. Edgar Allan Poe’s stories have stood the test of time. The vampire legends not only live on, but flourish in today’s reader/viewer-ship.

We might want to believe in rebirth, but our fears of the unknown haunt us. Whether one believes in reincarnation or in the more conventional concepts of Heaven and Hell, there are still people who will doubt either premise, and that is one of the best reasons to explore one’s past lives.

Mother Theresa said, “Death is nothing but a continuation of life, the completion of life, the surrendering of the human body. But the heart and the soul live forever…and if it was properly explained….there would be no fear.”

Paraphrased, the first law of physics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Are we not bundles of energy?

If we have learnt nothing else on our time on earth, it is that time does not stand still. Everything around us is changing. Why do we feel we could be any different than the rhythmic patterns found everywhere in our universe. We are as much a part of the universe as everything else, and as we gain the perspective of this great wheel of existence, we begin to see that all the spokes begin from the centre, and that only at the rim of the wheel do the spokes seem separate from other relationships with each other.

One of the most intelligent minds of recent years, Richard Tarnas, writes of Plato’s account of Socrates last hours, “It would appear that Socrates so highly valued this state of archetypal awareness transcending physical existence that he expressed equanimity, even eagerness in anticipation of his death by hemlock. His entire life, he declared, had been directed toward this moment of embracing  death, when the soul could at last return to the glory of its immortal state.”

It seems Socrates passionately affirmed confidence in the reality of the eternal.

Learning to embrace death is not just learning to let go of all that we hold dear and familiar. We often forget that we have memories of the grander spiritual realm and that we in essence, have two homes.

As much as we might look forward to spending time at our summer cottage by the lake, when summer fades and autumn arrives, we can equally look forward to spending time at our cozy winter home.

Using his scientist’s eye and philosopher’s heart, author Gary Zukav helps to demythologize some of the physics in The Seat Of The Soul:

When you return home, when you leave your personality and body behind, you will leave behind your inadequacies, your fears, and angers and jealousies. They do not, and cannot, exist within the realm of spirit. They are the experiences of the personality, of time and matter. You will once again enter the fullness of who you are. You will perceive with loving eyes and compassionate understanding, the experiences of your life, including those that seemed so much to control you.  You will see what purpose they served. You will survey what has been learned, and you will bring these things into your next incarnation.

Regression therapy offers the meaning of life, and the promise of life after death through experience. Once you have been there, you will no longer doubt the fear.

In Jess Stearns most fascinating case of The Search For The Girl With The Blue Eyes, Joanne MacIver vividly remembered her life as Susan Ganier. Afterwards, “Joanne was not frightened of life, or death…Death was no longer oblivion, but a promise.”

My clients acknowledge that when they remember their past-lives and past deaths, the after death experiences are always the most weightless, freeing, surrendering times.

 

The inquisitive minds of children can certainly blossom in youth. They are naturally full of questions of identity and their place in the world. Some approach this path from within, and some find their answers to who they are, as they understand more about the universe first.

Many of my clients are under 19 years old. Their exposure into this realm of phenomena is everywhere. Bookstores and the internet are filled with young adult novels that specialize in supernatural, extrasensory, paranormal and time traveling. 

So I checked out many of the current and classic novels and found their approach to the subject of past lives, informative and romantic. Classic titles such as A Wrinkle In Time, The Shadow On The Dial, Both Sides Of Time and Stuck Fast In Yesterday, all pursued the plots of average teenagers accidentally finding a pathway into the past, thereby experiencing an adventure in a romantic or dramatic era, before returning, always in the nick of time of some impending danger, and always to the satisfaction of the “time traveler”. The reader is left having had their adventure, adrenaline flowing, and a desire for more.

These children and teenagers then dream, fantasize, and discuss their wants and desires with their closest friends. If we can imagine it, it can be so. And these type of writings that foster their imagination and perhaps tug on a familiar note, can only expand on their understandings of unlimited possibilities.

These readers connect with me as clients, asking to experience what they firmly believe, via a past-life regression session. It is with great pleasure that I assist them through their own real life adventure.

The next age group of explorers I connect with are college youths. Their lives are programmed for years of learning and absorbing all that they can. They are walking sponges and they have a need to explore what they say has been with them since they were young.

Even when the age of the client increases, most of them tell me that the idea of past-lives is something they have believed in for most of their life, and they just “happened to see” one of my articles or my website. Hmmmm. 

Like many of my clients, I do not remember exactly when I heard or read about the philosophy of reincarnation, or the idea of regression therapy. I do know that the ideas felt like a second skin, and I had no doubt about the reality of it. It was during the formative years that further exposure to these concepts le me to the school librarian and several teachers, with many questions. I was lucky to find a few books on the school shelves, and a few open-minded teachers who listened more than they talked. My thirst for this knowledge, and the desire to experience it, was therefore not squelched, but instead, let to grow. Embedded to grow and flourish later.

There is a lot of evidence that supports the idea that many references of reincarnation that were originally part of the Bible and the Christian theology, were purged or modified at the Fifth Ecumenical Congress of Constantinople in A.D. 553.  

Even philosopher Plato’s writings were disregarded and denounced.  At this time, it is believed, members of the Council chose to adopt a new streamlined version in order to help solidify Christian control.

Until recently, almost all Church historians have believed that the doctrine of rebirth was officially dropped at the Council of Constantinople in the year 553 and thus declared heretical. But the damming of the rebirth doctrine is traceable to a personal attack by the Emperor Justinian, which never entered the protocols of the Council. 

It seems Justinians’ wife had a somewhat shameful past as a courtesan and in her rise to power ordered the torture and death of 500 of her earlier clients. Believing that the karmic doctrine meant she would have to suffer the full consequences for these cruel acts in a subsequent lifetime, she set about having the entire teaching of rebirth simply abolished. Historian Holger Kersten states, “The prohibition of the rebirth doctrine is therefore simply an error of history and lacking all ecclesiastical validity.” 

So, the Bible as we know it, has only retained a few references that could be indicative of a knowledge, and even acceptance, of reincarnation.

John 9:1-2: And as Jesus passed by he saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he is born blind?”

Revelations 3:12: He that overcometh, will I make a pillar in the Temple of the Lord, and he shall go no more out.

Still, these verses can be misconstrued and are subject to interpretation, just as the subject of vegetarianism is both defended and denied.

But prior to the changes in the Christian Bible, we had quotations from St. Gregory (A.D. 257-332) stating: It is absolutely necessary that the soul should be healed and purified, and if this does not take place during its life on earth, it must be accomplished in future lives.

And from The Republic by Plato (582-507 B.C.): Know that if you become worse, you will go to the worse souls, and if better, to the better souls, and in every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like must fittingly suffer at the hands of like.

Reincarnation was certainly regarded as a basic philosophy by Hindus, Buddhists and Christians at one time. Death was seen as simply the birth into a new state of existence, a new cosmic address, if you will.

The idea of past-lives is nothing new. In most of the world’s religions, the soul is believed to return to the body, time and time until it reaches a state of enlightenment.

Many believe that it is our intuition therefore that leads us to comprehend and realize that we are on a journey of the soul back to our original source, and that what occurs in each lifetime is necessary for the stage of that journey.

Reincarnation is seen as very spiritual, in fact a spiritual vehicle to help clarify the spiritual nature of our existence, and is accepted by more people all the time. Frank Tippler, author of one of my favourite books, The Physics of Immortality: The idea of reincarnation, which is based on a strict dualism between body and soul, is central to modern Hinduism and Buddhism. But reincarnation, and the dualism upon which it is based, is actually a rather recent development in Indian thought. It apparently arose around 600 B.C. and spread rapidly, becoming universally accepted within a century.

More and more the concepts of God, reincarnation, and past-life regression are being interwoven and understood. Our search for spirituality is taking a front seat as we come to recognize that our sense of spirituality is deep within us. So often we look outside ourselves for answers, even for our own inner sense of spiritual. Yet it is an inner self that connects us with the universe. It is in looking within that we finally come to terms with our whole self.

Whatever else the Bible may be to those who follow its precepts, it can truthfully be said to be the work of a continuously recorded (although modified) history of mankind. But the Bible’s historical record is merely a secondary consideration in light of its predominant teaching of a basic belief system – even if that system is, at present, severely dismembered. 

No one is as firmly entrenched in the philosophy of reincarnation as the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. For fourteen generations Tibetans have succeeded in tracing the lineage of one reincarnated soul (the first Dalai Lama) down to the 14th and current.

After each Dalai Lama passes on, the belief is that he will reincarnate again within 49 days. The quest for this reincarnated soul is combined with the new child’s coming to terms with an understanding of a past-life that is still typically hidden from his conscious mind.

Upon the child’s arrival to the Tibetan temple, a series of identification tests are set up to confirm that the Dalai Lama has again been found and will therefore continue along the path of enlightenment and leadership.

The longevity of the Dalai Lama’s lineage is testimony to the span of time that we have had believers and practitioners of reincarnation and past-life recall.

Sigmund Freud made the unconscious conscious in an effort to restore healing via hypnosis and later, free association. His student, Carl Jung, added the spiritual aspect, the collective unconscious theory.  “If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change.” He further stated, “I could very well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries…my life, as I lived it, had often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end.”

Edgar Cayce, popularly known as “the sleeping prophet”, fine-tuned his abilities at channeling information and guidance about one’s past-lives, in the 1920’s and 30’s.

American businessman Henry Ford said (in the Hearst Papers in 1938), “I adopted the theory of reincarnation when I was 26…Religion offered nothing to the point…Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life to the next. When I discovered reincarnation, it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock.”

Even Albert Einstein believed: “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

By the 1950’s, Dianetics came out. It was a direct approach to accessing ones past-lives, later emerging as Scientology.

The case of Bridey Murphy came to the forefront at this time, and stands out as one of the earliest and most exploited by the media.  Bridey Murphy was the name of an Irish girl recalled by Ruth Simmons by hypnotist Morey Bernstein.

In the 60’s and ‘70’s, more and more professional and nonprofessional books were published to substantiate the belief in past-life recall. British author Joan Grant recalled more than 30 previous incarnations, and her “far memory” assisted her in writing many historical novels. Grant’s husband, psychiatrist Denys Kelsy, used reincarnation and hypnosis as psychotherapeutic tools in his private practice.

There were countless others -  Jess Stearn, Ian Stevenson, Edith Fiore…each taking a rightful place as bearers of past-life regression therapy to the masses.

In 1980, an association of professional practitioners and researchers began in California by Hazel Denning and 50 past-life practitioners. Currently it exceeds 2000 members worldwide (and I’ve been a proud member for almost 20 years).

Through the centuries, many have written their views on reincarnation, from renaissance poet William Blake, to playwright William Shakespeare. It seems we know something deep within – we feel it, and we acknowledge it.

We have been influenced by modern physics and psychobiology which supports that all energy fields, such as behaviour and patterns, cannot end. They can only be transmitted.

The evidence for reincarnation therefore is in us. The proof is not from without, but from within, and that’s not new.

“While it is surely a comforting idea, reincarnation remains a challenge to scientifically prove, although some intriguing evidence does.” 
Diane Goldner

A belief in reincarnation is not vitally important for therapy or even exploration to take place. The process of going through and working out an experience is all that is necessary.

Some people doubt the validity of reincarnation before the initial session, and some will still doubt it after one or more experiences.

It’s not my purpose to prove or disprove the concept of reincarnation. Even with all the cases of reincarnation that have been recorded, there are still people who will doubt its validity. And that is every persons right.

If a client books a session with me for exploration, they are not necessarily going to feel contentment at the end, as much as a feeling of infinity. A door has been opened. One that they knew was there, and one they could have kept closed by their own choice. After a successful session however, the door that leads to an infinite amount of possibilities in their lives has forever been removed.

Reincarnation is not so much a belief as it is a philosophy. It’s a philosophy of life. The Oxford dictionary defines philosophy as “seeking of knowledge concerning the ultimate reality”. Therefore reincarnation is not so much a commitment to a fact, as much as it is a commitment to an opening up – an understanding that there is more to life than meets the eye.

In a therapeutic setting, simply allowing the experience to exist, is all that is initially required. Regression therapy is a powerful addition to conventional therapy, and it is used both to remit symptoms speedily and effectively, and to purge and harmonize the original cause of the conflict.

This process of assisting a client in bringing their energy field into a state of balance, is necessary work, and is realized only when acknowledgement is made that the presenting problem is never the real and complete issue. There is a core psychological issue beneath the presenting problem - a core issue with a constellation of past lives clustered around it.

What changes - what heals - are the emotions, for it is the emotions that create our reality. They are the special characteristics of physical experience. I do not have to believe I am sad to produce tears. A belief, in this instance, is often an intellectual denial. The emotions are ruling my physical and psychological self, no matter what I choose to believe.
Through regression therapy, a healing - an understanding - can take place by reliving an experience with the benefits of hindsight. This deeply affects the emotions the same way it affected them the first time.

We do not have to believe it is true and accurate recall, or even that it is part of us. We can simply use it as a metaphor offered up for our examination, and leave it at that.

The efficacy of regression therapy is agreed upon by therapists and practitioners, simply because of its truth. The results are the same, whether belief is there or not.

Armed with half a dozen or so simple questions and a yellow pad, I sought out individuals throughout the city of Vancouver and casually stated I was taking a personal survey on past-life regression.

My first question went right to the soul of the matter and let me know if they would willingly answer more. “Do you believe you have lived before?”

72% said yes! The rest didn’t necessarily say no, they just didn’t reply. Understood. Coffee breaks can be short. No one needs to be bothered.

When I asked, “who do you think you were in a past-life?” I prefaced it with “you don’t have to necessarily believe in past-lives. In your imagination, if they could have lived before, who did they think you could have been?” The answers flowed….

57% came up with famous and infamous people from the past. No surprise. The men always chose men from the past. The woman chose both sexes. That was surprising.

24% chose a type of person. They characterized traits, mannerisms, economic level, status. For example, one woman claimed if she could have lived before, it must have been as a wealthy princess, “because I’m still expecting the servants and cleaning ladies to come in the door any minute”.

Another woman brought up relationships. “If I had a life before, I bet I was as miserable as I am now, and I bet he was too.”  She was referring to her unhappy relationship, I gathered. And she nodded to her female companion for sympathy.

Only one person even suggested transmigration. “I have a silly belief that I must have been a fish, because ever since I’ve moved here, I feel so at home.” The fact that she chose an animal did not seem in the least to surprise or puzzle her.

“Do you believe who you have been before has any barring on who you are now?” I omitted even the words past-life. I wanted a more organic stretch, whether than included other lifetimes or not.

Many claimed heredity could be responsible for at least part of who they were today. Some involved, and even blamed, their parents. But the majority of surveyed individuals all took responsibility for themselves in this lifetime. A positive realization. I ventured further and elaborated a bit on the question, hoping to stimulate some thought. But unfortunately, even those that gave reincarnation a possibility of existing were still closed minded about passing on any components of their make-up from lifetime to lifetime.

Still, those that claimed heredity could be partially responsible for who they were now, gave me something to think about. Two people discussed DNA as their theory, and listed the concept of “passing on physical weakness” as an example of this. Were they not stating that parts of a person could be transferred from person to person, through time and physical contact? How big a leap did they really need to make then?

I bit my tongue and listened, but without entering into the conversation, their one-sided comments fell flat.

“Do you blame the past for your present troubles?”

Perhaps it was the word blame that intrigued them. If they believed that genetics could transfer something unspecific to them and contribute somehow to their present troubles, then I knew I wanted to hear more. It seemed some individuals believed their lives weren’t completely self-enclosed after all. They seemed to believe that the evolution of human beings affected them in ways that were present even today. Hmmm…

“Would you participate in a past-life regression session to get a better understanding of who you were and why things have happened to you?”  I could feel the second part of the question, “why things have happened to you”, tensing people.

Taken as a novelty, the idea of participating in a past-life regression sounded amusing to about 72% of those surveyed. The other 28% gave me a skittish no, with no further explanation. They were spooked. But the 72% didn’t actually say yes. Some asked questions such as “who would do the regression?” “Is it difficult to do?” “How long would it take?” Cautious, but curious.

“Do you feel that understanding something about your past life could make a positive contribution to your present life?”

I was delighted to hear the factors they believed might contribute toward a better life.

They believed that any type of understanding or healing of one’s past was beneficial, including past lives. Well, they had the right attitude.

I took my yellow pad and ordered a tall dark roast. The answers pleased me overall. I saw that their beliefs about reincarnation were quite different from their beliefs about the flow of life. As an organic concept, when it all came together, it made sense to the open-minded thinkers. We were definitely in the 21st century about it all. Thank goodness.