Unlike the spontaneous, volunteered claims by very young children (usually aged between 3 and about 6) about an immediate past life, regressions under hypnosis by adults to past lives – especially multiple past lives – cannot be as easily accepted as credible; they cannot be investigated by interrogating anyone alive for confirmation.
My personal concern is of cryptomnesia (false memory). That could be triggered by the subject’s imagination and nature. In all investigations of the paranormal, some corruption by a parent, or a certain extent of subconscious recall by adults of what had been read or heard of – and interpreted through imagination – could be expected. The human mind is extensible and thereby fallible.
The great debunker Ian Wilson (refer his ‘After Death Experience’), in asking “Is a genuine ‘past life’ coming through?” when examining past-life regressions under hypnosis, begins with the Bridey Murphy case. Lacking verifiable historical information, that case was left in limbo (so to speak). However, good ‘deep trance’ subjects have reported regressions to past lives over the years. Wilson accepts that “there is not the slightest evidence for deliberate, conscious fraud on the part of either hypnotist or the subject hypnotised.”
Yet, “… many of these run-of-the-mill regressions can show signs of the subject fantasizing, or drawing on present twentieth-century knowledge, rather than knowledge of the period appropriate to his or her ‘past life.’” As well, while ‘suggestion’ by the hypnotist can, in fairness, be ruled out, subjects may be influenced by any ‘expectations’ expressed by a hypnotist; for ex ample, that there is no ‘no rest between one life and another.’
Credibly, Ian Wilson asks “… why we retain in our minds material that we cannot get access to without the aid of a hypnotist? … ‘we’, whatever ‘we’ might be, are something of rather more permanence than our physical bodies?” This is an encouraging conclusion by one who seems to have difficulty acknowledging the existence of human souls.
Hans TenDam (refer ‘Exploring Reincarnation’) makes a sound distinction between adult recollection and past-life regression under hypnosis. “Full regression, originally a hypnotic state, brings back memories, but more intense, more like reliving than remembering … we experience the situation just as it happened at that time.” That makes the reported regressed life more credible. Since “Hypnosis is a psychotic shift in consciousness, not a loss of will” (TenDam), the hypnotist needs to be trustworthy.
Hypnosis is subject to certain fears: that the subject is open to suggestion; losing control; given instructions contrary to one’s beliefs; or psychologically damaging; but all are without foundation. Stage hypnosis can, of course, be based on ridicule; but in fun.
Strangely, hypnosis can ease or solve psychosomatic complaints. Physical trauma in a past life can apparently manifest itself in the present body. Two friends and I can attest to seers removing specific pains. In my case, the seer/healer called upon her Spirit Healer to identify a couple of my past live traumas. When I challenged her by pointing out that my past lives are surely private (within my soul memory, possibly), she said that her Healer had access to them. What could I say?
After her healing, my pains disappeared, for ever. And I had not told anyone about them. What could I then say? And I had consulted the healer only in an investigative capacity; to learn about psychic healing. My friends had comparable experiences.
TenDam concludes from his survey thus: “Apparently our soul registers every experience, conscious as well as unconscious. It stores all of our sensory impressions, all our beliefs and thoughts, all our semi-conscious and subconscious reactions.”
I am not sure that I want to delve too deeply into my past lives. Yet, the most recent one intrigues me. And I have intimations of aspects of that life, and where on the globe that occurred. I find that fascinating.
As well, I have clear evidence of life after death.
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 