Past life regression

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Past Life Regression (PLR) is typically undertaken for one of two reasons. First, in a therapeutic setting it can be used in an attempt to resolve a whole range of emotional, psychological or psychosomatic problems. Second, it can be used by the curious for a spiritual experience. Usually therapists use a light hypnosis trance inductions to regress clients into apparent past lives. Some PLR therapists also use bridging techniques from a client’s current life problem to bring past life stories to conscious awareness spontaneously. [1]. Most PLR experiences contain few historical details. Some are even short and brutal. Occasionally subjects come up with a plethora of names, dates and places that can be checked.

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[edit] Past life regression therapy

PLR therapy has been progressively developed since the 1950s by a number of professional psychologists and psychiatrists from the US, UK and Australia. The key researchers and their published findings are Alexander Cannon’s The Power Within (1950), Denys Kelsey’s Many Lifetimes (1967), Morris Netherton’s Past Lives Therapy (1978), Edith Fiore’s You Have Been Here Before (1978), Helen Wambach’s Reliving Past Lives (1978), Hans Ten Dam Exploring Reincarnation (1983), Roger Woolger’s Other Lives, Other Selves (1988) and Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters (1988). More recently PLR therapy has been integrated with current life regression and is called Regression Therapy. The psychologists and their findings that cover this are Andy Tomlinson’s Healing the Eternal Soul (2006) and Hans Ten Dam Deep Healing (1996).

As Ian Lawton states in his review of this material: “Nearly all of the early pioneers came to use PLR more or less by accident, or at least reluctantly, and were previously either Christian, agnostic or atheist. As a result, nearly all were profoundly skeptical of the results of their therapy at the outset, but gradually became convinced as their work progressed and they could no longer escape the obvious conclusion: that, as a therapeutic tool, PLR was able to produce dramatic, rapid and permanent improvements in certain clients who had spent years in conventional therapy with no significant improvement whatsoever. They all also emphasize that their clients existing religious beliefs, or lack of them, had no impact whatsoever on the success of their therapy.”[2]

A more formal study was conducted by Hazel Denning, who studied the results of a number of past life therapists with nearly 1000 subjects between 1985 and 1992. Results were measured just after the therapy, with a follow up five years afterwards. Of the 450 subjects who could still be tracked, 24% reported the symptoms had completely gone, 23% reported considerable or dramatic improvement and 17% reported noticeable improvement.[3]

[edit] The reality of lives recalled under PLR

Although most of the PLR pioneers saw past lives as the obvious conclusion, the apparent success of past life regression therapy does not necessarily indicate that the memories have any basis in reality. More modern therapists tend to accept that it works whether the apparent past lives can be proved or not. Moreover although other research might suggest that past lives are real, such as that of Ian Stevenson into children who remember past lives spontaneously, it cannot be used to validate lives recalled via PLR.

Skeptical sources such as Ian Wilson’s Mind out of Time and The After Death Experience (1981 and 1987), Paul Edwards’ Reincarnation (2002) and Melvin Harris’ Investigating the Unexplained (2003) have argued that past lives revealed by regression are nothing more than authentic sounding narratives that the subconscious creates using a mixture of imagination and normally acquired information that has been forgotten. This is properly referred to as cryptomnesia. For example, Harris was apparently able to show that the celebrated “Bloxham Tapes” were based on fictional sources that the subject, Jane Evans, must have read and then forgotten. This despite her almost photographic recall, use of different accents and apparent depth of emotions.[4]

It has since shown that, in at least one of the three lives recalled by Jane, the fictional source proffered by Harris clearly did not contain many of the most obscure details of her recall, and nor does it seem likely that they could be traced to any other normal source she might have accessed.[5] Further impressive cases are shown in Australian psychologist Peter Ramster’s documentary The Reincarnation Experiments (1983) and the accompanying book The Search for Lives Past (1990).

[edit] Criticism

Critics of past life regression say that memories of past lives can be explained as the result of imagination, confabulations or induced false memories.[6]

Professor Ian Stevenson, a past life researcher, stated concerns about hypnotic regression to previous lives.[7]

[edit] Paranormal alternatives

Even if some past lives revealed by PLR contain obscure details that are eventually verified this does not automatically mean that they prove the concept of reincarnation. Other possibilities include tapping into some form of universal memory that Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, or possession. However, supporters argue that the additional evidence provided by Life between lives regression does point to a continuity of the individual soul.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Andy Tomlinson, Healing the Eternal Soul (O Books, 2006), chapter 3, page 40-53.
  2. ^ Lawton, The Book of the Soul (Rational Spirituality Press, 2004), chapter 4, p. 73.
  3. ^ Snow, Chet, ‘Past-life Therapy: The Experiences of Twenty-Six Therapists’, Journal of Regression Therapy 1:2 (1986).
  4. ^ Harris, Investigating the Unexplained (Prometheus Books, 2003), chapter 18.
  5. ^ See Lawton, The Bloxham Tapes Revisited (2008) at www.ianlawton.com/plr1.htm.
  6. ^ Past life regression - Skeptic's Dictionary
  7. ^ Hypnotic Regression to Previous Lives

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links