Remembering Past Lives (3 page)

At this early stage, give yourself permission to enter hypnosis and while in the trance state, to travel into your past to retrieve whatever is relevant for you at the moment. Affirm that you will be in full and complete control throughout the trance experience. Further affirm that you can at any moment exit hypnosis by simply counting upward from one to five.

Step 2. Trance Induction

You are now ready to initiate the trance state using a combination of eye movement and reverse counting. Tell yourself that by shifting your eyes from side to side as you count backward from ten, you will enter the trance state. Further affirm that each count backward will take you deeper and deeper until you reach a successful trance state on the count of one.

As your eyes remain open, begin the procedure by slowly shifting your eyes upward and to your right without turning your head on the count of ten. Hold your eyes in that upper right position until they begin to tire. Then slowly shift your eyes downward and then upward to your left on the count of nine and hold them in that upper left position until they begin to tire. As you shift your eyes from side to side on each count, develop a rhythmic downward and then upward swinging movement, always holding your eyes in each upper position. You will notice your eyes becoming increasingly tired as you continue the rhythmic eye-movement and reverse-counting combination. Upon reaching the count of one, slowly close your eyes while still holding them in the upper position. Once your eyes are closed, let them return to their normal position. With your eyes now comfortably closed and the muscles around them relaxed, let yourself slowly enter the trance state.

Step 3. Deepening the Trance

As your eyes remain closed, deepen the trance state by taking a few moments to envision a very peaceful and tranquil scene and then letting yourself become progressively relaxed from your head downward. Notice first the relaxation around your eyes and then let it spread slowly over your face and then into your neck and shoulders. Let the relaxation then radiate into your shoulders and arms, right through the tips of your fingers. Then notice the relaxation in your chest and let it spread deep into your abdomen. Let the relaxation extend slowly downward, soaking into your hips, thighs, lower legs, and finally right through the tips of your toes.

As you remain comfortable and deeply relaxed, envision again a very peaceful scene—either the one you pictured earlier or a totally new one. Notice the pleasing details of the mental image, and let yourself absorb the tranquility of the scene. You are now at complete peace with yourself and the world.

You can at this point reach an even deeper level of hypnosis, should you decide to do so, by focusing your full attention on the little finger of either hand, noticing its weight, tingling, warmth, and so forth, and then mentally replacing these sensations with numbness. As your finger remains numb, let yourself go deeper and deeper into hypnosis. When you reach the desired trance level, allow the feeling to return and then move your finger slightly as a signal of your success. Again remind yourself that you are in full and complete control of the trance state.

(Note: With practice, you will find that the EM/RC procedure is a very flexible induction procedure that can be easily tailored to your own preferences and needs. Some people find that the rhythmic eye movement independent of reverse counting is sufficient to induce the trance state. Almost everyone will find that inserting such suggestions as “more and more relaxed” and “deeper and deeper” at times throughout the procedure facilitates the induction process. Should you enter a satisfactory trance state before completing the full EM/RC procedure, simply proceed to the next stage: regression to childhood.)

Step 4. Regression to Childhood

Once you've reached a successful trance level, begin your regression to childhood by envisioning a pleasant and festive event—perhaps a birthday party or holiday celebration. Take plenty of time to become a part of the remembered childhood experience and give yourself permission to use it as a springboard for past-life regression. You are now ready to begin the past-life regression experience using the Past-life Corridor procedure.

Step 5. Past-life Corridor Preliminaries

While remaining in the trance state, give yourself permission to use the trance as a vehicle for past-life regression. Re-affirm that you will experience only those past-life events that are relevant and presently useful to you. Remind yourself that you can at any moment end the trance state and return safely to the present by simply counting upward from one to five.

Affirm that you will be protected and secure throughout the regression experience.

You may decide at this point to invite a personal spirit guide to accompany you in your past-life probes.

Tell yourself that upon later exiting hypnosis, you will recall those past-life experiences that are important to you at this time. Affirm your ability to use past-life insight productively to enrich your present life and promote your future growth. Remind yourself that you will remain in full control throughout the regression experience.

Step 6. Entering the Past-life Corridor

You are now ready to enter the Past-life Corridor. Notice the brightly illuminated corridor stretching into the distance. Your personal past-life corridor is unique to you—it is unlike any other corridor. It can be of any combination of materials, colors, and shapes. It can, for instance, be of stone, marble, or gold. The colors can range from the boldest shades to the most delicate pastels.

On the sides of the corridor you will notice doors, one for each of your past lifetimes. If your present lifetime is your first, there will be no side doors. But if you have lived many lifetimes, there will, of course, be many doors. They, like the hallway itself, can be of a variety of materials, such as jade, amber, or glass. Their shapes can likewise vary, to include rectangular, round, heart-shaped, or oval, to list but a few of the possibilities.

Behind each door is a past lifetime, with the doors closest to the corridor's entrance representing your most recent lifetimes, and the doors in the distance representing your earlier lifetimes. By opening the door of your choosing, you can experience the events of that life which hold relevance for you at the moment.

At the far end of the bright corridor, you will notice a resplendent door representing your preexistence. Provided you have lived a previous lifetime, you will notice a second bright door situated to the right of the preexistence door. It represents your life between lifetimes in the spirit realm. Together, the two luminous side-by-side doors provide a gateway to the spirit realm as you experienced it in past life. You can at will open either door to gain the information you need concerning these important dimensions of your past. (In our studies, less than three percent of our subjects experienced no previous lifetimes upon entering the Past-life Corridor. For them, the corridor included only the preexistence door.)

Step 7. Experiencing Past Lifetimes

Upon entering the corridor, select the door that holds particular appeal for you at the moment. Almost always, it is the door that first commanded your attention, or the door that stands out as brightest among the others. Upon approaching the door, you may decide to open the door and view from the doorway the past life it represents, or you can step through the door and become an active participant in that past life.

As you experience the past lifetime you selected, either from the open door as a spectator or from beyond the door as an active participant, you can at will shift your awareness either forward or backward to experience it in as much scope and detail as you prefer. To shift forward, count 1, 2, 3; to shift backward, count 3, 2, 1.

Once regression to a particular past lifetime is complete, you can leave that lifetime by simply returning to the corridor and closing the door behind you. At this point, you may wish to explore another past lifetime by opening another past-lifetime door. To promote recall of the regression experience, it is recommended that no more than two past lifetimes be experienced during a particular regression session.

(We should note here that should you wish to explore the afterlife that followed a given past lifetime, you can open the life-between-lifetimes door at the end of the corridor. Opening that afterlife door immediately following your regression to a particular past lifetime ensures that the afterlife depicted is the immediate follow-on to that lifetime.)

Step 8. Conclusion

To exit the Past-life Corridor, give yourself permission to return first to the childhood situation you experienced earlier, and from there, into the present. Upon your return to the present and before exiting the trance state, affirm that you will successfully recall the regression experience in as much detail as needed and that you will understand its full relevance.

To end the trance state, count slowly from one to five with interjected suggestions of alertness and well-being. On the count of five, open your eyes and take a few moments to reflect on the experience.

Many of our subjects found that upon opening a particular door, the past lifetime it represented unfolded before them like a movie. The more highly relevant experiences of that lifetime often appeared in bright detail, thereby commanding attention and inviting interaction.

Subjects who remain spectator observers during their regression often describe their experiences as three-dimensional, in which relevant aspects of their past were depicted in colorful detail. In these dramatizations, our regression subjects invariably recognized themselves, even when they were pictured as the other gender or another race.

In contrast to spectators, active participants who “stepped into” their past lifetime experienced it close up as though they were actually there interacting with their surroundings and others exactly as they did in that past lifetime. Both spectators and participants alike were typically aware of their past-life personal identity and life situation as well as the historical settings and geographical location of the past lifetime depicted.

Although EM/RC is particularly conducive to past-life regression, some subjects prefer alternative strategies, including the popular hand levitation technique. In this procedure, the hand at rest on your thigh gently rises at your suggestion to touch your forehead, thereby inducing the trance state. A second popular procedure is eye fixation, in which attention is centered on a fixed object to facilitate the upward gaze and thus promote the trance state. Both of these techniques use suggestions of drowsiness along with a variety of other deepening strategies.

Regardless of the strategies used, you will find that with practice, your ability to enter hypnosis and regress to designated past lifetimes will improve. Given sufficient practice and experience, you may successfully master, like many of our subjects, the highest form of trance induction known—the ability to enter hypnosis through sheer intent alone.

To maximize the effectiveness of your regression experiences, it is important to maintain a detailed journal of each session. Research your journal entries and take time to reflect upon them, keeping in mind that all experiences, past and present, are purposeful. You will eventually discover the relevance of your regression experiences to your present-life situation.

Whenever experiencing your past life, don't rush it—take plenty of time to enjoy the regression experience and discover its relevance. It is important again to emphasize that the best specialist—whether for hypnosis or past-life regression—exists within yourself. After all, you know yourself better than anyone else, and all your past-life experiences remain a critical part of your growth history. By acquiring the skills to reconnect to them, you can discover for yourself all you need to know about your past and its relevance to you at this moment in your life.

Many times, in your regression experiences, you will first note a childhood event or feeling that leads you to a past life experience that reveals a connection between the two and then leads to the resolution of even long standing problems in this life. Other times it will be through the exploration of many past lives that benefits from those lives will be realized. In other cases, the needs of your present life will lead you to experience particular past lives where certain knowledge and even skills are brought forward to provide answers or give new direction to your current life work.

Some examples of these benefits are demonstrated in the follow Case Studies.

Case Studies

While working with various techniques to develop the most effective past-life regression programs, numerous case studies were conducted by the Parapsychology Research Institute and Foundation at Athens State University.

The EM/RC and Past Life Regression Corridor program, as it turned out, was found to be among the most effective techniques, not only toward inducing the past-life regression state, but also in identifying those past-life experiences that hold important relevance to present-life development. Our studies found that through the past-life corridor experience, a participant can awaken dormant potentials and literally generate new growth possibilities.

In our labs, the Past Life Regression Corridor program demonstrated unusual effectiveness in retrieving and resolving past-life experiences that functioned as barriers to our present growth. That possibility was particularly well illustrated by a nineteen-year-old pre-law student whose long history of inferiority feelings and fear of failure had become weights that slowed his progress and progressively diminished the quality of his life. As a participant in our past-life research, he used the EM/RC and the Past Life Regression Corridor Program in his effort to discover the sources of these barriers that had hounded him since childhood.

Following successful induction and regression to an early childhood experience of playing in a sand box, he entered the past-life regression corridor. Almost instantly, a glowing door to his right commanded his attention. Since it was the first door in the corridor, he assumed that it represented his most recent past life. Carved upon the door was the image of a balance scale that, for him, signaled a past-life related to law. He eagerly opened the door to view a young man seated at a table in an older-styled courtroom before a judge and jury dressed in historic fashions. Almost instantly, he recognized the young man as himself being tried for a crime he did not commit. When the verdict of “guilty” finally rang out in the courtroom and the young man was ushered from the room, he returned to the corridor where, upon closing the door behind him, he experienced instant relief and complete liberation from all feelings of fear and inferiority.