IS PAST LIFE REGRESSION REALLY EVIDENCE OF REINCARNATION?

In this section I'd like to share some ideas about Past Life Regression (PLR).
I don't know if Past Life Regression really reveals a person's past lives. However, in order to avoid peppering this article with words like alleged and so-called I want to make it clear at the outset that we are dealing with something that appears to be the uncovering of past lives. Past life regression is the accepted term for this phenomenon, and it aptly describes what is subjectively experienced.

In this article I am considering the possibility that PLR is strong evidence for reincarnation. Other explanations have been proposed over the years, which purport to be more 'scientific'. These include claims that PLR is some kind of fantasy created by the subconscious mind based on scraps of information collected over a person's current lifetime. Another 'scientific claim', is that memories of dead people are somehow contained in DNA, and passed down from generation to generation. The former theory may have some merit, but should not be liberally applied to every single instance of PLR as a means of dismissing other possibilities. Each case should be judged on its own merit. The latter theory is just absurd. How could a person's memory of how they died be transmitted via DNA? Also during a PLR a person may experience being someone of a totally different racial background. I get the impression some of these scientific theories to explain PLR are simply clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to avoid the obvious conclusion - souls can, and do, reincarnate.

I have a science degree, and am well aware of how scientific theories come and go and how these theories are accepted by many members of the general public as fact - mostly because that is how educational systems and the media tends to portray them. Science actually knows very little about the nature of the Universe; there is much to learn - a lot is Unknown.

PLR is of course a controversial issue for some since it suggests that some people (possibly all), are born again and again. Death is not the end.

This brings up the first issue. I would imagine that most of us would quite like the idea that death is not the end - either for themselves or their loved ones.
Why would anyone wish to deny such a possibility?

I don't know for certain whether we reincarnate or not. But I'm happy to accept that we may continue after death. After all, many religions tell us that death is not the end.

Are some people afraid of having a false hope? Well, those people that are, say, Christians, already believe in an immortal soul, don't they?
Is it mainly atheists who condemn PLR on the grounds that there are no past lives to remember? Possibly. There are many people who purport to have a religion but have little or no faith in that religion.

There are so-called 'skeptics' who pretend to be scientific in their dismissal of PLR as bogus. Their idea of the scientific method is to decide what they want the Universe to be like and then decree that anything that contradicts their belief is un-scientific and therefore bogus. Rather like the people who condemned Galileo for saying that, with his telescope, he could see moons orbiting Jupiter, when it was known that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. Or those people that maintained that the world was flat and you would sail over the edge if you went too far from land. Closing one's mind to evidence that contradicts a belief system is not being scientific, it is just being ignorant.

In any case, science is not restricted to proven facts. It is mostly based on theories, which hold until someone manages to disprove them. For example: The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, The Theory of Relativity, The Big Bang Theory. The general public may regard the above as fact but they are only theory.

Scientists have not proved Darwin's theories. They have not proved relativity or the Big Bang. They have not proved that reincarnation does not happen. Scientists like to guess about things that cannot be proven one way or the other. It's either that or throw up their hands and say they don't have a clue, and people would turn to religion...

Science actually knows very little about the nature of the Universe and our place in it.

That's fair enough, it's a big Universe. But, we don't have to wait for a guy in a white lab coat to rubber stamp reincarnation before we can consider that it may be valid. In order to scientifically prove that some people had immortal souls I daresay scientists would have to dissect a soul and preserve it in a glass jar. I'd sooner scientists steered well clear of this subject. Science and morality don't sit well together.

So, I think we can keep an open mind on the possibility of reincarnation, and not worry about whether it's scientifically possible. In any case, science is often proven wrong when it decrees what is possible eg. bees can't fly, bacterium can't survive at extreme temperatures, life cannot exist deep in the ocean.

What about religion?
Reincarnation is a concept which makes more sense to me than a soul being judged for all eternity on the basis of a very short life span - for some, very, very short. I think it's a much better idea that people get a chance to get the hang of things and learn to improve and experience different situations. If you are brought up as a pagan Viking warrior it might be a bit tricky to decide to become a nun. Conversely, if you are brought up to be a nun, being a savage barbarian may not be a life style option available to you. Reincarnation seems to offer the possibility of more freedom of choice to be bad or good.

I have to make the point though, that PLR and reincarnation may be totally unrelated. We have no way of knowing at present (remember the glass jars?) Like the scientists, we just have theories.

So, are PLRs evidence of reincarnation? Certainly. But of course, evidence does not mean proof.

PLR appears to be a means of re-living a past life. However, the term Past Life Regression seems to cover a very wide range of experiences. For that reason I don't think it wise to say that all PLR is good evidence of past lives. All that glitters is not gold - but gold still exists.

I have conducted many PLR sessions. For that reason I can clear away some of the clutter that gets in the way of objective assessment of PLR. Some say that PLR is a fantasy concocted by the hypnotist. I know I don't create fantasies for the people that I hypnotically regress. I take great care not to suggest what they will experience. The PLR is generated by them - and not by me. I cannot vouch for how other hypnotists conduct their sessions, such information is not generally available. Client confidentiality is of prime importance.

I also know that the hypnotist in question is being honest, because I'm the hypnotist and I know I'm not embellishing the facts.

The above two pieces of clutter do create quite an obstacle to an objective view of PLR, not because people are untrustworthy, but because the phenomenon seems so extraordinary that it is difficult to believe. It is natural and healthy to question the evidence. But questioning the evidence is a whole different thing to refusing to consider it.

It is of course possible to make up a past life. Just get someone to fire off questions and say the first thing that comes into your head, you'll soon build up a fictional life.
What are you wearing? Are you married? Where do you live? What is your job? But that isn't PLR. See what happens when it's supposed to be ten years later, What are you doing now? What are your relatives doing now? Now go back to the fictional childhood. does your story still make sense after several twists and turns? You'll probably find things are getting a bit mixed up by now.

My own hypnotic subjects experience a past life as if they were there, living it second by second. They can be taken backwards or forwards in time and their story will remain consistent. They can experience a full range of emotions as they go through their past life. So something is happening that is beyond mere make believe.

If we could always find real world evidence that backed up what is revealed in the PLR sessions, it would be nice. But it does not always work like that. Of course, even if it did, then detractors would say that the client (or hypnotist) dug up the information prior to the publishing of the session details so that they could be proved later. You can't win in this game. If people don't want to believe, they won't, no matter what.

Now, if someone relives a past life where they went to a certain church, and we check, and that church is not recorded anywhere where we can track it down; was that a false memory? A complete fantasy? There's no way of knowing for sure. It could be that the records were lost and or we haven't looked in the right places. The name of the church may have been misremembered. After all, current life memory is seldom 100 per cent accurate. Or perhaps there is another possibility that fits the PLR and does not indicate it was a fiction...
A good many scientists these days believe in the theory of parallel Universes. There could be other Earths, very similar to ours, but not quite identical. I see no reason why a PLR session might not reflect an existence in a parallel Universe where, say, a particular church had a different name, but was otherwise pretty much identical. Some may well say this is stretching things too far to make a PLR valid. Maybe so. But given the subject matter, the religious notion of immortal souls, and the scientific theory of parallel worlds, then perhaps it should not be discounted as a possible explanation.

I'm not trying to prove anything here. I'm just pointing out that we are dealing with something that is beyond our everyday notions of mundane reality. Since there is no reliable handbook about reincarnation we don't know how it works (if indeed it does work). Still, by examining PLR results we can at least try to figure things out.

Some argue that PLR is a complete waste of time since the past lives did not really happen. On that basis we may as well destroy all the works of fiction that have ever been written, or filmed. If people have an innate ability to spontaneously weave incredibly detailed plots based on entirely fictional characters and situations, then that seems to me to be worthwhile in itself. It's a natural ability and must be there for a reason.

Some people claim that PLR is very much like dreaming. This needs some clarification. There are indeed some similarities, but these are superficial, much as hypnosis itself was assumed to be a type of sleep when judged by outward appearances.

In my experience, dreams may seem very real whilst dreaming, but upon awakening, it becomes clear that they were absurd in nature, lacking consistency and skipping from scene to scene. Since most people remember their dreams to some extent, I'm sure I don't have to describe the phenomena in detail. They feel very real and it tends to be the emotional response that makes them appear real to us. We don't generally realize we are dreaming until we wake up. Then it's usually obvious that the dream could not have been real. Unlike dreams, PLR has internal consistency and tends to happen in real time. And of course, the person is describing what he/she is experiencing while it is happening.

Is there any proof that Past Life Regression is really the recollection of past lives?
Possibly. Unfortunately proof is actually a very subjective thing. What is proof for some people is not proof for others. There is unquestionably though, a great deal of evidence to support the case for PLR being a way of remembering previous incarnations.

Why is proof so difficult to obtain? Well it is probably down to what society wants us to believe and what it does not want us to believe. Take Unidentified Flying Objects for example. There are, without question, UFOs. There is overwhelming evidence that UFOs have been seen by respected people, tracked on radar, pursued by fighter planes, photographed, filmed, videotaped etc. etc. But they are still regarded as imaginary by the authorities - whatever UFOs might actually be. Nonetheless there are unidentified objects that are detected flying around - UFOs. That's not to say there are aliens visiting the Earth. That's just saying there are UFOs of unknown physical characteristics and origins.
How could you prove you'd seen a UFO? I mean, really prove - not just convince your friends and relatives. I don't think you could. Society does not want to admit any proof of UFOs. So it is not possible to prove that UFOs exist. The same type of evidence that could get a person sent to the electric chair does not count when used to prove the existence of a UFO.

The same difficulty occurs with PLR / Reincarnation. There is a great deal of evidence. Admittedly, some is not very convincing - it varies in quality. But no matter what evidence you come up with - it will be scoffed at. Society will find a more 'acceptable' explanation, such as the subject was simply telling lies.

If something can't be measured and analysed it's not scientific because science is about measuring and analysing. Proof is not generally a prerequisite for scientific acceptance, so long as there is data (sometimes very bad data) to play with. You need data so you can have a scientific theory. No data - no science. Getting a person sentenced to death doesn't require such rigorous proof. We don't have the death sentence in Britain at the moment, but the police can still legally shoot people to death with very little or no evidence.
So perhaps we should not be over concerned about 'scientific' proof when we consider Past Life Regression and/or Reincarnation. Society does not require absolute proof in more important areas, where current lives are at stake.

You can personally decide whether you believe that PLR is genuine. You can change your mind later if you come across more evidence. It's nice to have a few mysteries to ponder over.

I am continually amazed by the various assumptions that people make about PLR.
For example, some people make the claim that 'PLR is entirely bogus. We don't have past lives so there are no past lives to go back to.' It's amazing how these people can know, apparently beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there is no such thing as reincarnation. I wonder what scientific method they use to deduce this fact. With this kind of person there can be no debate. Their minds are made up and they pretend to be scientific. It rather reminds me of those people who were adamant that the world was flat. If it is 'known' that the Earth is flat there is no point in considering evidence that suggests the world is round. This kind of reasoning seems to have its basis in superstition rather than science. A desire to keep things nice and simple with nothing left unexplained.

Those that fervently and loudly proclaim that people don't have souls may be partly right. The Bible says that there will come a time when children are born without souls. So, perhaps the advocates of 'people have no souls' are simply speaking from personal experience. They have no soul, therefore they assume no one else has a soul either. Certainly this topic is food for thought.

Here's another popular assumption: 'You cannot have a future PLR.'
That is, you can't remember a life where you apparently lived in the future. I'd like to know the basis for this assumption since I've certainly conducted PLR sessions where people have found themselves in the far future - see the transcript on this web site. If we are being scientific about this we should look at the available evidence and refine our theories accordingly. If we get regressions to the future then this has to be factored in to our theory - not discounted. Let's assume for now that PLR is real and people can reincarnate. If a person has had a previous life in, say, the 23rd century is this a problem? Not really. We might conjecture that there is a between lives state that is outside of time and space - outside our notion of reality. When we go back into a new body, we might go back to any point in space and time. Why should we be limited to a linear progression? If we reincarnate in order to learn and progress, then we may find valuable life experiences in the future as well as the past. If we remember living in the 23rd century, then we've already had that life - it's not a life we will someday have. It's already happened to us.
In the above scenario, when we die, we are outside space and time, and when we go back inside we can find ourselves in the far past or far future, relative to when we died. Seen from outside time is just a place, or you could view it as a history book, and you can go back to any page. Obviously, I cannot know if this theory is correct, but it seems to better fit what we find in PLR than dismissing future incarnations as impossible. Better to fit our theories to the evidence rather than fit the evidence to the theories.

A similar assumption to the above one is that lives cannot overlap.
That is, if you were born say, in 1960, then you could not have a past life that ended in 1965. Who says so? I don't know of any authorized manual of how reincarnations work, so I don't know what is and what is not permitted. If a person appears to have an overlap of lives, I just accept this to be the case, rather than tell the them that they must be wrong. Again, we should fit the theory to the evidence, not vice versa. If we have lived a life as a soldier invading another country, then why not also experience what it was like being a citizen of that country when it was invaded? If we really do have immortal souls and we are supposed to be evolving then a balanced view of such things may be an advantage to understanding and learning. So I would not rule out someone in PLR being a US cavalry officer in the 1870s and also being a native American during the same period. I don't know of any rules that forbid this. Still, some people are apt to say 'Ah, this can't be right' if they hear about any such overlap.

Another assumption: 'We can't all have been princes or princesses.'
Again, why not? Who lays down the rules of what we can be in each incarnation and how do people know of these rules? Personally, I've not encountered a single prince or princess in PLR but I don't know of any rationing system. Most people seem to have led pretty ordinary previous lives. Still, for all I know, it may be a requirement of soul development to be a member of a royal family at least once in all eternity.

A common question regarding PLR is, 'Was I always the same sex?'
From my studies so far it seems the answer is probably no.
However, it seems that men mostly remember being men, whilst women have a more equally divided representation of gender recollection during PLR. I put this down to my female hypnotic subjects being more culturally prepared to accept having been a person of the opposite sex. eg a girl may happily pretend to be a man or a boy during play, but a boy may be reluctant to pretend to be a girl or woman when playing. Therefore, for some men, the memories of being female in a previous life may not be as near to the surface as memories of being a man. This leads to there being more male PLR 'lives' than female ones. I suppose another explanation might be that historically, men have had greater freedom of choice in society, and their lives are perhaps more interesting to the subconscious mind which brings those memories to light.

As if PLR wasn't mysterious enough, the fact that it means different things to different people makes the waters even murkier. I recently read a **book by a renowned hypnotist which purported to be about a past life regression. The sessions discussed in the book involved a lady being hypnotized and subsequently dictating an autobiography of a dead psychic investigator who was supposed to have lived about 100 years earlier. Under hypnosis the client, a film actress, said she was dead and wanted to talk about her life.
I don't consider that kind of thing to be past life regression. Assuming it was genuine, it seems to me more a case of 'possession' or 'channeling'. I've no opinions on the reality of such feats of mediumship, but I don't think it's anything to do with PLR or reincarnation. If I had a client who proceeded to tell me that she was dead and wanted me to write her posthumous autobiography I'd direct her to a medium. Whether mediums can actually talk to the dead or not, I feel they'd be better qualified to deal with such situations.

Another book*** I read recently presented visualisations during solitary meditation as Past Life Regression. Frankly, using this method you can see whatever you want to see. As absorbing and enlightening as this process can be, I don't consider it to be Past Life Regression, though I admit that it may on occasion, hint at a past life. In basic terms though, you can get a similar experience by just daydreaming. In any event, there are no witnessess to what you experienced.

Dr Brian Weiss conducts 'group PLR' sessions of 200 people at a time. I don't consider this to be the same phenomenon as a one-to-one hypnotic regression. It's probably more akin to the above meditation method, though I don't doubt its therapeutic efficacy.

I suspect many genuine past life regressions have been discarded because of incorrect assumptions. For example, I've read of otherwise convincing PLR sessions that were dismissed as fantasy because the person has quoted a date as something or other 'B.C'. I don't think we should be so hasty. Many hypnotherapists seem to regard dates as being high on the list of things to ask their regressed client. Some ask for the date before the client has any notion of who they are in a past life. 'Say the first date that comes into your head', some say, or,' You may see the date painted on the door leading to your past life.' These techniques might be useful. But personally I feel they are more than likely to generate a date which has little or no connection with the past life. Or, even worse, will incline the client to consciously imagine what kind of life style would go with the date they have just named. Before we discount a PLR session on the grounds of a wrong date, we should know the manner in which the date was identified. More often than not though, such information isn't readily available.

Another reason cited for discrediting an otherwise convincing PLR session is where the person uses a current-day naming system, which is judged to be an anachronism. Again, we may be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We don't know the internal working of PLR any more than we understand electricity. We know how to make it work, but why it works is pretty much a mystery. When a person is under hypnosis and telling the hypnotist what they are experiencing, they generally use their own language - not the language of the person they have temporarily 'become'. This makes a lot of sense. The hypnotic subject has to be able to understand what the hypnotist is saying and vice-versa. The session would not get very far if the client under hypnosis only understood and spoke a foreign, or long dead, language. (There have been recorded instances where the regressed person has spoken in a foreign tongue, but I have not encountered this personally.) So, there seems to be some kind of translation going on behind the scenes, perhaps akin to the concept of telepathy. That is, the hypnotized subject believes themselves to be, say, an ancient Greek. But, he or she expresses themselves via the mind of the person they are in current life. The thoughts of the client would be expressed in English, not Greek. This means that everything that is said is a translation into modern English. So, if concepts like grass and tree are translated, why not dates, the names of rulers, places etc. too?
Basically, we cannot rely too heavily on assumptions. As with any scientific theory, we should refine our understanding by carefully considering the evidence presented - and not simply discard the evidence which does not accord to the theory.

When we read accounts of PLR experiences it is important to know how the information was obtained if we want to be critical. For example, there seems to be a half way state of PLR where the person is still very much aware of their current identity but can view the PLR as if it is a set in a film studio. They can make guesses, like: 'Judging by the cars I'd say this is the 1950's.' Now, that's obviously pure guess-work. But it's still a valid PLR account. Deeper into the PLR the subject would know what year it was because he would click into place and become the person living out that experience.

There is much to learn about past life regression.
It may hold the key to a much greater understanding of who we really are and what life is truly all about.

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**Ormond McGill Seeing the Unseen (Crown House Publishing 2003)
***David Wells Past, Present and Future (Hay House 2007)

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