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This text briefly discusses the history of regression and controversies whether a regression evokes true memories from past lives, or not. It also discusses various arguments pro and contra referring to the Bible, early Christianity and the Church Dogma.

 

A short history

During various experiments with hypnosis it was observed already early in the 19th century that in certain cases the hypnotized person could behave as if he or she would be another person than to day, in another time, in another country and many times even of the opposite sex. Since our official science rejects the existence of a soul that survives the death of the body, and still more the concept of reincarnation, it saw no other explanation than declaring this as being cases of hypnotic hallucination.  Few, however, took the phenomenon more seriously and investigated it further.

Already in the beginning of the 1850es, a magnetizer Du Potet induced trance with an early hypnotic technique and some subjects seem to have described past lives.

A Russian prince Galitzin (probably Nikolai Borisovich Galitzin or Golytsin, 1794-1866, a cellist, who inspired Beethoven to write his last string quartets, possibly associated with H.P. Blavatsky), who spent some time in Hessia (Germany), performed a hypnotic experiment in 1862 with an uneducated Hessian woman from Bad Homburg, who knew no word of French. To the astonishment for the observers, she began to speak fluent French and told a story about having lived before in the 18th century. She said that she had been the countess Y. in an Italian castle (but apparently speaking French) and had killed her husband under circumstances held to be accidental. Therefore, she had to live a hard life as the Hessian woman. The prince later went to the place where she had said that she had lived and could confirm that person’s existence.

These are cases of “accidental regressions”, since it wasn’t the intention of the hypnotist to try to take the person back to an earlier existence, but the phenomenon occurred spontaneously.

The first who performed intentional regressions seems to have been José María Fernández Colavida (1819-1888) in Spain, a member of a spiritist group “La Paz” in Madrid. He reported about this at an international spiritist conference in Barcelona in 1888. I have tried in vain to get detailed information about this, a.o. from Federación Espírita Española, but it seems that no records have been kept. Later, Esteva Marata from Spain reported about this at a spiritist conference in Paris in 1900, also mentioning having performed such experiments himself.

Another pioneer in the field was the French lieutenant colonel and spiritist Albert de Rochas d’Aiglun (1837-1914). He performed a number of hypnotic past-life regressions and published the first book on the subject: Les vies successives (Bibliotèque Chacornac, Paris, 1911; 2nd ed.: Leymarie, Paris, 1924).

It is most interesting to note that Sigmund Freud during a phase in his life towards the end of the 19th century also performed hypnotic regressions – not to past lives, but to a traumatic experience earlier in the actual life of the patient, which had become suppressed from the memory. He treated some cases of a mostly hysterical nature in that manner, in a way that is based on much the same theory as regression therapy is to day. He later left hypnosis and developed his own form of psychoanalysis by means of free association, in much still with the same basic idea that a forgotten past traumatic experience in the actual life could be the cause of the patient's problems, and that remembering it could have a curative effect.

The professor of psychology Theodore Flournoy (a teacher of Carl Gustav Jung) studied a rather spectacular case of a Mrs. Hélène Smith (a pseudonym for Catherine Elise-Müller), who told about past lives while in trance. He explained the phenomenon as cryptomnesia (see below).

From around 1928 up to the 1940es a Coptic teacher Asa Roy Martin in Sharon PA, USA, performed past-life regressions. He wrote a little known self-published book about his work: Researches in Reincarnation and Beyond (1942).

The British psychiatrist Alexander Cannon performed hypnotic past life regressions in some 1400 cases and wrote about his work in the book The Power of Karma (Rider, London, 1936, republished as The Shadow of Destiny, Kerringer, Whitefish MT, 2005).

Another pioneer was the Swedish psychiatrist and researcher John Björkhem (1910-1963). He was an excellent hypnotist and wrote a doctoral thesis named De hypnotiska hallucinationerna [“The Hypnotic Hallucinations”] (Gleerup, Lund, 1942), in which he reported a number of experiments performed in order to induce various kinds of “hypnotic hallucinations”, some of them by the suggestion: “Go back to a time before you were born”. He avoided giving an explanation for the phenomenon, stating that there would yet be too little knowledge available for this, but called the latter kind “pseudo-hallucinations”.

Klein is mentioned to have regressed a number of persons in 1952 (mentioned in “The Effect of Suggestion on Past-Lives Regression” by R.A. Baker, American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 71-76).

In 1956 a book was published by Henry Blyth: The Three Lives of Naomi Henry (Fredrick Muller, London). Two of the past lives herein described were researched and confirmed.

Arnall Bloxham in England performed a number of remarkable hypnotic regressions in the 1950es, about which books were written (A. Bloxham: Who was Ann Ockenden?, Spearman, London, 1958 and Jeffrey Iverson: Reincarnation. The staggering Evidence of The Bloxham Tapes, Pan, London, 3rd printing 1982).

The British psychiatrist Denys Kelsey described his experiences with past-life therapy in a book first published in 1967, Joan Grant and Denys Kelsey: Many Lifetimes (Victor Gollancz, London, 1970). It seems that he performed this work already in the 1950es.

Morey (Morris) Bernstein (USA, 1919-1999) stirred up half the world with his book The Search for Bridey Murphy (first published in 1956 by Doubleday, New York, and later repeatedly in several editions), in which he presented the case of an American woman Virgina Tighe (1923-1995, in the book called Ruth Simmons), who in several hypnotic sessions went back to being Bridey Murphy in Ireland. The case was researched by William Barker of the Denver newspaper Post, who went to Ireland and could confirm most of what “Bridey Murphy” had told in Virginia Thighe’s sessions, even though he couldn’t find a person by that name documented. The book has been criticized in all possible ways and attempts have been undertaken to “debunk” the case as an invention, or at least a case of cryptomnesia. William Barker could show that these attempts were false and some even based on lies, therefore being invented themselves (see his articles “Bridey’s Debunkers Debunked” and “The Case for Bridey in Ireland” in the 1989 Doubleday edition of The Search for Bridey Murphy). Those who oppose the reincarnation concept still to day often refer to a “debunking” book, A Scientific Report on “The Search for Bridey Murphy” (ed. by Milton Kline, Julian Press, New York, 1956), published shortly after Bernstein’s book, as being “the last word” in the case. The book is in no way “scientific” and fails in its attempt to disprove the case, using little more than a series of allegations. Yet the subjective supporters of the latter book of little sense stubbornly refuse to acknowledge later findings in the case (such as the reports by William Barker, mentioned above).

 

The book by Bernstein will have inspired many persons in the Western world to perform such experiments themselves. They are too many to be mentioned here. From the 1960es on, a growing number of mainly experimental hypnotic regressions were performed in the USA, Europe and Australia and probably also in some other areas of the world.

With time, it was discovered that a regression can be carried out without hypnosis, and non-hypnotic techniques arouse. To day, most regressions are carried out in a non-hypnotic way, for which there are several procedures.

It was also discovered that a regression can have a therapeutic effect, which led to the establishment of what has become called “past-life therapy”, but is better named “regression therapy” (see this section on this Website).

 

Dividing opinions

If a regression technique is hypnotic or non-hypnotic has been disputed. Mainly hypnotists want to claim that what is called a non-hypnotic technique would be just another kind of hypnosis. I don’t agree. First, the Greek word hýpnos after all does mean “sleep”. If the client is not put more or less asleep, but his to-day’s consciousness is present and participating in the experience, it can, therefore, by definition not be called hypnosis. Hans Ten Dam, the foremost past-life therapist in The Netherlands, has established a concept helpful for the understanding of the difference. He talks about an “elliptic consciousness”. An ellipse has two focal points. In a non-hypnotic regression, the focal point of the consciousness divides and drifts apart. One point remains in “here and now”, the other tunes in to “there and then”. The client is at both points simultaneously and doesn’t forget who he or she is to day. If, for example, asked about an automobile, he understands the question but remarks: “They didn’t exist at that time”. In a deeply hypnotic regression, the focal point is not divided but shifts from “here and now” to be only in “there and then”. The client is the past person to a 100 % and has no idea during the regression of who he or she is to day. He doesn’t understand the question if asked about an automobile, but is puzzled and says he has never heard about such a thing. However, there is no sharp dividing line between the hypnotic and the non-hypnotic method. In a “gray zone” between, both methods float into each other. At most, one could join the concepts under the heading “altered states of consciousness”, but under that the hypnotic and non-hypnotic techniques still remain two alternative subgroups.

Another difference is that the phenomenon of xenoglossy, speaking a language the client doesn’t know to day, occurs almost only under hypnosis. In a non-hypnotic regression the person throughout uses the language of his focal point in “here and now”. It happens, however, that a non-hypnotic regression spontaneously becomes pseudo-hypnotic, and then such a phenomenon can rarely occur.

Another difference is in the feeling of time. After a hypnotic regression, one often has the feeling of having “been away for a long time”, but after a non-hypnotic regression has the feeling that it lasted much less time that it really did. One also remembers the experience quite well after a non-hypnotic regression. After a hypnotic regression, the phenomenon of the so-called post-hypnotic amnesia may occur, if not prevented through a suggestion: “You will afterwards remember everything”.

 

Another point where opinions divide is whether the regression experience is really from a past life, or something else. Many opponents who cannot fit the concept of reincarnation into their worldview claim the latter. A popular idea among them is that it would be cryptomnesia (from Greek for “hidden memory”). It would be composed of things the client has heard, read or seen earlier in this life, but forgotten to day – yet remaining as memories in the unconscious self. There are cases, which could be explained this way, but in my view the majority of them cannot easily be fit into this “Procruste’s bed” without a good stretch of imagination. The major argument is the effectiveness of regression therapy. Opponents persist in ignorantly denying the effectiveness, or they just don’t want to know about it, but it is definitely there! If a person becomes free from, say, a life-long fear of heights through reexperiencing falling down and dying in a hypothetical past life, it would really be very far-fetched to want to explain this with things he has earlier read or heard or seen in a movie! The remarkable and lasting relief from such a phobia simply cannot be explained that way, nor can it through suggesting that it would be mere fantasy.

 

The hypothetical explanation as “fantasy” is contradicted by a large number of cases in which the existence of the “past-life person” has been verified. The hypothesis of cryptomnesia (see above) leads to contradictions, too. If this were so, the “past-life person” would not rarely be someone who lived when the when the client was a child (or maybe even lives still to day), but he is always someone who died before the client was born.

Another hypothesis is that the “past-life person” would be an ancestor and that the information would have been transferred genetically to the client. In that case, the “past-life person” would often be verified to be an ancestor, since this in most cases would not be very difficult. This happens so rarely that one in such a case would rather assume a reincarnation in the same family. Furthermore, the “ancestral memory” could only proceed up to a moment when that ancestor had a child, since the family tree branches off there. But it always proceeds up to the death of the “past-life person” and the soul state after dying. The hypothesis fails, of course, if the ancestor never had a child but became a “dead-end” branch of the family tree. One may, furthermore, ask for what reason nature would pass down also totally meaningless information to later members of the family, in vain occupying valuable but limited data space in the genes. Another contradiction is when the client in his or her latest incarnation, maybe only 50 years ago, belonged to a totally different race on another continent, which does occur in regressions. Here a genetic connection is impossible.

One more hypothesis has been proposed by certain religious opponents, claiming that the client would be “possessed” by the soul of a dead person. This is absurd, since it would mean that nearly each and everyone would be “possessed”, because the regression works in at least 90 % of the cases.

A strategy used by opponents in dealing with verifications of the present person’s past existence is the following. If no data are found which verify the past person’s existence, then that person “clearly” has never existed… But if such data are found, the present day person “must” have the information from such data sources… The other alternative is not permitted in their reasoning, being that the data confirm the past person’s existence and that this indicates a case of reincarnation…

 

As already pointed out, all these hypotheses fail to explain the effectiveness of regression therapy. The discussion above doesn’t exclude the possibility that one or another of the hypotheses could be valid in certain singular cases, but not generally.

Still another hypothesis is that the regression experience would merely be symbolical. This actually does happen in a minority of the regressions. There are methods to ask the unconscious self of the client whether the experience was symbolical, or not. It certainly cannot be symbolical if the existence of the “past-life person” has been verified. A symbolical experience could by psychological mechanisms possibly to some extent explain the effectiveness of regression therapy, but such an explanation is quite a bit further fetched than the simple one of reincarnation, in which case the soul of the client will really have had that experience itself in the past, which appears to be the “original trauma” of an actual problem bothering the client to day.

There is another kind of psychological problem involved in such hypotheses: The resistance against accepting what would require a change in one’s preconceived world concept, be it for religious reasons or for that of scientific prejudice.

It is, of course, understandable that if one has based a whole life and maybe even an academic career on a specific religious doctrine, one will to the bitter end deny and resist to acknowledge evidence of something that seems alien to one’s religious concept, since this raises fear that one’s “ivory tower” could crumble. Likewise, a scientist with reputation fears to loose it if he doesn’t deny not only reincarnation, but also the existence of a soul that survives the body. He fears the risk to be ridiculed and intrigued against. Scientific customs require such an attitude.

This impression is not the least one we get from conventional psychology and its attitude towards regression therapy, in any case if it includes hypothetical past lives. Even regressions to the childhood seem to often be viewed with caution and suspicion, since the next step into the past is so near.

 

Contradiction or evidence in the Bible?

Several passages in the Bible have been proposed as contradictions to reincarnation and the pre-existence of the soul. The most commonly used objection is Hebr. 9:27: “And it is appointed to men once to die, but after this the judgment.” Here, the Greek word hapax has been translated as “once”. This is, however, not the only possible translation. Dictionaries inform us that it can also be translated as “once again”, “once for all”, “a last time” and some more things, too. If such an alternative but linguistically correct translation is used, there is no more a contradiction but even a certain support for the reincarnation concept.

In my book Reincarnation, Christianity and the Dogma of the Church (downloadable as a PDF file under “Texts” on this webpage – see “Books” for the original German version and “Texte” in the German language section for additional Bible passages) I have dealt extensively with such and other questions. Here I will only take up another remarkable example: Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus.

Jesus said: “…Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus asks him “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time in the mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:3-4, cf. John 3:7). Nicodemus doesn’t understand that it would have to be a new mother. In most modern Bible texts, Jesus is quoted as having said: “… except a man be born from above…” and the explanation given by theologians is that the Greek word anothen means both. Jesus would have meant “from above” and Nicodemus would have misunderstood him as “again”. This is clearly nonsense, since they didn’t speak Greek! The spoke Aramaic! The Aramaic language doesn’t have a double-sense word that would fit here, but a single-sense word mille’ela that means “from above” and another single-sense word taneyanut that means “again”. Obviously, there cannot have been a misunderstanding and Nicodemus’ question indicates that Jesus must have used the latter word.

One may furthermore ask what being born “from above” would mean. Are some of us really born “from below”? Maybe even a few of the high leaders of the Church…?

A little later on in the text follows a strange statement: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the spirit” (John 3:8). This is quite inunderstandable. The Greek word pneuma has here been translated differently in the same sentence, first as “wind”, then as “spirit”. Greek dictionaries tell us that the translation as “spirit” is only in an “indirect sense”. The common meaning of pneuma in the theological context is “breath of life” or “soul”, that, which makes the body alive. Furthermore, the word phoné is not well translated as “sound”, it rather means “voice”. Thus we arrive at the following linguistically valid translation: “The soul goes as it likes and you hear its whispering, but you cannot tell from where it comes and not where it goes: so is everyone born with a soul.” Here, Jesus talks about pre-existence of the soul, since it comes from somewhere, where it was before conception. Pre-existence of course doesn’t automatically imply reincarnation, but reincarnation implies pre-existence.

These are examples of how the translation is often done in a dogmatically preconceived way in order to convey an understanding that we are supposed to have, obscuring to us that there are other ways to understand and translate, but we shouldn’t know them.

 

The world concept of the Christian Gnostics

There were two major movements in early Christianity: The Paulinian and the Gnostic Christians. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 a.D., Constantine laid the foundation of the present form of the Church. He obviously did this more in order to have a useful tool for his power than being an ardent believer. The documents from that Council are incomplete, important parts have been lost. It is, however, known [1] that he refused to let the Gnostic Christians present their views at the Council and he gave their petitions to the fire without opening them. From that moment on, Gnostic Christianity was regarded as heresy.

Esoteric literature often claims that belief in reincarnation would have been forbidden by that Council, but there is no evidence of that. However, the Gnostic Christians were not given a chance to talk and present their view about it.

The attitude and strategy in theology, especially in German theology, has been to regard the Gnostics as mixing Christianity with earlier Gnostic philosophies, so that they would not be true Christians. Research in the history of religion has, however, changed this view and it is to day acknowledged that there is no basis for the assumption of an influence from an earlier Gnosis before Christ. This is discussed in a monumental German encyclopedia of religion [2]. Therefore, the Gnostics must now be seen as an early form of Christianity, parallel to the Paulinians.

One of the most important Gnostic Christians was Origen (185-253 or 254). The Church claims that he would have been an opponent to the concept of reincarnation, but has from itself withdrawn the basis for such an allegation, since it had Origen’s original texts in Greek burned in the 6th century. What is remaining to day are only Latin translations by Rufinus and parts of Latin translations by Hieronymus. The most important of these texts in our context is Perì Archon. Both translators state in their introductions to that work that they have “corrected” the text to fit the Dogma and omitted “offensive” parts [3]. There can, of course, be no doubt that if Origen wrote positively about reincarnation, they will in there censorship certainly have omitted or changed such parts of the text. It can, therefore, not be concluded from the text that Origen would have been an opponent to the idea of reincarnation. He was, on the contrary, accused by contemporary critics of teaching it, like many Gnostic Christians had done before him.

The world concept of the Gnostic Christians is that we all were angelic beings in God’s world of light, existing from the beginning of Creation. Some of us would have developed a desire for experiences, which are not possible to have in God’s world, such as even exercising our free will against the free will of others, which would disturb the harmony in that world. But since we do have a free will, given to us by God, he, therefore, created new worlds for these beings – for us – where we could have such experiences. A hierarchy of 9 angelic levels of existence arose, under that the physical world of the humans as a 10th level, and at last an 11th level, being the one of demons and adversaries. Those entities, which fell to the level of the humans, became souls and were “put into bodies like into prisons”.

What happens, then, to a human being when he or she dies? According to Origen, he could – if he had been good enough – rise to the lowest level in the angelic hierarchy, where he would exist without a physical body. He would, of course, in a continued development climb the “Jacob’s ladder” of the other angelic levels until he, in a final resurrection, would return to God’s world. Those who are bad enough would, however, fall to the lowest level, the one of demons and adversaries, which is obviously a kind of hell, however not for an eternal condemnation, but only as long as needed to reach understanding, regret and conversion.

Here, a third alternative is striking through its absence. What happens to those – to the great majority of humans – who are neither good enough to rise to the next higher level, nor bad enough to fall to the lowest? This is not mentioned in the versions we have to day of Perì Archon. One of the very best translations to a modern language of that work [3] has been done by two German professors, who have tried to wherever possible reconstruct lost parts from other sources. When it concerns this question, they remark that Origen had a large treatise on the soul, which has become lost. In that treatise he will have given the answer, and only one answer fits the scheme here: They become humans again, i.e., reincarnation. This will be the reason why the text is lost; it will have been destroyed and “censored” away by the Church.

 

References:

    1. Charles Joseph Hefele and “A Religious Benedictine” (not mentioned by name): Histoire des Conciles [History of the Councils], Letouzey et Ané, Paris, Vol. 1, 1907.

    2. Theologische Realenzyklopädie [Theological General Encyclopedia], ed. by Gerhard Müller, Vol. XIII, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1984.

    3. Origenes: Vier Bücher von den Prinzipien [Four Books about the Principles], translated by Herwig Görgemanns and Heinrich Karpp, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 2nd ed. 1985.

 

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