Past Lives & Future Lives

Introduction

Some people believe in reincarnation. That is, that after the end of a lifetime, we get born into another lifetime. In between, according to Life Between Lives by Michael Newton, there is a stage where, after a person has died and exited their previous lifetime, they enter another world where they meet their soul group (deceased family members and friends) and spirit guides. This world is what mediums and spiritualists, who believe in its existenence, term the spirit world. Here, Past Life Regression and Future Life Progression will be discussed.

Past Life Regression

Past life regression (P.L.R.) is the practice of regressing someone to experience or access their past lives. It can be helpful for people psychologically and spiritually, although whether the memories that are said to be of or from past lives are actually from past lives is debatable.

   Consider the following:

Q1. Even if PL memories were from actual past lives, they wouldn't be entirely accurate due to selective memory and reconstructive memory. So with this knowledge in mind, how accurate would memories from Past Lives actually be?

Q2. Furthermore, the memories wouldn't necessarily be entirely correct, because of cognitive dissonance - the person in the past life whose memories they are would only be seeing things and significant events solely from their own perspective which may result in their rememembering particular details that are in accord with their belief that a particular outcome had happened at a fault of another person's during a significant event that had had a major impact on that life. This would mean that they only remembered details that are in accord with that belief or viewpoint and forget those that were not.  

Q3. If, in this current lifetime, an individual had had an extremely traumatic experience earlier in life - probably in early childhood - but they had caused themselves to consciously forget about the experience, the traumatic memories may end up burying themselves in their subconscious mind and, during a PLR session, these memories may be discovered, but, perhaps due to transliminality, these memories present themselves as memories from a past life. However, because of their traumatic nature, transliminality works in this in that it allows their valuable information to be a accessed by the conscious mind in a safer form (as mere 'past life memories') which will help the individual to come to terms with their content. In other words, if the traumatic memories that had been hidden deep in the subconscious were presented as 'past life memories', it would mean that the individual does not necessarily need to know they were from this lifetime, but can work, in a more dissociated state, to deal with these psychological problems as if they were lived by their soul but in a different lifetime as a different person. Alternatively, the traumatic memories may be misperceived by the person being regressed as being memories from a past life. 

Case studies

Details about past lives vary. Past life experiences vary. Some people believe they were famous people - such as Anne Boleyn or Cleopatra or some historical monarch - whilst others had seemingly mundane lives where they had lived in a rainforest. Details from past lives are not usually very specific and are often rather vague. For example, in Figure 1, Person A says they had had a lifetime in a rainforest. Person A did not get a lot of detail about it, although they had an video-memory where they were young tribal children jumping into a rainforest river. But was this a real past life memory, or was it fantasy? If it was a past life memory, in what rainforest did it take place? When did the lifetime take place - could it have been a lifetime where they had been living in a rainforest which had, in more recent times, been chopped down - e.g. a rainforest in the United Kingdom? Or did it even take place in a rainforest on Earth? Could it have occurred in a parallel universe, or another planet that was Earth?

Did Person A's PL take place in the Amazon?

Person A may believe that the rainforest was the Amazon rainforest, but just because they believe this doesn't mean that it is true. They did not come up with a lot of details, so consequently there isn't actually any evidence for whether it took place in the Amazon rainforest. It could have taken place in some other rainforest other than the Amazon.

Cognitive dissonance

Some people think that they share characteristics with the people who they believe they had been in a past life. For example, Anne Boleyn liked to play cards and dance when she was younger. A person who believes that they were Anne Boleyn may be aware of this and "remember" that when they were young, they, too, liked to play cards and to dance. This serves to strengthen their belief that they had been Anne Boleyn in a past life. Of course, they would have more differences than similarities to Anne Boleyn, but because of cognitive dissonance, they only recall these two "similarities". Of course, this "memory" may not be true - they may not have actually liked to play cards and to dance when they were younger. This may have been made up by their mind. They may have hated playing cards or dancing, but due to reconstructive memory, this memory is altered, in order to confirm their belief. So they remember liking playing cards and dancing when in fact hey actually didn't. A possible antedote to this scenario is to ask one's elders - parents etc. - whether they remembered if they had had a liking for cards and dancing when they were young. Of course, it is possible that the person did have a liking for cards and dancing, but their parents can't remember.       

Similarly, if a person believed that they had been a monarch (e.g. Henry VIII) in a past life, this may explain to them why, in their opinion, they behave rather like they had been a monarch in a previous lifetime (bossing people around, letting people clean up after themselves, etc.).

Future Life Progression

Future Life Progression (FLP) is a technique for accessing one's future lifetime. Originally discovered by a psychic called Anne Jirsch, it can be used to help a person spiritually with their current lifetime. According to her book, The Future Is Yours, she stumbled across it during a past life regression of her and two friends - Steve and Dave, conducted by a student of hers called Dan, p.11: "After taking us through the relaxation techniques, Dan told us, 'Feel yourself floating back through time. Float all the way back to a previous life, one where you have all met before.' All three of us sat in silence, our eyes closed. Eventually Dan asked, 'Steve, what are you aware of?'" Then '"This is odd,' he replied, 'I don't know what is going on. All I can see are two skyscrapers next to each other. There is smoke coming out of them.' He paused. 'I don't know what all of this means - I haven't gone back to a past life at all. Maybe my mind isn't right at the moment. I just can't see anything other than these skyscrapers.' Dan said, 'Tell me what else you see.' Steve continued. 'There's smoke coming out of the skyscrapers. I don't know where this is. There are people on the ground running, there is lots of dust. A helicopter is circling the building.' He added, 'It is not army, nor police. It says CNN. This is America.' Dave then reported, 'I'm not seeing a past life either. but I'm not seeing what Steve is seeing. All I can see is a bay, but I don't recognise it. This sounds mad, but it's as if the skyline has changed. How can a skyline change?'" Then Anne Jirsch spoke up next. "'I'm somewhere completely different from you guys. All I can see is the Middle East and oil.' That was all, we saw no more and had no idea what any of it meant. At the time we thought we had got our wires crossed; it had just been a bad session. We gave up, deflated, believing we had been unsuccessful. ... Two weeks later I received a call from Dave at my office. 'Have you heard?' 'Heard what?' I replied, confused. 'It's happening, everything we saw in the session is happening. Steve and I are at work transfixed by the television, watching everything we saw happen.' I logged onto the web and went to Sky News. My blood ran cold as I saw the very scenes Steve and Dave had described. Suddenly, we understood what the session  had been about and why I had seen the Middle East. Our three visions had seemed unconnected but now we knew better: we jumped forward in time." Lo and behold, Future Life Progression was born.

To be continued...