Perhaps it was my age at the time, or my interest in the church of satan for a time, but it always shocks me how few people remember the satanic panic.
I'm also shocked how few people know that it was bogus. (...!)
For along time that kept me from exploring any sort of regression whatsoever.
I have since studied regression, and I have a lot of respect for it, but anyone who practices it and hasn't learned some serious lessons since the 80's scares me.

And that's one of the main problems with regression. Too often the researchers simply find what they were looking for in the first place, there results simply reflecting their preconceived beliefs.

Also very similar were the techniques used to elicit "suppressed" memories of alien abductions going back to the days of Betty and Barney Hill. To this day many such incidents are still cited as "proof" of alien contact by UFO conspiracy buffs.

...apparently, George Wiess, General Manager (NY Yankees), died on the exact same day that I was born - so maybe I was him...

Yes! I was wondering whether or not to mention alien abductions, but true.
Child abuse comes up a lot in regression too, which is even trickier because of course that really does happen frequently; but can easily be led to by a well meaning therapist and an suggestible client.

After the last time I read through Grant Morrison's "The Invisibles" I used self-hypnosis to generate a series of alien encounters.
I feel that I learned a lot.
Interestingly enough, the memories that I have of those experiences are very similar to memories I have of normal 'real world' events and if my world-view was slightly different and I was led to them by a trusted person in a position of authority it is not unreasonable that I could see them as true physical encounters rather than, ...whatever they were.

For anyone interested in Past Life Regressions and not interested in hypnosis, may I recommend William Swygard's Awareness Techniques. Multi-Level Awareness allows you to re-experience your past lives in detail. The simple instructions are online and Googleable. Very interesting, fun to try, and surprising. You can be up and running a past life in 10-15 minutes, yours or someone else's.

Belief not a prerequisite, and hypnosis not required.

Like Seadog93, I have conducted many past life sessions for clients. From a therapeutic point of view, it doesn't matter if they're "real"; the information is in the client's unconscious mind and how it got there is not important.

Hypnosis is generally considered to be unreliable as "proof" for reincarnation, although, as Seadog93 says, it can be pretty convincing as anecdotal evidence. The best evidence, though, comes from the studies with young children.

Barry

I've just looked at this. It's similar - almost identical - to the "Christos Experiment" described by G M Glaskin in his book "Windows of the Mind". It may actually be the original source for Glaskin's method. I've tried Christos once and it worked very well for my subject. More here: https://barrydcooper.wordpress.com/categ......therapy/


Barry

Millions of people around the world have a steadfast belief in past lives as part of their world view or religion. To them, asking if it is real would be like asking a Christian if Christ was real.

CT

Hi Barry- 'The Christos Technique' is, indeed, "Multi-Level Awareness", the first of Swygard's 3 techniques. I never understood why he renamed it when he wrote his book. I'm thinking he had actually never had the original source as he didn't reference Swygard in the book (as I recall). Nor did he reference the other 2 techniques, 'Multi-Plane Awareness' and 'Perfecting The Spirit' that complete the single complete Awareness Technique.

FYI, The Awareness Techniques were released in 1967, free, through an offer in the Letters To The Editor column in Fate magazine, which is where and when I first obtained the instructions. Swygard had a rather large active group in Florida at the time and published simple sheet instructions of the three techniques, then four expanded booklets on the three techniques and three companion booklets 'Waldara Answwers'. Again, I believe all are available online.

The other two techniques are just as interesting as the first one is, work as well and as easily, and are well worth trying out.

I love the way Slim can slip in to any thread and crapp it up!

Yep. And, of course, when I pointed out that my statement about the Bridey Murphy case was indeed accompanied by proof, he simply dropped out of this thread and slipped off to stir up trouble in another one.

Not at all surprised though, that Slim may be the only person left on earth who still believes the Bridey Murphy story. Even Virginia Tighe (Bridey Murphy) herself didn't believe it when asked about the case later in her life.

As I don't believe in past lives I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of someone in need paying money to make up a fantasy story rather than seeking proper medical attention.

Having read this thread I now see that there could be potential for 'past life regression' if it is an effective technique for uncovering information relevant to a psychological prognosis. I know one person who had lots of sessions and in their case I don't think it was useful beyond being fun and interesting, which did make them happier.

Can this technique be just as effectively practiced by non-believers and be delivered in a way that lets the patient(?) leave the room Not believing in past lives? I doubt it. Just out of interest, I have no intention of moving in to this line of work!

If not then I don't think I have anything good to say about past lives or regression other than that it's a fun fantasy. Individual cases can be interesting puzzles and regression sessions do sound like a good trip. I might try them out some time.

Mindmagic...(sorry for picking you out Barry, I wanted someone to reference but it could have easily been someone else!)

Is this right? ... Therapeutically it doesn't matter where the information came from? You mean to say that it is irrelevant as to whether a patient is recalling an actual repressed memory of childhood abuse or randomly improvising one, supposedly in a past life, under the influence of your suggestions? I think it must matter if the memories are 'real' if only because you should let the patient finish their treatment with a justified belief as to whether they are real or not.

I.e. it seems feasible that treatment for psychological damage caused by a real events may also, but to no greater extent, benefit someone with apparent psychological damage inferred from construed events similar in nature. But is it not still important whether past lives exist or not? As the idea is in direct contradiction with most fundamental science I would say that it is a highly profound concept! Is potentially changing a persons worldview really therapeutically irrelevant?

Personally, I think it would be almost psychotic to give up all my current worldview and philosophy for the therapeutic benefit of believing in past lives!


Out of interest, although perhaps it won't be, when it comes to evidence and proof, I believe our current best philosophy on the subject and it's implications here goes something like this ...

Strictly speaking, no claim can be proven with any amount of evidence (the fallacy of inductive reasoning) but claims can be disproved by a single piece of evidence. So unfortunately even if you isolated a child at birth with strict monitoring and they seem to recall a verifiable past life, that still wouldn't prove the existence of past lives. It would be strong evidence that there is something missing from the prevailing current scientific worldview, and that would be very interesting, however I could come up with any number of add hock theories equally as good as past lives to explain the phenomena E.g. the ghost of another person inhabited the child and gave it the information.

Science is the evolutionary process of improving our explanations about how the world works via the falsification of competing ideas. What is considered to be our current best theories is not decided on by tally of evidence but because they are our best explanations with no strong contradictory evidence.

I would argue that our current (relevant) best theories i.e. quantum mechanics and information theory are in direct contradiction to all conceivable physical explanations to the notion of recalling a past life.

So if you want to justify your belief in past lives then I believe you will need to revolutionize a lot of science. It's not a question of 'how much evidence is there' but a question of how good is your physical explanation of how past life recall works. If your physical explanation (e.g. the existence of personal immortal souls retaining memory information) contradicts other deeper theories then you're in trouble. You're going to have to also present a consistent worldview that accounts for all the phenomena previously explained by said contradicting theories. Otherwise your proposed worldview will leave us being able to explain less about the universe which would not be scientific progress!

If you don't even have an explanation as to exactly how a phenomena works then you can't even enter a reasoned debate. It's competition in explanations by how good the explanations are that leads to a reasonable (and towards an objectively true) world-view, not competition in unexplained claims by tallying samples of evidence.

For what it is worth, and it is not worth much, I have “experienced” thousands of my past lives. I have also gotten several people to experience them. However, they generally claim they are not their past lives but something they saw in a movie and forgot about. At one time this was a primary interest of mine vastly more important than magic. I chronicled events since the big bang. I put it up on the internet. No one cares. During that time I sought out other people that had done the same so we could compare notes. I found no one with my experience. When I shared this with those in that “industry,” I was accused of being a fool or having a good imagination. What I saw did not match their dogma. At the end of this little piece I will tell you one thing I saw often in the past. I attended some events that were directed toward past life experiences. They all seem to get it wrong. I think it is real. But like most things that are real and not understood, people make up “devices” to sell and make a profit. The internet abounds with it. Most are absurd. Most often when I talk about it I get, “Whatever makes you happy.” Hence my comment, “…it is not worth much.” I have found that people do not want the truth. I eventually realized why. A person’s self-belief is their self-identity. If you suggest their self-belief is wrong you are threatening their existence. In short, if you suggest someone wrong, you threaten death. Perhaps the reason I can do all this is that I prefer knowledge over life. I want to know even if I am wrong or lead to my demise. This has gotten me into trouble all of my life. To be clear, there is no proof of this. I am also an expert in quantum mechanics. A similar situation exists there. The claim is that no one can understand it. They don’t see that they cannot understand it because they are wrong about what it is. Again, the power to see is based on the ability to admit self wrong. Anyway, here is the bit I promised. The most common thing I have seen in past lives is bars or drinking houses. In low society times they served as drinking places, hotels when families would sleep around a table at night, meeting places for political discussions and so on. In high society, there seems to be a bar on every block. At least there is where I live in Rice Lake, WI.

Great stuff Al. While we have different beliefs we share an appreciation for the importance of establishing was is real and what isn't.

The relativist attitude you mention prevents moral progress as well as scientific. I studied maths but lived with physicists when at University 10 years ago. Quantum mechanics is indeed generally delivered with an instrumentalist philosophy. I.e. 'It doesn't matter if light is particle or wave as long as your equations give you the right answer.'

This is ridiculous because science is meant to be about explaining the universe not just accurately predicting the measured outcome of experiments.

(Things might be getting better in Physics as the growing popularity of Everett's 'realistic' theory over the nonsense of the Copenhagen interpretation, I think, is a sign of improving philosophy).

Relativism and instrumentalism is also ridiculous when it comes to magic. Magic is all about engaging with what is experienced vs what is known about reality. How does anyone even start to conceive of magic if they don't have an objective world to refer to!

There is an objective world to be wrong and right about and it is important that we try to discover what that truth is. That requires a completely open and free exchange of ideas and lots of people will be offended and will act like drug addicts trying to protect their beliefs but that's a necessary part of progress.

I think that people seem more interested in picking their beliefs based on what they think sounds nice rather than what they can reasonably justify.

It sounds like years of criticism has worn you down Al. I'm sorry to hear that. I hope that I never stop arguing for what I believe in.

As for your claims of experiencing past lives, how do you know that they are your past lives rather than memories passed to you by a ghost or just other people's lives that you've accessed memories of somehow. You might feel that they were your lives but you need to justify it with an explanation. We are constantly deceived by our own minds so feelings and intuition counts for nothing.

One should keep an open mind, but not so open one's brains fall out:

"But she slowly became curious and then somewhat convinced the more her son spoke of Hollywood, his five marriages, lavish trips to Europe, his old homes and how all his acting clients kept changing their last names, so she decided to start doing some research on Hollywood during the studio era and shared some of the books she found at the local library with her son.
Then, one day, Ryan had a breakthrough when he saw a still from the from the 1932 movie Night After Night starring Mae West.
'That's me,' Ryan told his mother."


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I doubt Slim believes much of what he touts. I think he just wants others to believe it, as it is good for the "paranormal business."

Time has passed.
My previous post was aimed at finding someone interested in past lives.
I believe no one cares about it.
Some people that appear to care want to write about it to make a buck.
The other people that appear to care want to tell everyone it is a hoax.
Anyone else not covered by the above two cases, do not understand it.
As for the wisdom of Robert D. Adams. He is a condescending, erudite, haughty educated idiot.
His only goal seems to make others wrong. He seems well trained at that.
Should I be wrong about my opinion in any of this, I have written a booklet.
It is titled, “Reincarnation A-Z without the BS.”
It is available on amazon dot com.
It has been out for awhile and not a single copy has been sold.
This adds to my conclusion that no one cares.
I have forgotten about all this until my brother in law found a copy I used to edit long ago.
He claims it has answered questions he has had all his life.
And now ladies and gentlemen, I will crawl back into my corn field and take a nap.

I suggest you examine all the articles you can find on Bridey Murphy. The wikipedia is worth a look. Make sure you read the Bridey Murphy talk page. See: My Grandmother. Look up the word cryptomnesia. Search out the medical and psychology studies on cryptomnesia. I heard a professional hypnotherapist at a ring meeting talk about a female subject in a deep trance who began to speak about her experiences in a past life. He had not tried to take her back to a past life. He was very surprised. It was very interesting. Check out Bridey Murphy's obituary in the New York Times.

Many hypnotists have done much better. People have reported lives on other planets like Mars and far future lives on this planet. The stories are always coherent, consistent, detailed and believable. Instead of studying life in the future or looking for life on Mars, I would first investigate the nature of hypnosis.

To believe in reincarnation, one has to believe in a soul that exists separately from the human body. I don't believe in this, nor do I believe in ghosts. I am happy to listen to any evidence that anyone has for the existence of the soul, but I have never seen any.