Belief in Past Lives
Friday 06 Dec 2013
Recently I have had some rather interesting results from the hypnosis sessions that I offer. I work mainly with past life issues and it is not unusual to have all sorts of events unfold. I believe that many of the narratives that surface from my clients unconscious minds are real memories. You get a feeling for this especially when an emotional reaction links with a story that is being told. Sometimes it is quite dramatic. Often it is very cathartic. A client can heal and be finished with all manner of physical and mental problems.
A recent client was able to give accurate dates and names of a life lived in Perth, Western Australia, first as a Red Coat guard looking after transported prisoners in the mid 1800’s followed with a move to the Albany area and then delisting to become a landholder and farmer in the South West region.
This man and his family later popped out of the records like a beacon. My client was able to check the records and was able to make his past life memory very real. It was really is quite startling. My client can even visit his own grave and the area where he built a home and family. The accuracy of his past life recall was very telling.
All of this has made me wonder about the reasons that rebirth and reincarnation are not a more widely held belief system. It was once a belief system in the Christian church but for various reasons it was made heretical in the 4th Century. By the 5th century the churches power play had all but banished any talk of reincarnation or rebirth, usurping the obvious power it gives to the individual, with the church assuming all of the power for truth making to itself. Happily Eastern religions did not follow the same fate, but I am sure the influence of this “Western Thought” still prevails over us.
The evidence for past lives is extraordinarily solid. Anyone looking over the vast body of evidence for it would have to at least consider it. It is certainly true that no one can ever absolutely prove it right or wrong, but that is so for everything in existence. A belief is just what it says. It is a belief. A belief is a view of a body of evidence that provides a particular direction for us to think on, perhaps so we can predict its replication. There is a very large amount of information and evidence about reincarnation and rebirth that can now easily be accessed by anyone. This ranges from very authoritative and well researched books on the lives of people reporting such events, right through to research from Universities that use the “Scientific Method” in its approach. Perhaps the largest repository of verifiable work comes from Professor Ian Stevenson who has many thousands of case studies documented and researched in his body of work at the University of Virginia from 1957 up to his death a few years ago.
I believe that the question of whether past lives are true or not does not really matter, but I do think that reincarnation or rebirth is a very good thing for anyone to believe in. It is a belief system that encourages responsibility and compassion. It is arguably better than a nihilistic atheist approach and better than a belief that God will look after everything, precisely because it brings us back to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.
My insight also tells me that it is a belief that helps mould our view towards what I would call the RIGHT VIEW as set out in the first noble truth of the Buddhist tradition. By cultivating the “truthful” view that we are all in this together and that we are all interconnected, it conditions and triggers our natural sensitivity and compassion. It encourages us not to exploit for the sake of exploitation but to act with responsibility and care. This conditioning is a pathway to peace of mind and that naturally brings up the RIGHT VIEW of things that will gradually guide us towards enlightenment.
The stream of consciousness that each of us builds our lives around can then become visible and we can then see and experience this interconnectedness more profoundly so that we can eventually let go of all of our beliefs, views and opinions and rest in the bliss of the present moment.
Not every person can remember their past lives as precisely as my last extraordinary client, but there are enough of us that are able to remember to put the question of past lives way beyond doubt. Peter Ramster the hypnotist from Sydney made a film many years ago with four women who remembered their past lives well enough for them to research their remembered lives in a film that he made. The past lives are very compelling. The film is on you tube and can be seen on my web site. www.dennissheppardhypnosis.com.au
The truth of past lives will always be contentious, much the same as any memory. I find it difficult enough to remember things that happened last week in this life, let alone years and years ago. Furthermore past events will always be remembered through our own unique perception, so even stories of the same event will always be different. This means that no memory will ever be 100% truthful.
The important thing about past life memories is the peace that one can be left with when tensions made in the past are allowed to unravel and relax. The stories we tell are narratives that relate to the tensions we all have inside us. When one sees a client’s emotional release coinciding with a story they are telling you, I know that truth is in the vicinity. It might not be an absolute truth but the peace that the catharsis brings is well worth believing in.
