Raymond moody life before life. Raymond Moody - Life before life: Exploring past life regressions. Brand new evidence of life after life
Raymond Moody says: each of us has already lived several lives. American psychotherapist Raymond Moody became famous for his book "Life after life". In it, he talks about the impressions of a person who has passed the state of clinical death.
It is amazing that these impressions turned out to be common to all the dying. The new book of the famous doctor "Life before life" tells us that our life is just a link in the chain of several lives we have lived before. Moody's book caused a real scandal abroad. She made many people interested in her distant past. It sparked a new direction in the treatment of a number of serious diseases. It posed a number of unsolvable questions to science.
1. LIFE BEFORE LIFE
For centuries, people have been trying to solve the question: did we live before? Maybe our life today is just a link in an endless chain of previous lives? Is it possible that our spiritual energy completely disappears after our death, and we ourselves, our intellectual content, each time start again from scratch?
Religion has always been interested in these questions in the first place. There are entire nations who believe in the transmigration of souls. Millions of Hindus believe that when we die, we are somewhere reborn in an endless cycle of deaths and births. They are even convinced that human life can transmigrate into the life of an animal and even an insect. Moreover, if you led an unworthy life, the more unpleasant the creature will be, in the guise of which you will again appear before people.
This transmigration of souls has received the scientific name "reincarnation" and is being researched today in all areas of medicine - from psychology to conventional therapy. And it seems that the great Vernadsky himself, while building his “noosphere”, came close to this problem somewhere, because the energy sphere around the planet is a kind of accumulation of the former spiritual energies of myriads of people who inhabited the Earth.
But back to our problem...
Have pieces of memory been preserved somewhere in the recesses of our consciousness, one way or another confirming the existence of a chain of previous lives?
Yes, science answers. The mysterious archive of the subconscious is filled to the limit with such “memories” accumulated over the millennia of the existence of changing spiritual energies.
Here is what the famous researcher Joseph Campbell says about this: “Reincarnation shows that you are something more than you are used to thinking, and there are unknown depths in your being that have yet to be known and thereby expand the possibilities of consciousness, embrace what not included in your self-image. Your life is much wider and deeper than you think. Your life is only a small part of what you carry within yourself, what gives life - breadth and depth. And when you once manage to comprehend it, you will suddenly understand the essence of all religious teachings.
How can one touch this deep archive of memory accumulated in the subconscious?
It turns out that you can get to the subconscious with the help of hypnosis. By introducing a person into a hypnotic state, it is possible to cause the process of regression - the return of memory to a past life.
Hypnotic sleep differs from ordinary dreaming - it is an intermediate state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. In this state of half-sleep-half-wakefulness, the consciousness of a person works most sharply, providing him with new mental solutions.
The famous inventor Thomas Edison is said to have used self-hypnosis when faced with a problem he could not currently solve. He retired to his office, sat down in an easy chair and began to doze off. It was in a state of half-asleep that the necessary decision came to him.
And in order not to fall into a normal sleep, the inventor even came up with a clever trick. He took a glass ball in each hand and placed two metal plates at the bottom. Falling asleep, he dropped a ball from his hand, which fell with a clang on a metal plate and woke up Edison. As a rule, the inventor woke up with a ready-made solution. The mental pictures, hallucinations that appear during hypnotic sleep are different from ordinary dreams. Sleepers, as a rule, participate in the events of their dreams. During regression, a person detachesly looks at what his subconscious shows him. This state in normal people (the appearance of pictures of the past) occurs at the moment of falling asleep or under hypnosis.
Usually, hypnotic phenomena are perceived by people as rapidly changing pictures when viewing color slides on a slide projector.
The famous Raymond Moody, being a psychotherapist and hypnotist at the same time, conducting experiments on 200 patients, claims that only 10% of the subjects did not see any pictures in a state of regression. The rest, as a rule, saw pictures of the past in the subconscious.
The hypnotist only very tactfully, as a psychotherapist, helped them with his questions to expand and deepen the overall picture of the regression. He, as it were, led the subject in the image, and did not tell him the plot of the picture being viewed.
Moody himself for a long time considered these pictures an ordinary dream, not paying much attention to them.
But while working on the problem that made him famous, the topic "Life after Life," he encountered among the many hundreds of letters he received describing a number of cases of regression. And this made Raymond Moody take a new attitude to the phenomenon, which seemed to him natural.
However, the problem finally attracted the attention of the already world-famous psychotherapist after his meeting with Diana Denhol, a professional hypnologist. She introduced Moody into a state of regression, as a result of which he recalled nine episodes of his past life from his memory. Let's give the floor to the researcher himself.
2. NINE PREVIOUS LIVES
My lectures on near-death experiences always raised questions about other paranormal phenomena. When it came time for the listeners to ask questions, they were mainly interested in UFOs, physical manifestations of the power of thought (for example, bending an iron rod with mental effort), past life regression.
All these questions not only did not concern the area of my research, but simply baffled me. After all, none of them has anything to do with "experiences on the verge of death." Let me remind you that "death experiences" are deep spiritual experiences that spontaneously occur to some people at the time of death. Usually they are accompanied by the following phenomena: exit from the body, a feeling of rapid movement through the tunnel towards a bright light, a meeting with long-dead relatives at the opposite end of the tunnel and a look back at one’s lived life (most often with the help of a luminous being), which appears before him as would be filmed. Experiences "on the verge of death" have nothing to do with paranormal phenomena, which the audience asked me about after the lectures. At that time, these areas of knowledge were of little interest to me.
Among the phenomena of interest to the audience was regression into past lives. I have always assumed that this journey into the past is nothing but a fantasy of the subject, a figment of his imagination. I believed that it was a dream, or an unusual way of fulfilling desires. I was sure that most people who successfully went through the process of regression saw themselves in the role of an outstanding or extraordinary person, for example, an Egyptian pharaoh. When asked about past lives, I found it difficult to hide my disbelief.
That's what I thought, too, until I met Diane Denhall, a magnetic personality and psychiatrist who could easily convince people. She used hypnosis in her practice - initially to help people quit smoking, lose weight, and even find lost items. “But sometimes something unusual happened,” she told me. From time to time, some patients talked about their experiences from a past life. This was most often when she led people back through life so that they could relive some traumatic event they had already forgotten, a process known as early life regression therapy.
This method helped to find the source of fears or neuroses that bothered patients in the present. The task was to take a person back through life, “removing” it layer by layer to reveal the cause of a trauma, just as an archaeologist peels off one layer after another, each of which was deposited over a certain historical period, to unearth the ruins at the archaeological site.
But sometimes patients somehow surprisingly got much further into the past than it seemed possible. Suddenly they began to talk about another life, place, time, and as if they were seeing everything that was happening with their own eyes.
Such cases have repeatedly met in the practice of Diana Denhol during the hypnotic regression. At first, these experiences of patients frightened her, she looked for her mistakes in hypnotherapy or thought that she was dealing with a patient suffering from a split personality. But, when such cases were repeated again and again, she realized that these experiences can be used to treat the patient. By researching the phenomenon, she eventually learned to evoke past life memories in people who consented to it. She now regularly uses regression in her practice, which brings the patient right to the core of the problem, often significantly reducing the duration of treatment.
I have always believed that each of us is the subject of an experiment for himself, and therefore I wanted to experience past life regression myself. I communicated my desire to Diana, and she generously invited me to begin the experiment that same day after dinner. She seated me in an easy chair and gradually, with great skill, introduced me into the deepest trance. Then she told me that I was in a trance state for about an hour. I kept in mind that I was Raymond Moody and that I was under the supervision of a skilled psychotherapist. In this trance, I visited nine stages of the development of civilization and saw myself and the world around me in different incarnations. And to this day, I don't know what they meant, or if they meant anything at all.
I know only one thing for sure - it was an amazing feeling, more like reality than a dream. The colors were the same as they are in reality, the actions developed in accordance with the internal logic of events, and not the way I “wanted”. I didn’t think: “Now something will happen.” Or: "The plot should develop in such and such a way." These real lives evolved on their own, like the plot of a movie on a screen.
I will now describe, in chronological order, the lives I went through with the help of Diana Denhall.
LIFE FIRST
IN THE JUNGLE
In the first version, I was a primitive man - some kind of prehistoric kind of man. An absolutely self-confident creature that lived in trees. So, I comfortably existed among the branches and leaves and was much more human than you might expect. I was by no means an ape.
I did not live alone, but in a group of beings like me. We lived together in nest-like structures. During the construction of these “houses”, we helped each other and tried in every possible way to make sure that we could walk to each other, for which we built reliable flooring. We did this not only for safety, we realized that it was better and more convenient for us to live in a group. Probably, we have already decently climbed the ladder of evolution.
We communicated with each other, directly expressing our emotions. Instead of speech, we were forced to use gestures, with which we showed what we feel and what we need.
I remember that we ate fruit. I can clearly see how I am eating some fruit unknown to me now. It is juicy, it has a lot of small red seeds. Everything was so real that it seemed to me as if I was eating this fruit right in the hypnosis session. I even felt the juice running down my chin as I chewed.
SECOND LIFE
PRIMIAL AFRICA
In this life I saw myself as a boy of twelve living in a community in a tropical prehistoric forest, a place of unfamiliar, alien beauty. Judging by the fact that we were all black, I assumed that this was happening in Africa.
At the beginning of this hypnotic adventure, I saw myself in the forest, on the shore of a calm lake. I looked at something in the white clean sand. A sparse tropical forest arose around the village, thickening on the surrounding hills. The huts we lived in were built on thick piles, their floors raised about sixty centimeters above the ground. The walls of the houses were woven of straw, and inside there was only one, but a large quadrangular room.
I knew that my father was fishing with everyone in one of the fishing boats, and my mother was busy with something nearby on the shore. I didn't see them, I just knew they were close and I felt safe.
LIFE THREE
MASTER SHIPBUILDER ROVERS IN BOAT
In the next episode, I saw myself as a muscular old man. I had blue eyes and a long silver beard. Despite my old age, I still worked in the workshop where boats were built.
The workshop was a long building overlooking a large river, and from the side of the river it was completely open. The room was stacked with planks and thick, heavy logs. Primitive tools hung on the walls and lay in disarray on the floor. Apparently I was living out my last days. My three-year-old shy granddaughter was with me. I told her what each tool was for, and showed her how to work them on a freshly finished boat, and she peeked fearfully over the side of the boat.
That day I took my granddaughter and went boating with her. We were enjoying the calm flow of the river, when suddenly high waves rose and capsized our boat. My granddaughter and I were blown apart by water. I fought the current, trying my best to grab my granddaughter, but the elements were faster and stronger than me. In powerless despair, watching the baby drown, and I stopped fighting for my own life. I remember drowning with guilt. After all, it was I who started the walk in which my beloved granddaughter found her death.
LIFE FOURTH
TERRIBLE MAMMOTH HUNTER
In my next life, I was with people who, with desperate passion, hunted the shaggy mammoth. I usually did not notice any particular gluttony in myself, but at that moment no smaller game would have satisfied my appetite. In a state of hypnosis, I nevertheless noticed that all of us were by no means well-fed and we really needed food.
Animal skins were thrown over us, and in such a way that they covered only the shoulders and chest. They did little to protect us from the cold and hardly covered our genitals at all. But this did not bother us at all - when we fought with a mammoth, we forgot about the cold and decency. There were six of us in a small gorge, we threw stones and sticks at a powerful animal.
The mammoth managed to grab one of my tribesmen with its trunk and crush his skull with one precise and strong movement. The rest were horrified.
LIFE FIFTH
GRAND CONSTRUCTION OF THE PAST
Fortunately, I moved on. This time I found myself in the midst of a huge construction site, in which masses of people were occupied, in the historical setting of the beginning of civilization. In this dream, I was not a king, or even a monk, but just one of the workers. I think that we were building an aqueduct or a road network, but I'm not sure about it, because from where I was, you could not see the whole panorama of the construction.
We workers lived in rows of white stone houses with grass growing between them. I lived with my wife, it seemed to me that I had lived here for many years, because the place was very familiar. In our room there was an elevation on which we lay. I was very hungry, and my wife was literally dying of malnutrition. She lay quietly, emaciated, emaciated, and waited for her life to die out. She had jet-black hair and prominent cheekbones. I felt that we lived a good life together, but malnutrition dulled our feelings.
LIFE SIX
THROWN TO BE EATED BY LIONS
Finally, I ended up in a civilization that I could recognize - in Ancient Rome. Unfortunately, I was neither an emperor nor an aristocrat. I sat in the lion's pit and waited for the lion to bite my hand off for fun.
I watched myself from the side.
I had long fiery red hair and a mustache. I was very thin and only wore short leather pants. I knew my origin - I was from the area that is now called Germany, where I was captured by the Roman legionnaires in one of their military campaigns. The Romans used me as a bearer of plundered riches. Having delivered their cargo to Rome, I had to die for their amusement. I saw myself looking up at the people who surrounded the pit. I must have asked them for mercy, because a hungry lion was waiting outside the door next to me. I felt his power and heard the roar he let out in anticipation of a meal.
I knew that it was impossible to escape, but when they opened the door to the lion, the instinct of self-preservation made me look for a way out. The point of view at that moment changed, I got into this body of mine. I heard the bars being lifted and I saw the lion heading towards me. I tried to defend myself by raising my hands, but the lion rushed at me without even noticing them. To the delight of the audience, who squealed with delight, the animal knocked me down and pinned me to the ground.
The last thing I remember is how I am lying between the lion's paws, and the lion is going to crush my skull with his mighty jaws.
LIFE SEVEN
REFINED TO THE END
My next life was that of an aristocrat, and again in Ancient Rome. I lived in beautiful, spacious rooms, filled with pleasant twilight light, spreading a yellowish glow around me. I was reclining in a white toga on a couch shaped like a modern chaise longue. I was about forty years old, I had the tummy and smooth skin of a man who had never done heavy physical labor. I remember the feeling of satisfaction with which I lay and looked at my son. He was about fifteen, with wavy, dark, short hair that beautifully framed his frightened face.
"Father, why are these people rushing to us?" he asked me.
“My son,” I answered. “We have soldiers for that.”
“But, dad, there are a lot of them,” he objected.
He was so frightened that I decided to get up, more out of curiosity, to see what he was talking about. I went out onto the balcony and saw a handful of Roman soldiers trying to stop a huge excited crowd. I immediately realized that my son's fear was not causeless. Looking at my son, I realized that the sudden fright could be read on my face.
These were the last scenes from that life. From what I felt when I saw the crowd, that was the end of it.
LIFE EIGHT
DEATH IN THE DESERT
My next life took me to a mountainous area somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East. I was a merchant. I had a house on a hill, and at the foot of that hill was my shop. I bought and sold jewelry there. I sat there all day and valued gold, silver and precious stones.
But my house was my pride. It was a beautiful red-brick building with a covered gallery where you could spend the cool evening hours. The back wall of the house rested on a rock - it did not have a backyard. The windows of all the rooms overlooked the facade, they opened a view of the distant mountains and river valleys, which seemed something especially amazing among the desert landscape.
One day, returning home, I noticed that the house was unusually quiet. I entered the house and began to move from one empty room to another. I was getting scared. Finally I entered our bedroom and found my wife and three of our children murdered there. I do not know exactly how they were killed, but judging by the amount of blood, they were stabbed with knives.
LIFE NINE
CHINESE ARTIST
In my last life I was an artist, and a woman at that. The first thing I remember is myself at the age of six and my younger brother. Our parents took us for a walk to the majestic waterfall. The path led us to granite rocks, from the cracks in which water was breaking through, feeding the waterfalls. We froze in place and watched as the water cascaded and then collapsed into a deep crevice.
It was a short passage. The next one related to the moment of my death.
I became poor and lived in a small house built on the backs of rich houses. It was a very comfortable accommodation. On that last day of my life, I was lying in bed and sleeping when a young man entered the house and strangled me. Just. He didn't take anything from my things. He wanted something that had no value to him - my life.
Here's how it was. Nine lifetimes, and in one hour my opinion about past life regression completely changed. Diana Denhall gently brought me out of my hypnotic trance. I realized that regression is not a dream or a dream. I learned a lot from these visions. When I saw them, I remembered rather than invented.
But there was something in them that is not in ordinary memories. Namely, in a state of regression, I could see myself from different points of view. I spent several terrible moments in the lion's mouth outside of myself, watching events from the side. But at the same time I remained there, in the hole. The same thing happened when I was a shipbuilder. For some time I watched myself as I was making a boat, from the side, the next moment, for no reason, without controlling the situation, I again found myself in the body of an old man and saw the world through the eyes of an old master.
The shifting point of view was something mysterious. But everything else was just as mysterious. Where did the "visions" come from? When all this happened, I was not at all interested in history. Why did I go through different historical periods, some of which I recognized and others not? Were they genuine, or did I somehow cause them to appear in my own mind?
My own regressions haunted me as well. I did not expect to see myself in a past life, entering a state of hypnosis. Even assuming that I would see something, I did not expect that I could not explain it.
But those nine lives that surfaced in my memory under the influence of hypnosis surprised me greatly. Most of them took place in times that I have never read or seen films about. And in each of them I was an ordinary person, nothing stood out. This completely shattered my theory that in a past life everyone sees himself as Cleopatra or another brilliant historical figure. A few days after the regression, I admitted that this phenomenon was a mystery to me. The only way to solve this riddle (or at least attempt to solve it) I saw in the organization of scientific research, in which the regressions would be broken down into separate elements and each of them carefully analyzed.
I wrote down a few questions, hoping that researching regressions would help answer them. Here they are: Can past life regression therapy affect painful states of mind or body? Today, the connection between the body and the soul is of great interest, but a negligible number of scientists are investigating the impact of regression on the course of diseases. I was especially interested in its effect on various phobias - fears that cannot be explained by anything. I knew firsthand that with the help of regression, you can find the cause of these fears and help a person overcome them. Now I wanted to investigate this question myself.
How can these unusual journeys be explained? How to interpret them if a person does not believe in the existence of reincarnation? At that time I did not know how to answer these questions. I started writing down possible explanations.
How to explain the mysterious visions that visit a person in regression? I did not consider them to be rigorous proof of the existence of reincarnation (and many people who have come into contact with the phenomenon of past life regression considered them proof), but I had to admit that some of the cases known to me are not easily explained otherwise.
Can people themselves, without the help of a hypnotist, open channels leading to past lives? I wanted to know if self-hypnosis can induce past life regression in the same way that hypnotherapy can.
The regression gave rise to a host of new questions that needed to be answered. My curiosity was aroused. I was ready to dive into past life research.
Raymond MOODY
3. IS REINCARNATION PROVEN?
Raymond Moody began serious research into regression while teaching psychology at West Georgia State College in Carroll Town. This educational institution, in contrast to many other American institutions, paid great attention to the study of parapsychological phenomena. This situation allowed Moody to create a group of experimental students in the amount of 50 people. It is not superfluous to recall that, while studying the problem of "Life after life" in the seventies, the researcher used the materials of two hundred patients who had come out of death.
But these were, of course, isolated cases. During regression, Moody conducted experiments with simultaneous hypnotic influence on the team. In this case of group hypnosis, the pictures visible to the subjects were less bright, as if blurred. There were also unexpected results, sometimes two patients saw the same picture. Sometimes someone asked after waking up to return him to the past world, he was so interested in it.
Moody has installed another interesting feature. It turns out that a hypnotic session can be replaced by an ancient and already forgotten method of self-hypnosis: continuous peering into a crystal ball.
Putting the ball on black velvet, in the dark, only by the light of one candle at a distance of 60 cm, you need to completely relax. Persistently peering into the depths of the ball, a person gradually falls into a state of a kind of self-hypnosis. Images from the subconscious begin to float before his eyes.
Moody states that this method is also acceptable for experiments with collectives. In extreme cases, the crystal ball can be replaced with a round carafe of water and even a mirror.
“Having carried out my own experiments,” says Moody, “I found that the visions in the crystal ball were not fiction, but fact ... They were clearly projected in the crystal ball, moreover, they were color and three-dimensional, like images in holographic television.”
Whatever method the regression was evoked: hypnosis, peering into the ball, or simply self-hypnosis (and this happens), under all conditions, the researcher was able to identify a number of features during regression, related to all in their generality:
- Visuality of events from a past life - all subjects visually see pictures of regression, less often hear or smell. Pictures are brighter than ordinary dreams.
- Events during regression occur according to their own laws, which the subject cannot influence - basically he is a contemplator, and not an active participant in the events.
- The regression patterns are somewhat familiar. A peculiar recognition process takes place with the subject - he has the feeling that what he sees, does, he has already seen and done once.
- The subject gets used to someone's image, despite the fact that all the circumstances do not match: neither gender, nor time, nor the environment.
- Having settled into a personality, the subject experiences the feelings of the one in whom he incarnated. Feelings can be very strong, so that the hypnotist sometimes has to reassure the patient, convincing him that all this is happening in the distant past.
- Observed events can be perceived in two ways: from the point of view of third-party observation or a direct participant in the events.
- The events that the subject sees often reflect the problems of his current life. Naturally, they are refracted historically in time and depend on the environment where they occur.
- The process of regression can often serve to improve the state of mind of the subject. As a result of this, a person feels relief and purification - emotions accumulated in the past find a way out.
- In rare cases, subjects experience noticeable improvements in physical condition after regression. This proves the inseparable connection between body and spirit.
- Each time subsequent introductions of the patient into a state of regression occur more and more easily.
- Most past lives are the lives of ordinary people, not prominent figures in history.
However, the same Moody gives several convincing examples when an equal sign can be put between regression and reincarnation. Here are the examples.
Dr. Paul Hansen of Colorado saw himself in regression as a French noble named Antoine de Poirot, living on his estate near Vichy with his wife and two children. It was, as memory suggests, in 1600.
“In the most memorable scene, my wife and I rode on horseback to our castle,” Hansen recalls. “I remember well: my wife was in a bright red velvet dress and sat in a side saddle.”
Hansen later visited France. According to the known date, name and place of action, he, according to documents preserved from past centuries, and then from the records of the parish priest, learned about the birth of Antoine de Poirot. This completely coincides with the regression of the American.
In another case, the well-known tragedy that took place in 1846 in the Rocky Mountains is told. A large group of settlers was caught in late autumn by snow drifts. The height of the snow reached four meters. Women, children, dying of hunger, were forced to resort to cannibalism ... Of the 77 people of the Donner detachment, only 47 survived, mostly women and children.
A German woman came to Dr. Dick Sutfeng today, who was being treated for overeating. During the act of regression, under hypnosis, she saw in every detail the terrible pictures of cannibalism on a snow-covered pass.
I was a ten year old girl at the time and I remember how we ate grandpa. It was scary, but my mother told me: “That’s how it should be, that’s how grandfather wanted ...” It turned out that the German woman came to the USA in 1953, knew nothing, and could not know anything about the tragedy that broke out a hundred years ago in the Rocky Mountains. But what is striking: the description of the tragedy from the patient's story completely coincided with the historical fact. The question involuntarily arises: is her illness - chronic overeating - not a "memory" of the monstrous days of hunger in a past life?
It is said that a fairly well-known American artist came to a psychotherapist and underwent a regression. However, after returning under hypnosis to a past life, he suddenly spoke in French. The doctor asked him to translate the speech into English. An American with a clear French accent did it. It turned out that in the past he lived in old Paris, where he was a mediocre musician who composed popular songs. The most mysterious thing was that the psychotherapist found in the music library the name of a French composer and a description of his life, which coincided with the story of an American artist. Doesn't this confirm reincarnation?
Even stranger is Moody's account of one of his subjects. In a state of regression, he called himself Mark Twain.
I have never read either his works or his biography,” the subject said after the session.
But in his practical life he was permeated in every detail with the features of a great writer. He loved humor, like Twain. He liked to sit on the porch in a rocking chair, talking to his neighbors like Twain. He decided to buy a farm in Virginia and build an octagonal workshop on a hill - the same one Twain once worked on his estate in Connecticut. He tried to write humorous stories, one of which described Siamese twins. It is amazing that Mark Twain has such a story.
Since childhood, the patient had a keen interest in astronomy, in particular Halley's comet.
The passion for this science is also known in Twain, who also studied this particular comet.
Until now, this amazing case remains a mystery. Reincarnation? Coincidence?
Do all these short stories serve as proof of the transmigration of souls. What else?..
But after all, these are isolated cases that have received verification, and then only because we met with people who are quite famous. One has to think that there are not enough examples to draw final conclusions.
One thing remains - to continue to study the mysterious phenomena of reincarnation.
However, we can firmly say: regression heals the sick! Once upon a time, medicine did not connect the state of the patient's spirit with the disease of the body. These views are now a thing of the past.
It has been proven that regression, which certainly affects the spiritual state of a person, successfully heals him. First of all, various phobias - a violation of the nervous system, obsessions, depression. In many cases, asthma, arthritis are also cured ...
Today, many psychotherapists in America, as they say, have already adopted a new direction in medicine - regression. Well-known psychotherapist Helen Wambech provides interesting data from this area. 26 specialists reported data on the results of work with 18,463 patients. Of this number of psychotherapists, 24 were involved in the treatment of physical diseases. In 63% of patients, elimination of at least one symptom of the disease was observed after treatment. Interestingly, of this number of those cured, 60% improved their health, because they experienced their own death in the past, for 40% the improvement was due to other experiences. What's the matter here?
Raymond Moody tries to answer this question. He says: “I don't know exactly why past life regression works only for certain diseases, but it reminds me of Einstein's words, said many years ago: “Perhaps there are radiations about which we still know nothing. Remember how they laughed at electric current and invisible waves? The science of man is still in diapers.”
And what, in this case, to say about reincarnation - a phenomenon even more profound?
Here Moody's position seems to be more flexible. Reincarnation, he concludes his book, “is so attractive that it can cause unhealthy mental experiences. We must not forget that reincarnation, if it exists, may be completely different from what we imagine it to be, and even completely incomprehensible to our consciousness.
I was asked recently: “If there was a court session at which it was necessary to decide whether reincarnation exists or not, what would the jury decide?” I think he would rule in favor of reincarnation. Most people are too overwhelmed by their past lives to be able to explain it any other way.
For me, past life experiences have changed the structure of my faith. These experiences I no longer consider "strange". I consider them a normal phenomenon that can happen to anyone who allows himself to be put into a state of hypnosis.
The least that can be said about them is that these discoveries come from the depths of the subconscious.
The biggest thing is that they prove the existence of life before life.”
Moody Raymond. Life before life. Each of us has already lived several lives.
Raymond Moody
1. LIFE BEFORE LIFE
Raymond Moody says: each of us has already lived several lives. American psychotherapist Raymond Moody became famous for his book Life After Life. In it, he talks about the impressions of a person who has passed the state of clinical death. It is amazing that these impressions turned out to be common to all the dying.
Today we will talk about the new book of the world famous doctor. It is called "Life before life" and tells that our life is just a link in the chain of several lives we have lived before.
Moody's new book has caused a real scandal abroad. She made many people interested in her distant past. It sparked a new direction in the treatment of a number of serious diseases. It posed a number of unsolvable questions to science.
(c) Miracles and Adventures N 06/95
For centuries, people have been trying to solve the question: did we live before? Maybe our life today is just a link in an endless chain of previous lives? Is it possible that our spiritual energy completely disappears after our death, and we ourselves, our intellectual content, each time start again from scratch?
Religion has always been interested in these questions in the first place. There are entire nations who believe in the transmigration of souls. Millions of Hindus believe that when we die, we are somewhere reborn in an endless cycle of deaths and births. They are even convinced that human life can transmigrate into the life of an animal and even an insect. Moreover, if you led an unworthy life, the more unpleasant the creature will be, in the guise of which you will again appear before people.
This transmigration of souls has received the scientific name "reincarnation" and is being researched today in all areas of medicine - from psychology to conventional therapy. And it seems that the great Vernadsky himself, while building his “noosphere”, came close to this problem somewhere, because the energy sphere around the planet is a kind of accumulation of the former spiritual energies of myriads of people who inhabited the Earth.
However, let's get back to our problem… Have there been pieces of memory preserved somewhere in the recesses of our consciousness, one way or another confirming the existence of a chain of previous lives?
Yes, science answers. The mysterious archive of the subconscious is filled to the limit with such “memories” accumulated over the millennia of the existence of changing spiritual energies.
Here is what the famous researcher Joseph Campbell says about this: “Reincarnation shows that you are something more than you are used to thinking, and there are unknown depths in your being that have yet to be known and thereby expand the possibilities of consciousness, embrace what is not part of your self-image.Your life is much wider and deeper than you think.Your life is only a small part of what you carry in yourself, what gives life - breadth and depth.And when you once If you manage to comprehend it, you will unexpectedly understand the essence of all religious teachings.
How can one touch this deep archive of memory accumulated in the subconscious? It turns out that you can get to the subconscious with the help of hypnosis. By introducing a person into a hypnotic state, it is possible to cause the process of regression - the return of memory to a past life.
Hypnotic sleep differs from ordinary dreaming - it is an intermediate state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. In this state of half-sleep-half-wakefulness, the consciousness of a person works most sharply, providing him with new mental solutions.
The famous inventor Thomas Edison is said to have used self-hypnosis when faced with a problem he could not currently solve. He retired to his office, sat down in an easy chair and began to doze off. It was in a state of half-asleep that the necessary decision came to him. And in order not to fall into a normal sleep, the inventor even came up with a clever trick. He took a glass ball in each hand and placed two metal plates at the bottom. Falling asleep, he dropped a ball from his hand, which fell with a clang on a metal plate and woke up Edison. As a rule, the inventor woke up with a ready-made solution. The mental pictures, hallucinations that appear during hypnotic sleep are different from ordinary dreams. Sleepers, as a rule, participate in the events of their dreams.
During regression, a person detachesly looks at what his subconscious shows him. This state in normal people (the appearance of pictures of the past) occurs at the moment of falling asleep or under hypnosis.
Usually, hypnotic phenomena are perceived by people as rapidly changing pictures when viewing color slides on a slide projector. The famous Raymond Moody, being a psychotherapist and hypnotist at the same time, conducting experiments on 200 patients, claims that only 10% of the subjects did not see any pictures in a state of regression. The rest, as a rule, saw pictures of the past in the subconscious.
The hypnotist only very tactfully, as a psychotherapist, helped them with his questions to expand and deepen the overall picture of the regression. He, as it were, led the subject in the image, and did not tell him the plot of the picture being viewed.
Moody himself for a long time considered these pictures an ordinary dream, not paying much attention to them. But while working on the problem that made him famous, the topic "Life after Life", he encountered among the many hundreds of letters he received describing in a number of cases regression. And this made Raymond Moody take a new attitude to the phenomenon, which seemed to him natural. However, the problem finally attracted the attention of the already world-famous psychotherapist after his meeting with Diana Denhol, a professional hypnologist. She introduced Moody into a state of regression, as a result of which he recalled nine episodes of his past life from his memory.
Let's give the floor to the researcher himself.
2. NINE PREVIOUS LIVES
My lectures on near-death experiences have always raised questions about other paranormal phenomena. When it came time for the listeners to ask questions, they were mainly interested in UFOs, physical manifestations of the power of thought (for example, bending an iron rod with mental effort), past life regression.
All these questions not only did not concern the area of my research, but simply baffled me. After all, none of them has anything to do with "experiences on the verge of death." Let me remind you that "death experiences" are deep spiritual experiences that spontaneously occur to some people at the time of death. Usually they are accompanied by the following phenomena: exit from the body, a feeling of rapid movement through the tunnel towards a bright light, a meeting with long-dead relatives at the opposite end of the tunnel and a look back at one’s lived life (most often with the help of a luminous being), which appears before him as would be filmed. Experiences "on the verge of death" have nothing to do with paranormal phenomena, which the audience asked me about after the lectures. At that time, these areas of knowledge were of little interest to me. Among the phenomena of interest to the audience was regression into past lives. I have always assumed that this journey into the past is nothing but a fantasy of the subject, a figment of his imagination. I believed that it was a dream, or an unusual way of fulfilling desires. I was sure that most people who successfully went through the process of regression saw themselves in the role of an outstanding or extraordinary person, for example, an Egyptian pharaoh.
Raymond Moody, also Raymond or Raymond Moody (Raymond Moody, June 30, 1944, Porterdale, Georgia) is an American psychologist and physician.
He is best known for his books on life after death and near-death experiences, a term he coined in 1975. His most popular book is Life After Life.
He studied philosophy at the University of Virginia, where he received successive bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy. He also received a PhD in psychology from Georgia Western College, where he later became a professor on the subject. He received his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree from the Medical College of Georgia in 1976. In 1998, Moody did research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and then worked as a forensic psychiatrist at the Georgia Maximum Security Prison Hospital.
He was one of the first researchers of near-death experiences and described the experiences of approximately 150 people who experienced near-death experiences.
Currently resides in Alabama.
Books (6)
Glimpses of eternity
Brand new evidence of life after life.
Glimpses of Eternity is a book for skeptics. She will dispel their doubts about the accuracy of the statements made by Moody in Life After Life.
This book is for everyone who wants to finally believe that there is no death! This is a very light and persuasive book. Discover brand new, never-before-published evidence for life after life!
Reader Comments
Natalia/ 07/23/2018 Who will sit at the gates of paradise after death, wait until the doors are opened, but you won’t see this, because you are not saints, and your thoughts and actions are far from April, so to get to heaven you need to work on yourself, to help people, to love them, to sympathize, to improve. It’s rare for anyone to have time in this life, so you have to be born again.
Natalia/ 07/23/2018 Religions are right in principle, they are the path to perfection and in general we were created by the absolute with the help of several types of alien races and there is reincarnation, and we will be born until we become perfect. Here is Michael Newton's book which has no analogues tells about it. The doctor introduced patients into a hypnotic state, taking them through past lives in order to cure some diseases that have projections from past lives. And one woman accidentally said where she was between lives, that's the whole secret, why we are, and then we are not. The book Journey of the Soul Between Lives provides a definitive answer.
Basil/ 03/31/2017 All these books are for beginners... Those who want to deepen their knowledge, read the works of H. P. Blavatsky and H. I. Roerich.
Gurka Lamov/ 01/10/2017 And think with your head? What do we read in Moody's? Here, people dying, suddenly, bang, the room will be filled with light and the soul flies off through the tunnel. And there everyone is already waiting for her, relatives who previously glued flippers and I. Khristos himself ... All of them stocked up on popcorn and are looking forward to viewing all, even the most intimate, details of the deceased's life. Watching porn with your own participation, together with relatives and the founder of the Christian religion ... Cool! The author of the books is either crazy himself or thinks the readers are complete fools.
Julia/ 11/14/2016 People, be kinder and more tolerant to each other. As for reincarnation therapy, I can say that I am currently studying it with my teachers and have reviewed my 4 lives and excerpts from 3 more! And it's all true. On the other hand, it’s very good and everyone loves you !! Therefore, they give chances again and again.
Peaceful/ 03/15/2016 Friends, why all these disputes? Everything has long been known thanks to the Primordial Knowledge, which is written in a simple and understandable form in the books of Anastasia Novykh.
and from the standpoint of the AllatRa book, which contains the keys for understanding, everything falls into place thanks to them. highly recommended reading)
Sofia/ 02/15/2016 I don’t know if it’s better, but it’s still possible and true ...//
marina/ 12/17/2015 Alex, The Bible is the ABC for the future life THERE. And at the expense of reincarnation, I think God gives a chance to correct what happened in a past life. Example: a man killed another drunk. Having sobered up, he sincerely repented, suffered a worldly punishment. Where does he go to Heaven or Hell after death?! Someone will say to Hell, because he repented, to Paradise, but what about the punishment from Above? God gives reincarnations for redemption and to understand what the truth is. Moreover, if anyone thinks that souls are sitting at the gates of heaven awaiting the Day of Judgment, and God sends new ones to earth, just remember the parable of the full bowl. You can read Pythagoras, he was a smart uncle.
Guest/ 10/13/2015 To Alexey, the “I” of a dead and a living frog is also significantly different! Don't you find? And if you are not able to distinguish a living biological being from a dead one, then this indicates a neglected problem of the development of your intellect.P.S. Your words about the "faith" given from birth were especially amused :))). "Faith" is not an instinct - it is an experience acquired in society! On average, in which society a person lives that "faith" he has: a Muslim lives in a Muslim society, a Christian - in a Christian one, a Jew - in a Jewish one, a cannibal - in a society of savages worshiping spirits. They all believe what they were taught to believe!
Alexei/ 10/13/2015 Eugene, let your scientists justify the existence of your Self. What is it made of, where did it come from, and where will it disappear. Just do not write about the brain. Put people's brains in morgues, you can't tell one from the other. Whereas inside of us, it clearly "sits", each has its own I. Explain this, from the point of view of the Big Bang, and the emergence of everything from nothing.
Alexei/ 13.10.2015 Read the Bible. Delve into. Don't listen to anyone. Including the fools who call it "obscurantism". They just don't get it. And whoever wants to, he will read it, and each time discover something new for himself. Previously read chapters of the Bible will be perceived in a new way, and supplemented with fresh admonition. I'm not talking about the grace that, to one degree or another, descends on the reader, who is ready to accept this scripture. Faith is a gift. I can compare faith with a musical gift, absolute pitch. This is when a person, having heard a sound, can name the note of this sound. And when you press the key of a properly tuned piano or piano, these notes will match. Some people are already born with this gift, they hear notes. Most people are born with an undeveloped ear for music. But if you do solfeggio, exercise, then gradually their hearing will develop almost to absolute, and they will also hear a note in sound, they will be able to determine its height relative to the staff. And there are people who do not want to develop an ear for music. And if people who have a bear stepped on their ear, and no matter how much they exercise, nothing will help them. There is no rumor at all. So it is with faith. Someone has faith from birth, someone acquires it through interest and reflection, and someone lives empty like a drum, believing that he does not need it. And someone is just dumb to fit it.
Natalia/ 07/11/2015 Death is the door to eternal life, real life is only preparation. And how we live it will depend on our eternal account - in heaven with God or in hell. Reincarnation and all the experiences of seeing past lives are just a trick of evil spirits. a person is immersed during hypnosis, meditation, etc. into the realm of fallen spirits, the sky, they invade his consciousness and give him what he believes in... believe in reincarnation, get it... but they live a long time and know everything... therefore, be careful in your experiments. The American monk Seraphim Rose wrote about this very well in his books. You can argue about this question as much as you like, many can find the answer after death ... only then it may be too late for those who lived believing in rebirth .. and those who lived with the Lord, basing their lives on the Gospel and patristic teaching, invested and into this life and into eternal life. Follow the life of the saints in Rus', these are not just beautiful words of the guru, etc. teachers, but an experienced life with God, and after their death they help all people - Matrona of Moscow, John of Kronstadt, Seraphim of Sarov. I wish every seeking person to find the Truth... to know God by experience, and not only in words and books. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you; For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. In the Gospel of Matthew (chapter 7, verses 7-8).
life is pain/ 06/14/2015 Usually reincarnation is associated with magic, esotericism = demonism. On contact with the other world, only evil, crafty spirits come out, they can only deceive.
Guest/ 06/14/2015 Moody stuffed Darwin's face and proved to everyone that we are not ordinary animals. But where is the truth: reincarnation or eternal torment is another question. It would be nice if reincarnation were true, it is more humane, I would not really want to burn forever in unbearable torment in hell.
Raymond Moody
1. LIFE BEFORE LIFE
Raymond Moody says: each of us has already lived several lives. American psychotherapist Raymond Moody became famous for his book Life After Life. In it, he talks about the impressions of a person who has passed the state of clinical death. It is amazing that these impressions turned out to be common to all the dying.
Today we will talk about the new book of the world famous doctor. It is called "Life before life" and tells that our life is just a link in the chain of several lives we have lived before.
Moody's new book has caused a real scandal abroad. She made many people interested in her distant past. It sparked a new direction in the treatment of a number of serious diseases. It posed a number of unsolvable questions to science.
(c) Miracles and Adventures N 06/95
For centuries, people have been trying to solve the question: did we live before? Maybe our life today is just a link in an endless chain of previous lives? Is it possible that our spiritual energy completely disappears after our death, and we ourselves, our intellectual content, each time start again from scratch?
Religion has always been interested in these questions in the first place. There are entire nations who believe in the transmigration of souls. Millions of Hindus believe that when we die, we are somewhere reborn in an endless cycle of deaths and births. They are even convinced that human life can transmigrate into the life of an animal and even an insect. Moreover, if you led an unworthy life, the more unpleasant the creature will be, in the guise of which you will again appear before people.
This transmigration of souls has received the scientific name "reincarnation" and is being researched today in all areas of medicine - from psychology to conventional therapy. And it seems that the great Vernadsky himself, while building his “noosphere”, came close to this problem somewhere, because the energy sphere around the planet is a kind of accumulation of the former spiritual energies of myriads of people who inhabited the Earth.
However, let's get back to our problem… Have there been pieces of memory preserved somewhere in the recesses of our consciousness, one way or another confirming the existence of a chain of previous lives?
Yes, science answers. The mysterious archive of the subconscious is filled to the limit with such “memories” accumulated over the millennia of the existence of changing spiritual energies.
Here is what the famous researcher Joseph Campbell says about this: “Reincarnation shows that you are something more than you are used to thinking, and there are unknown depths in your being that have yet to be known and thereby expand the possibilities of consciousness, embrace what is not part of your self-image.Your life is much wider and deeper than you think.Your life is only a small part of what you carry in yourself, what gives life - breadth and depth.And when you once If you manage to comprehend it, you will unexpectedly understand the essence of all religious teachings.
How can one touch this deep archive of memory accumulated in the subconscious? It turns out that you can get to the subconscious with the help of hypnosis. By introducing a person into a hypnotic state, it is possible to cause the process of regression - the return of memory to a past life.
Hypnotic sleep differs from ordinary dreaming - it is an intermediate state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. In this state of half-sleep-half-wakefulness, the consciousness of a person works most sharply, providing him with new mental solutions.
The famous inventor Thomas Edison is said to have used self-hypnosis when faced with a problem he could not currently solve. He retired to his office, sat down in an easy chair and began to doze off. It was in a state of half-asleep that the necessary decision came to him. And in order not to fall into a normal sleep, the inventor even came up with a clever trick. He took a glass ball in each hand and placed two metal plates at the bottom. Falling asleep, he dropped a ball from his hand, which fell with a clang on a metal plate and woke up Edison. As a rule, the inventor woke up with a ready-made solution. The mental pictures, hallucinations that appear during hypnotic sleep are different from ordinary dreams. Sleepers, as a rule, participate in the events of their dreams.
During regression, a person detachesly looks at what his subconscious shows him. This state in normal people (the appearance of pictures of the past) occurs at the moment of falling asleep or under hypnosis.
Usually, hypnotic phenomena are perceived by people as rapidly changing pictures when viewing color slides on a slide projector. The famous Raymond Moody, being a psychotherapist and hypnotist at the same time, conducting experiments on 200 patients, claims that only 10% of the subjects did not see any pictures in a state of regression. The rest, as a rule, saw pictures of the past in the subconscious.
The hypnotist only very tactfully, as a psychotherapist, helped them with his questions to expand and deepen the overall picture of the regression. He, as it were, led the subject in the image, and did not tell him the plot of the picture being viewed.
Moody himself for a long time considered these pictures an ordinary dream, not paying much attention to them. But while working on the problem that made him famous, the topic "Life after Life", he encountered among the many hundreds of letters he received describing in a number of cases regression. And this made Raymond Moody take a new attitude to the phenomenon, which seemed to him natural. However, the problem finally attracted the attention of the already world-famous psychotherapist after his meeting with Diana Denhol, a professional hypnologist. She introduced Moody into a state of regression, as a result of which he recalled nine episodes of his past life from his memory.
Let's give the floor to the researcher himself.
2. NINE PREVIOUS LIVES
My lectures on near-death experiences have always raised questions about other paranormal phenomena. When it came time for the listeners to ask questions, they were mainly interested in UFOs, physical manifestations of the power of thought (for example, bending an iron rod with mental effort), past life regression.
All these questions not only did not concern the area of my research, but simply baffled me. After all, none of them has anything to do with "experiences on the verge of death." Let me remind you that "death experiences" are deep spiritual experiences that spontaneously occur to some people at the time of death. Usually they are accompanied by the following phenomena: exit from the body, a feeling of rapid movement through the tunnel towards a bright light, a meeting with long-dead relatives at the opposite end of the tunnel and a look back at one’s lived life (most often with the help of a luminous being), which appears before him as would be filmed. Experiences "on the verge of death" have nothing to do with paranormal phenomena, which the audience asked me about after the lectures. At that time, these areas of knowledge were of little interest to me. Among the phenomena of interest to the audience was regression into past lives. I have always assumed that this journey into the past is nothing but a fantasy of the subject, a figment of his imagination. I believed that it was a dream, or an unusual way of fulfilling desires. I was sure that most people who successfully went through the process of regression saw themselves in the role of an outstanding or extraordinary person, for example, an Egyptian pharaoh.
When asked about past lives, I found it difficult to hide my disbelief. That's what I thought, too, until I met Diane Denhall, a magnetic personality and psychiatrist who could easily convince people. She used hypnosis in her practice - initially to help people quit smoking, lose weight, and even find lost items. “But sometimes something unusual happened,” she told me. From time to time, some patients talked about their experiences from a past life. This was most often when she was leading people back through life so that they could relive some traumatic event they had already forgotten, a process known as early life regression therapy. This method helped to find the source of fears or neuroses that bothered patients in the present. The task was to take a person back through life, “removing” it layer by layer to reveal the cause of a trauma, just as an archaeologist peels off one layer after another, each of which was deposited over a certain historical period, to unearth the ruins at the archaeological site.
But sometimes patients somehow surprisingly got much further into the past than it seemed possible. Suddenly they began to talk about another life, place, time, and as if they were seeing everything that was happening with their own eyes.
Such cases have repeatedly met in the practice of Diana Denhol during the hypnotic regression. At first, these experiences of patients frightened her, she looked for her mistakes in hypnotherapy or thought that she was dealing with a patient suffering from a split personality. But, when such cases were repeated again and again, she realized that these experiences can be used to treat the patient. By researching the phenomenon, she eventually learned to evoke past life memories in people who consented to it. She now regularly uses regression in her practice, which brings the patient right to the core of the problem, often significantly reducing the duration of treatment.
I have always believed that each of us is the subject of an experiment for...
Raymond Moody says: each of us has already lived several lives. American psychotherapist Raymond Moody became famous for his book "Life after life". In it, he talks about the impressions of a person who has passed the state of clinical death.It is amazing that these impressions turned out to be common to all the dying. The new book of the famous doctor "Life before life" tells us that our life is just a link in the chain of several lives we have lived before. Moody's book caused a real scandal abroad. She made many people interested in her distant past. It sparked a new direction in the treatment of a number of serious diseases. It posed a number of unsolvable questions to science.
1. LIFE BEFORE LIFE
For centuries, people have been trying to solve the question: did we live before? Maybe our life today is just a link in an endless chain of previous lives? Is it possible that our spiritual energy completely disappears after our death, and we ourselves, our intellectual content, each time start again from scratch?
Religion has always been interested in these questions in the first place. There are entire nations who believe in the transmigration of souls. Millions of Hindus believe that when we die, we are somewhere reborn in an endless cycle of deaths and births. They are even convinced that human life can transmigrate into the life of an animal and even an insect. Moreover, if you led an unworthy life, the more unpleasant the creature will be, in the guise of which you will again appear before people.
This transmigration of souls has received the scientific name "reincarnation" and is being researched today in all areas of medicine - from psychology to conventional therapy. And it seems that the great Vernadsky himself, while building his “noosphere”, came close to this problem somewhere, because the energy sphere around the planet is a kind of accumulation of the former spiritual energies of myriads of people who inhabited the Earth.
But back to our problem...
Have pieces of memory been preserved somewhere in the recesses of our consciousness, one way or another confirming the existence of a chain of previous lives?
Yes, science answers. The mysterious archive of the subconscious is filled to the limit with such “memories” accumulated over the millennia of the existence of changing spiritual energies.
Here is what the famous researcher Joseph Campbell says about this: “Reincarnation shows that you are something more than you are used to thinking, and there are unknown depths in your being that have yet to be known and thereby expand the possibilities of consciousness, embrace what not included in your self-image. Your life is much wider and deeper than you think. Your life is only a small part of what you carry within yourself, what gives life - breadth and depth. And when you once manage to comprehend it, you will suddenly understand the essence of all religious teachings.
How can one touch this deep archive of memory accumulated in the subconscious?
It turns out that you can get to the subconscious with the help of hypnosis. By introducing a person into a hypnotic state, it is possible to cause the process of regression - the return of memory to a past life.
Hypnotic sleep differs from ordinary dreaming - it is an intermediate state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. In this state of half-sleep-half-wakefulness, the consciousness of a person works most sharply, providing him with new mental solutions.
The famous inventor Thomas Edison is said to have used self-hypnosis when faced with a problem he could not currently solve. He retired to his office, sat down in an easy chair and began to doze off. It was in a state of half-asleep that the necessary decision came to him.
And in order not to fall into a normal sleep, the inventor even came up with a clever trick. He took a glass ball in each hand and placed two metal plates at the bottom. Falling asleep, he dropped a ball from his hand, which fell with a clang on a metal plate and woke up Edison. As a rule, the inventor woke up with a ready-made solution. The mental pictures, hallucinations that appear during hypnotic sleep are different from ordinary dreams. Sleepers, as a rule, participate in the events of their dreams. During regression, a person detachesly looks at what his subconscious shows him. This state in normal people (the appearance of pictures of the past) occurs at the moment of falling asleep or under hypnosis.
Usually, hypnotic phenomena are perceived by people as rapidly changing pictures when viewing color slides on a slide projector.
The famous Raymond Moody, being a psychotherapist and hypnotist at the same time, conducting experiments on 200 patients, claims that only 10% of the subjects did not see any pictures in a state of regression. The rest, as a rule, saw pictures of the past in the subconscious.
The hypnotist only very tactfully, as a psychotherapist, helped them with his questions to expand and deepen the overall picture of the regression. He, as it were, led the subject in the image, and did not tell him the plot of the picture being viewed.
Moody himself for a long time considered these pictures an ordinary dream, not paying much attention to them.
But while working on the problem that made him famous, the topic "Life after Life," he encountered among the many hundreds of letters he received describing a number of cases of regression. And this made Raymond Moody take a new attitude to the phenomenon, which seemed to him natural.
However, the problem finally attracted the attention of the already world-famous psychotherapist after his meeting with Diana Denhol, a professional hypnologist. She introduced Moody into a state of regression, as a result of which he recalled nine episodes of his past life from his memory. Let's give the floor to the researcher himself.
2. NINE PREVIOUS LIVES
My lectures on near-death experiences always raised questions about other paranormal phenomena. When it came time for the listeners to ask questions, they were mainly interested in UFOs, physical manifestations of the power of thought (for example, bending an iron rod with mental effort), past life regression.
All these questions not only did not concern the area of my research, but simply baffled me. After all, none of them has anything to do with "experiences on the verge of death." Let me remind you that "death experiences" are deep spiritual experiences that spontaneously occur to some people at the time of death. Usually they are accompanied by the following phenomena: exit from the body, a feeling of rapid movement through the tunnel towards a bright light, a meeting with long-dead relatives at the opposite end of the tunnel and a look back at one’s lived life (most often with the help of a luminous being), which appears before him as would be filmed. Experiences "on the verge of death" have nothing to do with paranormal phenomena, which the audience asked me about after the lectures. At that time, these areas of knowledge were of little interest to me.
Among the phenomena of interest to the audience was regression into past lives. I have always assumed that this journey into the past is nothing but a fantasy of the subject, a figment of his imagination. I believed that it was a dream, or an unusual way of fulfilling desires. I was sure that most people who successfully went through the process of regression saw themselves in the role of an outstanding or extraordinary person, for example, an Egyptian pharaoh. When asked about past lives, I found it difficult to hide my disbelief.
That's what I thought, too, until I met Diane Denhall, a magnetic personality and psychiatrist who could easily convince people. She used hypnosis in her practice - initially to help people quit smoking, lose weight, and even find lost items. “But sometimes something unusual happened,” she told me. From time to time, some patients talked about their experiences from a past life. This was most often when she led people back through life so that they could relive some traumatic event they had already forgotten, a process known as early life regression therapy.
This method helped to find the source of fears or neuroses that bothered patients in the present. The task was to take a person back through life, “removing” it layer by layer to reveal the cause of a trauma, just as an archaeologist peels off one layer after another, each of which was deposited over a certain historical period, to unearth the ruins at the archaeological site.
But sometimes patients somehow surprisingly got much further into the past than it seemed possible. Suddenly they began to talk about another life, place, time, and as if they were seeing everything that was happening with their own eyes.
Such cases have repeatedly met in the practice of Diana Denhol during the hypnotic regression. At first, these experiences of patients frightened her, she looked for her mistakes in hypnotherapy or thought that she was dealing with a patient suffering from a split personality. But, when such cases were repeated again and again, she realized that these experiences can be used to treat the patient. By researching the phenomenon, she eventually learned to evoke past life memories in people who consented to it. She now regularly uses regression in her practice, which brings the patient right to the core of the problem, often significantly reducing the duration of treatment.
I have always believed that each of us is the subject of an experiment for himself, and therefore I wanted to experience past life regression myself. I communicated my desire to Diana, and she generously invited me to begin the experiment that same day after dinner. She seated me in an easy chair and gradually, with great skill, introduced me into the deepest trance. Then she told me that I was in a trance state for about an hour. I kept in mind that I was Raymond Moody and that I was under the supervision of a skilled psychotherapist. In this trance, I visited nine stages of the development of civilization and saw myself and the world around me in different incarnations. And to this day, I don't know what they meant, or if they meant anything at all.
I know only one thing for sure - it was an amazing feeling, more like reality than a dream. The colors were the same as they are in reality, the actions developed in accordance with the internal logic of events, and not the way I “wanted”. I didn’t think: “Now something will happen.” Or: "The plot should develop in such and such a way." These real lives evolved on their own, like the plot of a movie on a screen.
I will now describe, in chronological order, the lives I went through with the help of Diana Denhall.
LIFE FIRST
IN THE JUNGLE
In the first version, I was a primitive man - some kind of prehistoric kind of man. An absolutely self-confident creature that lived in trees. So, I comfortably existed among the branches and leaves and was much more human than you might expect. I was by no means an ape.
I did not live alone, but in a group of beings like me. We lived together in nest-like structures. During the construction of these “houses”, we helped each other and tried in every possible way to make sure that we could walk to each other, for which we built reliable flooring. We did this not only for safety, we realized that it was better and more convenient for us to live in a group. Probably, we have already decently climbed the ladder of evolution.
We communicated with each other, directly expressing our emotions. Instead of speech, we were forced to use gestures, with which we showed what we feel and what we need.
I remember that we ate fruit. I can clearly see how I am eating some fruit unknown to me now. It is juicy, it has a lot of small red seeds. Everything was so real that it seemed to me as if I was eating this fruit right in the hypnosis session. I even felt the juice running down my chin as I chewed.
SECOND LIFE
PRIMIAL AFRICA
In this life I saw myself as a boy of twelve living in a community in a tropical prehistoric forest, a place of unfamiliar, alien beauty. Judging by the fact that we were all black, I assumed that this was happening in Africa.
At the beginning of this hypnotic adventure, I saw myself in the forest, on the shore of a calm lake. I looked at something in the white clean sand. A sparse tropical forest arose around the village, thickening on the surrounding hills. The huts we lived in were built on thick piles, their floors raised about sixty centimeters above the ground. The walls of the houses were woven of straw, and inside there was only one, but a large quadrangular room.
I knew that my father was fishing with everyone in one of the fishing boats, and my mother was busy with something nearby on the shore. I didn't see them, I just knew they were close and I felt safe.
LIFE THREE
MASTER SHIPBUILDER ROVERS IN BOAT
In the next episode, I saw myself as a muscular old man. I had blue eyes and a long silver beard. Despite my old age, I still worked in the workshop where boats were built.
The workshop was a long building overlooking a large river, and from the side of the river it was completely open. The room was stacked with planks and thick, heavy logs. Primitive tools hung on the walls and lay in disarray on the floor. Apparently I was living out my last days. My three-year-old shy granddaughter was with me. I told her what each tool was for, and showed her how to work them on a freshly finished boat, and she peeked fearfully over the side of the boat.
That day I took my granddaughter and went boating with her. We were enjoying the calm flow of the river, when suddenly high waves rose and capsized our boat. My granddaughter and I were blown apart by water. I fought the current, trying my best to grab my granddaughter, but the elements were faster and stronger than me. In powerless despair, watching the baby drown, and I stopped fighting for my own life. I remember drowning with guilt. After all, it was I who started the walk in which my beloved granddaughter found her death.
LIFE FOURTH
TERRIBLE MAMMOTH HUNTER
In my next life, I was with people who, with desperate passion, hunted the shaggy mammoth. I usually did not notice any particular gluttony in myself, but at that moment no smaller game would have satisfied my appetite. In a state of hypnosis, I nevertheless noticed that all of us were by no means well-fed and we really needed food.
Animal skins were thrown over us, and in such a way that they covered only the shoulders and chest. They did little to protect us from the cold and hardly covered our genitals at all. But this did not bother us at all - when we fought with a mammoth, we forgot about the cold and decency. There were six of us in a small gorge, we threw stones and sticks at a powerful animal.
The mammoth managed to grab one of my tribesmen with its trunk and crush his skull with one precise and strong movement. The rest were horrified.
LIFE FIFTH
GRAND CONSTRUCTION OF THE PAST
Fortunately, I moved on. This time I found myself in the midst of a huge construction site, in which masses of people were occupied, in the historical setting of the beginning of civilization. In this dream, I was not a king, or even a monk, but just one of the workers. I think that we were building an aqueduct or a road network, but I'm not sure about it, because from where I was, you could not see the whole panorama of the construction.
We workers lived in rows of white stone houses with grass growing between them. I lived with my wife, it seemed to me that I had lived here for many years, because the place was very familiar. In our room there was an elevation on which we lay. I was very hungry, and my wife was literally dying of malnutrition. She lay quietly, emaciated, emaciated, and waited for her life to die out. She had jet-black hair and prominent cheekbones. I felt that we lived a good life together, but malnutrition dulled our feelings.
LIFE SIX
THROWN TO BE EATED BY LIONS
Finally, I ended up in a civilization that I could recognize - in Ancient Rome. Unfortunately, I was neither an emperor nor an aristocrat. I sat in the lion's pit and waited for the lion to bite my hand off for fun.
I watched myself from the side.
I had long fiery red hair and a mustache. I was very thin and only wore short leather pants. I knew my origin - I was from the area that is now called Germany, where I was captured by the Roman legionnaires in one of their military campaigns. The Romans used me as a bearer of plundered riches. Having delivered their cargo to Rome, I had to die for their amusement. I saw myself looking up at the people who surrounded the pit. I must have asked them for mercy, because a hungry lion was waiting outside the door next to me. I felt his power and heard the roar he let out in anticipation of a meal.
I knew that it was impossible to escape, but when they opened the door to the lion, the instinct of self-preservation made me look for a way out. The point of view at that moment changed, I got into this body of mine. I heard the bars being lifted and I saw the lion heading towards me. I tried to defend myself by raising my hands, but the lion rushed at me without even noticing them. To the delight of the audience, who squealed with delight, the animal knocked me down and pinned me to the ground.
The last thing I remember is how I am lying between the lion's paws, and the lion is going to crush my skull with his mighty jaws.
LIFE SEVEN
REFINED TO THE END
My next life was that of an aristocrat, and again in Ancient Rome. I lived in beautiful, spacious rooms, filled with pleasant twilight light, spreading a yellowish glow around me. I was reclining in a white toga on a couch shaped like a modern chaise longue. I was about forty years old, I had the tummy and smooth skin of a man who had never done heavy physical labor. I remember the feeling of satisfaction with which I lay and looked at my son. He was about fifteen, with wavy, dark, short hair that beautifully framed his frightened face.
"Father, why are these people rushing to us?" he asked me.
“My son,” I answered. “We have soldiers for that.”
“But, dad, there are a lot of them,” he objected.
He was so frightened that I decided to get up, more out of curiosity, to see what he was talking about. I went out onto the balcony and saw a handful of Roman soldiers trying to stop a huge excited crowd. I immediately realized that my son's fear was not causeless. Looking at my son, I realized that the sudden fright could be read on my face.
These were the last scenes from that life. From what I felt when I saw the crowd, that was the end of it.
LIFE EIGHT
DEATH IN THE DESERT
My next life took me to a mountainous area somewhere in the deserts of the Middle East. I was a merchant. I had a house on a hill, and at the foot of that hill was my shop. I bought and sold jewelry there. I sat there all day and valued gold, silver and precious stones.
But my house was my pride. It was a beautiful red-brick building with a covered gallery where you could spend the cool evening hours. The back wall of the house rested on a rock - it did not have a backyard. The windows of all the rooms overlooked the facade, they opened a view of the distant mountains and river valleys, which seemed something especially amazing among the desert landscape.
One day, returning home, I noticed that the house was unusually quiet. I entered the house and began to move from one empty room to another. I was getting scared. Finally I entered our bedroom and found my wife and three of our children murdered there. I do not know exactly how they were killed, but judging by the amount of blood, they were stabbed with knives.
LIFE NINE
CHINESE ARTIST
In my last life I was an artist, and a woman at that. The first thing I remember is myself at the age of six and my younger brother. Our parents took us for a walk to the majestic waterfall. The path led us to granite rocks, from the cracks in which water was breaking through, feeding the waterfalls. We froze in place and watched as the water cascaded and then collapsed into a deep crevice.
It was a short passage. The next one related to the moment of my death.
I became poor and lived in a small house built on the backs of rich houses. It was a very comfortable accommodation. On that last day of my life, I was lying in bed and sleeping when a young man entered the house and strangled me. Just. He didn't take anything from my things. He wanted something that had no value to him - my life.
Here's how it was. Nine lifetimes, and in one hour my opinion about past life regression completely changed. Diana Denhall gently brought me out of my hypnotic trance. I realized that regression is not a dream or a dream. I learned a lot from these visions. When I saw them, I remembered rather than invented.
But there was something in them that is not in ordinary memories. Namely, in a state of regression, I could see myself from different points of view. I spent several terrible moments in the lion's mouth outside of myself, watching events from the side. But at the same time I remained there, in the hole. The same thing happened when I was a shipbuilder. For some time I watched myself as I was making a boat, from the side, the next moment, for no reason, without controlling the situation, I again found myself in the body of an old man and saw the world through the eyes of an old master.
The shifting point of view was something mysterious. But everything else was just as mysterious. Where did the "visions" come from? When all this happened, I was not at all interested in history. Why did I go through different historical periods, some of which I recognized and others not? Were they genuine, or did I somehow cause them to appear in my own mind?
My own regressions haunted me as well. I did not expect to see myself in a past life, entering a state of hypnosis. Even assuming that I would see something, I did not expect that I could not explain it.
But those nine lives that surfaced in my memory under the influence of hypnosis surprised me greatly. Most of them took place in times that I have never read or seen films about. And in each of them I was an ordinary person, nothing stood out. This completely shattered my theory that in a past life everyone sees himself as Cleopatra or another brilliant historical figure. A few days after the regression, I admitted that this phenomenon was a mystery to me. The only way to solve this riddle (or at least attempt to solve it) I saw in the organization of scientific research, in which the regressions would be broken down into separate elements and each of them carefully analyzed.
I wrote down a few questions, hoping that researching regressions would help answer them. Here they are: Can past life regression therapy affect painful states of mind or body? Today, the connection between the body and the soul is of great interest, but a negligible number of scientists are investigating the impact of regression on the course of diseases. I was especially interested in its effect on various phobias - fears that cannot be explained by anything. I knew firsthand that with the help of regression, you can find the cause of these fears and help a person overcome them. Now I wanted to investigate this question myself.
How can these unusual journeys be explained? How to interpret them if a person does not believe in the existence of reincarnation? At that time I did not know how to answer these questions. I started writing down possible explanations.
How to explain the mysterious visions that visit a person in regression? I did not consider them to be rigorous proof of the existence of reincarnation (and many people who have come into contact with the phenomenon of past life regression considered them proof), but I had to admit that some of the cases known to me are not easily explained otherwise.
Can people themselves, without the help of a hypnotist, open channels leading to past lives? I wanted to know if self-hypnosis can induce past life regression in the same way that hypnotherapy can.
The regression gave rise to a host of new questions that needed to be answered. My curiosity was aroused. I was ready to dive into past life research.
Raymond MOODY
3. IS REINCARNATION PROVEN?
Raymond Moody began serious research into regression while teaching psychology at West Georgia State College in Carroll Town. This educational institution, in contrast to many other American institutions, paid great attention to the study of parapsychological phenomena. This situation allowed Moody to create a group of experimental students in the amount of 50 people. It is not superfluous to recall that, while studying the problem of "Life after life" in the seventies, the researcher used the materials of two hundred patients who had come out of death.
But these were, of course, isolated cases. During regression, Moody conducted experiments with simultaneous hypnotic influence on the team. In this case of group hypnosis, the pictures visible to the subjects were less bright, as if blurred. There were also unexpected results, sometimes two patients saw the same picture. Sometimes someone asked after waking up to return him to the past world, he was so interested in it.
Moody has installed another interesting feature. It turns out that a hypnotic session can be replaced by an ancient and already forgotten method of self-hypnosis: continuous peering into a crystal ball.
Putting the ball on black velvet, in the dark, only by the light of one candle at a distance of 60 cm, you need to completely relax. Persistently peering into the depths of the ball, a person gradually falls into a state of a kind of self-hypnosis. Images from the subconscious begin to float before his eyes.
Moody states that this method is also acceptable for experiments with collectives. In extreme cases, the crystal ball can be replaced with a round carafe of water and even a mirror.
“Having carried out my own experiments,” says Moody, “I found that the visions in the crystal ball were not fiction, but fact ... They were clearly projected in the crystal ball, moreover, they were color and three-dimensional, like images in holographic television.”
Whatever method the regression was evoked: hypnosis, peering into the ball, or simply self-hypnosis (and this happens), under all conditions, the researcher was able to identify a number of features during regression, related to all in their generality:
Visuality of events from a past life - all subjects visually see pictures of regression, less often hear or smell. Pictures are brighter than ordinary dreams.
Events during regression occur according to their own laws, which the subject cannot influence - basically he is a contemplator, and not an active participant in the events.
The regression patterns are somewhat familiar. A peculiar recognition process takes place with the subject - he has the feeling that what he sees, does, he has already seen and done once.
The subject gets used to someone's image, despite the fact that all the circumstances do not match: neither gender, nor time, nor the environment.
Having settled into a personality, the subject experiences the feelings of the one in whom he incarnated. Feelings can be very strong, so that the hypnotist sometimes has to reassure the patient, convincing him that all this is happening in the distant past.
Observed events can be perceived in two ways: from the point of view of third-party observation or a direct participant in the events.
The events that the subject sees often reflect the problems of his current life. Naturally, they are refracted historically in time and depend on the environment where they occur.
The process of regression can often serve to improve the state of mind of the subject. As a result of this, a person feels relief and purification - emotions accumulated in the past find a way out.
In rare cases, subjects experience noticeable improvements in physical condition after regression. This proves the inseparable connection between body and spirit.
Each time subsequent introductions of the patient into a state of regression occur more and more easily.
Most past lives are the lives of ordinary people, not prominent figures in history.
All these points, common to many regression processes, speak of the stability of the phenomenon itself. Naturally, the main question arises: is regression really a memory of a past life? It is impossible to answer this question 100% and categorically at the current level of research - yes, it is - impossible.
However, the same Moody gives several convincing examples when an equal sign can be put between regression and reincarnation. Here are the examples.
Dr. Paul Hansen of Colorado saw himself in regression as a French noble named Antoine de Poirot, living on his estate near Vichy with his wife and two children. It was, as memory suggests, in 1600.
“In the most memorable scene, my wife and I rode on horseback to our castle,” Hansen recalls. “I remember well: my wife was in a bright red velvet dress and sat in a side saddle.”
Hansen later visited France. According to the known date, name and place of action, he, according to documents preserved from past centuries, and then from the records of the parish priest, learned about the birth of Antoine de Poirot. This completely coincides with the regression of the American.
In another case, the well-known tragedy that took place in 1846 in the Rocky Mountains is told. A large group of settlers was caught in late autumn by snow drifts. The height of the snow reached four meters. Women, children, dying of hunger, were forced to resort to cannibalism ... Of the 77 people of the Donner detachment, only 47 survived, mostly women and children.
A German woman came to Dr. Dick Sutfeng today, who was being treated for overeating. During the act of regression, under hypnosis, she saw in every detail the terrible pictures of cannibalism on a snow-covered pass.
I was a ten year old girl at the time and I remember how we ate grandpa. It was scary, but my mother told me: “That’s how it should be, that’s how grandfather wanted ...” It turned out that the German woman came to the USA in 1953, knew nothing, and could not know anything about the tragedy that broke out a hundred years ago in the Rocky Mountains. But what is striking: the description of the tragedy from the patient's story completely coincided with the historical fact. The question involuntarily arises: is her illness - chronic overeating - not a "memory" of the monstrous days of hunger in a past life?
It is said that a fairly well-known American artist came to a psychotherapist and underwent a regression. However, after returning under hypnosis to a past life, he suddenly spoke in French. The doctor asked him to translate the speech into English. An American with a clear French accent did it. It turned out that in the past he lived in old Paris, where he was a mediocre musician who composed popular songs. The most mysterious thing was that the psychotherapist found in the music library the name of a French composer and a description of his life, which coincided with the story of an American artist. Doesn't this confirm reincarnation?
Even stranger is Moody's account of one of his subjects. In a state of regression, he called himself Mark Twain.
I have never read either his works or his biography,” the subject said after the session.
But in his practical life he was permeated in every detail with the features of a great writer. He loved humor, like Twain. He liked to sit on the porch in a rocking chair, talking to his neighbors like Twain. He decided to buy a farm in Virginia and build an octagonal workshop on a hill - the same one Twain once worked on his estate in Connecticut. He tried to write humorous stories, one of which described Siamese twins. It is amazing that Mark Twain has such a story.
Since childhood, the patient had a keen interest in astronomy, in particular Halley's comet.
The passion for this science is also known in Twain, who also studied this particular comet.
Until now, this amazing case remains a mystery. Reincarnation? Coincidence?
Do all these short stories serve as proof of the transmigration of souls. What else?..
But after all, these are isolated cases that have received verification, and then only because we met with people who are quite famous. One has to think that there are not enough examples to draw final conclusions.
One thing remains - to continue to study the mysterious phenomena of reincarnation.
However, we can firmly say: regression heals the sick! Once upon a time, medicine did not connect the state of the patient's spirit with the disease of the body. These views are now a thing of the past.
It has been proven that regression, which certainly affects the spiritual state of a person, successfully heals him. First of all, various phobias - a violation of the nervous system, obsessions, depression. In many cases, asthma, arthritis are also cured ...
Today, many psychotherapists in America, as they say, have already adopted a new direction in medicine - regression. Well-known psychotherapist Helen Wambech provides interesting data from this area. 26 specialists reported data on the results of work with 18,463 patients. Of this number of psychotherapists, 24 were involved in the treatment of physical diseases. In 63% of patients, elimination of at least one symptom of the disease was observed after treatment. Interestingly, of this number of those cured, 60% improved their health, because they experienced their own death in the past, for 40% the improvement was due to other experiences. What's the matter here?
Raymond Moody tries to answer this question. He says: “I don't know exactly why past life regression works only for certain diseases, but it reminds me of Einstein's words, said many years ago: “Perhaps there are radiations about which we still know nothing. Remember how they laughed at electric current and invisible waves? The science of man is still in diapers.”
And what, in this case, to say about reincarnation - a phenomenon even more profound?
Here Moody's position seems to be more flexible. Reincarnation, he concludes his book, “is so attractive that it can cause unhealthy mental experiences. We must not forget that reincarnation, if it exists, may be completely different from what we imagine it to be, and even completely incomprehensible to our consciousness.
I was asked recently: “If there was a court session at which it was necessary to decide whether reincarnation exists or not, what would the jury decide?” I think he would rule in favor of reincarnation. Most people are too overwhelmed by their past lives to be able to explain it any other way.
For me, past life experiences have changed the structure of my faith. These experiences I no longer consider "strange". I consider them a normal phenomenon that can happen to anyone who allows himself to be put into a state of hypnosis.
The least that can be said about them is that these discoveries come from the depths of the subconscious.
The biggest thing is that they prove the existence of life before life.”
