Understanding Deja through Past-Life Regression Therapy

According to Sarah Matthews, if you’ve ever felt that certain experiences are preventing you from achieving your true potential – but you’re not sure exactly what they are – then past-life regression therapy could help. Then again, this type of therapy could be a complete waste of time, giving people bogus answers to questions and encouraging them to rely on “memories” that almost certainly are false.

Past-life regression (PLR) is a New Age therapy where people probe into what they think is their past to find answers to questions plaguing them in the present. A therapist hypnotizes clients, or at the very least puts them in a state of deep relaxation, in an attempt to delve into their “pasts” and find clues about their previous lives. Uncovering a traumatic event in a previous incarnation, they say, can help us understand why we have psychological – and even physiological – problems today.

It is thought that examining these “lives” can reveal why we harbor certain fears, behaviors or habits, or even why we experience deja vu from time to time. Proponents of PLR say it can not only help us understand our own character better and why we act the way we do, but also explains why we are drawn towards specific individuals – because we have met them before, of course!

Skeptics, however, say PLR is merely cryptomnesia, or inadvertent plagiarism, as well as confabulations, or the formation of “memories” that are false, on the part of the person being hypnotized. This occur largely due to the desire of the individual to want to believe in a past life, and inadvertently confusing true memories (a remembered childhood TV show, a favorite song) with their imagination. Remember, PLR rarely works on people who don’t believe in reincarnation. The desire has to be there from the start.

Origins of PLR

PLR entered the American consciousness way back in 1952, when a Colorado businessman by the name of Morey Bernstein hypnotized a local woman called Virginia Tighe. While under hypnosis, Ms Tighe suddenly began to speak in an Irish brogue, singing old Irish songs and “remembering” what happened in Cork, Ireland during the 19th century. She began to refer to herself as Bridey Murphy, and Mr Bernstein decided that he had uncovered one of Ms Tighe’s past lives.

When Mr Bernstein published a book about Bridey, it became a bestseller – in fact, it became No 1 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. “The woman who is creating the biggest stir in the U.S. this week is an attractive, 33-year-old Pueblo, Colo, housewife named Virginia Tighe,” Time Magazine wrote on March 19, 1956.

“Millions of Americans know her in another personality as Bridey Murphy, the necromantic heroine of The Search for Bridey Murphy who has made reincarnation a fad more entrancing than canasta or flying saucers. “

However, when people began combing Ireland for evidence of Ms Murphy, who allegedly lived there from 1798 until she died in 1864, they found nothing, What they eventually did discover, however, was that as a child, Virginia Tighe had lived across the street from an Irishwoman called Bridey Murphy Corkwell. While they concluded that Ms Tighe’s “memories” were simply buried remembrances of a neighbor, PLR was already born – and thriving.

How PLR Works

Past-life regression therapy rests on the premise that evidence of our past lives is everywhere. Why do you have a sore throat? Because in a past life you were hanged, choked or even strangled. Why do you have a bad knee? Because in a past life you were in a car accident, trod on by a horse, or prayed too much. Do you have a good voice? Yes, because in a past life you were Judy Garland.

However, this evidence is often buried beneath our consciousness, and we need a PLR therapist to help us get it out (and we also need to pay him or her a handsome sum to do it). It is much like uncovering traumatic stress in a current life, as those who suffered abuse as a child, for example, might suffer panic attacks as an adult.

PLR has also been given credence by Dr Brian L Weiss MD, a Columbia University trained psychotherapist and graduate of Yale Medical School who was “surprised” when one of his patients began recalling past lives. Another guru is Dr Michael Newton, who calls himself a Master Hypnotherapist and has written extensively on past lives. He uses the term “life-between-lives” therapists, or people who help us mere mortals learn what our souls were doing between past lives.

“This technique offers you an opportunity to experience a trance-induced ’superconscious’ state of awareness that brings a deep sense of love, compassion and an understanding of your life purpose,” Dr Newton writes on his website, www.spiritualregression.org. “Everyone’s experience is unique and personal so you can be confident of a spiritual journey that will fulfill your own needs and wishes. “

Case Study

“Samantha” couldn’t understand why she was finding it so hard to break off a relationship with a man who was bad for her – until she visited a past-life regressionist. Initially her romance with “Craig” was passionate and intense, but very few soon cracks started appearing. He became arrogant, dominant and controlling – but still she couldn’t leave him, even after putting up with his unpleasant behavior for almost three years.

Samantha only began to understand why she was finding it so difficult to end the relationship when she started having past-life regression therapy, and learned that she and Craig had spent a tortured past life together. “I lay down and the therapist did a two-hour regression, guiding me to a memory with Craig that I had buried years ago,” she recalls.

During the therapy Samantha found herself as a peasant girl, working in a manor house that had high ceilings and wooden beams. Craig was the “lord of the manor” with a wife on the side, and when he learned Samantha was pregnant he threw her out of the house, where she eventually died.

“When I woke up it was like everything had slotted into place. This was the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle,” Samantha says. “The fact the therapist healed me made it easier for me to let go and release all the angry feelings I had kept inside me – perhaps for centuries.

“I know that deep down I wanted to make Craig behave differently. But in the end I realized I couldn’t, and my regression finally let me be able to say goodbye.”

Is PLR for You?

People who benefit from PLR say it helps them build stronger relationships, be more creative and feel more satisfied with life overall. Similar to having counseling for post-traumatic stress (see above), they say that PLR can also help some people deal better with panic attacks, insecurity, feelings of shame, worthlessness and guilt, alcoholism, insomnia and other often emotionally-related disorders.

If you can suspend your disbelief long enough for a past-life regressionist to do their magic on you, what have you got to lose? Well, according to Robert T. Carroll, founder of A Skeptic’s Dictionary, more than you might think. “As a tool for New Age explorers, there may be little harm in encouraging people to remember what are probably false memories about their living in earlier centuries or for encouraging them to go forward in time and glimpse into the future,” he writes.

“But as a method of healing, it must be apparent even to the most superficial of therapists that there are great dangers in encouraging patients to create delusions. Some false memories may be harmless, but others can be devastating. They can increase a person’s suffering, as well as destroy loving relationships with family members. The care with which hypnosis should be used seems obvious.”