Finding Your Past Life: Getting Started by Dr. Bruce E. Kaloski

Under hypnosis, a San Francisco businessman tells about a life he led as an Egyptian trade merchant around 6,000 B.C. He speaks Egyptian and writes in hieroglyphics. An Egyptologist, checking the data accumulated in the sessions, reports that the lifestyle described, language spoken and the figures written are all representative of Ancient Egypt.

A 24-year-old Los Angeles woman is cured of recurrent abdominal pains and a fear of establishing close relationships with men by a Past Life Therapist who uncovers a life in which she committed suicide by stabbing herself in the stomach after being accused of infidelity and being beaten by a jealous husband.

A Chinese-only speaking surgeon from China experiences and describes her life in 1850s San Francisco - while speaking in fluent English.

An Orange County, CA businessman, who suffers paranoia and upper back pain, is cured of both conditions after uncovering a life he lived as a Colorado fur trader in the 1800s who was “tomahawked” in the back by a renegade Indian.

And then there is the compelling story of the late actor and famous Hollywood leading man Glenn Ford. Under hypnosis, he recalled five previous lives - one in particular as a French cavalryman under Louis XIV. The astonishing part was that although Ford said he knew only a few basic phrases in French, under hypnosis he spoke French with ease while describing that life. And when recordings of his regression were sent to UCLA, they discovered that not only was Ford speaking fluent French, he was in fact speaking the Parisian dialect from the 17th century.

Once relegated to the worlds of spiritualism, mysticism and occult phenomena, reincarnation is now a hot mainstream topic. Not only do adherents of Eastern religions or New Age spirituality currently accept it, but so also do many who don’t share such esoteric interests and convictions. Indeed, reincarnation distinguishes itself from other spiritual, mystical and esoteric subjects because of its rapidly expanding amount of empirical evidence. Some feel it is no more illogical to assume that reincarnation is a fact than it is to assume that each of us is limited to one birth and one death.

The concept of reincarnation seems to offer one of the most attractive explanations of man’s origin and destiny. There is an increasing interest in this topic today, sustained especially by books and magazines, TV broadcasts, movies and conferences. Even Hollywood has gotten into the act. Many know of actress Shirley MacLaine’s avid interest in reincarnation - so much so that she’s written two books on the subject.

Yet those who have only recently seriously entertained the notion of reincarnation are often confused on how they should proceed with their investigation. Hopefully, we can shed a little light on that in this article and suggest some possible pitfalls to avoid.

Begin by researching the subject online and/or in books. Look for books and articles that take an objective, perhaps even analytical view of the subject and avoid those that are given to proselytizing and are replete with the author’s personal dogma presented as fact. There are literally tens, if not hundreds of theories and philosophies surrounding the subject. Yet, I submit that the subject of reincarnation is too “unknowable” to dogmatize with any degree of certainty. Furthermore, look for books and articles that examine both sides of the reincarnation subject, pros and cons, and leave it to the reader to decide.

In my years of academic research, clinical practice and experiments with Past Life Regression, I’ve encountered an array of scientific research data on the subject. One of the most credible and noteworthy of these investigators is the late psychologist Dr. Helen Wambach whose work focused on the statistical analysis of the past life recollections of regressed subjects. She published her findings in two books - Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis and Life Before Life.

Another collection of scientific data that appears to provide apparent proof that reincarnation is real is from the life's work of Dr. Ian Stevenson, who headed the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. Instead of relying on hypnosis to verify that an individual has had a previous life, he instead chose to collect thousands of cases of children who spontaneously (or without hypnosis) remembered a past life. These he investigated using strict scientific protocols. Stevenson published his finding in a book entitled Children Who Remember Previous Lives. Upon his retirement in 2002, Stevenson’s work was taken over by Dr. Jim Tucker, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. In his book Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives, he recounts a number of thoroughly and meticulously researched incredible cases suggestive of reincarnation.

In Part 2 of this article, we shall consider different ways in which you can experience a Past Life Regression.