Raymond A. Moody Jr. - Coming Back - A Psychiatrist Explores Past-Life Journeys [fixed]

My own past-life regression confused me. If I did see something, I didnt think the experience would be so unexplained. But the nine lives I experienced were very much a surprise. I was essentially an average person in each of them, which for me shot down the theory that everyone who goes into a past life sees himself or herself as Cleopatra or Caesar or some similarly glamorous historical figure.

The only way I could unravel this mystery was to structure a scientific study that would examine regressions, taking them apart and looking at their component parts. I hoped to do with past-life regressions what I had done with near-death experiences: analyze them for their common elements. My curiosity was piqued. I was now ready to explore past lives.

COMING BACK

A Bantam Nonfiction Book

Bantam hardcover edition published February 1991

Bantam paperback edition / February 1992

BANTAM NONFICTION and the portrayal of a boxed "b are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Copyright 1990 by Raymond A. Moody, Jr.

Cover art copyright 1992 by Michael Stuckey.

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ISBN 0-553-29398-2

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Preface

Introduction

1 The Nine Other Lives of Raymond Moody

2 Traits of Past-Life Regressions

3 The Healing Power of Past Lives

4 When Past Lives Meet the Present

5 Are Regressions Proof of Life Before Life?

6 Present Lessons from Past Lives

7 Are They Hidden Memories?

8 Do Past Lives Tap Our Personal Myths?

9 Exploring Your Own Past Lives

10 Conclusions

11 Self-Hypnosis for Self-Exploration

Have we lived before? Do we live again?

Many people, religious and nonreligious alike, believe that we do. Hindus think that we die and return in a sort of endless cycle of death and renewal. Some Orientals, for instance, believe that if you are laden with sin when you die, you will return again as a human in order to be given the chance to purify yourself. Hindus believe that you shall reap as you sow: a bad person in this life comes back as something unappealing, such as an insect, in the next.

Some people believe that they can return to those past lives almost at will. They believe that hypnosis can tap an area of the brain that stores all or part of the lives they have lived like a file cabinet stores old tax records.

This process of hypnotically getting at these past lives is called past-life regression.

I think it is safe to say that most people consider regression bogus. They link it with such beliefs as harmonic convergences (where the planets line up to form power zones on the earth), or the healing of diseases through the use of crystals.

There are significant differences between these things (which I too consider bogus) and past-life regression. The main difference is this: using the vehicle of past-life regression, something happens. Normal, psychologically healthy people actually see themselves in ancient cultures, living lives in long-ago eras. They find themselves wearing the dress of the period and often find themselves surrounded by conversation of the time.

Not everyone who regresses finds himself living the life of Christopher Columbus, Henry VIII, or some other famous historical figure. Most aren't royalty or members of the elite. For the most part, they are slaves or gladiators, soldiers or stable boys. In short, they are ordinary folk living lives as ordinary as the ones they lead now. Few are special people and even fewer experience lives of opulence and grandeur.

I know this is true because I have seen it in my own psychiatric practice.

From time to time, while working as a psychotherapist with psychologically healthy human beings, I have been surprised to hear patients describe puzzling episodes during which they seemed to be transported back through time and space to a realm where they experienced a sense of identity with an individual who lived in an earlier historical period.

Usually the experience takes the form of a sensory image. Most often it is visual. But sometimes the person being hypnotized describes only sounds and smells and can see nothing. They feel that these images relate to events that happened before they were born. Yet these images seem so real that the individuals are convinced they were actually "back in time."

For a long time I assumed that the handful of cases I had treated or heard of were aberrations, just brief vivid daydreams not worthy of serious investigation.

And that's where I would have left it, had it not been for the publication of Life After Life, my first book on near-death experiences. After the publication of that book, I received hundreds of letters from readers. Most of them described near-death experiences, vivid spiritual experiences of people who had almost died.

But among those letters were reports of other types of fascinating psychological and spiritual phenomena, including numerous accounts of past-life recollections similar to the ones I had heard described by patients in psychotherapy. Some of them, like the following, were amazing:

When I was regressed I found myself as a little girl of about twelve in the forest standing by a body of water. I looked down at my feet and noticed that they were dark. Next to me on a sort of cot was a woman I knew to be my grandmother. She was dying and I was feeling very alone.

I was able to regress further, back to about five years old. I had no sense of a father being present in the family, but I was there with my mother. All around us the men of the village were building these log houses. I spent my days with the women of the tribe, weaving baskets and gathering food.

I didn't know where this place was, but I knew that the white man was there because conversations told of being chased to this new place by white outsiders.

When my grandmother died I became a loner and lived by myself in the forest until my early twenties. Then I was able to go to my death scene and could see that I broke my leg and had no one to take care of me. I could see my leg become discolored and finally I realized that this was how I died.