Chapter 3
Past Life Readings and Recalls


Accepting theoretically the idea of reincarnation or sequential incarnation will have an effect upon our philosophy of life and therefore, at least indirectly, on our actions. A much more direct effect is realized however when we begin to learn details of specific lifetimes and their interactions with the current personality and lifetime.

These specifics are not always easily obtained; although, for a few people, they may come naturally and unsought. Some dreams and daydreams as well as some deja vu type experiences will provide information concerning past lives.

Deja vu is a French expression which “means ‘already seen’ and is the name given to the fairly frequent experience of recognizing as strangely familiar a scene, a house, a street, never seen before in this life = or so it appears”(Cranston, Sylvia, and Williams, Carey. Reincarnation: A New Horizon in Science, Religion, and Society. New York: Crown, 1984, page 80). Professor C.J. Ducasse takes us one step toward understanding the experience of deja vu when he states, “The true explanation is usually that the new situation is similar in prominent respects to some situation the person has experienced before in his PRESENT life but which he does not at the moment recall” (Ducasse, C.J. A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life After Death. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1961, pages 232-233).

Ramsingh has given, during lectures and question and answer sessions, an additional reason for these feelings of “having been here before”. According to him, one of the most important purposes of sleep is to allow the unconscious mind (both the subconscious and the superconscious) to review the events that the conscious mind and personality may expect to encounter during the coming hours. He maintains that many, or perhaps most, of our experiences are set-up in advance, predestined, for learning or testing purposes. How the personality decides to meet that challenge, however, is open to decision by him or her - free will.

The sleep period is utilized therefore as a period during which the personality, on an unconscious basis, reviews the coming situations in order to choose the manner in which they should be met. Occasionally this review will be close enough to the conscious level to spill over in what the person then thinks is a deja vu experience.

One clue that can be used in distinguishing between such “memories” is the setting. If the setting involved is a truly modern day one then a past life experience is unlikely to be involved.

More specific information can be obtained through past life readings and past life recalls. Readings are obtained through the services of a channel, sometimes called a medium, or a psychic. This utilizes an altered state of consciousness on the part of the reader which may vary from deep concentration through various levels of trance to a complete, deep trance from which the reader will remember nothing when he/she returns to consciousness,

Probably Edgar Cayce, and he Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) which studies and publicizes his works, have done more than any other person or group to bring past life readings to the attention of the general public. Most of Cayce’s readings dealt with health and present day problems but he was led, after much soul-searching on the part of this dedicated Christian man to a belief in reincarnation and thereafter did many readings which were concerning his client’s past lives.

There are today a growing number of persons who can provide this type of service. Most can do the work after only telephone or postal contact with the client. Some are artists who can also provide you with a picture of that former personality. As in all other professions, the quality of the end product will depend upon the skills of the channel. The word “channel” may refer to the individual incarnate person involved or it may include the “person” on the other end and the process through which the two communicate. As a process, it may be likened to a telephone or radio connection. Some readers are not conscious of this help from the other side.

Whatever human tool is used, the information is considered to come from the “Akashic Records”. This Eastern term is explained by Cayce: “Akasha is a Sanskrit word that refers to the fundamental etheric substance of the universe, electro-spiritual in composition. Upon this Akasha there remains impressed an indelible record of every sound, light, movement, or thought since the beginning of the manifest universe.”

Recalls, sometimes called Regressions, tap the soul’s personalized portion of this “Universal Memory” and allow the individual to review the former experiences of his or her own soul which are affecting this lifetime through positive or negative karma, the persons with whom we are in association, or the preparations by which we have been adapted for the job of this particular lifetime - all of which is simply part of the cause and effect of karma.

As mentioned earlier, recalls may come spontaneously but many more persons are capable of such experiences with the help of a conductor. Sometimes hypnosis is used. However it is unnecessary and I agree with Dr. Netherton and Ms. Shiffrin when they state, “Many psychologists have worked toward this end [discovering the hidden information] by using hypnotism and suggestion, but I find that this method handicaps the patient. He gives up a necessary control to the therapist, and is unable to take any positive action toward erasing the unconscious incident.”

While, in this instance, there is no desire to “erase” but only to remember, it is still preferable to work with a psychographer, as Dr. Franklin Loehr has designated persons specifically trained in the techniques of safely leading a person through the “mapping of the forces upon the psychic (soul)”. Dr. Loehr, as founder and still Chairman of the Board of the Religious Research Foundation of America (RRFA), has worked since 1944 in scientifically investigating this process and developing the techniques for training conductors in it.

Having had the privilege of being trained personally by Dr. Loehr, I have utilized the psychographic techniques in many instances for counseling concerning specific problems, for satisfying curiosity concerning particular situations, and for various research projects.

Since the reverie recall technique is the main tool used in the current project, I will give more detail of the specific procedure for getting someone into the recall state for the first time. The following depersonalized sample induction will illustrate one of the techniques used.

Jeanette: This is a recall for Bob in connection with a research project. Since this is a new experience for you, Bob, I will go into how the recalls work. A lot of this you already know, but for the record, I will put it in anyway.

You know that you can come back in any time or any place that you have had previous lifetimes. It can be in either sex, any race, any kind of condition -- good or bad person, whatever you want to call them. We have had all sorts of experiences in our previous lifetimes and this is simply a way of finding out about some of them.

The recalls, as we do them, are not done under hypnosis. Hypnosis is not necessary. When you go under hypnosis, you do give up a great deal, if not all, of your free will. We do not want that. We want your soul and your personality operating and understanding and knowing all that happens. Everything that we get in a recall, you will remember. Just as much as you remember anything else that happens during the day.

There are two or three ways for you to “see” the recall. You can actually get into it and experience it as if you are really that person and all of this is happening to you. Now, of course, you know that it is a former personality and you are simply going back into the memory banks, into the Akashic Records, to review this. But you get into it to the point of feeling everything that person feels. Or you can step back a little bit and see it as if it were a video screen and it is playing a tape of things that have happened and you know which one is “you” and you view it in that way. We can move in and out during the recall from these different positions and particularly, if anything becomes traumatic, we simply pull back from it. We don’t stand quite so close. We don’t feel it so completely. That helps decrease the trauma.

In therapy there may be reasons for experiencing some of the trauma but for our purposes here it certainly is not necessary. But you do feel the emotions. You do understand what is going on. Of course, you can also see a lot of things that you don’t normally see in a situation and that the person whom you are recalling did not necessarily see at the time. You can look over the entire lifetime. You can tell, oftentimes, people that you know today if they were in that lifetime also and you will know who they are. You will simply recognize them. The soul knows and the soul will tell you.

We can either let you “freewheel” which lets your soul decide what lifetime it wants to show us or we can direct you to specific lifetimes by date, country, someone you knew then, or when you developed a special talent. This kind of thing.

You may not “know” or “see” clearly. Particularly to begin with. But if you will say the first thing that pops into your head, then if it is wrong we can correct it later. It will help the flow of things and the more you talk, the more the flow will go. If you will answer my questions, if you will simply talk about what you are seeing, then it helps it to come clearer to you. Some people seem to really see it, like I said, on a video. Others simply “know”. They are more clairsentient than clairvoyant. But if you go with whatever comes into your mind it will work out and you will get your answers.

There are also several methods for getting into it. We need to have you relax. We need to have your mind begin to wander, shall we say. Sort of a daydream thing. A movement in time and space. Your mind is actually in control of this. Doing that which your soul tells it to do. It can present whatever we ask it to.

This is one reason we try not to direct too much, because it is the mind and the subconscious that is doing this and the subconscious will try very, very hard to please. So we try not to give the mind directions that answer the question at the same time. We ask questions, as much as possible, with options to stimulate so that the mind will tell us rather than us telling it. So go with what you feel, what you sense. Don’t try to analyze, don’t try to make anything up.

Now we do some body-mind exercises first. Well, not much body exercises. They are mind exercises to help your mind become aware of the fact that, at this point, we want it to free itself from the normal physical identity that it has. So you lean back in the chair, relax, close your eyes. Are you comfortable? The fan is right? The light doesn’t bother you?

Now as you relax, realize that your mind is in charge of this trip. It is your mind that is going traveling while your body simply sits here comfortably relaxed, rejuvenating itself for a busy afternoon. Just to begin this exercise, let your mind think of yourself as being two inches taller than you are and make that extension out through your feet. Your mental body will grow two inches taller through your feet. Let me know when you have done that.

Now come back to normal. Get six inches bigger down through your feet. Come back to normal. Now get two inches taller up through your head. Come back to normal. Get six inches taller through your head. Come back to normal. And you see how easy this is. Now get just as large as you would like to be. Staying in good proportion but getting just as big as you would like to be. This is the one I always like. I have trouble coming back from it. [Long pause.] Feel good?

B: Mm-hm. Takes a while to grow that big. OK. That’s big enough.

J: All right. Come back to normal. And as you get back to your normal size, mentally, you will find a cloud sitting beside you. It is a magic cloud. It can be any color you want. It can be any shape you want. It can have anything on it that you want. So you just let it be known what you want your magic cloud to be and it will be that. You can have seat belts. You can have a dance floor. You can have tables and chairs. Lawn chairs. I guess you could even put a swimming pool on it, if you wish. Anything you want. Is it there?

Now you climb aboard and let me know when you are comfortably aboard your cloud. Good. Now the cloud will start up. It will rise, gradually, smoothly, and yet quite rapidly. You are now at treetop level. Look down and see what you can see below you and out from you.

B: Well, it is like springtime -- the trees have real green leaves and the sky is real blue. It is like a forest. I can’t see any clearing. There is just a lot of woods.

J: Oh, and you like the woods. That’s nice, isn’t it? Now that you have gotten a glimpse of it and you know that it is there whenever you want to come back to it, we are going to go on up. Rising, rising. Looking out now you will see the entire island of Key West. You will see the water around it and the road leading up to the other Keys. Going higher, still higher. You will see Cuba, all of the Keys, the beginning tip of the peninsula, water out on all sides.

Higher, higher. You are seeing now the coastline along the Gulf, up the Atlantic, way past Cuba, down to Yucatan and into other of the Central and South American areas. Many of the small islands. Going still higher. Beautiful day. Lovely ride. Everything going great, feeling good, knowing that we are going to have a very positive experience. An eye-opening, enlightening kind of experience today.

No fears whatever because you are attached to the earth by gravity and to your own body by the silver cord. You know that nothing can separate you from either one of them. Nothing can happen to you. You are under God’s protection and you are safe, happy, and looking forward to a new adventure. Now the earth is beneath you as a globe. You see it as you have seen it in satellite pictures. Beautiful. Lovely. Far enough away that you cannot see the problems of the earth and it becomes a place of pure beauty for you. The clouds begin to close in under you. You still know you are perfectly safe. The earth is there and you are attached to it, but you can no longer see it. Is it daylight or dark where you are?

B: Dark.

J: All right. Is there a moon or just the stars?

B: The moon and the stars.

J: Real beauty, up there. Remembering that your mind is in charge of this and you want to give it experience and practice in producing that which it wants to produce, ask it to make it daytime for you.

B: It’s like it is always daytime, but there are lots of spaces of dark when you look out. You know, the stars - little pinholes of light and then of course the earth has a lot of light on it.

J: Can you bring about a change in it in any way? Your mind creating that which you want?

B: Yeah. I guess I could.

J: We want your mind to exercise itself, to practice making that which you ask it to make or that which it wants to make. At this point it will make what you ask it to.

B: It would be kind of exciting to make it completely light. So I should make it completely light? [Pause] OK! It is completely light.

J: Interesting mind exercise, right? And this also helps your mind realize that there is a passage of time. So now that you have enjoyed the light for a bit, let’s, just for the exercise, make it dark again. Move, essentially to the nighttime side of the earth.

Back to daytime again and after you get to the daytime, we will start down. This is a signal that the earth has been turning beneath you so that you will come down in a different place and there has been a passage of time so you can come down in any previous time that your soul has had an incarnation. Now we are asking your soul to bring you down into a lifetime during which you knew an incarnate from any of the souls of Mary, Joseph or Jesus. When you are back to daytime the cloud will start down. It will come down quickly, easily, swiftly, and since it is a magic cloud, as you touch the earth, the cloud will disappear. You will realize that you are standing on something different. Let me know when your feet are on that solid difference.

B: OK. I am back on the earth.

J: Tell me what you see on your feet. Give me the first impression.

B: I think I am barefooted. (Recall for ‘Bob’, May 2, 1986, Unpublished)

Since the entire recall was quite long it will not be reproduced in total here. I will note that it is common for “recallers” to sink into the reverie quite deeply and to become uncommunicative because of this absorption. It then becomes necessary to “pull” information from them with questions. The conductor must exercise care in phrasing the questions - often presenting several alternatives, so that the subconscious mind does not, in its attempt to please the conductor, “provide” the necessary scene to the recaller. Conductors should also be aware of the fact that, toward the end of the session, the recaller may seem to be back in a totally awake, aware state of mind. It is still the best policy, however, to count the person back to full awareness with something like the following: “One, coming awake slowly. Two, very nearly awake. Three, wide awake and feeling fine!”

Following the brief introduction in the next chapter, an entire rather spectacular recall session is presented. Most sessions are 1/2 hour or less, especially for inexperienced persons. Since I was the recaller and am accustomed to lengthy speaking sessions as well as to staying in trance for 3 hours or more, it extended much longer than most sessions. Also, even though my husband provided a brief induction and the count out, it was virtually self-conducted since my experience with the technique allows for this procedure.