Is past life, therapy?

What will your company do?"
"We will be offering reincarnation therapy?"
"Reincarnation? As in rebirth?"
"Yes."
"Is that what people are suffering from these days?"

Marion Boon almost keeled over laughing as she recounted her interaction with the clerk when she went to register her company with the Netherlands government a few years ago.

Scepticism, wonder and frank disbelief. It was all there as Boon narrated her story at the gathering of nearly 100 experts, students and audience members at the 2nd Asian Reincarnation and Theosophical Seminar (ARTS2) — organised by Geeta Nirupam and Asha Warrier of the Clover-Leaf Learning Academy — which focused on where healing methodologies like Past Life Regression (PLR) therapy, hypnotherapy, deep memory process and inner child healing fall on the rationality spectrum.

Though almost always offered under the guise of personal growth or healing, PLR therapy, as a tool for New Age explorers, may make it seem okay to encourage people to remember memories (which some call 'unreal fantasies') about living in past centuries or travelling ahead to see the future. But are such healing techniques really safe? Isn't it akin to leading patients to delusions and then trying to help them out? Doesn't this aggravate a person's suffering while destroying relationships?

Held over the extended Independence Day weekend, the seminar tried to find answers to some of these questions. Juanita Puddifoot, who began with the understanding of Deep Memory Process (DMP) to resolve unfinished impulses, said, "In deep memory process therapy we look at what would happen in 'real life' vis-a-vis body responses when healthy functions of the body are interrupted by mental, emotional and physical traumas." The founder-creator of Energy Gateways, which offers training about "cellular memories of what bodies could not complete in the past, and helping them identify and complete them", felt that it is unfair to use modern scientific paradigms to measure these healing practices. "Just because modern science has not developed the scope to understand practices that have been part of the human experience for millennia, doesn't make them untrue?"

Tulin Etyemez-Schimberg who led "a shamanic trance-dance for retrieval of lost soul parts with the help of power animals" at the seminar, echoed Puddifoot. "Why should there be a problem with awakening and utilising of the energy of a grand and already existing system? We are simply assisting it to come down to our plane with these techniques. In many ways, it is just like harmonising frequencies," she added.

Boon, one of the world's leading PLR trainer-therapist, linked pain in the body to mental convictions. "When an organ is treated, emotions surface and the mental programming becomes clearer," she said. "It can be traced back using trans-generational focus. Genetically disposed illnesses are described as stemming from the biological family. Which is why, the term epigenetics in my work refers to cleansing the system from influences of the dynamic web around us... in emotional burdens, in behaviour, even at a cellular level. The message of possibilities is: you may be able to do something about it actively. In that sense, genes don't rule our health. We do!" Boon linked healing to frequencies in the universe, and underlined how gaseous nebula near the centre of our galaxy has been shaped by magnetic torsion into two connected spirals, mirroring the double helix structure of our DNA. "You might know that the earth emits a frequency. And it is not for nothing that soul-healing chants in many ancient religious traditions are in this same frequency."

Polarised views

Not everyone is a convert though. Neha Dalal, a professor at LS Raheja College, who attended the seminar with her students, said she was curious to find out about PLR. "But none of the auto-suggestion exercises led me to a single past life memory. I lapsed into total relaxation and even dozed off," she admitted, adding that she thought most exercises were 'Gestaltian'. "Just as Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to maintain meaningful perception in a chaotic world, here one saw similar resonances."

Pune resident Vedanti Sahastrabuddhe felt otherwise. "Jaaki rahi bhaavana jaisi, prabhu murat dekhi tin taisi (A person's attitude determines how he sees everything)," she said, quoting poet-saint Tulsidas. And herein lies the nature of this subject. The views vary depending on person, perspective and their frame of mind. Mukta Dabholkar of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti is opposed to this "pseudo-science". "This is just physical or monetary exploitation under the guise of psychology," said the daughter of late rationalist Narendra Dabholkar. Labelling these therapists more dangerous than voodoo priests and black magic practitioners, she added: "They use sophisticated terminology replete with phrases and chants in Greek and Latin, and also conveniently mix psychology with their mumbo-jumbo. They have believers among the educated, urban crowd. The rural poor see the rich follow these ideas and are also drawn to them. It is also driven aspirationally and not just for succour."

Bringing up escalating 'hourly charges', she said, "The time taken for therapy and its cost grow in direct proportion. Also there is no limit to which direction the client and healer can take since no one can stop, contradict or question anything."

The counter

Boon stoutly rubbished such a stance. "The stubbornness with which some reject PLR is more a reflection on their poor ability of their limited paradigm. American psychiatrist Brian Weiss, who once unexpectedly ran into a spontaneous past life recall, has admitted on record that 'nothing in my background had prepared me for this. I was absolutely amazed when these events unfolded.' And this was a psychiatrist!"

The regression therapist and founder/trainer of the European Academy for Regression Therapy (EARTh) is baffled that the many benefits are swept away. The 'benefit spectrum' includes improvement of self-respect, self esteem, elimination of phobias and feelings of insecurity and timidity, control of obsessive-compulsive behaviours; better coping/cure of problems like stress, insomnia, persistent headaches, migraines allergies, stuttering, skin diseases, improvement of sex life and coming to terms with bereavement. "Medical science has been unable to provide all the answers to people's suffering, has it?"

Rationalist Shyam Manav has an explanation for this. "The heightened ability to imagine/fantasise when hypnotised, is the only logical explanation for the alleged past life regression. The trigger could be elsewhere: desire to know or belong to a historical era, obsessive identification with historical figures, or simply inappropriate leading by the therapist. Movies, TV shows or dreams could also be causing such fantasies which the client is encouraged to believe as true."

Former MP Priya Dutt, who attended the seminar over four days, also echoed Boon. "Why should rational thinking mean a closed mind? If people weren't benefitting, why'd they seek these therapies in such large numbers?"

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The middle ground

Senior psychiatrist and Zen Budhhism follower Rajendra Barve said he believes in these therapies. "There is enough evidence to prove memory at a cellular level. If collective subconscious and memory are for real, then we need to see what happens with wisdom and memory. Is it carried on parent-to-child like the expressive phenotype?" A deeper understanding of answers to such questions, he felt, would help arrive at a middle ground instead of absolute rejections or blind belief.

Modern science, too, has begun to grapple with understanding much of what has been out of its realm until now. "The Buddha never spoke of atman. He spoke of a reconstitution of elements that makes life possible. In a way, modern science today is spending millions of dollars in sequencing genomes to do just that."

According to Barve, the basis for strides in these disciplines was triggered by the developments in the world of nuclear physics between 1920-40. "As the Rutherford particle wave theory experiment turned all our Newtonian understanding of matter on its head, it had an effect on how we look at life and living too," he pointed out. "Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle took uncertainty beyond the scope of the quantum theory. It spoke of a fundamental limit to knowing the behaviour of quantum particles and, therefore, the smallest scales of nature. And that brought us to the question of whether what's happening sub-atomically could be replicated in space too and the effect this has on us." He credits the matrix created by physicist Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, breaking the myth that science and mysticism are mutually exclusive. "Whether it's past life regression or new therapies, they have all sprung from the same insights on meditation and mindfulness."

Yet, the psychiatrist added a note of caution, and said he limits the number of patients he uses PLR with. Past life regression, he warned, can lead to depression and psychosis if done wrongly. "The therapist must be able to dis-identify themselves from pathological emotions rekindled. After all this is akin to pilot's job. One can't emphasise enough how landing back safely is more important than taking off and flying."