Nagging advertisements on my YouTube screen to sign up for Gaia – a spiritual Netflix of sorts – finally overwhelmed my resistance during last year’s lockdown and I plunged myself in several chakras deep. The first morsel on my TV menu? Well I thought I would just ease myself in…

With Past Life Regression!

What in the name of Cosmic Consciousness is that?

Well, it turns out that when Hypnotherapy was mesmerizing the masses in the 60’s, therapists decided it would be a good idea to take people back in a trance to revisit traumatic episodes in their life, and be guided through parts of their memory they had learnt to repress, bringing about reintegration of pain too traumatic to acknowledge; a release from what held them mentally hostage.

Sounds…intense?

And the further back they took the patients, an even more peculiar phenomenon would arise. People would start having a psychosomatic experience of dying.

Literally gulping for air. Clutching at wounds. Cowering in fear.

When asked what was happening for them, a strange discovery was made: They seemed to be remembering their death.

Holy smokes Batman!

One Eastern European woman for instance, found she had been thrown overboard as an Irish sailor by her captain for hoarding food in the 19^th century when her crew was starving. Another gentleman discovered he was a French Spy gunned down in the streets of London.

A supposed past life, experienced first-hand.

When I remarked upon this to a friend this week, she asked if any had died from pneumonia, or something boring:

“It would give the documentary more credibility, surely. What are the odds that these guys are just relaying details of some epic death in a Marvel film?”

A fair point. 

Except that when these people are guided through to the end of their ‘deaths’, something altogether more transcendent happens.

They float up out of their bodies toward the famous ‘light’, typically accompanied by a spirit guide. They can look back at people trying to revive their bodies but an overwhelming sense of bliss and unconditional love, emanating from their guide and above seems to call them onward. Barely a second thought is given to their pain-stricken meat suit. The real party is at the top of the stairs and it is to die for.

This whole process – funnily enough – is a fundamental part of the Near Death Experience (NDE), a term originally coined by Dr Raymond Moody (MD) in 1975 with his pioneering ‘Life after Life’ book. In writing it, he interviewed hundreds of people who had been pronounced dead and subsequently come back from the Great Beyond.

In a documentary by the same name, people  reported being able to be somewhere and anywhere at once, to visit a relative in the blink of an eye, and to pass through new places they had not been before – just ‘cos. In one case, a patient comes to lying on the operating table and clutches at a nurse. They ask her to visit a ledge on the roof of the hospital building where they reported seeing an old shoe when they were out of their body. The nurse investigates and finds it.

It doesn’t fit though.

No shoe, no Ball!

My favorite person of all in the Near Death Experience documentary is Russian Psychologist (and later, pastor), Dr George Rodonaia (PhD) who tried to leave the KGB for the US in 1976 and was driven down by a car in an assassination attempt. Before his NDE, Rodonaia was a Soviet man of science and an atheist. He is also just the most genuinely happy human being I have ever laid eyes on. As he describes the freedom of his out-of-body roaming, a smile from here to the next Life opens up on his jolly features. Not a single person, he said, could see or hear him.

Except the babies.

So freshly arrived from the waiting room of life, he found, to his surprise, that he could be perceived by the very young. And the feeling was mutual.

Upon floating into another room in the hospital, he found a newborn baby screaming at the top of his lungs at the confused doctors and parents. Somehow, Rodonaia could intuit from the child that he had a broken hip. When he beseeched the baby to stop crying as they ‘could not understand what he wanted’, the wee one immediately ceased, plunging his caregivers into a confusion more profound than the first. Three days later, as the first incision in his chest was being made in the morgue, he felt a force push his spirit down onto the slab and he gained consciousness. Later, he was able to communicate to the young family the diagnosis they were after for their child.

Rodonaia and many others found themselves in darkness at first, non-existence as it were. A separation from light, love and God. A deep fear can grip them. Dr. Eben Alexander (M.D), the previously materialist neurosurgeon in his book ‘Proof of Heaven’ reported hearing disembodied chanting of eerie mantra in a dark wasteland with ‘scorched earth intensity’. More interesting still, he recognized the chanting from somewhere deep in his primordial memory.

The good news is that the vast majority of those found in this darkness will experience some kind of trigger event that whooshes them away from trouble. Some may cry out to God or Jesus to save them which, in virtually every case I’ve read, seems to work! In other cases a spirit guide or angel may just guide these people on up to the Light: where curiosity and ecstasy drown out fear and the greatest love people have ever known is being beamed out on every station.

Okay, so who or what is the light?

Dr Moody says it is described by these patients as a Personal God, the kind espoused by religious texts the world over: vastly wise, kind, understanding and with (my fave) a wonderful sense of humour and irony! It is worth noting that many will not only experience God as a being but may be given a taste of what it is like to be united with this Godhead, experiencing profound amounts of knowledge about the universe and its future, realizing -or perhaps – remembering that there is a plan; an infinitely wide ranging purpose to a universe so teeming with life and love, it is impossible to capture in earthly terms and many folks just shrug their shoulders and beam at the interviewer.  

Before the meeting with the Creator and spiritual elders, the Past Life Regression patients ‘remember’ being guided into something resembling a reception room where they are reunited with a troupe of souls that turn out to be their companions for every lifetime. Surprise, remorse, and overwhelming joy can take hold of people as they gaze around the smiling faces and notice who is among their posse. Their eternal tribe.

And the party is in their honour.

What is then explained to them about the meaning of life fills me with awe every time.

We are eternal. To pass the time in eternity (and according to some – to enable life in other parts of the universe), we – along with our soul mates – choose a body, a set of circumstances and the role each of us will play in one another’s lives. And then we enter, stage left. Some will marry. One may kill another. This is allegedly done so that a lesson can be granted to the killer and the victim’s loved ones. Others might choose to die as children to stretch our hope at the seams and help us understand why love is the most important thing there ever was. Such painful memories of past lives where these things played out between you and your soulmates may surface at this time and forgiveness and understanding takes place.

One lady remembers her time in a Nazi Concentration camp prisoner thus:

“As painful as it was to be in that situation, I would always rather be her than a soldier. It was much harder for their souls to carry out such things”

After such an earthbound journey, the spiritual baggage of these cosmic travelers requires processing. So when the reunion is over, loved ones, teachers, elders, and guides lead the person on to the ‘City of Light’ where a review is held of their life in front of rows of elders. For NDE patients too, a review is held, their life ‘flashing before their eyes’ as they are asked by God:

‘How did you show me?’

One delightful old Psychiatrist, Dr George Ritchie (M.D.) in the documentary describes pointing out his Boy Scout days to which God replies “That shows you, how did you show me?”

An interesting point here is that under no circumstances do experiencers feel judged by God. At all times, they are being held compassionately and patiently in the loving gaze of this presence. In fact, they all insist that His judgement is quite unnecessary when you are experiencing first hand every repercussion of your actions ever. Literally placed in the shoes of the other, people have a full emotional experience of that person’s pain in response to their actions. They see how the universe is like a delicate pond of existence, with every one of our thoughts, feelings and actions sending cosmic ripples across space and time.

The take-away message, if you have been living under a spiritual rock for the last hundred thousand years is to love: to show the love and forgiveness and understanding we are given so freely by He who made us.

Even as I write ‘He’ I can hear eyes rolling up in the reader’s head.

And it must be said that – like me – the documentary film ‘Life after Life’ suffers from a complete lack of diversity.

Whiter than a Fox News Christmas Party.

You know what? I have totally lost my train of thought.

Train. Tube. Cylinder.

PHALLLUS!

God is described by some as being masculine in these experiences, but with overtones of motherly and sisterly love too. But what even is gender when one minute you are scrolling through Instagram and hit by a car, and the next you are conversing with the Almighty??

So!

After a review of your life, you are feeling pretty keen to go back and make amends, right?

Wrong!

Almost to a person, the people in the film describe wanting nothing more than to stay in the light, the great unconditional love they feel, to stay in holy union with the Source from which all things come.

“Like when you’re a kid, you lose your parents in the supermarket and there’s that tidal wave of relief you feel when you find them again” one man recounts with tears in his eyes.

God or the guide will then point out loved ones who are devastated back on earth.

“Don’t matter” retort a surprising amount.

“I wouldn’t trade 20 lifetimes here for those few moments I got in the Presence of the Love of God” another reflects soberly.

Inevitably though, Neo must leave Zion to plug back in. After all, there is still so much to see and learn in the Matrix. The one place to put everything we have learnt to the test and see how this will result in more creation, pain and growth. Rupert Steiner said it best:

“Every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of suffering, of grief”

If the hypnotized patients are to be believed, our programs may be loaded ahead of time. Soul mates will discuss the roles they will play like characters in a life-drama. As with any RPG game worth its salt, a setting is chosen and finally, of course, the body. So too, the set of parents, circumstances and human identity we will assume for a lifetime. Older souls, it is said, will go for the tougher assignments.

No pain, no gain am I right?

Of course, the whole reincarnation shtick is a bit of a tag-itch in the butt for your average Christian, Jew or Muslim. It is for my family anyway.

I concede there is a chance that every one of the thousands of children who relay details of previously lived lives is a simple case of demonic deception: a vulnerable young mind taken advantage of to distance them from Christ/Jehovah/Allah. Or that people under hypnosis in Past-life Regression are subject to the same trickery. The hypnotherapist themselves may simply be cuing these patients to imagine it all.

It does seem like a lot of work for the Devil to go to, to espouse essentially the same message of love and selflessness that the Bible and every religious text does anyway but who knows?

To be honest, there is an element to both the New Age and secular worldview that is at best dismissive and at worst dangerously naïve not only of the reality of spirit but more specifically of evil. You don’t have to look far now to find a well-reviewed book on Amazon for Satanic rituals to get what you want, or listen to harrowing online audios of famous exorcisms, or when and where a course for witchcraft is popping up on your Facebook Events Calendar.

If “God is dead”, then what’s the problem here?

Well, let me preface my thoughts by saying I have an ingrained sense of Catholic paranoia and guilt! I grew up with this stuff. The devil. Sin. Salvation through Jesus Christ alone. I do not claim to have any particular spiritual insight you do not. But the more I direct my gaze to the modern-day evidence for evil, the more it seems we are a materialist humanity sleepwalking into spiritual war.

Because the truth is not all Near Death Experiences – and I would argue any mystical experiences – are sublime experiences of the light. And even in neutral or positive experiences, what the spirit guide has had to say to the person dying has definitely raised my eyebrows!

In fact, as many as 20% of people will have a predominantly hellish experience. For some it is the void; an experience of lonely misery with nothing but their thoughts to accompany them. This may even be a misty plane of existence where souls wander, subsumed with their own depressive thoughts and self-concern. For others, it is a classic hell experience with demons tormenting them physically, emotionally and spiritually.

For those that come back from an experience like this, three patterns of responses emerge. Many will turn to a religious tradition, most notably Christianity, in an attempt to give over to the scriptures and Jehovah (the Creator God believed to be the inversion of the demonic) what has become an unmanageable fear of what happens after death. Still others will turn to science to reframe it as a certain unfortunate combination of neurochemicals and oxygen deprivation. A third group won’t find solace in either option, with the question ‘what did I do wrong?’ resounding most clearly among the returnees, sometimes echoing years into their future lives, like spiritual PTSD.

Although it is tempting for me to draw connections between the violent, homicidal or suicidal nature of these people’s ‘deaths’ and the timbre of their experience, researchers Nancy Evans Bush and Dr. Bruce Greyson insist there is no relationship between these factors and the event; and moreover that saints have reported extremely disturbing NDEs, while felons and suicide attempters have encountered bliss.

A fascinating piece of the puzzle.

 

I mention all this because as useful and self-evidently true as the Taoist philosophy of balancing dualities (good/evil, light/dark, order/chaos) is, the New Age mantra these days of ‘escape all discernment and you will escape all suffering’ sentiment still disturbs me. Good and Evil are both necessary – absolutely – how else could we tell one from the other? But is that a reason to make the argument that all evil is socially constructed? A mere figment of the human psyche and no more? A figment to be looked at with the same passive, enlightened gaze as Good? I fear not. 

The best I can make of it is that the experience given to these people is a reminder to us; that as attractive as the idea of an undiscerning, unconditional, ruffle-your-hair-indulgingly kind of afterlife is, we can’t take it for granted that that is all there is. That there may be realms of existence where the actions, attachments, desires or attitudes of this life may continue to play out in less than ideal scenarios.

Working at a crisis phone line, colleagues and I are challenged daily to respond to the central claim of suicidal clients. “I know that if I die, I will finally be okay”. The response myself and others want to give (but for obvious reasons, we don’t) is:

“How do you know?”

Are people damned for all eternity? I hardly think so. From what I’ve read of these experiences, while the character and content of the realms differs significantly, one universal truth remains: at any time, those same souls may begin work to escape their circumstances by giving themselves over to the light and to goodness. The awkward reality happens to be that being permeated by the Supreme Light and Source of all being could be acutely uncomfortable if you have shadows which remain undealt with.

As a counsellor, I find this isn’t as hard to understand when we see the lengths people will go to in this life to avoid accountability. Getting along to therapy, sobering up or reconciling with a family member is damn hard work. This is because genuine love of ourselves and others comes at the enormous cost of integrating our shadow side, reconciling the ‘sins’ of others or ourselves and emerging from that pain, shame and guilt to realign ourselves in the direction of what is good. If we tow a freight train of denial straight through to the next cosmic station, how hard might it then be to acknowledge our inner most selves in the presence of the ultimate therapist; under the loving but awe-inspiring gaze of The One?

Who is this One and who speaks for Them? Is it Krishna, Christ or the Buddha who is ultimately the Logos, the messenger Word of God? Which one is the safeguard we need against the void? Are the others then liars? The ‘fallen sons of God’ the Bible warns Christians about?

Honestly, beats me! I pray to Jesus myself because in my personal reading and experience, His name seems to hold sway under – let’s say ‘darker’ – circumstances. He may not be the first poke’mon in your party right now and that is okay. Many spiritual leaders have wisdom to offer. We deny it at our peril.

Regardless of worldview, what seems crystal clear from studying these phenomena is that the way we act in our lives is important not just for the world but on the level of spirit. We are here for more than the promotions and Tiktok videos, folks. We are eternal and one day we will go home. Whether or not we get a chance to study another degree or simply graduate with God forevermore hardly seems important. What is important is the love we show, the service we offer others and the ideas we contribute to a world shackled by individualism and material fetish.

People of all faiths will find no trouble with the bottom line of this message: we are spirit embodied, and we should love selflessly as God loves us. Where possible, we should try engender a world founded in creativity, compassion and service.

Piece of cake, am I right?! 😉

But we are not alone

 

For your own rabbit-hole reading of people’s stories you can go here

References

Cressy J. (1994) The Near-Death Experience: Mysticism or Madness. Hanover, MA: Christopher Publishing House. 

Evans Bush, Nancy (MA) and Greyson, Bruce (MD) (2014) Distressing Near-Death Experiences: The Basics. Mo Med. Nov-Dec 2014; 111(6): 486–491. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6173534/]

Flynn CP. After the Beyond: Human Transformation and the Near-Death Experience. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall; 1986. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01076139]

Moody, R. A. (2015). Life after life. HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

Shockey, Peter, director. Life After Life. Gaia, 1992, http://www.gaia.com/video/life-after-life.

Tucker, Jim B. (MD) Children’s Reports Of Past-life memories: A Review. Explore 2008; 4:244-248. © Elsevier Inc. 2008