by Walter Semkiw, MD

CASE I

JAPANESE SOLDIER REINCARNATES AS A WOMAN AND BECOMES A LESBIAN, UNDERSTANDING HOMOSEXUALITY & GENDER IDENTITY ISSUES THROUGH REINCARNATION

How Derived: Past Life Memories in Childhood

Researcher: Ian Stevenson, MD

From: Cases of the Reincarnation Type, Volume IV, Thailand and Burma, by Ian Stevenson, MD

Nathul, Burma during the Japanese Occupation

The setting of this case is in the village of Nathul, in Burma. During World War II, the Japanese army occupied Nathul, starting in 1942.

As there was a railroad station nearby, Allied fighters and bombers regularly bombed the area and used machine guns to strafe the ground to kill any Japanese soldiers that were spotted. Attacks would often happen twice a day.

As the Allied planes ran sorties during the day, the Burmese villagers of Nathul would scatter into the countryside in the mornings. The villagers would then return to their homes in the cover of the night’s darkness. The Allied attacks continued through the spring of 1945. (more…)

by Gina Cerminara

The vocational histories in the Cayce files raise many questions in the mind of the thoughtful investigator. First of all there is the problem of beginnings—a problem which troubles most reincarnationists as they try to push back to the first emergence of the soul from God. What initially set off one soul in one occupational direction and another soul in another? If the spirits of men originally emanated from Divinity as equal and undifferentiated, why then should one start off in the direction of agriculture, another in trading, a third in textiles, fourth in music, and a fifth in mathematics? Was there some minute element of individuality in each which led to the diversity of human activities that they chose—and if so, what determined that individuality?

Although the Cayce files provide no clear cut answer to this question, they do furnish fairly satisfactory information with respect to another question that suggests itself—namely: what later causes a soul to change from one occupation to another? There are examples of many such changes in the Cayce files, and an analysis of the pertinent data indicates that the transition can be accounted for by either of two basic factors: desire or karmic law. (more…)

by Roger Woolger, Ph.D.

Not long ago, I saw a slogan on a bumper sticker: “Reincarnation is having a comeback.” It is a sad fact that the scientific establishment in the United States still marginalizes most work that even hints at realities beyond our own, including regression therapy, parapsychology, and a vast body of research into paranormal phenomena, from out-of-body experiences to children’s spontaneous past-life memories. By clinging to such a narrow protocol, mainstream psychology risks becoming, in George Orwell’s memorable phrase, one of “the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.” Fortunately, in most countries where I have lectured, the general public is far ahead of the academics. Nearly everyone has heard of the doctrine of reincarnation, and recent polls show that almost one in three Americans now believe in it, even though most of the Christian churches reject it. (more…)

by Manly P. Hall

The human life wave is made up of sixty billion spirits or entities. Of this number, about two [nearly eight today] billion incarnate at one time, making up the population of the earth.

The spirit, ego, or self of the human being has been evolving through various forms and conditions for nearly a thousand million years. This vast period of time was used in the perfecting of the physical body as a medium for the expression of the entity in the physical world. The human body as we know it was first distinguishable some fifty million years ago. At that time the entity controlled the body by a rudimentary nervous system which it since has refined to its present degree of subtlety. About twenty-five million years ago the division of the sexes made sight and thought possible in the body. From that period to the present time the entity has been constantly refining the body which serves as the vehicle of its physical expression. Present humanity bears witness to hundreds of millions of years of growth which we see recapitulated in the embryo and fetus. (more…)

by Roger Wolger, Ph.D.

Subtle Body Memories: The Etheric Imprint

When we go deeply into a regression, we often have extraordinarily vivid memories of physical pain, contortion, struggle, or dis-empowerment, and we experience all this in a fully embodied consciousness. To feel the phantom pain of having a sword in the side, or of being raped or beheaded, puts us in touch with the deepest level of traumatic residue that has persisted across lifetimes.

Such physical memories often shock us when they surface in a regression, especially when there is nothing to account for them in the current life. The most helpful explanation is that these memories are embedded in the subtle body—literally, the layers of subtle energy that surround and penetrate the physical body. (Some researchers have called it “cellular memory,” but this metaphor unfortunately raises more questions than it answers. The Russian research into the bio-electrical auras around plants, animals, and human bodies, which can be recorded with the technique of Kirlian photography, is more descriptive, speaking of “energy fields” in and around the body, like magnetic fields.) Both past life research and past life therapy have now collected an impressive array of evidence to show that these old traumas, inherited though the subtle body—which I will also call the etheric field or blueprint—consistently re-imprint in the living body as rashes, deformities, birthmarks, weaknesses in certain limbs, or organic disorders such as a weak bladder, a weak heart, gynecological problems, and so on. (more…)

by Roger Woolger, Ph.D.

Working With The Story Behind The Story

The value of remembering past lifetimes is frequently that feelings long buried or blocked can come to the surface and be released. Old fears, as we have seen, can be re-run and found to be baseless: we find that they no longer apply today, that they are simply old stories somehow lodged into the psyche. Generally speaking, it is in lifetimes where there were traumas and severe struggle, or where the life span was cut short, that phobic or traumatic patterns are most likely to be passed on. One of the meanings of the word karma is actually “work”; in contemporary usage I often translate it simply as “the soul’s unfinished business.” The things we failed to do, the setbacks we experienced in one lifetime, seem to be passed on as the soul’s ongoing tasks—work to be redone by the newly incarnating consciousness as it returns to this world in new circumstances and with new opportunities. (more…)

by Rosemary Ann Guiley

BILL (A PSEUDONYM) is a college student in New England. A native of California born in 1968, he has since early childhood been fascinated by war and the military, and also has felt an affinity with the name “John.” It was neither his real first nor middle name, yet as a child he adopted it as a second middle name and called himself by it.

His family moved around the country while he was growing up, and in Texas, where he finished high school, Bill met a friend who introduced him to reincarnation, metaphysics and other topics of the New Age. Just before he entered college, Bill decided to undergo hypnotic regression as an exploration of himself. The night before, he and his friend meditated together as a way of preparing for it. (more…)

by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Sex Change

Individuals who go through past-life regression often are surprised to find themselves as the opposite sex. Not all, but some, men have a much more difficult time accepting female lives than women do male lives—a reflection of a pervasive male view of women as inferior. In fact, in some cultures which believe in reincarnation, such as the Druse of Lebanon, men refuse to believe it is possible to reincarnate as women; it is simply unacceptable. In other cultures, such as Burma, it is considered punishment for a man to be reborn as a woman. (more…)

by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

In 1966, Helen Wambach, an American psychologist and clinical psychiatrist, visited a Quaker memorial in Holly, New Jersey, and suddenly found herself in an altered state of consciousness, and a feeling of being in another time and place came over her.

As I entered the small library room, I saw myself going automatically to the shelf of books and taking one down. I seemed to ‘know’ that this had been my book, and as I looked at the pages, a scene came before my inner eye. I was riding on a mule across a stubbled field, and this book was propped up on the saddle in front of me. The sun was hot on my back, and my clothes were scratchy. I could feel the horse moving under me while I sat in the saddle, deeply absorbed in reading the book propped before me. The book I was reading was a report of a minister’s experience of the between-life state while he was in a coma. I seemed to know the book’s contents before I turned the pages. (more…)

by Roger Woolger, Ph. D.

Very often, the portal into a past-life memory is a distressing event in our present life that awakens, or triggers, an older or deeper memory. In the prior examples explored here – Wendy’s story of the Indian raid, Cheryl’s fear from the Roman arena, Peter’s adolescent death wish – we saw how events in each of their lives had caused emotional chaos for many years. But we also saw how paying precise attention to the triggering situation in the present could open the door to the past. What follows is the story of a young woman who walked through just such a door. (more…)