1 Your Past Lives A REINCARNATION HANDBOOK Michael Talbot Copyright © 1987 by Michael Talbot All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, Inc., 225 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003 and represented in Canada by the Canadian MANDA Group HARMONY and colophon are trademarks of Crown Publishers, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Talbot, Michael Your past lives. 1. Reincarnation. I. Title. BL515.T35 1987 133.9'01'3 87-8803 ISBN 0-517-56301-0 10 987654321 First Edition For Carol Dryer, to whom I owe more than words can express Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. i Preface ............................................................................................................. ii Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 Part One: Exploring Alone 1. Preparing ............................................................................................... 13 2. The Resonance Method .......................................................................... 25 3. Dreaming Technique .............................................................................. 47 4. Meditation Techniques ........................................................................... 70 5. Self-Hypnosis Technique ....................................................................... 89 Part Two: Exploring for Two 6. Guided Meditations ................................................................................ 99 7. The Active Imagination Technique ........................................................ 108 Part Three: Exploring with Professional Guidance 8. Exploring with a Professional Past-Life Therapist .................................. 114 9. Exploring with a Psychics and Other Metaphysical Sources ................... 125 10. The Dangers of Past-Life Exploration .................................................... 144 Part Four: Closing Words Bibliography ................................................................................................. 148 Credits .......................................................................................................... 154 Acknowledgments It is difficult to acknowledge all of the people who (in one way or another) contributed to the writing of this book, but a few who deserve special mention include: Carol Dryer, Gregory Paxson, Barbara Hand Clow, Carl Llewellyn Weschcke, Dr. Ernest Pecci, Roger Woolger, Jennifer Woolger, Dr. Hazel Denning, Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf, Judith Wolf, Dr. Stanley R Dean, Jim Gordon, Mary Palermo, Tarn Mossman (and, of course, James). I would also like to thank Marcia Richards and Martha Visser for their diligent work in helping me research the book; Michael Pietsch and Liz Sonneborn at Harmony Books for their careful editing; and, of course, Lucy Kroll, my agent and dear friend for being as wonderful as she is. i Preface In 1981 a Gallup poll revealed that 38 million Americans now believe they've had past lives—about one fourth of our adult population. More and more intelligent, successful people from all walks of life are seriously beginning to consider the possibility that they have lived before. And this growing interest in reincarnation is not limited to the general public. Increasing numbers of psychologists, medical doctors, and therapists are using past-life regression techniques to help people overcome emotional and physical health problems and tap into skills and talents that some believe were first learned in previous incarnations. As increasing attention is focused on past lives, more people are becoming interested in exploring the issue for themselves, in finding out how to unlock their own past-life memories, as well as in learning what benefits to their relationships, outlooks, and professional lives might come from unearthing these memories. This book will satisfy these interests. In it you will find step-by-step exercises and techniques for all of the best- known methods for delving into your past lives. These include meditation methods, ways for you to inspire and remember dreams about your past lives, simple self-hypnosis techniques, and guided imagery exercises for two or more people. Included among these is a technique that I have developed myself called the Resonance Method, which is a very simple way of determining immediately and without meditation various possible past-life dramas, geographic locations, and time periods hidden in your unconscious, as well as numerous other pieces of information which may represent your own past-life memories. Because some of the methods of past-life recall now available can only be done safely by trained professionals, the book also includes advice on how to find a past-life therapist, what sort of training and ii YOUR PAST LIVES credentials to look for, and what sort of regression techniques are available for you to choose from. Whatever your reasons for wanting to explore your previous lives, and whether you believe in reincarnation or not, you will find that the methods given in this book work. With them you will be able to unlock a stream of remarkable stories which now lie hidden in your unconscious mind. Whether you believe these stories are fantasies or actual past-life memories is up to you. It is my hope only that you learn from them and expand your horizons. iii Introduction I believe in reincarnation. I always have. The reasons for my conviction are simple. For as long as I can remember I have always had memories of former existences. When I was a small child, this resulted in my refusing to call my parents "mother" and "father" until I was five years old, when they gently persuaded me to stop calling them by their first names because I was embarrassing them in front of their friends. My refusal was not due to any absence of affection on my part. I did not have a mature intellectual understanding of what the tracts of strange memories inside my head meant, but I was vividly aware that I possessed a continuity, a history beyond the child's body in which I found myself. So it did not make sense to me to call the two kind people who were taking care of me my parents. This was not the only precocity that my parents were forced to contend with. They rapidly discovered that they had a child on their hands who insisted upon drinking several cups of strong black tea every day, who preferred sitting cross-legged on the floor to sitting in chairs, and who was fanatically drawn to things Asian. I also recall asking my mother about several ways that I remembered having died before. Fortunately there was no longer any trauma attached to these memories, and my mother was able to dismiss them. It wasn't until I grew older that I began to understand the import of this strange farrago of memories. By the time I was an adolescent, I realized that I had clear but fragmented recollections of what appeared to be over a dozen different past lives. In a few instances I even remembered names and other obscure but specific details about certain geographic locations. Although it is difficult for me to prove that these spontaneous recollections are actual evidence of past lives, in a few 1 YOUR PAST LIVES instances the information that came bubbling out of me seemed otherwise of inexplicable origin. As a very small child, after I finished the traditional "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayer taught to me by my parents, I automatically followed it with a request to God "to release the suffering of all conscious beings ..." It was only later that I discovered that the ending I had given the prayer was of Buddhist origin. Similarly, as a young adult, although I had had only two months of piano lessons as a child, I discovered that with just a few months of practice I was able to play difficult pieces by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. But to me the most persuasive evidence that my fragmented memories are actual remnants of past-life experience comes not from the place names, the historical facts, or mysterious pieces of information that I remember, but from the fact that when I look back on this succession of memories, I seem to see the germs of many of the elements that make up my current personality. Sketchy though it is, I see an epic story that tells me where many of my faults and positive attributes, my habits, belief systems, and my various strengths and weaknesses began. Just as most people can look back on their childhoods and see events that helped sculpt their current identity, I see a similar progression of self- development over the lifetimes I remember. I would like to say at this point that I do not have any memories of having been a famous historical personage, nor do I have any tales to relate about having been a pharaoh or even a lesser pope. Indeed, most of the past lives that I remember are relatively undistinguished and have little about them of interest save for the personal significance they hold for me. However, here and there throughout the book I will offer further experiences of my own when I feel that they communicate larger points, or complement the findings and discoveries