Zooming into the past

To understand the present, you have to know the past.”

— Dr Carl Sagan

It is a concept that is not only being embraced every day by scores of people looking to extricate themselves from the shackles of past karma and usher in a peaceful present through past-life therapy; it is also the theme of Dr Brian Weiss’ Many Lives, Many Masters, Through Time Into Healing and Same Soul, Many Bodies.
Don’t turn your back on the past when you look to the future. The past doesn’t recede, it lingers, casting its long shadow into your present. Moving through the space-time continuum means that yesterday’s actions can impact your today. Ignoring past-life blocks leaves you in the hands of karmic law, in a vortex of cause and effect, impinging on your emotional health and ability to live a content, stress-free life.
It is not a mere co-incidence — connecting instantly with someone the first time you meet, or developing an immediate dislike for someone for no obvious reason. Perhaps you’ve heard someone rue their past when they go through a rough time? Or wondered who or what you may have been before? Or pondered on whether such a thing as pure co-incidence actually exists?
Turning back the pages of a life lived may unfold many mysteries. Your past life holds the key to the answers to many questions, fears and phobias and without prodding, they will remain unsolved. A lot of people today seek solutions to their present problems in the exploration of their pasts. With guidance from clinical hypnotists, karmic readers to Bhrighu Samhita and Naadi Shastra — they’re discovering there are several paths to the past.
Hypnotherapists are witnessing a rise in the number of people approaching them to resolve blockages/issues in their lives and who also want to let go of fear and bonds.
Dr Blossom Furtado is a clinical hypnotist, past-life and life-between-life therapist and founder director at The Hypnotherapy School of India. She says people are increasingly pro-active about finding solutions to their problems. “If something isn’t working, they want the reason behind it, to get to the root of the problem, even if it lies in their past. People no longer believe ‘it is my destiny, so be it.’ They are open to challenging their destiny and changing it.”
Pranic healer and therapist, Vibha Sharma believes that many present-day problems have a connection with the past, “Several youngsters come to me with relationship problems, emotional hurt and career-setbacks. They get answers to their problem with regression. They see what wrongs they’ve done or have had done to them in previous lives and realise why something is happening today. We neutralise the situation/incident by asking for forgiveness and forgiving.”
Past life incidents impact the present in rationally inexplicable ways. Anju Kapur, 42, suffered a bad marriage for seven years. Unable to fathom the cause of a sudden change in her husband Alex after the wedding, she bore the turbulence even after having her son.
“Alex became possessive after marriage. He wouldn’t let me talk to anybody. He started suspecting my fidelity.” An acquaintance brought Anju in contact with Anjali, an astrologer and mystic. “She told me later that all that was happening in my life was a result of my past karma; that in my previous life, I was a research scientist and had dissected a rabbit. It may sound weird, but that rabbit’s father had seen what I did to his son and in this life he is my husband Alex and his son is born to us as Mike. Alex’s strange behaviour was the result of his anger and loss in previous life, for which I was responsible.”
Karmic reader Nishi Singh attributes the interest in past-lives to Kalyug. “We are at the peak of Kalyug. Stress levels are at an all-time high. Cancer has become as common as a cold. People come looking for quicker solutions.”
Nishi explains the concept of karma, “It’s part of ancient Hindu philosophy. Karma means higher purpose. We can know a person’s past through karmic reading and also tell a person the purpose of his life.”
Dr Hans TenDam, president European Association for Regression Therapy, also believes that people seek regression to clarify their identity and purpose on earth. He says, “We carry both negative and positive from our past birth. Personality, character, intelligence, certain habits, at times strong addictions like alcohol. For example, (this is in rare cases) if you died hungry, that can provoke over-eating in this birth.”
“There is a socio-cultural-psychological perspective to this issue,” says Dr Sameer Malhotra, head psychiatry and psychotherapy, dept. of neurosciences, Fortis Hospital, FHN, explaining the human curiosity about exploring pre-birth and post-death consciousness.”
There has always been a desire to conquer death. Our own scriptures talk of the concept of ‘atma’ or soul and that it never dies. Dissatisfaction with a present life situation makes one wonder about the reasons for difficulties. The thought ‘why has this happened to me?’ often troubles a person. It is also considered that the mind is not just about conscious awareness; it is also about the unconscious… about conflicts, needs, desires or fantasies. At times, we project or feel the need to project these conflicts, needs and fantasies on to an object or find a possible external or antecedent reason to our present state.”
Gayatrri Bhartiya is a clinical hypnotherapist, angel, tarot card reader and holistic healer. She recalls one of her clients with a fear of flying. “His business demanded flying but he’d often send other people. He tried everything, a psychiatrist, a psychologist but nothing worked until someone suggested hypnotherapy. We started the therapy and did a past life regression. He saw himself flying a plane which lost control and crashed. This is where we found the origin of his fear.”
Dr Sunil Prakash, hypnotherapist and a hypnotherapy trainer, says that patients beset with phobias and trauma, often find the reason for their disturbance and also discover ways to heal it. “We once had an over-weight patient, who after trying various ways of losing weight, decided to undergo hypnotherapy. We found that the problem arose from her early life, dating back in utero. During pregnancy, her mother was malnourished; so to make up for it the girl subconsciously gorged on food and gained weight.”
Dr Prakash recalls that he first had to heal her mother and the effect instantly showed on the patient. But he warns that it should be pursued only to sort issues and not for non-serious reasons, else past life experiences can open a Pandora’s Box. Hypno-therapy can help manage stress, helplessness and guilt to some extent but he cautions that it depends on the sensibility, context and methodology with which it is practiced. Some people are just curious about their past. Sumit Kaushik, 22, was inquisitive about Naadi Shashtra and tagged along with a friend for a thumb impression reading in Gurgaon. A non-believer in astrology, Sumit says he didn’t have any queries. But he was surprised at the accurate prediction they made about his friend. Sumit recalls, “After about six hours of having submitted my thumb impression to the expert, I was told they had found match. They foretold a few things about my life; a few of which have come true.” Naadi Shastra may not have convinced Sumit, but the once dormant form of astrology, Bhrigu Samhita, is steadily gaining popularity. Pandit Bharat Bhushan Sharma, a Bhrigu astrologer, explains that the parchments, on which Maharishi Bhrigu’s horoscopic, revelations were written, have been preserved for ages. After looking through the millions of sample horoscopes, once your corresponding parchment is found, it can be used to tap into the past to reveal one’s future. Pandit Sharma says, “If one’s horoscope matches a parchment from the Bhrigu Samhita, his present and up to three past lives can be revealed.” He illustrates, “Once despite undergoing several surgeries, a gentleman got no relief from abdominal pain. He resorted to a Bhrigu Samhita reading and discovered that in his past life he had stabbed an animal in the abdomen and killed it. To negate the after-effects of it, he went to Allahabad, performed rites for the peace of the dead animal and experienced instant relief.” Astrologer Pandit Jugal Kishore’s father Pandit Haveli Ram Joshi was a favourite of one of the ministers of Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He foretold Nehru’s death five years in advance, before he passed away in 1964. This incident finds a mention in the book Nehru: The Invention of India by Dr Shashi Tharoor.
Today, his son Pandit Jugal Kishore is in possession of several thousand original leaves/parchments of “Arun Samhita”, handed down to him through generations. He deciphers, interprets and reads out predictions and remedies from there. “There are 12 ascendants in a 24-hour period. Every person is born in any one ascendant, on the basis of his horoscope — time, place and date of birth. Arun Samhita can foretell future death, and can also deduct a person’s past life.” We turn full circle and end once more with words from Carl Sagan, “Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.” And even if history has the tendency to repeat itself, for the frail, fragmented, human consciousness, it is good to contemplate that ‘Somewhere, something incredible, is waiting to be known.”