In psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and other alternative practices, a client facing problems may be tested for "past life regression." Often using hypnosis, the practitioner takes a person back to the time of their birth and then proceeds beyond that to, what they claim, is the life previously lived before being reincarnated into this, present life. They claim that through recalling these past lives, the problems of the present may be solved as they may have their origin in this past life.
Skeptical Perspective
The number of questionable claims and methods used in this particular phenomena is large and concerning. The ability of hypnosis to take a person back to a time where no conscious memory exists is questionable. As with dream states and hallucinations, it is very likely that the memories recalled are figments of the imagination and have no basis in reality. If past lives and reincarnation exist they would give rise to many questions in need of explanation before the ideas can be taken seriously - they would also need to be correlated with the knowledge we have secured about the evolution of humans, the death of life, the form and movement of energy and matter and so on. No explanation exists to account for the claim of reincarnation yet several natural explanations exist that account for the experiences and phenomena that are described above and may detail what is really going on. Considering the many people that claim to have been Cleopatra, or other famous historical figures, it also tends to further discredit the ideas promoted in past-life regression.
- Jim Marks (Psychiatrist) |
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