Well, I was bowled over! I noticed that, unlike the other names I was seeing, this Rabbi Josiah was not listed as ben anyone, which means “son of.” Just Josiah, as if he had no parentage. I had never heard of Elisha ben Abuya and knew nothing of his background. This only confirmed for me the validity of the regressions.

  In 2009, the summer following my regressions, I had the opportunity to travel to Israel. I stayed at a Christian monastery on Mount Zion, and I was determined to get to Qumran. In the company of a friend I’d made in the monastery, a teacher at a Catholic school in America who’d listened to me recount my regression experiences and didn’t think I was crazy, I got on the bus and headed off.

  We arrived, paid our entrance fee, and approached the ruins of the Essene compound.

  “Well,” my new friend said, “I suppose you know where you’re going?”

  “I certainly do,” I answered. “We go right in through here.”

  “But that says ‘Exit.’ ”

  “I don’t care what it says,” I responded. “That’s the way in.”

  I moved though the ruined compound easily and deliberately. I knew exactly where everything was and what it was.

  “Up this lane,” I said to my friend, “was the place where we ate. The men sat on blankets, and the boys served them. Afterward, we had our meal.” And, sure enough, at the end of that path was a ruin marked REFECTORY, with a drawing of men seated on blankets, eating.

  “Down here,” I said as we proceeded, “was the place where the scrolls were written. We boys would stand to the side, and the scribes would call out for more ink or for a new writing utensil. They used short, hollow reeds, sharpened on one end.” Needless to say, we turned a corner and walked into a ruin marked SCRIPTORIUM.

  In my first regression session, I had seen this scriptorium with a round, raised hearth burning. It was quite distinctive. I described it to my friend, saying, “It was right around here somewhere.”

  “Wayne-Daniel,” he said, “look down.” There, at my feet, was a series of concentric circles, made of stone, pressed into the earth—exactly as I had seen.

  Wayne-Daniel Berard

  In Wayne-Daniel’s story, in which he was a rabbi around two thousand years ago and a chaplain now, we can see the continuing thread of a spiritual life. The affinities and interests of our current lives often have their genesis in past ones. Talents and abilities have been honed in previous incarnations before reappearing once again in the present one. We are the sum of our experiences, polished by our intuitional wisdom and our evolving awareness.

  The most intensive validation work is generally done by the person remembering the past life, as is shown here. The therapists are busy and often have many patients, but the clients are highly motivated to confirm the memories because the experiences are theirs. Confirmation of details lends even more power to the regression. Although the early research that Wayne-Daniel accomplished prior to his trip to the ancient Essene community was important and interesting, his on-site experiences were extraordinary. The déjà vu feeling of familiarity and of knowing your way around cannot be learned from maps. It comes from actual experience. He could describe the activities, the settings, and the details, and these were immediately confirmed.

  I remember my own past-life experience in Alexandria about two thousand years ago, where I wandered among the Essene communities in the desert to the north. The time period was the same as in Wayne-Daniel’s memory.

  Perhaps his coming to the training seminar was more of a reunion than we realized.

  According to a 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly three-quarters of Americans believe in life after death, and approximately one-quarter believe in reincarnation. Almost half claim to have had a mystical or spiritual experience—a percentage that has more than doubled in the past fifty years—and about 30 percent say that they have felt in touch with someone who has died. Even though the numbers of people who believe in reincarnation are higher in Asia and other areas where the concept has been accepted for many centuries, the Western world is finally catching up.

  Researchers such as Ian Stevenson, M.D., the late chairman emeritus of the psychiatry department at the University of Virginia, have documented thousands of cases of reincarnation, mostly through interviews leading to identification of the family from that person’s most recent past life and then that family’s ensuing confirmation of the recalled details. Dr. Stevenson’s work, which focused primarily on children’s spontaneous past-life memories, revealed the frequency with which mortal wounds from a prior lifetime manifested as birthmarks in the child’s current body.

  Nearly a decade ago, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced a beautiful, high-quality documentary series on past lives for which I was interviewed and acted as a consultant. After volunteers were chosen to undergo past-life regressions, a reporter named Sarah Kapoor traveled all around the world, including to tiny rural villages and gravesites, to verify the memories. She spoke to priests, village elders, and historians, among others, who were able to validate the past lives that the volunteers had experienced. I watched the compelling and confirmational video documentation and am still moved by many of the cases. In 2008, when I regressed several people on The Oprah Winfrey Show, that show’s producers interviewed Sarah. The earlier findings were confirmed once again, and in the intervening years, additional details had emerged after Sarah had followed up with the volunteers.

  In my previous books, I have extensively documented clinical cases that have validated past-life memories. There are countless confirmed stories. Jenny Cockell, a British woman, discovered the children whom she had borne during her previous incarnation as Mary Sutton in Ireland in the early twentieth century. Five of Mary’s children were still alive when Jenny found them in the 1990s. They were able to completely confirm Jenny’s past-life recall of even minor events in their childhoods, events that occurred more than seventy years prior to their emotional reunion with Jenny—the reincarnation of their mother, Mary Sutton.

  A carefully documented account of reincarnation is found in the book Soul Survivor: The Reincarnation of a World War II Fighter Pilot by Bruce and Andrea Leininger. The parents of James Leininger observed their two-year-old son recalling a prior lifetime as James Huston, a man who was killed in the battle of Iwo Jima. The degree of confirmation, even of the tiniest military details, is a testament to the careful research done by little James’s parents.

  Whether from single-case reports, like the experiences of Jenny and the Leiningers, or from ongoing research studies by investigation of reincarnational material, extensive confirmation of the validity of past lives has been accumulated. Validation helps minds to open to new possibilities. A closed mind cannot learn anything new. A closed mind is stuck in the past. Thanks to the tireless efforts of researchers, we can legitimately state now that reincarnation can be accepted on the basis of clinical data and not solely by belief.

  Of course, truths really do not need research support. They exist above and beyond scientific confirmation, because science is constrained by the limitations of its measuring devices. It cannot prove what it cannot yet measure. When the appropriate tools are developed, the truths will be there, waiting to be discovered. Truths are independent and are unaffected by the beliefs of humans. Yet many people, understandably, find comfort and support in statistical and scientific proofs. Ideally, truth and proof coincide. For the concept of reincarnation, this has become the case.

  As an example, Sir Isaac Newton described gravity, but he did not invent it. For millennia, people knew the truth: what goes up must come down. It took the development of mathematical tools to allow Newton to actually explain the phenomenon. And as the tools of physics are further refined, gravity will be even better understood. Similarly, we can describe reincarnation, even though we don’t yet know its exact mechanisms. We are still awaiting our Newton.

  After a training workshop, I dictated a brief experience that Claire, one of our participants, had had. From Ireland, Claire had never been to North or South America before in her life until she came to my training. There she had a past-life memory in “Chichen Itza,” as she pronounced it. It was a place that she didn’t know and that made no sense to her, yet she recalled it perfectly.

  She began describing an apparition that was like a magnificent, large angel with changing colors. Claire was a young woman who, along with some others, was involved in some kind of ceremony. She wore a white, belted robe. There were pyramids with flat tops and many steps that led up to a temple where she meditated to purify herself before the next part of the ritual. Claire was alone in the temple at the top of the steps, the flat-top pyramids below her. Suddenly, she found herself in a large hole in the ground. She was able to explain what was around and in the hole with great detail. She had become wrapped in a large fern at some point in the ceremony. This was apparently a sacrifice, but Claire was not at all traumatized, for she felt it was an honor to be chosen. Her family felt similarly honored. The decision to partake in the ceremony had been made willingly.

  Such details were later verified by another member of our training who happened to be a Mexican anthropologist and who was quite knowledgeable about its ancient ceremonies. I was impressed that in our small group, there was an anthropologist from Mexico who specialized in Mayan and indigenous cultures and who could immediately validate Claire’s memories, which were far more elaborate and detailed than what I can recall or describe here.

  Neither Claire nor I had talked to the anthropologist before her regression. When I contemplate the odds of encountering a professional who specialized in the very same subject matter of Claire’s recall, in the same small workshop, I am reminded that there are no coincidences in life.

  Jill, the client featured in the next story, discovered this same truth. The strong connections between her present and past life were far from accidental, and it was no coincidence that the details she recalled in a regression matched those that she later found in historical documents.

  . WE ARE ALWAYS FREE .

  My client, a white female in her fifties, relayed a story to me during a therapy session. In her present life, Jill was a social service worker who single-handedly began an inner-city soup kitchen. As a girl of about ten years old, she had gone to Mount Vernon to visit the home of President Washington. During that visit, she began to remember a past life. To her and her aunt, who had taken her on the visit, Jill’s reactions to seeing the home and to viewing photographs were strange. She recognized a little girl whom she said she played with at this house. She also talked on and on about the placement of furniture in the Mount Vernon estate and how it was all wrong. I recognized this story as a past-life memory, and Jill was open to the idea of exploring it further. She came to one of my workshops and was easily regressed. There, she put all the pieces together of this haunting memory.

  As Jill relayed to the group of us at the workshop, she had found herself as a ten-year-old black slave girl in George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. She had played with a little girl named Nell, and she later moved with the family to Philadelphia. She remembered that her mother was a black slave who was a seamstress, and her father a white tailor. She called herself a mulatto.

  Later, this young woman fled on a ship to freedom and settled in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she married a free black sailor and had three children. She remembered living in fear that she would be found and taken back into slavery, but she remained a free woman until she died peacefully in her old age. My client was able to get dates as well as locations, and she stated that her name was “Oney Judge.” When I asked what the lessons were for her in that lifetime, she responded in a very different voice, the voice of her soul: “We are always free.”

  Later that evening, Jill’s partner went on the Internet and yelled at her to come quickly. There on the computer screen was an African American history website describing the life of a courageous young slave who had fled to freedom: Ona Judge, the runaway slave of George Washington.

  All of what Jill had relayed to the group of us that night in the workshop was verified by the website. She had gotten many of the details correct. Jill has no recollection of ever studying this in history class in school, and she probably did not, as African American history was not taught in the days that she attended school. She also did not grow up in Portsmouth.

  Jill is still processing and integrating this information. She finds much comfort and relief in finding out why she had these memories at a young age, around the same age that Oney was at Mount Vernon. The regression has also been helping her to integrate parts of her personality in this lifetime, as well as to determine her future goals.

  Maria Castillo

  Every so often, a geographical stimulus will precipitate the past-life memory. No hypnosis is necessary, just the visiting of the locale. In this case, Maria’s client began to spontaneously recall details of furniture placement and other historical facts. Years later, her regression and some Internet research provided further validation. Interestingly, the profession and projects in Jill’s current life mirror the issues found in the life of Ona Judge.

  Wayne-Daniel also experienced past-life recall when he visited the archaeological excavation at the ancient Essene community. To physically return to the site of a previous lifetime is a powerful trigger and can evoke both strong emotions and detailed memories. If you visit a foreign city and feel a marked aversion or, on the other hand, a strong positive connection to the place, the origins of these feelings may lie in your past lives.

  You have lived many lives and have tasted the beliefs and cultures of nations from all corners of the globe.

  The possibility of verifying the details of a past life is undoubtedly an intriguing aspect of a regression, particularly for those people who might be skeptical about the memory they have just recalled. The person who wonders Was that really a past-life memory, or just my imagination? may find that having factual evidence that validates the data of their experience helps them to accept it as real or at the very least to recognize that the mind is capable of knowing things at a level far beyond the standard five senses. It certainly did for me when I was treating Catherine, my first patient to regress to a past life. I did not believe in this concept at all, yet I could not deny that she was rapidly healing, nor could I refute that she was able to provide me with unknowable and quite detailed personal information about my son, my father, and my daughter. Had she not provided me with this level of “proof,” I might not have been so compelled to research and explore the field of past-life regression.

  Most of us, at one time or another, have had a dream that may have been chronologically inaccurate, or possibly even illogical, yet moved us to a new level of understanding or insight upon awakening. A dream analyst would never think to write off such a powerfully evocative event because it is “inaccurate” or “untrue.” This is also the case with past-life regression. Like dreams, past-life recollections, because they are sometimes retrieved from very deep states of consciousness, may contain symbols and metaphors as well as actual memories. Such symbols and metaphors need to be interpreted so that their meaning and message become clear. A dreamlike or symbolic past-life memory is no less powerful than a literal one. The mind sometimes displays the past-life scenes more like a poem than a history text.

  Past-life recall is also subject to the same potential distortions as any other memory that we have in our regular waking consciousness. The memory may be entirely accurate, but sometimes dates and other details can be slightly blurred. Memory is like that. For example, what you are sure happened to you in kindergarten may have actually occurred in the first grade. Ninety-nine percent of the memory is correct, however, and that one mistake does not invalidate the general accuracy of the recall. Emotions and themes tend to be extremely accurate. The most common distortions are in numbers and other logical or left-brained functions. The deeper mind is more concerned with understanding and healing than it is with details and dates.

  My previous books provide a more thorough exploration of the validation of cases. However, as the years have passed and as I have borne witness to so many of these cases, my focus has shifted a bit from the confirmation of the past-life memory and toward its therapeutic value. It is rarely, if ever, the facts, details, or historical accuracy of the regression that has a significant healing effect on the patient, but rather its emotional content, the feelings and relationships that are brought to the surface, the insights into life and into our deeper nature that are gleaned. The stories in the next chapter illustrate how such understandings can powerfully and permanently heal people’s lives.

  . 3 .

  How Understanding Can Heal

  Our bodies and our minds are the masks our real self—the soul—wears in the physical world. When we die, we remove our masks and we rest in our natural state. There is no disappearance, no oblivion. We simply take off our masks, our clothes, and other outer coverings, and we return home to the spiritual realms. Here we are renewed and restored. Here we reflect on the lessons of the life that we have just left. Here we are reunited with our soul companions across the centuries. Here we plan our next lifetime on the earth. When the time and circumstances are right, we don new masks—a baby’s body and brain—and return to the physical state. With a refreshed energy and outlook, we continue learning our spiritual lessons until the need to reincarnate is no longer necessary. Then we can continue to help people from the other side.