What’s Real and What Isn’t
In a movie I was watching last night the idea of memory regression came up. It took me back a lot of years to a dear friend whose name will remain anonymous for reasons soon to become obvious. We were rooming together at a conference and she spoke of her work. For years she had practiced hypnotic regression. In our late night conversation with the lights out and everything spookily quiet she told me of one of her clients.
Now, no names or dates were mentioned, she was simply using this example to convince me that this was possible. She’d had it happen in her own work. For over a year she’d worked with a young, troubled girl treating her through hypnotism. Suddenly, after long months of the sessions the girl began to tell her she was somewhere unfamiliar.
My friend played the tape of the session without identifying her client in any way, more to let me see what might well be possible. That we could live previous lives. I was so skeptical I guess she thought the tape might open my mind, if not make a believer out of me.
In the dark silence of our room I listened as the girl talked of a life totally unfamiliar to her. She spoke of names and places, then described a man in white that she along with others, was following. Then she started to speak in a tongue vaguely familiar to my friend. She told me it was Aramaic. She also explained to me that this young girl had very little education and could not know the names of the specific locales, which were all in that ancient tongue. My friend explained that she had verified the existence of the area and villages she spoke of
Before the girl finished reciting her experiences I recognized the man in white. She had joined a group following Jesus as he walked and talked to them. Listening to her speak, and to the changes in the inflection of her voice, shivers ran down my spine. If this young woman had not gone back to a previous life, then she was one heck of an actor. Because of her lack of education she certainly could not have known how to speak the language or no way of knowing some of the descriptions of clothing, goods, and experiences in those days.
I came away from that experience with questions in my mind that have never been answered. My friend firmly believed what had occurred and she went on to lecture and carry out these sessions until her death. I’ll admit we don’t know anywhere near all there is to know about an afterlife or the possibilities in this life, and I wonder to this day if she has found the truth.
More and more discoveries in quantum physics make so much possible in our vast universe that we could never have believed. So I’ll hold back my judgment for now.
One thing’s for sure. I’ve had some strange experiences while working for the newspaper, and even more as a writer. The one thing I’ve learned for sure. It’s a wide, wonderful, secretive, strange world and it pays to take it all in not only for enjoyment, but for the fun of it. And of course, we writers can always put those wild experiences in our books.
We can think of it as if using this mirror. The past is what we see reflected and it’s something we know. Our present is where we are with the mirror, and a future is what we see beyond the mirror. Yet we can only guess what lies where we’re going ib the next world. Sort of a simplification, but hey I’m of a simple person.
Besides I promised to post this photo I took out in New Mexico when I advised someone to take a few scenic shots this way and see what their results. It was a stretch to get it into this post.
Velda Brotherton 