completely up to you.”
Greta smiled graciously. She clearly understood that I merely facilitated the memory and that I did not cause it. She graciously expressed her gratitude for taking such good care of her. Exhausted, Greta was only too happy to call it a night, and happy to leave that past life in the past . . . until she woke up the next morning with a bright red rash in a circle around the circumference of her neck.
Her body remembered the hanging.
A cold chill went through me as Greta tugged at her collar to show me the marks on her neck. In the pattern, I could almost make out the imprint of the braid of the rope. It was somehow simultaneously horrific and beautiful.
She smiled grimly. “I think . . . we had better go back into that life again.” She mindlessly ran her fingers over the intense red mark. “It won’t leave me alone, I think,” her voice trembled with both anxiety and feigned good humor.
Later that morning, I placed Greta under hypnosis again, but this time I was careful to initially direct her towards a very happy memory in that lifetime in Germany. We needed some context, some background, and most importantly, a memory that wouldn’t petrify her, at least not initially. Her most recent incarnation found Greta on the streets of a major German city, and she was about fourteen years old. It was a bright spring morning and the air was crisp as she walked hand-in-hand with her mother. The smell of fresh baked bread filled the air from a nearby bakery, and Greta felt the sun on her face.
The Nazi party was just coming to power, but Greta knew nothing of politics at her tender age. But as she looked across the cobblestone street, she saw a handsome young German officer. He looked so striking in his German uniform, all pomp and polish. He was firing off orders to several subordinates who snapped a salute before quickly leaving to do his bidding. Greta experienced feelings stirring somewhere deep in her body that she had not known before. Awed by his power and good looks, she was staring and caught his eye. Embarrassed, her eyes fell to the ground, but when she looked up again, he was still looking at her. He gave her a brief, if curt smile. She turned her face away, beet red with embarrassment, burying her countenance in her mother’s threadbare cotton coat.
I directed her to go to another important moment in that lifetime. She was perhaps a year older now and once again found herself walking the streets, running errands with her mother. She saw the Nazi officer again, and it became obvious to both of us that this was a daily ritual. She would walk the streets with her mother hoping to catch a glimpse of this man who was her schoolgirl crush.
On this day, Greta watched her dashing young officer from across the street and saw an old Jewish woman approach him. Although she couldn’t make out what the woman was saying, she could see that woman was animated—pleading and begging the young officer for something. Then, seemingly without warning, he struck her sharply across the face, frustrated by her cries for help. She fell to the ground, and he kicked her aside with a frightening nonchalance, appearing anxious to get on with his daily duties. Greta’s hands went to her face, her mouth agape.
Just at that moment he looked across the street and caught her glance and fiercely looked at her as if to say, See who you are in love with? Looking deeply into his blazing eyes, Greta took a sharp breath.
“I know this man. I know this man.” Greta became increasingly agitated. “He was my husband Klaus in my current life. In my current life, he was a good man . . . a good man, but now he is a monster!” Her hand rose to her mouth in horror.
“My Klaus is a monster!”
After using some calming techniques, I asked Greta to move ahead to the next important life experience. Her shoulders contracted, and her expression became grim. Her face was pale.
“It is the moment of my death,” she said grimly, her voice barely a whisper.
I assured her that she was safe to observe her own death, that her soul was eternal and these were echoes or shadows of her past.
“I understand that,” she said softly.
Now, I can look back at the thousands of past-life regressions I have induced since then, and I have been pleased to say that experiencing a death in another lifetime is rarely traumatic and is usually liberating. Very typically, subjects feel no pain and, upon leaving their body, are glad to be free of it, feeling peaceful and even joyous. However, the first few moments after leaving the body are usually an adjustment, especially if the death is sudden and unanticipated. There can be cursory leftover concerns about those who are left behind. But amazingly, most people come to terms with the death of their physical body quickly and have an underlying sense that everyone who is left behind will be okay.
I remember leading a group regression in Atlanta. I instructed the audience to go to the moment of their passing. A heavyset gentleman in his fifties immediately groaned as his chest heaved forward, his head whipped backward, like a ragdoll. I checked to see that he was okay and continued on with the regression. When it was over, I asked him what happened.
“When you asked us to go to the moment of our passing, I was suddenly hit with a spear right through my chest.”
“Did it hurt?” I asked him. He frowned considering the question.
“No, it was more like a shock, a sudden pound on my chest. It wasn’t so much pain as it was surprise. I literally didn’t see it coming,” he said with some amazement. “It actually took me a little while to realize that I was dead. But I hated being a soldier, and it wasn’t long before I felt relief and an incredible freedom.”
Greta’s feeling of terror after dying, I would soon learn, was very atypical. She said she felt no pain when she left her body, but there was a sense of shock and surprise as she discovered that her consciousness and awareness continued to live on. Curious, she floated up high over the rooftops of the city in which she lived. She was offered a panorama, a completely novel perspective she had never known in that life as she looked down on rows of familiar houses and shops with smoke billowing from their chimneys, drifting up into a deep blue sky.
Then she “remembered” she had a body . . . but where?
Suddenly frightened, she returned down to the scaffolding where she had been hung, but her body was no longer there. This is exactly the moment where we had “entered” her past life in our first regression. No wonder she had been so terrified and confused.
Following some kind of internal homing beacon, she found herself in a cold concrete warehouse where the bodies of dead Jews had been stacked. It was uncomfortable, but less painful to experience on this, the “return visit.” She became frustrated, because she could not see the faces on the bodies.
She eventually identified her body by her shoes.
“I spend some time looking at my feet and my body and all the bodies,” she said, her voice breaking. “I don’t know how long it is. Maybe a few minutes, maybe several hours, but then I become aware of a light—a beautiful, brilliant golden light that seems to enter the left-hand corner of the warehouse. As I look up at the light, my heart feels drawn to it, and I have a sense that everything is going to be okay. I realize that somehow, I am going to be okay, too.”
She released a heavy sigh. As she floated deeper and deeper into the light, her facial muscles relaxed. Then suddenly, she brightened.
“It’s Klaus!” she said excitedly, “not the Klaus from back then, but the Klaus from this lifetime. Oooh, it is so wonderful to see you.” Her face wet with tears, the words came rushing out in a tumble. “He
