I don't have a permanent hairdresser. If I have time I go to a barber’s shop and let my hair cut. Hairdressers usually start to talk about haircut styles or the weather but the lady who had taken me in hand last time started a totally different conversation.
’Imagine’, she said proudly, ’I was a dolphin in my previous life!’ It seemed quite apparent how proud she was about it. Keeping a colloquial manner, I asked back:
’Oh really? How did you learn that?’
The hairdresser, even more proudly if it is possible:
’By past life hypnosis!’
Being very careful not to unveil myself (meaning I am inquiring professionally), I continue chatting.
’Wow! And how did you feel as a dolphin?’
The hairdresser gave a detailed and sensitive account of her experiences, telling that she had felt the caressing sea water on her skin, the smell of the sea, how had she been playing with her mate dolphins and so on. It also turned out that she took part in a so-called “Brain Control” course. It is a self-help method, combining suggestive communication, NLP and hypnosis but lacking appropriate scientific ground. In that course the participants had been hypnotized in a group to gain past life experiences. By then, she finished my haircut which unfortunately prevented me from asking for further details.
Reincarnation (literally: “Re-infleshment”, i.e. a repeated manifestation in a body) denotes the phenomena that a soul or some other spiritually significant aspect of a deceased creature re-enters a new, till then “unsouled” body, thus getting a new life (McClelland, 2010). It is an important doctrine of Indian religions, although such classical Indian languages as Sanskrit or Pali there is no literal equivalent for it. Instead of reincarnation the expression Saṃsāra is used, which refers to the perpetual cycle of life, death and rebirth into a new life. In Western cultures Saṃsāra often appears in a stereotypical way—as those who act good in their lives will rebirth to a higher form, while sins and immorality results in rebirth to a lower form. This is decided by Karma, the law of cause and effect or act and consequence. In Jainism you might even been reborn as a plant or a stone if you did against Karma, like by committing sins. Contrary to that, Hinduism and Buddhism these forms of existence aren’t controlled by Karmic law, as they are not able to conscious experiences (bhoga). In Hinduism selfishness and desire forces human existence in a way that we are not able to sense the real world, just an illusion of it. This illusory perception is the Māyā. It is worthy to study Māyā alongside with Apostle Paul's letter to the Corinthians in which he tells: “For now we see through a glass, darkly...” (1Cor 13:12). Sensory pleasures offered by Māyā bound human beings to physical world, and that's the reason we cannot free from Saṃsāra, so we are forced to birth again and again in new lives.
Buddhism's concept of reincarnation, however, is by no means a “return” of consciousness of personality in a new form of life. This process rather resembles to when a lamp is extinguished and then it is kindled again. Does the flame remain the same? According to Buddha, reincarnation doesn't mean that a soul wanders into a new body but thoughts, emotions and actions compose a new soul (Popper, 2012). Thus the consciousness of the new-born being cannot be compared to as it was in its previous life. Buddha himself warned that soul is not unchangeable, as its deeds influence its Karmic energies. His most important teaching is the so-called “Noble Eightfold Path”. If one sticks to it his karma undergoes a transformation which results in that his desire and bounds for physical existence are gradually decreasing. If he adheres to the Noble Eightfold Path, in his successive lives he gets closer and closer to the state of nirvāṇa. Literally, nirvāṇa means “blown out” (as a candle)—referring to the total termination of bounds which forces us to reborn in the physical world. It is a state when all desires, emotions and the Māyā finally become extinguished. Just like when we blew out the candle at the end of the day.
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| Mara, Lord of Desire and Death spins the wheel of Saṃsāra. Buddhist relief from the Dazu Rock Carvings, Chungquing canton, China. (Resource: Wikipedia) |
As you can see the concept of reincarnation in the Indian religions is totally different from how most of the Western people thinks about it. Without any offense (or doubting that she experienced having been in her previous life), this conceptual difference is unveiled in the report of the hairdresser. By so-called “reincarnation hypnosis” she had an experience that she was a dolphin in her previous life. It seems obvious that she liked very much to be a dolphin (maybe even more than being a hairdresser, or at least she is nostalgic about her dolphin-life), and even more obviously she thinks that the dolphin and her current self are the same. This is something totally different from the Hindu or Buddhist idea of Samsara, directed by the Karmic law. It is no need to be a psychologist or an expert of religions to note that in her experience a pleasant, desired situation from the past is represented.Besides that, she reports about her dolphin-life from the viewpoint of her current self. But is that experience really “hers”? The soul who supposed to live in the body of a dolphin may have reborn into a hairdresser, and it can recall memories of its previous life?
According to a Korean study, hypnosis is really suitable for invocating memories attributed to past lives. For the interpretation of the results it is important to know that approximately a quarter of the Koreans are Buddhists, another quarter of them are Christian, and the remaining people don't consider themselves religious but are influenced by Konfucian tradition. (Though Konfucius taught that we should stick to morality and harmony in our present life, he did not reject the idea of reincarnation.) In the experiment of Pyun and Kim (2009), 64 male police academy students in the age of 21-23 took part. They were selected from a larger group, previously being examined by Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (HGSHS:A). The participants were included in the study based on their HGSHS:A scores - equal proportions of subjects with low, medium, and high level of hypnotizability were selected. Firstly, subjects had to chose one of the three following sentences:
1.) I think past lives exist.
2.) I think there are no past lives.
3.) I don't know or have never thought about if past lives are existing.
One third of the subjects, thirty-five people believed in the existence of past lives, a quarter of them (twenty-nine) rejected the idea, the rest of them were neutral about it. Although all subjects were invited for the reincarnation hypnosis, just the experiences of the believers and non-believers were analyzed. The researchers hypnotized the subjects again, and they utilized a suggestion created by an American “past life therapist” in order to let the subjects recall memories from their previous lives.
Interestingly, attitudes to reincarnation did not influence the emergence of memories. From the 35 believers, 15 (42%) reported to have experiences connected to a previous life, while among the 29 non-believer, 13 (44%) had suchlike feelings. Highly hypnotizables reported about past life memories twice more possibly than participants with low hypnotic responsiveness.
Four subjects experienced a previous life in which they were animals (as tiger, fox, deer and bear), two of them reported about gender change and two of them told that they felt to belong to another race (being Caucasian instead of Asian). Eighty percent of the subjects had the same age in their previous lives as currently. Most of them lived also in Korea in their past lives but era showed a large variety. Among those whose memory included time or date, most subjects reported to live under the Yi dinasty, which extincted in the beginning of the 20th Century. The higher the hypnotizability of the given subject was, the more detailed account he gave.
When interpreting the results, the authors highlight that tiger and bear are two animals having an important role in Korean mythology. In a previous study, conducted in Canada (Spanos et al. 1991) all subjects reported being humans in their previous lives. Pyun and Kim attributes this difference to that in North America the “New Age” school promotes the idea of reincarnation, but in this conceptual frame the soul does not change its life form across different lives. Contrary to that, Buddhism posits that change between life forms is possible (just, as I mentioned above, all forms must be able for bhoga). Spanos and his colleagues also found that past life experiences were not related to the subject's belief about reincarnation.
An important finding is that highly hypnotizable subjects are more prone to experience past life memories than low susceptibles. High reactivity to hypnosis is associated with imaginative involvement and rich fantasy. Any forms of identity change emerged also just among the very susceptible persons. Soon I will report that our memory is "reconstructive" by nature, i. e. we do not recall memories one by one but in the process of remembering we are building, constructing them again from different pieces. Hypnosis is facilitating that kind of memory processing which may result in that highly hypnotizables have more intensive and detailed memories. Even from their “past lives”.
This research apparently does not answer the question whether past lives do exist or not. Still, we cannot doubt that the experiences of the subjects seem realistic. Nevertheless, that mainly the highly hypnotizable men had such memories suggests that these memories are products of the reincarnation hypnosis rather than being real.
It is worthy of remark how sensitive is the hairdresser's account on her experiences. She describes how did the sea water feel on her skin, what did it smell like. Had we had a longer time together, she would have surely reported on how was it for her to play with the other dolphins, which kind of bodily sensations did she have. These reports--because of their realism--can really give an impression that they are based on the invention of an existing physical place, with the help of hypnosis; they suggest that the hypnotized subject was really taken back to a previous life.
The results of the Korean research rather suggest that the hairdresser may be very responsive to hypnosis and that's why she is reporting about such a realistic and sensitive experience. Most Hungarian hairdressers are not very well-off; based on that, maybe I do not exaggerate to state that being a dolphin may symbolize an easy and happy life, free of worries and everyday nuisances It can even be interpreted as a nostalgic craving for such a lifestyle. It is easy to recognize the fulfillment of desires in it: Freud (1900), our master posited that this fulfillment is the motivation of every dreams. Hypnotizable subjects are prone to mobilize this mechanism.
“What animals dream of I do not know. A proverb for which I am indebted to one of my pupils professes to tell us, for it asks the question: ’What does the goose dream of?’ and answers: ’Of maize.’ The whole theory that the dream is the fulfillment of a wish is contained in these two sentences.” (Freud: Interpretation of Dreams)
Besides that, many empirical findings and clinical reports underpin that those subjects who are very susceptible to hypnosis are having more intensive and detailed imagery not just under hypnosis but also in their everyday alert state. So if we do not accept reincarnation, we can still explain the account of the hairdresser as a combination of high hypnotic responsiveness and an imaginative elaboration for fulfilling a desire. This interpretation is further supported by the fact that brain control courses and reincarnation hypnosis sessions are most possibly attended by two types of people – those who are very motivated and those who are strongly skeptic about the whole idea. Hypnosis can be used as an “escape” from everyday worries and problems and may give an illusion of free and easy life. If not in any other ways, in a previous life...
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| Resource: Morguefile |
References
Freud, S. (1900). Interpretation of Dreams. Online edition: http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/WorldeBookLibrary.com/freuddream.htmPopper P. (2012). Fáj-e meghalni? [Does dying hurt? In Hungarian.] Budapest: Saxum Kiadó.
Pyun, Y. D., & Kim, Y. J. (2009). Experimental production of past-life memories in Hypnosis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 57(3), 269–278.
Spanos, N. P., Menary, E., Gabora, N. J., Dubreuil, S. C., & Dewhirst, B. (1991). Secondary identity enactments during hypnotic past-life regression: A sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 308–320.
