ne week later, Catherine bounced into my office for her next hypnosis session. Beautiful to begin with, she was more radiant than ever. She happily announced that her lifelong fear of drowning had disappeared. Her fears of choking were somewhat diminished. Her sleep was no longer interrupted by the nightmare of a collapsing bridge. Although she had remembered the details of her past-life recall, she had not yet truly integrated the material.

The concepts of past lives and reincarnation were alien to her cosmology, and yet her memories were so vivid, the sights and sounds and smells so clear, the knowledge that she was there so powerful and immediate, that she felt she must have actually been there. She did not doubt this; the experience was so overwhelming. Yet she was concerned about how this fit in with her upbringing and her beliefs.

During the week I had reviewed my textbook from a comparative religions course taken during my freshman year at Columbia. There were indeed references to reincarnation in the Old and the New Testaments. In A.D. 325 the Roman emperor Constantine the Great,along with his mother, Helena, had deleted references to

reincarnation contained in the New Testament. The Second Council of Constantinople, meeting in A.D. 553, confirmed this action and declared the concept of reincarnation a heresy. Apparently, they thought this concept would weaken the growing power of the Church by giving humans too much time to seek their salvation. Yet the original references had been there; the early Church fathers had accepted the concept of reincarnation. The early Gnostics-Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Jerome, and many others-believed that they had lived before and would again.

I, however, had never believed in reincarnation. Actually, I had never really spent much time thinking about it. Although my earlier religious training taught about some kind of vague existence of the "soul" after death, I was not convinced about this concept.

I was the oldest of four children, all spaced three years apart. We belonged to a conservative Jewish synagogue in Red Bank, a small town near the New Jersey seashore. I was the peacemaker and statesman in my family. My father was more involved with religion than the rest of us were. He took it very seriously, as he took all of life. His children's academic achievements were the greatest joys in his life. He was easily upset by household discord and would withdraw, leaving me to mediate. Although this turned out to be excellent preparatory training for a career in psychiatry, my childhood was heavier and more responsible than, in retrospect, I would have preferred. I emerged from it as a very serious young man, one who got used to taking on too much responsibility.

My mother was always expressing her love. No boundary stood in her way. A simpler person than my father, she used guilt, martyrdom,terminal embarrassment, and vicarious identification with her children as manipulative tools, all without a second thought. Yet she was rarely gloomy, and we could always count on her love and support.

My father had a good job as an industrial photographer, and although we always had plenty of food, money was very tight. My youngest brother, Peter, was born when I was nine. We had to divide six people into our small two-bedroom garden apartment.

Life in this small apartment was hectic and noisy, and I sought refuge in my books. I read endlessly when not playing baseball or basketball, my other childhood passions. I knew that education was my path out of the small town, comfortable as it was, and I was always first or second in my class.

By the time I received a full scholarship to Columbia University, I was a serious and studious young man. Academic success continued to come easily. I majored in chemistry and was graduated with honors. I decided to become a psychiatrist because the field combined my interest in science and my fascination with the workings of the human mind. In addition, a career in medicine would allow me to express my concern and compassion for other people. In the meantime, I had met Carole during a summer vacation at a Catskill Mountain hotel where I was working as a busboy and she was a guest. We both experienced an immediate attraction to each other and a strong sense of familiarity and comfort. We corresponded, dated, fell in love, and were engaged by my junior year at Columbia. She was both bright and beautiful. Everything seemed to be falling into place. Few young men worry about life and death and life after death, especially when things are flowing smoothly, and I was no exception. I was becoming a scientist and learning to think in a logical, dispassionate, "prove-it" kind of way.

Medical school and residency at Yale University further crystallized this scientific method. My research thesis was on brain chemistry and the role of neurotransmitters, which are chemical messengers in the brain tissue.

I joined the new breed of biological psychiatrists, those merging the traditional psychiatric theories and techniques with the new science of brain chemistry, I wrote many scientific papers, lectured at local and national conferences, and became quite a hotshot in my field. I was a bit obsessive, intense, and inflexible, but these were useful traits in a physician. I felt totally prepared to treat any person who walked into my office for therapy.

Then Catherine became Aronda a young girl who had lived in 1863 B.C Or was it the other way around? And here she was again, happier than I had ever seen her.

I again worried that Catherine might be afraid to continue. However, she eagerly prepared for the hypnosis and went under quickly.

"I am throwing wreaths of flowers on the water. This is a ceremony. My hair is blond and braided. I'm wearing a brown dress with gold, and sandals. Somebody has died, somebody in the Royal House...

the mother. I am a servant with the Royal House, and I help with the food. We put the bodies in brine for thirty days. They dry out and the parts are taken out. I can smell it, smell the bodies."

She had spontaneously gone back to Aronda's lifetime, but to a different part of it, to when her duty was to prepare bodies after their death.

"In a separate building," Catherine continued, "I can see the bodies. We are wrapping bodies. The soul passes on. You take your belongings with you, to be prepared for the next and greater life." She was expressing what seemed like an Egyptian concept of death and the afterlife, different from any of our beliefs. In that religion, you could take it with you.

She left the lifetime and rested. She paused for several minutes before entering an apparently ancient time.

I see ice, hanging in a cave... rocks...." She vaguely described a dark and miserable place, and she was now visibly uncomfortable. Later she described what she had seen of herself. "I was ugly, dirty, and smelly." She left for another

"There are some buildings and a cart with stone wheels. My hair is brown with a cloth on it. The cart has straw in it. I'm happy. My father is there.... He's hugging me. It's... it's Edward [the pediatrician who insisted she see me]. He's my father. We live in a valley with trees. There are olive and fig trees in the yard. People write on papers. There are funny marks on them, like letters. People are writing all day, making a library. It is 1536 B.C. The land is barren. My father's name is Perseus."

The year did not fit exactly, but I was sure she was in the same lifetime that she had reported during the previous week's session. I took her ahead in time, staying in that lifetime.

"My father knows you [meaning me]. You and he talk about crops, law, and government. He says you are very smart and I should listen to you." I took her further ahead in time. "He's {father} lying in a dark room. He's old and sick. It's cold.... I feel so empty." She went ahead to her death. "Now I'm old and feeble. My daughter is there, near my bed. My husband is already dead. My daughter's husband is there, and their children. There are many people around."

Her death was peaceful this time. She was floating. Floating? This reminded me of Dr. Raymond Moody's studies of victims of near death experiences. His subjects also remembered floating, then being pulled back to their bodies. I had read his book several years previously and now made a mental note to reread it. I wondered if Catherine could remember anything more after her death, but she could only say "I'm just floating."

I awakened her and ended that session.

With a new insatiable hunger for any scientific papers that had been published on reincarnation, I hunted through the medical libraries. I studied the works of lan Stevenson, M.D., a well-respected Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who has published extensively in the psychiatric literature. Dr. Stevenson has collected over two thousand examples of children with reincarnation-type memories and experiences. Many exhibited nonglossy, the ability to speak a foreign language to which they were never exposed. His case reports are carefully complete, well-researched, and truly remarkable.

I read an excellent scientific overview by Edgar Mitchell. With great interest I examined the ESP data from Duke University, and the writings of Professor C. J, Ducasse of Brown University, and I intently analyzed the studies of Dr. Martin Ebon, Dr. Helen Wambach, Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, Dr. Frederick Lenz, and Dr. Edith Fiore, The more I read, the more I wanted to read. I began to realize that even though I had considered myself well educated about every dimension of the mind, my education had been very limited. There are libraries filled with this research and literature, and few people know about it. Much of this research was conducted, verified, and replicated by reputable clinicians and scientists. Could they all be mistaken or deceived? The evidence seemed to be overwhelmingly supportive, yet I still doubted. Overwhelming or not, I found it difficult to believe. Both Catherine and I, in our own ways, had already been profoundly affected by the experience. Catherine was improving emotionally,and I was expanding the horizons of my mind. Catherine had been tormented by her fears for many years and was finally feeling some relief. Whether through actual memories or vivid fantasies, I had found a way to help her, and I was not going to stop now.

For a brief moment I thought about all of this as Catherine drifted into a trance at the beginning of the next session. Prior to the hypnotic induction, she had related a dream about a game being played on old stone steps, a game played with a checkerboard with holes in it. The dream had seemed especially vivid to her. I now told her to go back beyond the normal limits of space and time, to go back and see if her dream had roots in a previous reincarnation.

"I see steps leading up to a tower... overlooking the mountains, but also the sea. I am a boy.... My hail is blond... strange hair. My clothes ate short, brown and white, made from animal skins. Some men are on top of the tower, looking out... guards. They are dirty. They play a game, like checkers, but not. The board is round, not square. They play with sharp, daggerlike pieces, which fit into the holes. The pieces have animal heads on them. Kirustan [phonetic spelling] Territory? From the Netherlands, around 1473."

I asked her the name of the place in which she lived, and whether she could see or hear a year. "I'm in a seaport now; the land goes down to the sea. There is a fortress... and water. I see a hut... my mother cooking in a clay pot. My name is Johan."

She was progressed to her death. At this point in our sessions, I was still looking for the single overwhelming traumatic event that could either cause or explain her current-life symptoms. Even if these remarkably explicit visualizations were fantasies, and I was unsure of this, what she believed or thought could still underlie her symptoms. After all, I had seen people traumatized by their dreams. Some could not remember whether a childhood trauma actually happened or occurred in a dream, yet the memory of that trauma still haunted their adult lives.

What I did not yet fully appreciate was that the steady day-ln and day-out pounding of undermining influences, such as a parent's scathing criticisms, could cause even more psychological trauma

than a single traumatic event. These damaging influences, because they blend into the everyday background of our lives, are even more difficult to remember and exorcise. A constantly criticized child can lose as much confidence and self-esteem as one who remembers being humiliated on one particular, horrifying day. A child whose family is impoverished and has very little food available on a day-to-day basis might eventually suffer from the same psychological problems as a child who experienced one major episode of accidental near-starvation. I would soon realize that the day- in and day-out pounding of negative forces had to be recognized and resolved with as much attention as that paid to the single, overwhelmingly traumatic event. Catherine began to speak.

"There are boats, like canoes, brightly painted. Providence area. We have weapons, spears, slings, bows and arrows, but bigger. There are big, strange oars on the boat... everyone has to row. We may be lost; it is dark. There are no lights, I am afraid. There are other boats with us [apparently a raiding party]. I'm afraid of the animals. We sleep on dirty, foul-smelling animal skins. We are scouting. My shoes look funny, like sacks... ties at the ankles... from animal skins. [Long pause] My face is hot from the fire. My people are killing the others, but I am not. I do not want to kill. My knife is in my hand."

Suddenly she began to gurgle and gasp for breath. She reported that an enemy fighter had grabbed her from behind, around the neck, and had slit her throat with his knife. She saw the face of her killer before she died. It was Stuart. He looked different then, but she knew it was he. Johan had died at the age of twenty-one.

She next found herself floating above her body, observing the scene below. She drifted up to the clouds, feeling perplexed and confused. Soon she felt herself being pulled into a "tiny, warm" space. She was about to be born.

"Somebody is holding me," she whispered slowly and dreamily, "someone who helped with the birth. She's wearing a green dress with a white apron. She has a white hat, folded back at the corners. The room has funny windows... many sections. The building is stone. My mother has long, dark hair. She wants to hold me. There's a funny... rough nightshirt on my mother. It hurts to rub against it. It feels good to be in the sun and to be warm again.... It's... it's the same mother I have now!"

During the previous session, I had instructed her to closely observe the significant people in these lifetimes to see whether she could identify them as significant people in her present lifetime as

Catherine. According to most writers, groups of souls tend to reincarnate together again and again, working out their karma (debts owed to others and to the self, lessons to be learned) over the span of many lifetimes.

In my attempt to understand this strange, spectacular drama that was unfolding, unbeknown to the rest of the world, in my quiet, dimly lighted office, I wanted to verify this information. I felt the need to apply the scientific method, which I had rigorously used over the past fifteen years in my research, to evaluate this most unusual material emerging from Catherine's lips.

Between sessions Catherine herself was becoming increasingly more psychic. She had intuitions about people and events that proved to be true. During the hypnosis, she had begun to anticipate my questions before I had a chance to ask them. Many of her dreams had a precognitive, or foretelling, bent.

On one occasion, when her parents came to visit her, her father expressed tremendous doubt about what was happening. To prove to him that it was true, she took him to the racetrack. There, right before his eyes, she proceeded to pick the winner of every race. He was stunned. Once she knew that she had proved her point, she took all of the money that she had won and gave it to the first poor street person she met on her way out of the track. She intuitively felt that the new spiritual powers she had gained should not be used for financial reward. For her, they had a much higher meaning. She told me that this experience was a little frightening to her, but she was so pleased with the progress she had made that she was eager to continue with the regressions. I was both shocked and fascinated by her psychic abilities, especially the episode at the racetrack. This was tangible proof. She had the winning ticket to every race. This was no coincidence. Something very odd was happening over these past several weeks, and I struggled to keep my perspective. I could not deny her psychic abilities. And if these abilities were real and could produce tangible proofs, could her recitations of past-life events also be true?

Now she returned to the lifetime in which she had just been born. This incarnation seemed to be more recent, but she could not identify a year. Her name was Elizabeth,

"I'm older now, with a brother and two sisters. I see the dinner table.... My father is there... he's Edward [the pediatrician, back for an encore performance as her father], My mother and father are fighting again. The food is potatoes and beans. He's mad because the food is cold. They fight a lot. He's always drinking.... He hits my mother. [Catherine's voice was frightened, and she was trembling visibly.] He pushes the kids. He's not like he was before, not the same person. I don't like him. I wish he would go away." She was speaking as a child would speak.

My questioning of her during these sessions was certainly very different from what I used in conventional psychotherapy. I acted more as a guide with Catherine, trying to review an entire lifetime in an hour or two, searching for traumatic events and harmful patterns that might explain her current-day symptoms. Conventional therapy is conducted at a much more detailed and leisurely pace. Every word chosen by the patient is analyzed for nuances and hidden meanings. Every facial gesture, every bodily movement, every inflection of the voice is considered and evaluated. Every emotional reaction is carefully scrutinized. Behavior patterns are painstakingly pieced together. With Catherine, however, years could whir by in minutes. Catherine's sessions were like driving the Indy 500 at full throttle... and trying to pick out faces in the crowd.

I returned my attention to Catherine and asked her to advance in time.

"I'm married now. Our house has one big room. My husband has blond hair. I don't know him. [That is, he has not appeared in Catherine's present lifetime.] We have no children yet.... He's very nice to me. We love each other, and we're happy." Apparently she had successfully escaped from the oppression in her parental home. I asked if she could identify the area in which she lived. "Brennington?'r Catherine whispered hesitatingly. "I see books with funny old covers. The big one closes with a strap. It's the Bible. There are big fancy letters... Gaelic language."

Here she said some words I could not identify. Whether they were Gaelic or not, I have no idea,

"We live inland, not near the sea. County... Brenning-ton? I see a farm with pigs and lambs. This is our farm." She had gone ahead in time. "We have two boys.... The older is getting married. I can see the church steeple... a very old stone building." Suddenly her head hurt, and Catherine was in pain, clutching her left temple area. She reported that she had fallen on the stone steps, but she recovered. She died of old age, in her bed at home with her family around. She again floated out of her body after her death, but this time she was not perplexed or confused.

"I am aware of a bright light. It's wonderful; you get energy from this light." She was resting, after death, in between lifetimes. Minutes passed in silence. Suddenly she spoke, but not in the slow whisper she had always used previously. Her voice was now husky and loud, without hesitation.

"Our task is to learn, to become God- like through knowledge. We know so little. You are here to be my teacher, I have so much to learn. By knowledge we approach God, and then we can rest. Then we come back to teach and help others."

I was speechless. Here was a lesson from after her death, from the in-between state. What was the source of this material? This did not sound at all like Catherine. She had never spoken like this, using these words, this phraseology. Even the tone of her voice was totally different.

At that moment I did not realize that although Catherine had uttered the words, she had not originated the thoughts. She was relaying what was being said to her. She later identified the Masters, highly evolved souls not presently in body, as the source. They could speak to me through her. Not only could Catherine be regressed to past lifetimes, but now she could channel knowledge from the beyond. Beautiful knowledge. I struggled to retain my objectivity.

A new dimension had been introduced. Catherine had never read the studies of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross or Dr. Raymond Moody, who have both written about near-death experiences. She had never heard of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Yet she was relating similar experiences to those described in these writings. This was a proof of sorts. If only there were more facts, more tangible details I could verify. My skepticism fluctuated, yet remained. Maybe she had read about near-death research in a magazine article or had seen an interview on a television show. Although she denied any conscious remembrance of such an article or show, perhaps she retained a sub-conscious memory. But she went beyond these previous writings and transmitted a message back from this in-between state. If only I had more facts.

After she awakened, Catherine remembered the details of her past lives, as always. However, she could not remember anything that happened after her death as Elizabeth. In the future she would never remember any details of the in-between states. She could only remember the lifetimes.

"By knowledge we approach God." We were on our way.