wo months after our last session, Catherine called and scheduled an appointment. She said she had something very interesting to tell me.

When she walked into the office, the presence of the new Catherine, happy, smiling, and radiating an inner peace that made her glow, briefly surprised me. For a moment, I thought about the old Catherine and how far she had come in such a very short time. Catherine had gone to see Iris Saltzman, a well-known psychic astrologer who specialized in past-life readings. I was a little surprised, but I understood Catherine's curiosity and her need to seek some added confirmation for what she had experienced. I was glad she had the confidence to do this.

Catherine had recently heard about Iris from a friend. She had called and made an appointment without telling Iris about anything that had transpired in my office.

Iris had asked her only for the date, time, and place of her birth. From this, Iris explained to her, she would construct an astrological wheel that, in conjunction with Iris's intuitive gifts, would enable her to discern details from Catherine's past lives.

This was Catherine's first experience with a psychic, and she really didn't know what to expect. To her amazement, Iris validated most of what Catherine had discovered under hypnosis. Iris gradually worked herself into an altered state by talking and by making notations on the hastily constructed astrological graph. Minutes after she had entered this state, Iris reached for her own throat and announced that Catherine had been strangled and had had her throat cut in a previous life.

The throat cutting had been in a time of war, and Iris could see flames and destruction in the village many centuries ago. She said that Catherine had been a young man at the time of his death.

Iris's eyes appeared glazed as she next described Catherine as a young male dressed in a naval uniform, with short black pants and shoes with odd buckles on them. Suddenly Iris grabbed her left hand

and felt a throbbing pain, exclaiming that something sharp had entered and damaged the hand, leaving a permanent scar. There were large sea battles, and the location was off the English coast. She went on to describe a life of sailing.

Iris described more fragments of lifetimes. There was a brief life in Paris, where Catherine was again a boy and had died young, in poverty. Another time she was a female American Indian on the southwest Florida coast. During this lifetime she was a healer and walked around barefoot. She was dark-skinned and had odd eyes. She would apply ointments to wounds and give herbal medicines, and she was very psychic. She loved to wear blue stone jewelry, a lot of lapis, with a red stone intertwined.

In another lifetime Catherine was Spanish and had lived as a prostitute. Her name began with the letter L She lived with an older man.

In another life she was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy father who had many titles. Iris saw the family crest on mugs in me large house. She said that Catherine was very fair and had long, tapering fingers. She played the harp. Her marriage was arranged. Catherine loved animals, especially horses, and she treated the animals better than the people around her.

In a brief lifetime she was a young Moroccan boy who died of an illness in his youth. Once skived in Haiti, speaking the language and involved in magical practices.

In an ancient lifetime she was Egyptian and was involved in the burial rites of that culture. She was a female with braided hair.

She had several lifetimes in France and Italy. In one, she lived in Florence and was involve^ with _ religion. She later moved to Switzerland, where she was involved with a monastery. She was a female and had two sons. She was fond of gold and gold sculpture, and she wore a gold cross. In France she had being imprisoned in a cold and dark place. ~~"

"7n another life, Iris saw Catherine at a male in a red uniform, involved with horses and soldiers. The uniform was red and gold, probably Russian. In yet another lifetime she was a Nubian slave in ancient Egypt. At one point she was captured after thrown into jail. In still another life, Catherine was a male in Japan, involved with books and teaching, very scholarly. She worked with schools and lived to an old age.

And, finally, there was a more recent life as a German soldier who was killed in battle.

I was fascinated by the detailed accuracy of these past-life events as described by Iris. The correspondence to Catherine's own recall while under hypnotic regression was startling-Christian's hand injury while in the naval battle and the description of his clothes and shoes; Louisa's life as a Spanish prostitute; Aronda and the Egyptian burials; Johan, the young raider whose throat was cut by a previous incarnation of Stuart while Stuart's village had burned; Eric, the doomed German pilot; and so on.

There were also correspondences to Catherine's present life. For example, Catherine loved blue stone jewelry, especially lapis lazuli. She was not wearing any, however, during her reading with Iris. She had always loved animals, especially horses and cats, feeling safer with them than with people. And, if she could pick one place in the world to visit, it would be Florence.

By no means would I call this experience a valid scientific experiment. I had no way of controlling the variables. But it happened, and I think it is important to relate it here.

I am not sure what occurred that day. Perhaps Iris unconsciously used telepathy and "read" Catherine's mind, since the past lifetimes were already in Catherine's subconscious. Or perhaps Iris really was able to discern past-life information by the use of her psychic abilities, However it was done, the two of them obtained the same information by different means. What Catherine had arrived at through hypnotic regression, Iris had reached through psychic channels.

Very few people would be able to do what Iris did. Many people who call themselves psychics are merely capitalizing on people's fears as well as their curiosity about the unknown. Today, "psychic" hacks and fakes seem to be coming out of the woodwork. The popularity of books such as Shirley MacLaine's Out on a Limb has brought forth a torrent of new "trance mediums." Many rove around, advertising their presence locally, and they sit in a "trance" telling an enraptured and awestruck audience such platitudes as "If you are not in harmony with nature, nature will not be in harmony with you." These pronouncements are usually intoned in a voice quite different from the "medium's" own, often tinged with a foreign accent of some sort. The messages are vague and applicable to a wide variety of people. Often the messages deal principally with the spiritual dimensions, which are difficult to evaluate. It is important to weed out the false from the true so that the field is not discredited. Serious behavioral scientists are needed to do this important work. Psychiatrists are necessary to make diagnostic assessments, to rule out mental illness, malingering (faking), and sociopathic (conning) tendencies. Statisticians, psychologists, and physicists are also vital for these evaluations and for further testing. The important strides that are going to be made in this field will be made using scientific methodology. In science, a hypothesis, which is a preliminary assumption made about a series of observations, is initially created to explain a phenomenon. From there, the hypothesis must be tested under controlled conditions. The results of these tests must be proved and replicated before a theory can be formed. Once the scientists have what they think is a sound theory, it must be tested again and again by other researchers, and the results should be the same.

The detailed, scientifically acceptable studies of Dr. Joseph B. Rhine at Duke University, of Dr. lan Stevenson at the University of Virginia, Department of Psychiatry, of Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at the College of the City of New York, and of many other serious researchers prove that this can be done.