Past life regression

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Posted by Radhika

Yesterday, I had a glimpse of "Raaz Pichle Janam Ka." Aired recently on Indian Television, this programme claims to have a trained therapist who transports participants, through hypnosis, to their past life in order to resolves certain issues and phobias in their present life. "What?" Hypnosis is the communication with one's subconscious and unconscious mind thereby helping us gain solutions to a lot of open questions and puzzles. The ability to align and evoke the deep-rooted thoughts may help complete the picture - Agreed.

What I did not understand was why the participant who was apparently "dreaming" about snakes needed to be "hypnotised" into her past life. Maybe the fear was due to a childhood experience, or an induced fear by media/family/friends etc. Moreover past life regression may be a phenomena achieved by some spiritual experience (although I have my reservations on this one too!) but the use of psychology to pull out data which is non-existent in one's mind seemed appalling. Assuming that our soul transports from one life to another (cycle of life-and-death), the mind and body are new post every birth. By that logic it seems strange that psychotherapy is a technique for past life regression.

Exposure to such phenomenas encourage one to believe that their life is not in their own hands. It leads one to believe that we are mere puppets in the hand of destiny and discourages one to take accountability of their weaknesses, mistakes and failures. These also help people justify having an external locus of control making them believe that external forces control us rather than our inner self and conviction. With the Indian tradition that currently projects a high degree of religion, superstition, traditions I would rather have the media convincing people that they are responsible for what they are rather than the forces of nature. The onus ought to be on the "self" and not the outside entity - The day we stop believing this, that day we have given up.