Regression ... written by an elderly friend
Regression: past lives.
During my working life I found a good friend in Mel, a Chartered Psychologist. We commuted together from near Oxford to London, a long enough journey to allow quite long conversations.
I was an Accountant but we hit it off together as we were both inquisitive, investigative and inclined to be analytical and pragmatic. He is also a hypnotherapist and when he found that I was interested in the possibility of a past life, he said he knew me too well to attempt regression himself but introduced me to a medically qualified person and hypnotist, Mrs M Robinson (SRN, SCM, DHP, MNAHP, Member Corporation of Advanced Hypnotherapy), living in the Aylesbury, who specialised in regression.
I made an appointment and was seen together with two other independent researchers, both females aged about 30 who I had never met before and did not know each other. One was a school teacher, the other a hairdresser. It was a three-day session with one of us undergoing hypnosis each day, the other two acting at witnesses and keeping independent notes. The cost was £75 per person.
I thought, as do so many, that I could not be hypnotised but was wrong. When my turn came I was 'put under' whilst the other two people observed and made notes. There was also a tape recorder.
Briefly, I was regressed to 1340 when my mind apparently occupied the body of a 20-year-old monk, journeying on foot from a monastery near Kiev University, where I had been since aged 8, placed there by my parents who were too poor to support their ever-growing number of children, to Milan in Italy. Italy was a number of provinces in the 14th century. Milan province and city were to the North, bordering what is now Switzerland
I do not know how I knew the year as I possessed no diary or daily newspaper. The purpose of the journey was to study medicine (a subject that then appealed to me), and one day return to Kiev to apply and pass on my skills En route I made a living by distilling salicylic acid (pain-killer - later known as aspirin) from willow bark. My baggage train was a mule.
Generally, my attire and ability to treat minor ills made me acceptable in most communities and, being young and reasonably personable, I managed to get along with most folk, a knowledge of German and Latin making communication possible. Indeed, not being too “holy” there was a certain amount of fraternisation with my own age-group in the villages and often the nights were not that lonely, the morals standards of that age being somewhat different from those during ensuing centuries. I apparently achieved my objective as the hypnotist fast-forwarded me to my last day of that life and I was back in Kiev, a frail old man of 60 in a monastic cell.
I was surprised afterwards by my apparent knowledge of 14th century Russian and world politics. I had never studied the subject and had never realised that what we know as Russia was then about 15 independent republics. There was a war going on in Europe which made my journey rather difficult though warfare then was totally different from today’s variety.
However, I'm aware that the conscious mind can forget a lot but the unconscious retains all at a very deep level and it is possible, though unlikely, that I had read all this at some time. There could be an alternative explanation for my experience. The same thing may be said of the other two people, both “30-something” females who were also regressed at the same time as me.
Interestingly, the hairdresser was regressed to a South American people, the Olmecs, in about 800AD. She knew nothing whatsoever of this race, not even the name ( nor did I at the time ) and found the session meaningless and believed she must have dreamed up her experience - until I researched for her (and for my own need to know) the dress, culture, symbolism, religious ceremonies etc that she had described under hypnosis, and duly impressed her. There again, she may have read it up some time in her past and forgotten it but with the information retained deep in her subconscious. She was not the sort, though, to read anything deeper than weekly girlie magazines - although I may be wrong about that as she was interested enough to seek out Mrs Robinson.
The other lady had a more simple pre-history. In her past life she described being a stable-lad, in France, who met his end being trampled by a horse. She ascribed her present-day fear of horses to this sub-conscious memory. Interesting about the sex-change.