by George Schwimmer, Ph.D.
Although past-life regression is considered by many to be a fairly recent technique, A. R. Martin, late author of Researches In Reincarnation And Beyond, began conducting past-life regressions sixty-five years ago, the first person known to do so in the United States. His ground-breaking research, book, and conclusions are important in understanding that the core of life is spiritual, that we come to Earth repeatedly to learn needed lessons, and that the purpose of past-life recall is to help us to grow spiritually. It is hoped that this will be the first of a series of articles about the early “pioneers” in our field.
Most people today probably date the advent of past-life regression in the United States to the mid-1970’s, although many will recall Morey Bernstein’s The Search For Bridey Murphy, published in 1956. However, very few people know about the work of A. R. Martin, who—on his own initiative—devised a method of past-life regression in 1928 and later wrote Researches In Reincarnation And Beyond, which summarizes twelve years of Martin’s past-life regression work with more than five hundred subjects (Bolton, 1952).
I had noticed a brief mention of Martin’s book in Many Mansions (Cerminara, 1950), whose paperback edition I bought and read in 1967, and I later saw Martin’s book noted once or twice elsewhere. But I paid little attention to those references. However, in 1989 I moved to Glendale, California and while browsing through a used book store in that city, I stumbled across Martin’s book, remembered it, and promptly bought it.
Reading through the book, I was struck by how much it dealt with what is today termed “New Age” belief, and I was fascinated with Martin’s pioneering efforts in past-life regression. Noticing that the book was labeled “Volume I” and wondering if there was another volume, I wrote to the U.S. Copyright Office, which responded that no second volume had been published. Although Lois Irene Martin, one of Martin’s daughters, was now listed as the copyright holder of Martin’s book, I was unable to locate her.
However, my curiosity wouldn’t let go of me, so I placed an ad in the Sharon, Pennsylvania newspaper, since Martin had lived in Sharon. This time I stuck pay dirt, when someone sent me the phone number of Mr. Martin’s son, who in turn directed me to one of Mr. Martin’s surviving daughters, Anita Martin Woods. Mrs. Woods—an accomplished artist with a photographic memory, who now lives in Tennessee—has graciously labored to provide most of the information about her father and his work.
The Man
As a boy Martin was born on June 15, 1887 in Grand Junction, Colorado, but his family soon moved to Helena, Missouri. Martin had no brothers or sisters, and after his mother died when he was six, he was raised by his father, a postmaster. Young Martin eventually graduated from a business college in Quincy, Illinois and in 1910 married grammar school teacher Mildred Munk of Columbus, Ohio.
The young couple then moved to Providence, Rhode Island, when Martin was offered a position as a professor in a business college there. During this time, Martin became a Mason and eventually earned his 32nd Masonic degree. The Martins’ two oldest children, Roy and Anita, were born in Providence.
Mrs. Martin wished to be closer to her widowed mother in Ohio, however, so when a teaching position became vacant in a business college in Sharon in 1915, Martin took the job and moved his family to that city. However, he soon decided to open his own school—the School of Modern Business—which occupied a large four story building in downtown Sharon. In the following years, four more children were born to the Martins: Lois, Miriam, Dorothy, and Pat.
Martin was always strong and healthy, Mrs. Woods said, never sick, never even had a headache. Both he and his wife were very clean living—very health conscious about exercise, a balanced diet, and cooking food to preserve nutrients. Neither Martin nor his wife smoked or drank.
Martin was a Bible student and an avid reader of many scientific and metaphysical works, and he gradually amassed a large library on these and related subjects. The Martins were Methodists, and for many years Martin taught the local men’s Bible class.[1] He was a superintendent of the Methodist Sunday Schools and taught a young adult group; Mrs. Martin instructed young adult women. Martin also was involved in several positions of leadership in interdenominational religious activities. The two adult Martins always taught and worked together, and all of their children joined in the church activities.
The Martins regularly took advantage of scientific and metaphysical lectures which came to Sharon, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and other cities in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. One speaker was Justin Titus, a nationally know expert on the Tarot. The Martins and their three oldest children commuted for four or five months to Youngstown, Ohio in order to attend classes given by Titus, whose classes Mrs. Woods describes as “the most profound work on the real meaning of those ancient cards” that she had ever heard or read about.
With the coming of the depressed economic years of the late 1920’s, the students in Martin’s business school were unable to pay tuition and Martin was, therefore, unable to pay his teachers. He finally had to declare bankruptcy, losing both his school and his home. He turned to accounting to make a living, developing his own individualized accounting systems to suit each type of business—systems which he installed and serviced in a number of cities in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.
Martin’s business grew, and he eventually repaid all of his creditors. He continued his accounting career, making a good living, until his sudden and unexpected death at age 62 on October 19, 1949, in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania.
The Work
Martin’s interest in the potentialities of the human mind began during his days in business college when he and several of his fellow students began experiments with subconscious memory. They wanted to determine if their subconscious minds could be used for school examinations, to bring to consciousness information which had been studied earlier. So, after putting an individual into a relaxed state, it would be suggested that previously learned material in the subconscious mind be brought to consciousness at will. Little by little, Martin and his friends—working on each other—became successful in these experiments.
In the introduction to his book Martin states that the death of his mother, coupled with his church’s beliefs concerning death, eventually prompted him—in 1928, in Sharon—to form a group of twelve individuals to study questions of life, death, and spirit. This group included a stenographer, a married couple who owned a grocery store, a nurse, two school teachers, a steel worker and his wife, the owner of a furnace shop, and Martin and his wife—as well as their daughters Anita, Lois, and Miriam, who at the group’s formation were aged 14, 12, and 8, respectively.
The group soon found that there were so many conflicting ideas and theories in this field of “speculative philosophy” that they could arrive at no satisfactory conclusions. Martin, recalling his college experiments in hypnosis, then decided that—since the subconscious theoretically remembers everything it has encountered and learned—perhaps the answers to the questions which they were seeking could be found in and retrieved directly from individuals’ subconscious minds.[2]
Martin consequently devised a method of regression, which Mrs. Woods describes:
My father had tremendous heat in the palm of his right hand. Before starting a regression—after a reviewer[3] had been seated in a comfortable chair—my father would rub the palms of his hands vigorously together to start the heat. Then he would hold his hand above the center of the reviewer’s forehead—not touching it, however—all the while suggesting to the reviewer in a low voice, gently but firmly, to relax, first physically and then mentally.
When Dad sensed that relaxation was complete enough, he would ask the reviewer to go back in time to her/his early years, when she was perhaps six years old, then five, then four, and so forth, and to recall where she was at those times, what she was doing, who was with her, how she was dressed.
Then often, quite suddenly, the reviewer would be recalling a past life, speaking in a different voice or language—a high pitched voice or a child’s voice, for example—or many times reviewing what she was doing between lives, how she was planning to return to a physical body and was choosing her parents. For example, a woman who desired to be an opera singer was selecting parents who genetically could give her the vocal chords which would be required to accomplish her goal in her next life.
Dad always suggested to the reviewers, just before they came out of regression, that they would be able to recall and remember everything at will, which they could and did. After leaving our home, many reviewers kept on reliving and recalling their past lives—hours, days, and sometimes weeks later.
Prior to the formation of the Sharon group, however, Martin had first tried out his regression techniques in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, with individuals who met at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Garth Edmundson, where Martin was teaching meditation, focusing the mind, control of the emotions, how to contact superconscious levels of the mind, etc. Edmundson was an internationally recognized composer of church organ music, his wife a voice teacher who was psychic. Martin also began doing regressions with a group in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Irvine. Both groups were interested in the workings of the human mind, and they studied books about metaphysics and the subconscious. When the Sharon group was formed, Martin began doing regressions with those individuals as well. These weekly sessions were conducted in Martin’s home.
During the Sharon regressions, Anita, Lois, and Miriam would take down in shorthand, which they had learned at Martin’s business offices, what a reviewer said, as well as any questions asked of a reviewer. Afterwards, the three sisters would compare notes to confirm that they had made no errors, and they would then write out their notes in longhand. Copies of these were given to reviewers, if they wished to have them.
Martin took great care to ask no leading questions, and very careful historical research was later done by members of the Sharon group to verify the details given by reviewers. Mrs. Woods:
The follow-up of using libraries, reference books, history books, and old maps was done on every regression where dates, rulers, countries, prominent people, manner of dress, manner of living, wars, happenings, and so forth, were given. The historical research about the information given by reviewers was as thorough as possible. Father was quite insistent about doing these follow-ups. He wanted authenticity.
This research was quite successful, Mrs. Woods said. As more regressions were done, they became clearer and more detailed. Martin’s ability to put individuals in touch with their subconscious memories increased, and the people giving reviews became more spiritually evolved. All of the original group of twelve, which remained together for the next twelve years, also had rapid spiritual development. However, not all of the people Martin worked with over the years were able to regress to past lives. Mrs. Woods estimates that about five per cent were unable to do so, either because they could not reach an appropriate level of relaxation or because they unconsciously feared learning about who they had been or what they had done in past lives.[4]
About twenty-five per cent of the reviewers had more than one regression, typically three or four. One woman recalled thirteen lives in one session, going back life after life, until—in spirit—she reviewed the beginning formations of planet Earth. There were varying degrees to the depth of the recall state, some so deep that individuals could not speak at all. Other people were quite emotional, but also could not speak. Some stood up and walked around and unconsciously acted out their experiences. Some were quite stoic, some secretive, some resented being questioned. Recall of details also varied widely.
Martin’s regression work continued unabatedly until 1935, when another major association entered his life: Hamid Bey. Hamid Bey, born in Egypt around 1895, was a highly trained priest of the Coptic Order (Bey, 1933), which Order is either unaffiliated with today’s Coptic Christian Church of Egypt or is an inner, secret, order of that church.[5] The Order appears to be more of a mystical/spiritual teaching order than a church. Bey claimed that the spiritual lineage of his Order extended back directly to Atlantis.
In 1927, Hamid Bey was sent to the United States by his Masters to demonstrate and teach what he had learned at his temple. He began to lecture on spiritual topics, including reincarnation, across the U.S. and in 1934 organized The Coptic Fellowship of America, which eventually became national in scope.
Martin met Hamid Bey in 1935, became leader of a Coptic group in Cleveland in 1937, set up and became leader of a Coptic group in Sharon in 1939 or 1940. Martin’s wife was assistant leader in Sharon and treasurer in Cleveland; Lois was musical director for both groups. On April 18, 1940, in Cleveland, Martin was ordained a Coptic priest of the first degree:[6] “…Mr. Martin is now a qualified Coptic Teacher, who will soon assume his duty of spreading the message of the Fellowship throughout the United States.” (Aegyptus, May, 1940). Martin also was a writer for and associate editor of Aegyptus, a magazine published by the Fellowship. The Martins got to know Hamid Bey well, and he was an overnight guest in their home several times.[7]
As a result of his contacts in and travels for The Coptic Fellowship, Martin was able to further disseminate his knowledge of past-life recall, doing regressions in the homes of Coptic friends in Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, and Buffalo. When Martin was ready to publish his book in 1942, Hamid Bey wrote an introduction for it. However, Mrs. Woods notes that her father had always believed in reincarnation, and that Hamid Bey had no direct influence on or involvement with Martin’s past-life research.
Not only did Martin form a close association with Hamid Bey, but he also came to know Edgar Cayce. Mrs. Woods states that her father visited Cayce in Virginia about five times, the first time probably in 1935. Through those visits, Mrs. Woods says, Martin and Cayce became friends, and some correspondence passed between them. One can only speculate as to what the two men discussed during their meetings. Martin never received a reading from Cayce, however. Cayce died in 1945.
During the summers from 1935 through 1941, Martin rented a farm for his family near Mercer, Pennsylvania and regressions were held there also. In addition, for several years, Martin conducted classes and regressions during weekend retreats in Lordstown, Ohio, at the large homes of two local families. People would come for the weekend to Lordstown from Cleveland, Newcastle, and Sharon, and regressions would be conducted on Saturday nights. Up to thirty people would attend these weekend retreats, which were held in a pastoral setting (Brumm, 1993). Mrs. Woods says that her father never requested nor accepted money for regressions or classes, feeling that money might be a deterrent to spiritual development.
Around the time of the publication of his book, Martin stopped his regression researches when he became more involved in other aspects of his spiritual work.
Martin’s daughter Lois was quite psychic and began channeling around 1932. Soon after Martin’s death, on November 4, 1949, a message concerning Martin was channeled through her, and this gives some insight into Martin’s soul purpose for pursuing his spiritual life:
…his many lives in hidden temple work made it necessary for him to bluntly face the hard outer material world—to balance, as it were, inner truths through mental theory with earth plane activity. This had not been his first life in this process, for there were others bringing him to this point in spiritual balance where mental theory could be so readily workable in concrete substance. There were many higher minds working with and through him…
You (the Martin family), as well as many others, along with many others on this side, are to be instruments of developing personality and higher abilities. This can be accomplished now as never before, and where some now may feel shame or distrust, where some now may feel dis-ease between the uniting of inner truths and outer recognization and opinion let it be said now that there will come a time when you will pride yourself as a seeming pioneer (L. I. Martin, 1949).
It is presently not possible to gauge the impact of Martin’s regression work or its continuity through time after Martin’s death. However, considering the number of people Martin came into contact with after 1928, it would be surprising to find that no one had continued his work with past-life regression.
In fact, there are two known instances of this. Lois Martin moved to Los Angeles in 1939 and from that time until a year before her death in 1987, conducted past-life regressions and channeled (without charge). Mr. and Mrs. Robert Brumm[8], who were involved with Martin’s Coptic and regression work in Sharon and Lordstown from 1934 to 1944, are still doing past-life regressions and other spiritual work in San Antonio, Texas (Brumm, 1993). In addition, the group of twelve in Sharon eventually did a number of metaphysical writings, some of which dealt with past lives.
The Book
Martin self-published Researches In Reincarnation And Beyond—a hard cover book of 211 pages—in 1942. Only a thousand copies of it were ever printed, and it was never reviewed, so it apparently didn’t aim for wide distribution. In fact, a handful of unissued copies still exist. Nevertheless, Martin’s book is quite significant and reflects, to an astonishing degree, many current New Age beliefs about reincarnation and the human spirit.
The most distinctive characteristic of the book is its focus on the spiritual values of past-life recall. In his introduction, Hamid Bey noted the purpose of Earth life and of reincarnation:
Reincarnation (is) the only logical acceptance of justice, power, law, and love. It is not only the evolution of the spirit, but also the liberation of the spirit from the confinement of substance. This can not be accomplished in one life…Man…must be able to accept the responsibility of life and know that even though he is a unit of this universe, he is also the center of his universe, and this center is so complete within itself that he has become the expression of the divine power which we call God.
Martin wrote that:
The superconscious mind or self is the highest portion of man, for it is the eternal spark of the Divine…The purpose of life is to bring ourselves into perfect alignment with this Higher Self. When man in sincere simplicity attunes himself through silence to this great God within, all power, all strength, and all knowledge is perceived by him and he becomes I AM THAT I AM…When all error and disbelief has been erased from the subconscious mind and the conscious mind operates in perfect unison with the superconscious, then is man the master of himself. (Emphasis added. This should be the purpose of past-life recall: discovering error and disbelief in past lives and erasing them. G. S.)
Those things which the soul desires are the things to which he polarizes and wishes to express, and as every unfulfilled wish of the soul must be expressed, man must come back again and again into earthly flesh to fulfill those desires. There is a lesson to be learned in every unfulfilled desire, and all these lessons must be learned before man is master of himself.
And one of Martin’s entranced subjects stated, “To what goal? Eventually to their main goal, the right of Christhood. Mankind will then know all there is to know, all he can gain upon the planet earth…Each will become a Christ…”
One hundred pages of Martin’s book are devoted to accounts of fifty regressions which he conducted. The most significant feature of these is how completely the regressed individuals were immersed in the past. All the written accounts of these trance states, as well as the reports by Mrs. Woods and Mrs. Brumm, make clear that while in regression, individuals were experiencing their past lives directly and totally and had no conscious awareness of the present time or of their present personalities.
For example, when asked to open their eyes during regression and identify anyone there whom they knew, reviewers would either say they recognized no one present—even though relatives and friends were in the room—or would identify someone present as one whom they had known or been related to in the past life.[9] In addition, the person regressed would take on the age, physical and vocal characteristics, and sometimes the facial features of the past-life personality. People would walk around, bow, do temple rituals, or perform other physical actions. They would talk, sing, and chant in languages of which they had no knowledge—Chinese, Arabic, German, for example—and their grammar and syntax would reflect their past personalities. One individual gave a lengthy lecture on the true meaning of the Buddha.
A young woman reviewed her past life as a boy who had lived on the streets of England long ago. The boy’s voice was deep, gruff, unlearned, and bitter. When accused of stealing money—which he was just holding for another street child who had actually stolen it—he said to those who had captured him:
No, he didn’t take it. I took it. You can let him go. Why sure. Sure, I’ll take it. Naugh, I’m not afraid. I’ll take it. Yeah, I’m ready…No, no, kid, you won’t. You’re young yet. You go back and be decent if you want to. Sure, why don’t ya? You’re healthy. Yeah, kid, maybe you ought to be holied. I don’t know. I’ve seen ’em cross ’emselves. I don’t know what they say. You can do it. Maybe you’ll be happier. If ya go on like this you’ll get what I’m gettin’. Yeah, you go now, kid. You’ll be all right. No, don’t you fear about me, I’m kind of tired anyway. Ta, ta. No, I don’t want a priest.
The boy was then beheaded, along with about twenty-five others accused of similar crimes. The reviewer continued talking as the boy moved into the immediate after-death state:
My head ain’t where it used to be. I got my head back. I found it laying over there. Heads work different than voices. My hands were here and my head was there and it was talking. I picked it up. My hands picked my head up…Yeah, he cut my head here and I couldn’t get it back on. It wouldn’t fit. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it…My head won’t sit on by itself. I got to hold it on with my hands. I dropped it a couple of times and it ain’t so comfortable…A fellow can’t keep this up. Can’t go around carrying your head like that. It ain’t natural…People will stare at me…
Reviewers were obviously experiencing a unique state of consciousness. A professional trance medium who was regressed stated that “There was as much difference between (the experience of his) review and his mediumistic trance state as the difference between night and day.” The medium added that his consciousness was far beyond and in different rates of vibration than any he had ever experienced during trance. Further, when reviews were conducted before experienced hypnotists, those individuals stated that what they observed “was definitely not hypnotism.”
Three factors seem to bear on the characteristics of these regressions. First, Martin was stimulating the sixth chakra (the energy center associated with psychic development) of the reviewer. Second, most individuals were coming for spiritual knowledge and growth. Third, according to both Mrs. Woods and Mrs. Brumm, most of those regressed had been students of metaphysics and meditation and appeared to have been spiritually advanced individuals. Further, seven of the published accounts noted spontaneous past-life recalls or recalls while meditating.[10]
There were reviews of lives in China, Arabia, Sicily, Egypt, Rome, Germany, Switzerland, prehistoric times, the Holy Land, Atlantis, Tibet, Greece, Spain, and others.
Individuals lived at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus, the sinking of Atlantis, America’s westward migration, and Columbus’ journeys. They had lives as a gypsy, musician, temple priestess, dancer, soldier, orphan, wine maker, Chinese princess, and singer. Individuals also had patterns of lives, and groups would also reincarnate together in patterns as members of a Cosmic Family.
Reviewers reported leaving their bodies just before a traumatic death (being killed by a wild animal, for example). One person described a great beam of light coming down from above for her, and as she ascended on this light ray, she watched her body below drown in the seas washing over Atlantis. There also were accounts of what existence was like in the realm of spirit.
Although these regressions were not conducted for the purpose of therapy, they sometimes served a therapeutic purpose. A woman with a fear of cats, finding the cause in a past life, adopted a kitten and was then able to release her fear. A talented thirteen year old musician with an inferiority complex was regressed to a past life as a noted composer and musician, which recall gave the boy the confidence he needed to later excel in a musical contest and to advance in his musical career.
Not only were past-life talents and fears brought through, but also physical conditions which were the results of past-life actions. One woman had a foot problem in this life, which came from a past life in China when her feet had been bound. Another woman who had a partial paralysis of the right side of her face and neck discovered that this was a karmic teaching condition which originated in a past life where she had killed herself by shooting off the right side of her face. Souls also would choose to be born in—and would help to create, in spirit—crippled bodies, so as to learn certain karmic lessons. This was not punishment, however, but simply the development of understanding and balance.
Martin clearly delineated how physical problems in the present life body are:
…the outer manifestation of negative and false fixed ideas implanted in the subconscious mind of the past, and their subsequent effect upon the physical body of the present life. The term “fixed ideas” refers to those thoughts or ideas which have been accepted by the conscious mind as truth, but which in reality are either false or only “part truths.” These “fixed ideas” become implanted in the subconscious mind and unconsciously, but effectively, the conscious mind is conditioned or limited by such ideas…
Any experience…whether it be past, present, or future, is just an interesting story or an unusual incident unless the underlying cause of the experience, its reason for happening, and the fundamental truth it presents is recognized.
This means that past-life recall is basically a spiritual exercise and will not succeed fully unless these false “fixed ideas” are identified and removed.
An interesting corollary that Martin appended concerned aging:
Old age, according to the years of the physical body, is a race idea, and when man erases it from his subconscious mind and substitutes instead the truth that mind is in reality ageless, the physical body—obeying this dominant thought—will never grow old…Man grows old, tired, and misshapen through thought and not through the passage of years.
Martin also refuted the concept which in past-life therapy today is often characterized as “to re-live is to relieve”:
To overcome fear by neutralization (without) the opposite condition of that fear or the positive lesson taught by its experiencing (being) substituted, the old fear will creep back to its home and root itself more deeply into the consciousness of the individual.
Martin’s conclusions about man’s mental experiences were identical to those given by Edgar Cayce:
Man lives not in the world of conditions and events around him, but rather lives in the world of his reactions to such conditions and events…The individual himself, through thought and emotional reaction, creates the world in which he lives, and he alone has the power and choice to change in any and every way, through his inner thought reactions, his inner and outer world of conditions and affairs.
The life energy…flows in and through all space and matter (and) is unlimited, fluidic, and impersonal. As this emotional energy flows in and through man, it is he—as a free choosing moral agent—who conditions and qualifies it.
One reviewer, prophesying, had a unique perspective on the clash of darkness and light on this planet:
There is a gradual awakening of the people (in America)…There will be disaster first, internal, practically revolution. The majority will wake up and drive the minority out. Where? The minority will go out of existence, as far as this planet is concerned. They will have served their purpose in life. That purpose was to goad mankind on to seek the Christ within.
In concluding the book Martin again returned to the theme that life—at its core—is a spiritual journey:
Analyze the emotions in your life and find their causes. They may give you an important key to your past and a realization of the knowledge that you chose, through desire and emotional polarization, the experiences of life through which you must pass…
While on the soul plane, you chose your parents, not only because of possible karmic debts, but because they, with their present physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development could afford you the best possible background for the experiences your soul required for its further development…
Many spiritual truths of…incarnations are lost to conscious awareness for a time until the consciousness has developed spiritually to the place where it is able to recall and review such incarnations which reawaken and reveal the recording of such truths in its subconscious mind…
Not only must…cause and its consequent effect be known and understood, but the principle or great spiritual lesson back of it all must be thoroughly learned and incorporated into the individual’s thinking and become a part of him…
Conclusion
Researches In Reincarnation And Beyond is a landmark work—a germinal text—in regression research, and it is time to acknowledge the book, its author, and Martin’s extensive investigations and teaching. Martin unquestionably was the first individual in this country to systematically conduct past-life regressions and to carry out substantial past-life research. Asa Roy Martin thus joins Edgar Cayce as a pioneer in helping to establish the framework for Western-oriented reincarnation belief in the United States.
References
Aegyptus, ed. Hamid Bey (Jan.-Dec., 1940). Hollywood, CA: The Coptic Fellowship of America.
Bernstein, M. The Search For Bridey Murphy. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1956.
Bey, H. My Experiences Preceding 5000 Burials. Washington, DC: Harriet Luella McCollum, 1933.
——— Life After Life: Reincarnation. Los Angeles: The Coptic Fellowship of America.
Bolton, W. (January 17, 1952). “Looking Sideways,” Buffalo Evening News (clipping, no page number available).
Brennan, B. A. Hands of Light. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.
Brumm, Mrs. R. (April 13, 1993). Telephone conversation with the author.
Cerminara, G. Many Mansions. New York: Sloan Association, Inc., 1950.
Martin, A. R. Researches in Reincarnation and Beyond. Sharon, Pennsylvania: A. R. Martin, 1942.
Martin, L. I. (November 4, 1949). Transcript of a psychic channeling given by Lois Irene Martin.
Stern J. Edgar Cayce – The Sleeping Prophet. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1967.
Woods, A.M. (June, 1993). Tape recording of recollections.
——— (June, 1993). Two telephone conversations with the author.
——— (April-June, 1993). Letters to the author.
[1] This is an interesting parallel to the life of Edgar Cayce, who was an avid Bible reader and teacher of Bible classes.
[2] Again an interesting parallel to Cayce, as Cayce accessed his ability after being hypnotized.
[3] The term Martin used for the person being regressed.
[4] My own work in regression leads me to believe that this is probably the major cause of resistance to past-life recall.
[5] I was unable to find any information about the Coptic Order in the Santa Monica public library.
[6] There are eleven degrees, but only one eleventh degree Master is alive at one time—in Egypt, of course.
[7] Additional research about Hamid Bey is being conducted, and more about him will be published in a future article.
[8] Mrs. Brumm has been a lifelong friend of Mrs. Woods, and Mrs. Brumm first met Martin when she was three years old. Mr. Brumm was regressed by Martin at least three times, Mrs. Woods reports.
[9] Mrs. Woods said that Martin was several times identified by reviewers as someone the reviewers had known in past lives.
[10] Mrs. Woods said that she, her sister Lois, and her father all had recalls of past lives without regression, and that they had known each other in past lives.