THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REGRESSION THERAPY

Journal Archives

Home/JRT Article

Death, Transition, and the Spirit Realms: Insights from Past-Life Therapy and Tibetan Buddhism – Roger J. Woolger (Is.17)

Roger J. Woolger, Ph.D.

Dr. Roger Woolger here presents the connections he has discovered between the theories of Tibetan Buddhism, as expressed in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and what we find in past-life therapy. An important article that most past-life therapists (and others) will relate to.  This article is based on a lecture given at the November 6, 1998 Conference of The Association of Humanistic Psychology (Britain), held at Stoke Rochford Hall, Grantham, Lincolnshire. A shorter version is published in the Spring issue of Self and Society, Journal of the AHP (B).

In recent times there has been a renewed interest in ways of looking at death, transition and, significantly, rebirth. In hospitals the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and the Hospice Movement has humanized the experience of death. The remarkable writings about near death experiences of Raymond Moody and Ken Ring are widely known and in many ways they have changed consciousness of what death and transition might be about.

To amplify this picture, there have been some extremely valuable works on the death transition by Buddhist teachers in the west, notably Sogyal Rinpoche. His commentary, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, is a superb modern amplification of the archaic symbolic material of the famous Tibetan Book of the Dead that fascinated Jung a generation ago. In addition, our growing appreciation of the phenomenon of shamanic journeying has lead to the phenomenological discussion of both near death experiences and actual death experiences as types of out of body or “other worldly” experiences. German anthropologist Holger Kahlweit has even stated in his book Dreamtime and Inner Space, “As far as I am concerned, an out of body experience is identical with a near death experience.” My own findings from past-life regression therapy fully agree with this and in fact add a huge amount of detail to both shamanic and Tibetan studies. This is what I want to sketch in what follows.

Healing the Dying: Contributions to Thanatology – Franklin Loehr (Is. 3)

Death Preview: A New Direction in Psychography

 

by Franklin Loehr, D.D.

 

Psychography is that branch of psychology which attempts to map out the forces in the human personality and trace their sources. Since heredity and environment as sources of human personality forces have been comparatively well examined by conventional psychological research, psychography concentrates on the less explored areas of past lives, the push from the past, and, to a lesser extent on cosmic purpose, the pull from the future. It pays attention always to the crucial significance of the individual’s own decisions.

The usefulness of past-life recall has already been strikingly demonstrated in the results of those counselors who have used it in their psychotherapy with clients. It is a technique that is growing rapidly, as the recognition spreads that this is a method for attaining vastly deeper and more life-transforming results in strikingly less time. On the other hand, the element of cosmic purpose, that is, looking into the future to understand the present, has so far been less conceptualized and explored. In general, in all these areas there is a common denominator in the recognition that the client’s own decisions are decisive in his life.

Exploring One’s Death – Ernest Pecci (Is.3)

by Ernest Pecci, M.D.

 

It is important that we learn not to fear death. One way of accomplishing this is to explore the various realms of consciousness between the waking dream of earth-plane existence and consciousness after death. In recent years a number of books by Moody, Ring, and others regarding near-death experiences have helped to focus my interest on the possible reproduction of the death experience in a clinical setting by using direct suggestion. In dealing with past lives it is important to complete the lessons of given lifetimes by taking subjects through the death experience up to higher planes of learning where they can review those lifetimes and their lessons. They can then make more positive and constructive ego decisions regarding attitudes to bring with them into their next lifetime. This is one of the most important aspects of past-life work. It seemed to me that forward movement would be equally valuable for those approaching death through a terminal illness, especially when the process of dying stirs up ambivalence and doubt. My subsequent exploration of future progression with such people has shown the process to be both feasible and helpful.