by George Schwimmer, Ph.D.

Abstract

Recalling significant positive past lives can be even more powerful than returning to past lives where issues originated. The feeling of having lived a past life of purpose and spiritual accomplishment is extremely valuable for every person.

In September of 1985, I attended a weekend Psychosynthesis training workshop in Amherst, Massachusetts, during which I mentioned my regression work to one of my fellow students, who immediately asked me to regress her. As it turned out, we had no free time that weekend, so I said I’d make a regression tape for her, and the next week I did. It was very structured, utilizing all the elements I use in past-life therapy.

Before sending her a copy, I decided to regress myself with it, to make certain it worked OK. I put the regression tape in a tape player, then put a blank tape in a recorder, lay down, turned the lights off, and started the tapes. Below is the transcript of this regression.

I’m standing on dirt. Wearing sandals with thongs up to the knees, a short white tunic with a narrow patterned border at the bottom of the skirt, short sleeves, sort of a rope around my waist. Seem to have golden curly hair, a teenager, around sixteen, male. A charming, happy sort of boy. He enjoys nature—I see him reaching up to the sky. He has contact with God. Name is Damis.

It is 320 B.C., ancient Greece. I’m outdoors, alone. Seems like I’m on top of a cliff somewhere, the Parthenon and other buildings behind me in the distance. Starting to walk toward Athens now. A chariot with a soldier just went by, his armor gleaming in the sunlight. It felt exciting to me, the thought of being a soldier—he looked so strong, and beautiful.

It’s an ordinary day in the city—people seem happy. I’ve reached my home, which is a white building with heavy shrubbery and little pillars outside. Inside there’s a courtyard, cool marble floors, a fountain. In the center area of the courtyard there are small trees, bushes, some benches. It’s very peaceful. I sit on a bench, put my chin in my hand, stare into the water. I meditate like that, and hear celestial sounds when I meditate. I can’t describe the sounds, but I want to, want to let others experience them. They’re so beautiful, and they dance around in my head.

I’m having a meal. There’s a woman. She’s beautiful. She’s my mother, and she loves me very much. And I love her. She asks me to tell her what I’ve been doing, how I am—and she pets me. I feel very loved. My father has dark hair, is handsome, and strong. I have a younger sister, about eight. Two servants, one male, one female, wait on us.

Now I’m twenty-two. I have been studying philosophy, poetry, history, drama, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. I’ve been happy. Those were happy times, growing up. Seems like my hair has gotten darker. I have a good body now. Strong. I see myself learning to use sword and shield. I don’t think I’m going to be a soldier, but I really need to know how to protect myself. I’m laughing. The man who is teaching me looks to be in his thirties. He tells me not to laugh—it could mean my life or the life of someone in my family. I know that. And I’m good with my sword. But I enjoy life, enjoy everything in life. It’s been a joyful life so far. I feel full of life—it’s running over.

Feel like I’m on a ship now, that I have weapons, that I’m below decks. I got the word Sparta. Maybe there’s a war with Sparta. I don’t feel very good about that. I feel like—well, it’s my duty, but people shouldn’t kill each other. Nothing is worth killing somebody else for, particularly not pieces of land. That belongs to God, anyway, belongs to the Earth.

I kill some men in battle. I’m very good, but I grieve for the ones I have killed, so I write poetry to celebrate the valor of those who died. I think I’m sort of psychic, because I can see their spirits departing. They know I can see them, and they salute me for my courage and thank me for my compassion and for the poetry I wrote to commemorate their bravery in battle.

Now I’m about fifty-five. I have a beard, very gray, and there are students around me. I’m talking to them about life, and death, and man, and the stars. I’m talking about what I guess we now would call out-of-body travel. I speak about going to the stars, and tell the young ones that we are made of starlight and belong in the sky, that there is no death, and that indeed we are gods ourselves.

They arrest me for that—soldiers take me away. But the light in my eyes: everyone can see the light in my eyes—they can see the stars in my eyes. I don’t have to tell anyone anything. Everyone can see it in my eyes. The soldiers, the magistrates, those who come to observe—everyone can see the stars in my eyes. That is the lesson I came to teach them, that we are from the stars. It would appear they consider that blasphemy, and it seems they’re going to execute me.

I feel that my mother in that life was Faith [a woman I had been in love with in 1982], and she always supported me in what I did. Encouraged me to be myself, and supported me in any way she could. She’s still alive, and I am in prison. And they’re going to execute me for blasphemy. My mother is grieving, and I tell her to look into my eyes, and she sees the universe in my eyes, but it’s not enough. She doesn’t want to stay, so I release her, and she just dies right there, in my cell, with no trauma of any kind. She just leaves her body, and I can see her, beautiful and radiant, waiting for me to join her.

They must use a sword to kill me, since I was a soldier. I tell him to strike true, and he knows—right through the heart. I step out of my body and join my mother, who is waiting for me. But that night, my students—who I’ve trained in many things, in many mysteries—go out in the evening, in the darkness, to our meeting place, and there my mother and I meet them, and speak with them, to show them that what I had said was true. And many of those students I have already met and will meet in this lifetime, today.

My last thought was: “Life is beautiful. Why doesn’t everyone realize that? Why are they so unhappy?” My decision was: I must show everyone that life is beautiful, that we’re made of starlight, that we’re beings of light, that our heritage is joy, and that we are all one.

After my death: it’s like I changed my vibrations. I knew how, and it’s like suddenly I’m at a different vibrational level. There’s a very bright golden pearly-white light, and my mother and I are moving toward this light. It’s absolutely brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Oh, it feels good. It’s like a sun. I think I’m going back to my home. My home is in that sun or star. It’s a non-physical realm. Can’t describe it. I think that’s why I always associated the sun with Faith.

I chose that life to reinforce in myself who I was, but yet to be one with the earth as well. It’s sort of a wedding of the celestial and the terrestrial. It symbolized—in that opening image of me, with my arms upraised to the sky and my feet apart, attached to the ground—joining the earth and the sky. This marriage must be made, and I was there to learn and to teach others what I had learned.

I was trying to learn to be of service, but service in much broader terms than what I had previously thought of. It’s not just human service, such as teaching, protecting my country, or anything like that—those are outer manifestations. But there’s an inner service, serving the universe and helping it to evolve, being a channel for forces which create growth.

I chose the main events in that life to learn my oneness with everything. To learn I’m one with the stars, and one with the earth, and one with my fellow men. And that I am the one that kills, and I am the one that dies, and I am the one who cannot die. Just to experience the oneness.

I came to earth with a large group, we were like a legion, and we came to play different roles for each other, to learn certain lessons—we were like actors in a play. And they would say, “Yes, I’ll do this, and I’ll do that,” and we planned it all. It was all planned—every last detail was planned. We wanted to see how to be separate—because we are all One, but yet needed to see how we were separate as well.

The connection to my present life is: it’s time to bring this positive lesson into my life at this time, to really feel the oneness with others, to feel the connection with both the stars and the earth. And to let others know it’s all right to be both of the earth and of the stars, that there needs to be a marriage of the two, not one over the other, but both equal and blending, becoming a synthesis. This needs to be pulled into my life more now, into the work which I will do. I need to tap into those energies, of that self.

Faith returned [in my current life] to bring back into my human consciousness some of these memories and to bring into play certain energies again. She’s been a teacher for me many times.

My “problems” have had to do with the heart, of course. Quote, “bleeding heart.” (Infected heart, damaged heart valve.) It has to do with my feeling for others—that I want them to see. It is actually the opening of the heart, it is symbolic—not the heart damage so much, but the opening. It is similar to the concept of “the blood of Christ.” The heart is the center of love. When the heart opens and the blood spills out, it is spilling out love, all around one. And that is the symbol of the heart being opened.

Lessons learned: I knew how to do an awful lot of stuff. I knew how to get out of my body and travel all over. I could manipulate energies and I could communicate on the soul level with people—didn’t really need to use words. Words just hooked people, just as now my words attract people, but the real attraction is taking place at inner levels, and people are being taught at inner levels.

I feel that my father in that life was my father in my present life. My students then are going to be my students now, and I’ll recognize them. My teacher in that life was Dave Newhall (my college philosophy professor, from whom I took eight philosophy courses, including two semesters of early Greek philosophy).

There is a pattern with this, but the pattern is too huge to comprehend.

My past self gave me a fish, which is a symbol of the power of the Christ inside me, to remind me that I have that power. I gave my past self a sword, but the sword is a sword of light, and it’s meant to cut through the darkness. When I said that, tears started to roll down my face—several times during this regression, tears rolled down my face.

This past-life experience was to help me do the work I’m to do, to bring more light into my work, to bring in inner knowing of the light into myself and my work.

I must see the light in myself more—just literally concentrate on seeing the light, see the light starting from the heart center. Just concentrate on the light, use that as the point of concentration in meditation. “You are light,” see the light. Help others by giving them that meditation: “See the light, shining from the center of your self.”

Here’s how I’m going to help all my other selves: I’m going to put Damis in the center of all of my selves. I want all of my selves to look at Damis, as an example for all of them, whoever they are and whatever they’re doing, however confused they have been or may be, to understand that light inside themselves, and see that light, because that light will shine and dispel their confusion and despair. Look at the light, all of you.

I must understand that I’m part of one light—I’m not separate from my higher self, I am one, just as I’m one with everyone else. It’s all part of one light.

How to help the One: Simply be yourself, be your true self, don’t let anything interfere with who you are. Just open your heart center, as you know how, and enfold the earth in your love.

It was past midnight when I finished the regression. I had been in a very deep altered state, very little sense of my body. Any sadness I felt was just nostalgia, remembering a very positive life, some very substantial lessons learned, some good work done. It was one of the best lives I’ve recalled, maybe the best, in terms of positive values. The regression tape worked extremely well. The entire experience took about an hour and a half.

After transcribing this tape, eighteen years later, I checked the Internet and found that “Damis” was a Greek name, and that the Parthenon had been built prior to Damis’ birth. Aristotle was still alive when Damis was young. Plato had died only a few years before Damis was born, so Damis was living during the Hellenistic Period. In college, I studied Aristotle and Plato with Dave Newhall; in graduate school, and later, I read, in translation, almost all of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

The life of Damis is probably the most significant past life I have recalled, and since then I have felt that everyone should be regressed to their most positive life. What is experienced and learned in such a life can be far more important than any other past life. Since I believe that all time is simultaneous, I still call on Damis at times when I want to touch into his energies and feel him with me. It is very empowering.