Past lives, future lives and the concept of time
About 39 years ago a movie called “On a clear day you can see forever” was released in theaters. It starred Barbra Streisand as Daisy Gamble and Yves Montand as psychiatrist Dr. Marc Chabot. Daisy had gone to Dr. Chabot to be hypnotized into quitting smoking. During the course of treatment, Daisy spontaneously reverts to Lady Melinda Winifred Waine Tentrees, a coquettish seductress from the 19th century. Dr. Chabot becomes fascinated by this 19th century character and continues to explore the past life. The dean of the university that Dr. Chabot was associated with told Chabot to stop researching past lives, as he was giving the university a bad reputation. A little later he returns and tells Chabot to continue investigating him, as one of the university’s main benefactors would like to know who he will be in an afterlife so he can leave his money to himself in the future. .
Can we go forward in time to see an afterlife? Dr. Bruce Goldberg, a dentist and hypnotherapist, was one of the first to popularize the concept of afterlife progression in his book “Past Lives, Future Lives.” Now, most past life regression therapists accept that it is possible to progress a client to a future life. But moving forward in time presents us with a bit of a dilemma. Are all of our lives, past and present, predetermined? How can we know something that has not yet happened? How can our karma influence a life that has already been lived?
The West has always viewed time as linear; but the East, particularly the Hindus and Buddhists, have seen time as cyclical. However, Western science is realizing that time is a very real dimension in which we can travel. Because of Einstein, we often call time the fourth dimension. Spatial relativity shows that time behaves amazingly like all three spatial dimensions and that time expands as speed increases. Time exists and interacts with us and space in weirder ways than anyone would have thought. “Minkowski space-time” states that time and space are not separate entities but are intermingled in a four-dimensional space-time. Quantum physics, which I won’t go into here, adds further support for time as a dimension.
How does this relate to past lives? Well, since time as we know it only exists while we are present on Earth, after we die we are not bound by the linear aspects of time. When we incarnate, our soul can choose an 18th or 22nd century life depending on which life provides the best opportunity for development. In this theory, all lives are lived simultaneously. Each life interacts with all other lives and is governed by some interactive Karmic Law.
Dr. Brian Weiss, in his book “Same Soul, Many Bodies”, discusses the afterlife progression. He explains that our future lives are variable and how we live now will determine the kind of future life we will have. This, to me, seems to be something of a compromise between the linear concept of time and the Minkowski space-time implications. Dr. Weiss’s position on afterlife is very understandable. We can assume that all lives are lived simultaneously; but, it is very difficult to imagine. We are creatures of a three-dimensional world, and imagining a fourth dimension is as difficult for us as it was for the inhabitants of Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland” to imagine a third dimension.
It is possible to progress a client into a future life or back into a past life. It is clear from all the available evidence that nothing is predetermined. It is also theorized that all lives, past, present and future, influence each other according to the Laws of Karma. But, I don’t progress my clients into future lives. I know that in the West we are conditioned to think of time as linear. If you go back in time to a miserable life, we see that life as done and finished except for the Karma it may carry forward. However, if we go forward in time to a miserable afterlife, we feel a sense of impending dread. You may inappropriately change the way you live your present life in order to avoid that future life. It is not unlike the person who sees a psychic who tells him that he will have an accident in the next month. When the next month arrives, they avoid doing anything that might cause an accident. Your unnatural avoidance behavior may, in fact, lead to the accident. The only time I move people forward in time is to see the winning numbers in a lottery. Unfortunately, so far it hasn’t worked; but, I’m always hopeful!