From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: Myself and Magick
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 23:14:07 GMT

In article <JOSHUA.92Nov23101743@bailey.cpac.washington.edu> joshua@cpac.washington.edu (Joshua Geller) writes:
>
>In article <2005@lysator.liu.se> ceci@lysator.liu.se (Cecilia Henningsson) 
>writes:
>
>>I write:
>
>>   >[my comment about past life memories deleted].
>
>>   Is it really? Why not try to tolerate uncertainty and simply state
>>   that the so called past-life regressions might be a way for some but
>>   not all people to cope better with their current lives, leaving aside
>>   the question of truthfulness, and emphazising the question of
>>   helpfulness?
>
>because you end up with these losers running around talking how they were
>Egyptian Princesses and Knights of the Table Round with no evidence what-
>soever besides the fact that it sounds good and makes their tawdry selves
>appear to be slightly more interesting than the barely sapient helminths
>that they actually are. it is esthetically displeasing, and it tends to
>give the casual observer the idea that magick generally is a method of
>mental masturbation indulged in by twits.
>
>josh
>

True -- and for a change, I find myself agreeing with Josh's curmudgeonly
tone.  I have seen more nonsense being bandied about on the subject of
past-life regressions, and past lives generally, than on any other topic 
except Atlantis -- and more blatant ego-masturbation on the subject than
on any other topic whatsoever.

At the same time, I've encountered a number of cases of apparent past-life
memories, a few of them my own, that I am by no means closed to the idea...

Some pointers that may be of use:

a) Most of the people at any given time in history (the present very much    
included) led quiet, rather boring lives far from the centers of power
and the places where history was being made.  Their involvement in wars 
and great changes generally added up to being killed by a stray arrow, and
things of that sort.  "Memories" of the variety that read like trashy
historical romances are 99.999% likely to be garbage.  _Smelly_ garbage.
Put another way:  If you were Cleopatra, Attila the Hun, and Louis XIV,
what the hell are you doing now as a nobody from suburban America with
all the charisma of a squashed possum?

b) I'm not sure if this matches other people's experience, but the best
cases I've encountered all had to do with apparent lives within a few
incarnations of the present one.  Memories of Los Angeles in the 1940's
seem to be more honest, not to mention more checkable, than memories of
Atlantis circa 12,000 B.C....  Assuming that this kind of memory works
like the ordinary kind, this would seem to follow; which do you recall
better -- last week, or the same week in 1982?

c) There does seem to be some sort of connection between unexplained fears
and emotional reactions, on the one hand, and apparent memories, on the
other.  Fairly often, these things _hurt_ when they come out, and the
person who recalls them is rarely likely to parade them around.  If the
chief emotional response an apparent memory generates is the warm glow of
a stroked ego, you know what you're dealing with.

...And a final piece of advice:  When dealing with these, it seems to 
work best to write down every detail, go over the whole thing obsessively
in your mind, use whatever esoteric tools you have to bring through as
much as possible -- and then stick it in a drawer for at least six months 
before looking at it or thinking about it again.  Time is a great source
of perspective, and can save you from making a jackass of yourself.  

-- John Michael Greer
   grimoire@u.washington.edu