Acknowledgments

Dedicated to Carol, my wife, whose love has nourished and supported me for as long as I can remember. We are together until the end of our lives.

My thanks to the children, Jordan and Amy, who have forgiven me for neglecting them so much during the writing of this book.

I also thank Nikolai Pashkov for transcribing audio recordings of therapy sessions.

I found the advice of my editor, Julie Rubin, very valuable after she read the first part of my work.

My heartfelt thanks to Barbara Hess, my publisher at Simon & Schuster, for her expertise and courage.

I am also grateful to all those who helped this book come into being.

Preface

I am completely confident that nothing happens without a reason. Perhaps at the very moment when something happens, we have no idea why. However, over time and with due patience, the reasons become completely clear to us.

So it was with Katherine. We first met in 1980, when she was twenty-seven years old. She came to my office complaining of panic attacks, phobias and anxiety. Despite the fact that she had all these symptoms since childhood, she has recently become worse. She felt as if her emotions were paralyzed. Every day she became worse and worse, and did not have the strength to do anything. She was horrified and understandably depressed.

My life at that time, unlike hers, flowed measuredly and calmly. My marriage was strong, we had two small children, and my career was taking off. From the very beginning, it seemed that my life was going along a smooth, well-trodden path. I grew up in a loving family. Success in scientific affairs came easily to me, and in my second year I decided to become a psychiatrist. In 1966, I graduated from Columbia University in New York with Pi Beta Kappa honors. I then attended Yale University School of Medicine and received my M.D. in 1970. After an internship at New York University Bellevue Medical Center, I returned to Yale to complete my education in psychiatry. After that I got a teaching position at the University of Pittsburgh. And two years later he began working in Miami and headed the department of psychopharmacology. There I received general recognition in the fields of biological psychiatry and addiction medicine. After four years at the university, I was promoted to an associate professor of psychiatry in a medical school and also appointed to the position of head of the psychiatry department of a large hospital affiliated with the University of Miami. By that time I already had more than thirty-seven publications on psychiatry.

Years of diligent study taught me to think like a scientist and physiologist, thus forcing me to follow the narrow path of conservatism in my profession. I didn't believe anything that couldn't be proven using traditional scientific methods. I knew of some research in the field of parapsychology that was being conducted at the best universities in the country, but it did not attract my attention. All this seemed unattainable to me.

And then I met Katherine. For eighteen months, I used basic psychotherapy to help her cope with her illness. When I realized that everything was useless, I decided to resort to hypnosis. While in a trance state for several sessions, she recalled some events from her “past lives,” which turned out to be the key to her recovery. She became something of a conductor of information from the “higher spheres” and with their help discovered some of the secrets of life and death. In just a few months, her symptoms disappeared and the girl began to live her life to the fullest, much happier than before. I was not ready for this and was shocked by everything that happened.

I don't have a scientific explanation for everything that happened. Apparently, too many factors of human consciousness remain beyond our understanding. It is possible that during hypnosis, Katherine was able to concentrate on the part of the subconscious that contained real memories from a past life, or perhaps she penetrated into what Carl Jung called the “collective unconscious” - the source of energy that surrounds us and contains the memories of the entire human race.

Scientists are just beginning to look for answers to these questions. But today it is clear that society will gain a lot from studying the phenomena of consciousness, soul, life after death and the influence of experience from past lives on our behavior in the present. Obviously, deviations from the norm are allowed within very narrow limits, especially in the fields of medicine, psychiatry, theology and philosophy. Scientifically reliable research in this area is in its infancy. And despite the fact that certain steps are being taken to obtain the necessary information, everything is happening very slowly and, moreover, is meeting resistance from scientists and a number of conservative people.

Throughout human history, people have always resisted new ideas. There are many examples of this. When Galileo discovered the existence of the moons of Jupiter, the astronomers of that era refused to believe it and did not even want to look at these satellites, because the recognition of the latter went against what was considered correct. The same thing is happening now with psychiatrists and other doctors who refuse to take into account the evidence of life after death and reject the possibility of studying memories from past lives. They simply turn a blind eye to it.

This book is my small contribution to the research that is now being carried out in the field of parapsychology, especially those that relate to the experiences we have before birth and after death. Every word you read is true. I didn't add anything, just cut out the repeating parts. I have also changed Katherine's name to maintain confidentiality.

It took me four years to write this book, which means it took me four years to muster the courage to reveal this unconventional information to academia at the risk of my professional reputation.

Chapter 1

When I first saw Katherine, she was wearing a bright scarlet dress, sitting in my waiting room, nervously flipping through a magazine. It was noticeable that she was hardly breathing. For the previous twenty minutes, she had been pacing up and down the corridor outside the psychiatry offices, trying her best to convince herself not to run away.

I went out into the reception area to greet her with a handshake. The woman's hand was cold and wet, which confirmed great nervous tension. Despite the fact that two doctors at our clinic had long advised her to turn to me for help, in fact it took her two months to gain the courage to come to me for a session. And now, finally, she was here.

Katherine is an exceptionally attractive woman with medium-length blonde hair and hazelnut eyes. At that time, she worked as a laboratory assistant at the hospital where I headed the psychiatry department, and also worked part-time as a swimsuit designer. I led her into the office and sat her in a large leather chair. We sat opposite each other, separated only by my semicircular table. Katherine sat back in her chair and was silent, not knowing where to start. I waited, preferring that she decide on this herself, but still, after a few minutes, I myself began to ask about her past. We had to devote our first meeting to finding out the nature of her personality and what brought her to me.

In response to my questions, Katherine told her life story. She was the middle child in a conservative Catholic family living in a small town in Massachusetts. Her brother, three years older than her, was very athletic and enjoyed complete freedom in life. Her little sister was the favorite of both parents.

When Katherine began to talk about her symptoms, she became noticeably tense and nervous. Her speech accelerated, the woman leaned forward and leaned her elbows on the table. It turns out that the unfortunate woman’s life was always filled with fears: she was afraid of water, she was afraid of choking on pills that she found difficult to swallow, she was afraid of airplanes and the dark. And she was terrified of death. And recently her fears have intensified. To feel safe, Katherine often went to bed in her dressing room. Before falling asleep, she suffered from insomnia for two or three hours, and the sleep that followed was very superficial and intermittent. The nightmares and sleepwalking that plagued her childhood years returned again. Day by day, Katherine became more and more depressed.

As Katherine spoke, I felt how much she was suffering. For many years I had helped patients like her cope with their fears, and I was completely confident that I could help her too. I decided that first we would delve into her childhood and try to find the origins of the problem there. Usually, awareness of certain moments of the distant past helps reduce anxiety. If necessary, I could prescribe her a mild anti-anxiety medication to help her feel better. This is the standard treatment for symptoms such as hers, and I usually do not hesitate to recommend tranquilizers and even antidepressants for the relief of chronic and acute attacks of fear and anxiety. Now I try to prescribe these drugs very selectively and only from time to time, if at all - not a single medicine can eliminate the root of the problem. My experience with Katherine and patients like her convinced me of this. Now I know exactly how to treat these symptoms, and not just reduce their severity or suppress them.

So, in the first session with Katherine, I gently tried to push her to memories from her childhood. She did not remember a single episode that was even the slightest bit traumatic for herself, which would help explain where such an avalanche of fears in her life came from. Because she had surprisingly few of them, I thought I might try hypnosis to retrieve repressed memories.

While she was trying to force herself to remember at least something, certain fragments surfaced in her memory. So, when she was about five years old, she was very scared when someone pushed her from the pool tower into the water. However, she said that even before that incident she did not like being in the water. When Katherine was eleven years old, her mother fell into severe depression, for which she was forced to be treated by a psychiatrist and subsequently given electric shock, as a result of which her memory was damaged. What happened to her mother greatly frightened Katherine, but as her mother got better and, in Katherine’s own words, she became “herself” again, her fears went away.

Katherine's father was an experienced alcoholic, and her older brother had to periodically bring him home from the local bar. His binges became more and more frequent, which provoked frequent fights with his mother, after which she became withdrawn and depressed. But Katherine saw that in the family this was considered acceptable.

Things were looking up outside the home. In high school, she met her classmates and easily communicated with friends, most of whom she had known for many years. However, she found it difficult to trust people, especially those outside her small circle of friends. Her religion was simple and unquestionable: she was brought up in strict Catholic traditions and never questioned the plausibility and reasonableness of religious beliefs. She believed that if you were a good Catholic, lived righteously and followed all the rituals, then a person would go to heaven after death, and if not, then to hell. The decision about who goes where is made by God the Father and his Son. I later learned that Katherine doesn't believe in reincarnation. However, apparently she simply lacked knowledge about it, although she had read some Hindu literature. The concept of reincarnation simply went against what her family had taught her all these years. She never read metaphysical or occult books, simply because she was not interested in them. She felt safe within her faith.

After graduating from school, Katherine studied at college for two years and graduated as a technical laboratory assistant. Armed with her profession and inspired by the example of her brother, who had moved to Tampa, Katherine got a job in Miami, at the hospital affiliated with the university's School of Medicine. She moved to Miami in the spring of 1974. She was 21 years old then.

Katherine's life in a small town was simpler than the life that opened up for her in Miami, but she was happy because she was able to escape from her family problems. During her first year living here she met Stuart. He was Jewish, married, with two children, and very different from the men Katherine had met before. He was a successful doctor, with a strong and aggressive character. A strong chemical attraction arose between them, their romance was stormy and complex. Something about this man awakened passion in her, as if he had bewitched her. By the time Katherine began therapy with me, her affair with Stuart had lasted for six years and was very stormy. Catherine could not resist Stuart, although he treated her badly, and his constant lies, broken promises and manipulations infuriated her.

Several months before our meeting, Katherine needed surgery to remove a node on her vocal cords. She was very nervous before the operation, but after waking up from the anesthesia in the recovery room, she was completely terrified. It took medical staff several hours to calm her down. After being discharged from the hospital, she began to look for Dr. Edward Poole, a pediatrician and a very kind person. Katherine met him while working at a hospital. They understood each other well and became strong friends during that time. Katherine was free to talk to Ed about anything. She told him about her fears, her relationship with Stuart, how she felt, how she was losing control of her life. It was he who insisted that Katherine contact me, only me and no one else from my colleagues. When Ed called me and told me that he had referred his friend to me, he added that only I could fully understand Katherine. However, Katherine did not call me.

Eight weeks have passed. As the head of the psychiatry department, I was so caught up in business that I completely forgot about Ed's call. During this time, Catherine's fears intensified. Dr. Frank Ecker, the head of the surgical department, was superficially acquainted with Katherine - when Frank came into the laboratory, they often teased each other good-naturedly. So, Ecker noticed that she looked unhappy lately and felt that she was tense. He wanted to talk to her several times, but did not dare. One afternoon Frank was driving to a small hospital to give a lecture. On the way, he noticed Katherine's car, which was heading home, and, obeying an unconscious impulse, caught up with her and honked the horn. “You must meet Dr. Weiss! – he yelled through the window. - Immediately!" Although surgeons often act impulsively, Frank himself was surprised at how subtly he felt everything - Katherine’s panic attacks and anxiety became more frequent, becoming more intense and longer lasting. The woman was haunted by two recurring nightmares. In one, she saw herself driving a car across a bridge that was collapsing under her wheels; The car falls into the water, Catherine cannot get out of it and drowns. In the second nightmare, she found herself in a room where it was pitch black. Bumping into various objects, she stumbled and fell, but could not find a way out...

And finally she came to me. During our first meeting with Katherine, I had no idea that my life would be turned upside down, and that the frightened, lost woman sitting across from me would become the catalyst for these changes, and... that I would never be the same.

Chapter 2

Eighteen months of intensive psychotherapy passed. Katherine came to see me once or twice a week. She was a good patient - she talked a lot about herself, shared her ideas and really wanted to get better. During this time, we analyzed her thoughts, feelings and dreams in detail. Understanding the reasons for her behavior helped her see and understand what was happening in her life. She remembered many important moments from her past, for example, the fact that her father, a sea merchant, often left home, and when he drank heavily, he fell into unreasonable rage. She learned a lot about her unstable relationship with Stuart, and began to express her anger in more acceptable ways. I felt that she should be relieved at this point. Patients always feel better when they remember unpleasant things from their past, when they learn to recognize and correct their unconstructive behavior, when they have insights and can look at their problems in more detail from the outside.

But Katherine didn't feel any better.

She still suffered from anxiety and panic attacks. The recurring nightmares, vivid and realistic, continued; she was still afraid of the dark, water and closed spaces. The attacks of rapid heartbeat did not stop either. She still refused medications because she was afraid of becoming dependent on them. I had the feeling that I had hit a blank wall, and no matter what I did, the wall remained impregnable, and no force could help break it. But despite the fact that I was in despair at the futility of my attempts, a feeling of confidence came to me. I have to help Katherine no matter what.

And then something strange happened. Although Katherine was terribly afraid of flying on an airplane, and even had to drink a little for courage, in the spring of 1982 she flew with Stuart to a medical conference in Chicago. While there, she persuaded him to go to an art museum to see an exhibition on Egyptian culture.

Katherine has always been interested in the culture of Ancient Egypt, all sorts of artifacts and relics of this period. She was not a scientist and had never studied the history of this culture, but for some strange reason everything seemed familiar to her. When the guide started talking about one of the items, she unexpectedly began to correct him... and she turned out to be right! The guide was very surprised, and Katherine was stunned. How does she know this? Why was she so confident that she was right that she did not hesitate to correct the museum representative in public? Maybe some memories from childhood surfaced?

At our next meeting she told me about this incident. A few months earlier, I had suggested that Catherine try hypnosis, but she was scared and refused. But because of an incident at the Egyptian exhibition, she changed her mind and agreed.

Hypnosis is a wonderful method for helping patients remember long-forgotten incidents. There is nothing mystical about it. This is just a state of particularly acute concentration. Under the strict guidance of a specialist, the patient’s body relaxes and memory sharpens. I had hypnotized hundreds of patients, and I knew that this method helps reduce anxiety, cope with fears and remember what was long forgotten. Sometimes during the hypnotic session we were able to recall events from distant childhood, when the patients were two or three years old. Thus, we were reliving those long-forgotten traumatic events, the consequences of which prevented them from living a normal life today. I was confident that hypnosis would help Catherine.

I suggested that Catherine lie down on the couch, close her eyes and rest her head on a small pillow. To start, we focused on her breathing. With each exhalation, the accumulated tension and anxiety left her; With each breath she relaxed more and more. After a few minutes of this breathing, I asked her to imagine in her mind's eye how all her muscles relax: first the tension leaves the face and jaw, then the neck and shoulders, arms, back and stomach, and finally leaves the legs. Katherine felt her body sink deeper into the couch.

Then I asked her to imagine a bright white light coming from the crown of her head and filling her entire body. Further, as the light spread throughout her body, all the muscles completely relaxed, all the nerves and organs of her body found themselves in a state of complete peace and tranquility. She fell deeper and deeper into sleep, calming down and relaxing. Finally, as I spoke, she imagined that light filled her from the inside and enveloped her from the outside.

Slowly I started counting down from ten to one. With each count, Katherine relaxed more and more. She was going into a trance. She concentrated on my voice, ignoring all extraneous sounds. On the count of one, she fell into a relatively deep hypnotic trance. The whole process took about twenty minutes.

And we began our journey into the past. I asked her to remember her early years. She could talk and answer questions while remaining in a state of deep hypnosis. She managed to remember a very painful incident for her that occurred at the dentist when she was six years old. Then she remembered a terrible event that happened to her at age five, when she was pushed off the side of a pool into the water. Then she began to choke and choke because she had swallowed water, and while talking about this, she began to choke while in my office. I convinced her that everything was over and she had already been pulled out of the water. Then she stopped choking and started breathing normally again.

Katherine was still in a deep trance. When she was three years old, the worst thing happened. She remembered waking up in her room, in complete darkness, and her father was there - she could feel his presence. He then had too much, and she smelled the fumes. He touched her and began to rub her right there. She got scared and started crying, but he roughly covered her mouth with his hand. She couldn't breathe. Twenty-five years later, in my office, Katherine burst into tears. I felt that we had finally found the key to all our misfortunes. I was confident that her symptoms would go away overnight. I gently suggested to her that it was all over, that she was no longer in the bedroom, but in the office, but still in a trance. The sobbing stopped. I brought her back to the present time, to her real age, after which I gently awakened her and encouraged her to remember absolutely everything that she saw.

We spent the rest of the session talking about the unexpected memory of painful experiences associated with my father. I tried to help her accept and experience these new memories. Now she understood everything about her relationship with her father, about his reactions to her, her alienation and fear of him. She was still shaking when she left the office. But I knew that what she understood today was worth the discomfort she experienced during the session.

I was so busy working with her repressed painful past that I completely forgot to ask during the session if there was anything in her childhood related to the Egyptian culture that she knew so well. But at least the good thing is that she now knew more about her past. She recalled some really painful events and I was expecting a significant improvement in her condition.

However, despite these discoveries, for the next week, she said, the symptoms remained just as strong and unpleasant. I was very surprised. I couldn't figure out what went wrong. Maybe something happened before she turned three? We found more than enough reasons for fear of suffocation, water, darkness, closed spaces, but soul-piercing fears and uncontrollable anxiety still darkened her life. The nightmares remained just as terrible and frightening. I decided that in the next hypnosis session I needed to go further into her past.

While under hypnosis, Catherine spoke in a slow, measured whisper. So I could write down verbatim what she said and quote her words exactly. (The ellipses indicate pauses in her speech, not gaps or my editing. Although I did remove some repeated phrases.)

I gradually brought Katherine up to the age of two, but she did not remember anything significant. Then I gave her strict instructions: “Be in the time when you first had these symptoms.” But I was absolutely unprepared for what happened next.

„ I see white steps that lead up to a building, a large white building with columns in front. There are no doors. I'm wearing a long dress... a long, loose dress made of rough material. My hair is braided. I have long blond hair.

I was completely confused. I didn't understand what was happening. He asked what year it was and what her name was.

„ Aronda... I'm eighteen years old. Opposite the building I see a market... there are baskets... everyone carries baskets on their shoulders... we live in a valley... there is no water... this is 1863 BC. This country is barren, hot, sand everywhere. There is a well, but no river. Water enters the valley from the mountains.

After she provided other topographical details, I told her to fast forward several years and tell me what she saw.

„ I I see trees and a rocky road. Bonfire, food on the fire. I have blonde hair. I'm wearing a rough brown dress and sandals. I am twenty-five years old, I have a daughter named Cleastra... This is Rachel … Very hot.

I felt scared. My stomach twisted and I began to shiver. The images she talked about and the memories were very clear. She spoke so confidently. Names, dates, clothes, trees - everything seemed so alive! What was it? How could her real-life niece be her past-life daughter? I was completely thrown off track.

I have treated thousands of patients in a psychiatric hospital, and I have used hypnosis on most of them, but I have never encountered such fantasies - not even in my dreams. I ordered her to go further in time - getting closer to her death. I was not sure that I was speaking correctly to a patient immersed in such fantasies (or memories?), but I needed to find those painful events in which the cause of the current fears and pain is hidden. Events that happened shortly before or immediately before death could be very unpleasant. Her settlement was probably destroyed by high tide or flood.

„ Huge waves knock down trees. There is nowhere to run. Cold; the water is cold. I have to save my daughter, but I can't... all I can do is hold her tightly to me. I'm drowning, choking on water. I can’t breathe, I can’t swallow… the water is salty. My daughter was torn out of my arms.

Katherine is choking and finding it difficult to breathe.

Suddenly her body completely relaxed, her breathing became even and calm.

„ I see clouds... My daughter is with me. And another child from our village is also here. I see my brother.

She was resting. This life period was over. She was still in a deep trance. I was surprised. Past lives? Reincarnation? The common sense of a scientist told me that she did not invent all this, it was not her fantasy. Her thoughts, expressions, attention to detail - everything was different from what she was in a conscious state. A whole range of psychiatric diagnoses flashed through my head, but her condition and personality did not explain these discoveries. Schizophrenia? No, she never showed signs of cognitive or thinking disorders. She has never had auditory hallucinations such as voices, visual hallucinations or day visions, or other psychotic manifestations. She had no delusions, she reacted adequately to reality. She did not have a split personality. There was one Katherine who was completely aware of herself and her actions. She had no sociopathic or antisocial tendencies. She was not an actress. She did not take drugs or hallucinogens. She drank alcohol in minimal quantities. She did not have any neurological or psychiatric disorders that could explain these vivid, intense experiences during hypnosis.

It was something like a memory, but from where? With a sixth sense, I understood that I was marking time due to the fact that I knew very little about reincarnation and memories from past lives. I told myself it was impossible; my purely materialistic consciousness resisted these thoughts with all its might. But nevertheless it happened, and happened before my eyes. I couldn’t explain it, but I also couldn’t deny the reality of what I saw and heard.

“Go on,” I said, both concerned and delighted by what was happening. “Do you remember anything else?”

And she remembered fragments of two other lives.

„ I'm wearing a black dress with lace, black lace also decorates my hair. I have dark hair with gray streaks. 1756 I'm Spanish. My name is Louise and I am fifty-six years old. I dance and people around me dance...(Long pause). I feel bad. I have a fever, I’m breaking out in a cold sweat... Many people around me feel bad; they die... Doctors have no idea that it is because of the water...

„ I have recovered, but my head still hurts; eyes and head still hurt due to fever, from water... Many die.

Later she admitted that in that life she was a prostitute, but did not say it right away because she was embarrassed. Apparently, while under hypnosis, Catherine was able to censor the memories she told me about.

Since Katherine recognized her niece in one of her past lives, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had met me there. I was curious who, if anything, I was in her memories. She answered quickly - unlike previous times, when her answers were slow and thoughtful.

„ You are my teacher, and you are sitting on a rock ledge. You teach us from books. You are old and have gray hair. You are wearing a white robe (toga) with gold trim... Your name is Diogenes. You study shapes and triangles with us. You are very wise. But I still don't understand anything. This is 1586 BC.

The first session was over. However, even more amazing discoveries awaited us.

For several more days I pondered the details of this journey into the past. I tend to overthink everything. Very rarely did any detail escape me after a “normal” hour of therapy, but this hour could hardly be called “normal.” In addition, I was very skeptical about the concepts of life after death, reincarnation, out-of-body experiences and other similar phenomena. Eventually my rational part came to the conclusion that these were fantasies. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to prove any of what she said or described. But still, I had a very vague, but quite clear thought. “Be open,” this thought went, “real science begins with observation. Her “memories” could Not be fantasies or figments of the imagination. Something may be hidden from view or from other senses. Be open. Collect more data."

Another thought worried me: whether Katherine, who is already susceptible to fears and anxieties, would be afraid to continue the hypnosis sessions. I decided not to call her yet, let her also digest the experience. I'll wait a week.

Chapter 3

A week later, Katherine knocked on my office door again for her next hypnosis session. It was nice to note that she looked as beautiful as ever. She happily reported that the fear of drowning, which had haunted her all her life, had disappeared, and the fear of suffocation had become much weaker. The nightmare where the bridge collapsed no longer interrupted her sleep. But although she remembered the details of her past lives quite clearly, she still had difficulty accepting them.

Everything related to past lives and reincarnations was alien to her worldview, but nevertheless the memories were so vivid, the images, sounds and smells so clear, and the understanding that she was there so clear and strong that she could not help but feel that was really there. She didn’t even doubt it - the experience was so stunning. But she was very worried about how to combine all this accumulated knowledge with her beliefs and upbringing.

During the week, I repeatedly looked at my notes for the religious studies course I took as a first-year student at Columbia University. I found references to reincarnation in the Old and New Testaments. In 325 AD e. The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, together with his mother Helen, deleted everything related to reincarnation from the New Testament. Second consul of Constantinople, reigning in 553 AD. BC, supported this and declared the concept of reincarnation heresy. Apparently they feared that the doctrine of reincarnation would weaken the growing power of the Church, because otherwise people would have too much time to search for ways to save their souls. However, it was not possible to completely eradicate this - the elders of the church accepted this teaching. Some of the first Gnostics - Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Jerome - believed that they had lived before and would live again.

As for me, I have never believed in reincarnation. To be honest, I never thought about them. Although in the process of getting acquainted with religions I came across the doctrine of the existence of a “soul” after death, this idea seemed very doubtful to me.

I was the eldest of four brothers, all of us born within three years of each other. Our family attended a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Red Bank, a small town on the coast near New Jersey. Among my loved ones, I served as a peacemaker. Father was the most religious among us. He took religion seriously, like everything else in life. The greatest pleasure for him was the success of his children in science and profession. If any troubles began in the family, he was very upset and handed over the reins to me. Although this was excellent preparation for a career in psychiatry, my childhood was more difficult than I would have liked due to the overwhelming burden of responsibility for what happened in our home. I turned out to be an extremely serious young man who was used to taking on more than necessary.

My mother poured out her love to everyone. Nothing could stop her. She was simpler than her father, and therefore, without a twinge of conscience, she controlled us with the help of guilt, posing as a martyr. But she rarely allowed herself to be gloomy, and we could always count on her help and support.

My father made good money as a city photographer, and the house was always full of food, but there was not always enough money for everything else. My younger brother Peter was born when I was nine years old. Six of us had to live in our small three-room apartment.

Life in such close quarters was noisy and hectic, and I always sought refuge in books. When I wasn't playing baseball or basketball, two of my favorite games as a child, I was reading. I knew that only by getting a good education would I be able to get out of the small, albeit very cozy, town, so I was always the first or second student in my class.

By the time I became a student at Columbia University and even received a scholarship, I was already a responsible young man, completely immersed in my studies. Science came easy to me. My major was chemistry and I graduated with honors. After which I decided to become a psychiatrist, because it was in this area that I could satisfy my interest in scientific work and the secrets of human consciousness at the same time. Plus, a medical career would allow me to care for and empathize with other people.

Shortly before this, I met Carol on summer vacation at the Catskill Mountain Hotel, where I worked as a bus driver and she came on vacation. At the very first moment we felt that we were very strongly drawn to each other, that we felt good and comfortable together. We began corresponding, dating, fell in love, and by the time I entered Columbia University we were already engaged. She was bright and very beautiful. It seemed that everything fell into place. Probably very few young people begin to think about life and death, and about life after death, when everything is going so smoothly and well, and I was no exception to the rule. I was going to become a scientist and learned to think logically, dispassionately and believe only in what could be proven.

Medical school and subsequent life at Yale sharpened my scientific outlook to perfection. My research focused on the chemical processes that occur in the brain and the role of neurotransmitters, which are transmitters of brain matter.

I joined a new wave of so-called biological psychiatrists - those who are trying to combine in one approach traditional psychiatric theories and techniques with a new scientific direction - brain chemistry. I have written numerous articles, presented at local and national conferences, and become something of a style icon in my field. Perhaps I was not too flexible, too assertive and very active, but for a doctor this is good. I felt that I was ready to cure anyone who came to my office for a therapy session.

And then Katherine became Aronda, a girl who lived in 1863 BC or something like that. And so she came to my session again, even happier than before.

I again began to fear that Katherine would be afraid to continue treatment. However, contrary to my expectations, she eagerly set to work and quickly entered a state of hypnotic trance.

„ I throw wreaths of flowers onto the water. This is some kind of ceremony. I have blond hair braided. I'm wearing a brown and gold dress and sandals. Someone has died - someone from the royal family... it seems to be the Queen Mother... I am a servant at court. We immerse the bodies in saline solution for thirty days. The bodies are dried, after which the internal organs can be removed. I smell this smell, the smell of dead bodies...

Suddenly she returned to Aronda's life again, but to a different period - to the time when her duty was to process the bodies of dead people.

„ In a separate building I see bodies. We wrap them in a shroud. The soul flies on. You take with you everything that belongs to you to prepare for a new and happier life.

What she was talking about was similar to the Egyptian postulates about death and life after death, which are fundamentally different from all other religious teachings. According to the ideas of this religion, the soul can take everything with it.

The memories of this life are over. There was a pause for a while, and then Katherine again found herself in another life.

„ I see ice everywhere, on the walls of the cave... rocks...

She casually described some small and uncomfortable place, and then I saw that Katherine felt unwell. She later explained that she saw herself at that moment.

„ I was ugly, dirty, and had a bad smell.”

„ I see some buildings and a cart with stone wheels. I have brown hair covered with a scarf. There is straw on the cart. I'm happy. My father is here too... He hugs me... this is... this is Edward . He's my father! We live in a valley full of trees. There are olive and fig trees in our garden. People write on pieces of paper with funny icons that look like letters. People write all day long. They are creating a library. This is 1536 BC. This land is barren. My father's name is Perseus.

Even though the dates didn't exactly match, I was sure that this was the same episode that she talked about in last week's session. We moved on, remaining in the same life.

„ My father knows you , you talk about culture, laws and government. Father says that you are very smart and that I should listen to you.

„ Father lies in a dark room. He is very old and sick. It's cold...emptiness surrounds me.

Then she moved on to her death.

„ Now I'm old and weak. My daughter is standing at my bedside. My husband has already died. Nearby are the daughter’s husband and their children. A lot of people gathered around.

This time she died calmly. She floated away. Did she float away? I was reminded of Dr. Raymond Moody's research on the dying experience. The participants in his study also said that at first they seemed to float away, and then something threw them back into their bodies. I read this book several years ago and now made a mental note to read it again. I wondered if Katherine remembered anything else about her death, but all she said was that she was floating and that was all. I brought her out of the hypnosis state and ended the session.

Driven by an unbearable thirst to re-read all the works ever published on the topic of past lives, I began to dig through all the medical libraries. I studied all the works of Ian Stevenson, MD, a highly respected professor of psychiatry who worked at the University of Virginia and published a huge number of articles on psychiatry. Dr. Stevenson described more than two hundred children who had memories and experiences from past lives. Among them, many cases of so-called xenoglossy are described - the ability to understand and speak a foreign language without special study. His descriptions of such examples are distinguished by detail, they can safely be called outstanding.

I also read Edgar Mitchell's wonderful literary review. With great interest I studied the research conducted at Duke University, the records of Professor S. J. Ducasse from Brown University, and also studied in detail the work of Dr. Martin Ebon, Dr. Helen Wombach, Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, Dr. Frederick Lenz, Dr. Edith Fiore. The more I read, the more I wanted to read more. I began to understand that although I considered myself a person who was well aware of all aspects of the work of human consciousness, my knowledge was very limited. After all, there are entire libraries of literature and research on past lives, and only a few people know about it. Could all these authors be mistaken or mistaken? All the facts told me no, but I still doubted it. Despite the enormous amount of information that literally flooded me, I still had doubts. But for both Katherine and me - each in our own way - this experience was already having a profound impact. Katherine's emotional state was improving, and I was expanding my area of ​​knowledge. Catherine's fears had tormented her for many years, and now she finally felt relief. Whether these were real memories or such realistic fantasies, nevertheless, using them I was able to help her, and was not going to stop there.

These were the thoughts that briefly crossed my mind before Katherine and I began our next session. Before moving on to hypnosis, she described a dream she had about a game she was playing while sitting on the stone steps, a game played on a chessboard with holes. This dream seemed very realistic to her. And then I invited her to go beyond the boundaries of time and space and see if this dream originated from her previous incarnations.

„ I see stairs leading to the tower... from here you can see the mountains and the sea... I am a boy... I have blond hair... very strange hair. My clothes are very short, white and brown, made from animal skins. There are some men standing on the tower above and watching... These are guards. They're all dirty. They play some kind of game like chess, but not really. The board is round, not square. The chips look like daggers and are stuck into holes, and on top are decorated with carved animal heads.

I asked her what the name of the place where she ended up was and if she could tell the year.

She gradually approached the moment of her death. And even now I was still trying to find that very traumatic event that I could explain the origin of all her current fears and symptoms. Even if these incredibly vivid and clear images were fantasies, which I could not be sure of, what she believed and thought could lift the veil on the origin of her symptoms. After all, I have met people who suffered deep mental trauma due to a dream. Some of them could not remember whether they actually had any painful events in childhood or whether they dreamed everything, but the consequences of these experiences still poisoned their real lives.

What I really didn't consider is that persistent, systematic parental criticism can cause more harm than a single traumatic event. And this influence is much more difficult to calculate, and it is very difficult to get rid of it, because it penetrates into our daily life and becomes habitual. A child who is constantly scolded loses self-confidence, his self-esteem falls in the same way as that of someone who happened to experience severe humiliation one terrible day. A child whose family is below the poverty line and therefore cannot afford regular meals will suffer from the same psychological problems as a child who was forced to starve as a result of some accident. I will soon realize that persistent negative influences must be recognized and dealt with in the same way as individual traumatic events. Katherine began to speak.

„ There are boats that look like canoes, brightly painted. This is Providence, or somewhere nearby. We have weapons - spears, pikes, slings, bows and arrows, but everything is very large. These boats have very strange oars... everyone has to row. We risk getting lost, it's already very dark. Not a single light around - I'm scared. There are other boats next to the boat I'm sitting in. . I'm afraid of animals. We sleep on dirty stinking skins. We are in reconnaissance. I have very funny shoes, like sacks, they tie with laces at the ankles... and are made of animal skins...(Long pause.) I feel the heat of the fire on my face. People of my tribe kill others, but I don't. I don't want to kill. But the knife is in my hand.

Suddenly she began to choke and choke. She said a man from an enemy tribe grabbed her by the back of the neck and slit her throat with a knife. Just before her death, she saw the face of her killer. It was Stuart. He looked different, but she knew it was him. At the time of his death, Johan was 21 years old.

Then she saw herself floating above her body and watching it from the side. She rose to the clouds and felt puzzled and embarrassed. Soon she was pushed into something “small and warm.” She was getting ready to be born.

Slowly and sleepily she whispered:

„ Someone hugs me. Someone who helped me be born. She is wearing a green dress with a white apron and a white cap with the corners turned up. The room has funny windows... with many cells. The house itself is stone. My mother has long black hair. She wants to hold me. She's wearing a funny nightgown... made of rough fabric. It hurts me a little to touch her. It's very nice to bask in the sun... and this is... my mother... the same one I have now!

During a previous session, I had persistently asked her to pay close attention to significant people from past lives and see if they were any of the important people in her present life. According to the research of some scientists, groups of souls tend to reincarnate together again and again, working out their karma (debts to themselves and each other, unlearned lessons) over many incarnations.

Trying to understand this strange, fascinating, hidden drama that was unfolding before my eyes in my small office with dim lighting, I longed for confirmation of this information. I was eager to apply the scientific method that I had successfully used for the past fifteen years in my research to analyze the highly unusual information coming from Katherine.

Between our meetings, Katherine's spiritual abilities increased. She intuitively sensed people and could predict events. And as experience showed, everything was true. Under hypnosis, she soon began to anticipate my questions before I asked them. Many of her dreams became prophetic.

One day, when her parents came to visit her, her father expressed his great doubts about what was happening to her. To prove she was right, she took him to the racetrack. And there, right before his eyes, she began to guess the winner of each race. He was amazed. Convinced that her father finally completely believed her, she collected all the money she had won and gave it to the first beggar she came across. Something told her that the power she had just gained could not be used for financial gain. In her opinion, this gift was given to her for higher purposes. She admitted to me that she was a little scared by this new experience, but at the same time she was so interested that she said that she wanted to dive into past lives again. I was shocked and at the same time delighted by her new abilities, and especially the story with the hippodrome. The truth was obvious. She won every race and it was no coincidence. Something very strange had happened these past few weeks, and I tried not to lose sight of it. There is no denying her psychic abilities. And if they were real and so clearly provable, then can we assume that her memories from past lives were also true?

So she went back to her birth episode. It seemed that this incarnation was not that long ago, but she could not give an exact date. Her name was Elizabeth.

„ I'm already grown up, I have a brother and two sisters... I see the dining table... My father is here too... This is Edward . Father and mother are quarreling again. For lunch we have potatoes and beans. Father is angry because the food is cold. They often quarrel. My father drinks a lot... He beats my mother . He pushes the children. He is not at all the same as before. I do not like him. I want him to leave.

She spoke exactly as children speak.

During our sessions, I asked completely different questions than those typically used in traditional therapy. Rather, I was trying to be Katherine's guide. We tried to look at an entire life in an hour or two, looking for specific traumatic events that plagued her current life. In traditional therapy, there is more attention to detail and sessions are slower. Every word spoken by the patient is analyzed in search of hidden meaning and subtext. Every facial expression, every movement, every intonation is taken into account by the therapist and analyzed. Every emotional reaction is carefully considered. All behavioral reactions are painstakingly put together into a whole picture. In sessions with Katherine, we could run through several years in one minute, as if we were racing at full speed along the roads at the Indy 500... trying to find our own faces in the crowd.

„ We have two sons... The eldest is getting married. I see a church spire... the church is very old, made of stone.

Suddenly Katherine got a headache. The pain was intense, causing Katherine to rub her left temple. She said she fell on the stone steps but then felt better. She died at a very old age, in her bed, with her whole family by her side.

After death, she floated out of her body again, but this time without any confusion.

„ I'm immersed in bright light. This is wonderful; it gives energy.

She rested after death before her next incarnation. She sat in silence for several minutes. Suddenly she spoke, but no longer in the previous leisurely manner, in a whisper - her voice became hoarse and loud, unwavering.

„ Our task is to study to become like God through knowledge. We know so little. You are here to teach me, and I have so much to learn. Through knowledge we will get closer to God, and then we can rest. Then we will return to teach and help others.

I was speechless. These were instructions after death, from the intermediate state. Where did she get this information from? Her voice was completely different from Katherine's. She had never spoken in such a manner, using these expressions. Even the intonation was completely different from her own.

At that moment I did not yet understand that these were not Katherine's thoughts. She simply repeated what was said to her. Later she confirmed that the source of these thoughts were Teachers - highly developed souls who did not have physical incarnations. They spoke to me through it. Catherine could not only go back in time, but now also transmit information from the other world. Amazing information. I tried my best not to lose consciousness.

There was a new dimension before us. Katherine had never read the works of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross or Dr. Raymond Moody, who wrote about the afterlife experience. She had never heard of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But at the moment she was experiencing exactly the same thing as described in this book. It was some kind of proof. If only there were more facts, more tangible details! My skepticism dissolved, but did not disappear completely. Maybe she's read about near-death research in magazines or heard about it in an interview on TV. And although she consciously denied it, perhaps it remained in her subconscious. But she went further than could be described in the articles and transmitted information from this intermediate state. If only I had more facts...

After awakening, Katherine, as usual, remembered all the details of previous lives. However, she could not remember anything that happened after Elizabeth's death. And in the future she will not remember anything from intermediate states - she will only remember past lives.

“Through knowledge we will draw closer to God.” We were on the right track.

Chapter 4

Katherine spoke in her usual half-asleep manner.

“I see a square white house with a sandy path leading to it. People on horses ride here and there. There are trees everywhere... It's a plantation. There is a large house and many small ones that look like slave dwellings. It's very hot... This is the South... Southern... Virginia? There are horses everywhere and a lot of crops... corn... tobacco.

It seemed to her that it was 1873. She was a black child named Abby. She and the other servants eat in the kitchen of the large house. Suddenly she had a bad feeling and her body tensed. The big house was burning, and she watched the fire. I moved it forward 15 years to 1888.

„ I’m wearing an old dress, I’m washing a mirror on the second floor of a house... a large brick house with many windows. The surface of the mirror is uneven, wavy, and there are handles on the bottom of the mirror. The owner of the house is called James Manson. He wears a funny coat with three buttons and a large black collar. And he also has a beard. I don't recognize him . He treats me well. I live on an estate and clean the rooms. There is a school on this estate, but I was not allowed there. I also make butter!

Katherine spoke in a whisper, slowly, in very simple words and with a lot of attention to detail. In the next five minutes I learned in detail how butter is made. What Abby knew about churning butter was also new to Katherine. I took her further in time.

„ I have a man, but it seems we are not married. We sleep together... but we don't always live together. I feel good with him, but in general, nothing special. I don't see children. There are apple trees and ducks around. There are other people in the distance. I'm picking apples. For some reason my eyes are starting to sting . This is smoke. The wind is blowing in our direction... it's smoke from a burning tree. Wooden barrels are being burned again...

Katherine coughed.

After last week's session, I was very excited and eager to get Catherine into the in-between state again. We had been studying her life as a maid for ninety minutes now. I already knew everything about making a bed, churning butter, and tarring barrels; but I longed for a new lesson from higher beings. Having finally lost patience, I brought her to the moment of death.

„ It's hard for me to breathe. There is terrible pain in my chest.

Katherine was gasping for breath and it was clear that she was in pain.

„ Heart ache; it beats hard... I'm cold, I'm shaking ! There are some people in the room, they give me some kind of herb (tea) to drink. The smell is funny. They rub some ointment into my chest. I have a fever... but I'm very cold.

She died quietly. Soaring up to the ceiling, she looked down at her body - the body of a small, shrunken sixty-year-old woman. She just hovered above, waiting for someone to come and help her. Finally she felt a light that was pulling her towards it. The light became brighter, the radiance intensified. We waited in silence, the minutes passed one after another. And suddenly she found herself in another life, a thousand years before Abby.

„ There's a lot of garlic hanging in this room, everywhere. I can smell it. It is believed that garlic can kill all sorts of harmful particles in the blood and cleanse the body, but you need to eat it every day. Garlic also grows outside in the garden. There are other plants, of course - figs and so on. These plants help people. My mother buys garlic and other herbs. Someone is sick in our house. There are some strange roots here. Sometimes you just put them in your mouth or insert them into your ears or other holes. You just put it in and keep it there.

Katherine dropped to a whisper.

„ I see an old man with a beard. This is one of the village healers. He tells everyone what to do. Something like... a plague is raging in the village... people are dying. They are not embalmed because everyone is afraid of getting infected. They are simply buried. People don't like it. They feel it's hard for souls to leave because of this . But so many people died. Cattle are also dying. Water... floods everything... people get sick because of the water . I also caught some kind of disease from the water. I have a stomach ache. The disease affects the stomach and intestines. The body loses a lot of water. I just went to get water, but it’s killing us. I'm bringing her back. I see my brothers and mother. The father has already died. The brothers are very sick.

Before moving further in time, I paused. I was very surprised at how her ideas about death and life after death changed from life to life. At the same time, her own experiences after death remained unchanged each time. Her conscious part separated from the body at the moment of death, floated up and then “rushed towards a wonderful light full of energy.” Then she always waited for someone to come and help her. The soul automatically moved on. Embalming, funeral rituals and other post-mortem procedures did not affect this process in any way. Everything happened by itself, without any special preparations - it was like walking out an open door.