- 9 hours ago
Examines the possibility of reincarnation through various ways of exploring one's past lives. The recreations are quite good in this episode.
Category
ЁЯУЪ
LearningTranscript
00:01There are people who claim to remember events that happened in a former lifetime.
00:06It is a strange phenomenon called reincarnation.
00:12There's the story of Maria, a little girl who lived a long time ago in a coastal village of France.
00:19Maria had a special touch with living things.
00:22It was said she could cure animals and people of illness.
00:26The villagers called her a witch and hunted her down in the night.
00:39A girl living now remembers every detail of that horrible night as though it had happened to her.
00:46Perhaps it did.
00:55Ruth McGuire is convinced she has lived before.
01:05She remembers a specific place where this other life began.
01:09The smallest details are clear in her mind, though she has never been there.
01:16Ruth McGuire remembers more than where her past life began.
01:20She remembers how it ended.
01:22This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
01:36This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.
01:49The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations,
01:54but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
02:01Men of vision are rare in any time.
02:04In the pioneering days of American industrial expansion, Henry Ford was such a man.
02:11In his later years, Ford would be acclaimed as the father of the assembly line.
02:17Ford's genius embraced another idea.
02:20He believed he was immortal.
02:23Ford thought that his essential being or soul would be reborn into another body.
02:28Reincarnation is a belief that has been expressed by every civilization known to man.
02:35The principles governing the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth are called karma.
02:40Karma means that a soul progresses from body to body, life to life,
02:50until it achieves perfect harmony with the universe.
02:54Thus, one who suffers in this life is assured of at least the possibility of a better break in the next.
03:00All right, now lie down and make yourself as comfortable as you can.
03:09Dr. Helen Wambach is a clinical psychologist doing reincarnation research in San Francisco.
03:16Using the technique of hypnotic regression, she will be the guide on a remarkable journey through time and space.
03:22And all discomfort leaves your body, and you're floating on a cloud, and your body is very, very heavy now.
03:33We're going to float back all around the world, back into past time.
03:40When I call out the name of a place, let images come into your mind.
03:45An image for the Far East, an image for Central Asia, an image for Europe, an image for the Near East in Africa,
04:05or an image for North, Central, or South America.
04:12Now choose. You have chosen.
04:18I'd more or less picked Scandinavia.
04:21I couldn't get out of the snow.
04:24The only real scenery was just rolling snow-covered hills, frozen ground.
04:30And it seemed like we'd traveled by foot most of the time, from one fishing hole to another, it seemed.
04:40And, um, my death was an accident in, you know, one of the journeys, and it was like, um, had, it seemed to have something to do with a, um, a sled.
04:53And it sort of got thrown over, and I was just left laying in a snowbank.
04:57It seemed to be on the foot of the steps of a pyramid, a temple.
05:09The ceremony that, uh, I was going to attend was attended by all the members of the village, all the surrounding villages.
05:17And it seemed to be, um, a healing.
05:22There was some type of a healing going on, on what seemed to have been maybe the chief of the village.
05:28And I remember I had this very strong belief that this was going to be helpful and very great interest.
05:35Dr. Wombach has regressed more than 2,000 persons in her search for scientifically valid data on the reincarnation experience.
05:46Well, actually, I've been searching for five years now for evidence that we may have lived before.
05:54What I've found is what many researchers have found, that there's a tantalizing mix of fantasy and checkable reality in past life recall.
06:06My belief was that if we have lived past lives, all of us have lived past lives.
06:12And therefore, I ought to be able to explore this phenomenon in the same normative way that a psychologist would go about exploring any other kinds of phenomenon.
06:21So, I evolved a technique of taking people to past lives that I found to be both safe and reliable, and where I could get repeatable evidence.
06:31Elbows. Down.
06:35Simply put, Dr. Wombach's technique is to plant a post-hypnotic suggestion in the subject's minds, which enables them to fill out an elaborate questionnaire after the session is over.
06:46The questionnaires are important because Dr. Wombach finds that during regression, patients are reluctant to have their journey to a past life disturbed by conversation with the hypnotist.
06:58However, Dr. Wombach will occasionally use the standard question-and-answer technique to explore an unusual case.
07:06All right, now, Bob, I want you to go to a time when you are listening to some of the people around you talk, and you will hear the syllables, and you will be able to repeat them.
07:20All right, that's fine, Bob. Can you tell me what these words mean? What is being talked about?
07:38In regard to the days, labors, the dissatisfaction with the tasks, dissatisfaction with the job.
07:56How do you feel about this? Do you feel dissatisfied?
07:59I feel it's all in a day's, all in a day's time, and I'll soon be on my way away from it.
08:16Now, Bob, I want you to move in that lifetime to a time when you are seeing something written.
08:29Do you see anything?
08:39You will be able to open your eyes without coming out of the hypnotic trance.
08:45You will focus intently on the hieroglyphs, and you will be able to copy them.
08:51Dr. Wambach has had an expert at Stanford University study Bob's strange writing.
09:02She says the expert has been able to identify 80% of the characters as authentic Egyptian hieroglyphs.
09:09Very good, Bob.
09:12Can you tell me now what these hieroglyphs mean?
09:16In reference to a new trade route and treaty of free movement and protection from the highest power for such a venture.
09:40Hi, Bob. How was it?
09:43Not bad.
09:44Not bad, huh?
09:45Bob is a retired stockbroker.
09:48How could he write and converse in a language that vanished tens of centuries ago along with the builders of the pyramids?
09:56At the very least, it's a fascinating exercise, this probing of the unconscious mind for scraps of information about past lives.
10:05There are more practical aspects to the study of reincarnation.
10:09Trauma from a past life sometimes seems to spill over into the present.
10:13It is possible that many physical and emotional problems which defy medical science can be cured through an understanding of this principle.
10:23In this lifetime, for instance, I've had a series of, since early childhood, seizure type of things that occurred that doctors and priests couldn't explain.
10:36The sensation of going a million miles an hour and weighing at least a ton, and it was pretty terrorizing to have that occurring because I couldn't make it stop.
10:53During the session where I was regressed to the lifetime as a girl named Maria, this particular seizure started to occur while I was under hypnosis.
11:09And it was then that Dr. Wambach took me to that point where it first started to occur.
11:19Under hypnosis, Shirley described herself as a healer in a village on the coast of France.
11:26She said her name was Maria, and that she had been summoned to the constables to help his sick child.
11:32The child died.
11:33One evening, after the child had died, on my walk home through the forest, out of the bushes, out of the trees, with torches, the whole village seemed to appear.
11:50And they were going to burn Maria as a witch because they thought she'd killed the boy.
11:56And they came towards her, they'd get the witch.
11:58And I ran as Maria.
12:02I didn't want to get caught, and it was then that the sensation started.
12:08The sensation that I had been experiencing in this lifetime of absolute, stark, raving terror.
12:15And they chased me, screaming and yelling, and I ran and I ran.
12:19And rather than be caught by them and burnt, I jumped off a cliff.
12:23And that was the feeling of weighing a million pounds.
12:26And as Maria dropped that body and came out of that body, the weight, the speeding sensation stopped completely and abruptly, unlike any of the seizures that I'd had.
12:44It could be coincidence that Shirley's symptoms disappeared after she confronted the nightmare of a prior life.
12:52Or it could be just what it appears, using an understanding and karma to calm the restless corner of Shirley's mind that is still Maria.
13:00Dr. Wambach's collection of 2,000 apparent reincarnation experiences has yielded some fascinating data.
13:11Between 70 and 80 percent of her subjects remember lives as working class people or peasants.
13:18If these prior lives were imaginary, wouldn't more people think of themselves as royalty, rather than accurately reflecting a cross-section of society?
13:27In another experiment, a group of white Californians was regressed to the 1850s.
13:35An extraordinary number said they were Asians then.
13:39Could they have been the Orientals who were imported to build California's railroads?
13:44Could they still be with us, in new bodies?
13:46How many pasts can a person have?
13:51The work of other investigators may suggest an answer.
13:59The old Chestnut Inn in Kent, Connecticut, has a history as rich as its setting.
14:05Ruth McGuire has quite a history of her own.
14:08It appears she may have a number of histories.
14:10I've had very strong feelings about the year 1857 and India.
14:17When I was just a child, I picked up a 10-cent piece.
14:21I felt terribly depressed.
14:24The date meant something to me.
14:27Ruth had heard of Professor Hans Holzer, parapsychologist and author.
14:32She invited him to probe her mind for a meaning to the date that bothered her.
14:36Using hypnotic regression, Professor Holzer had enjoyed success with similar cases before.
14:44Your name is Ruth McGuire.
14:46I want you to go back with me 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.
15:03Where do you live?
15:04In Manhattan.
15:06You are now 10 years old.
15:13You are now 9 years old.
15:15You are now 7 years old.
15:17You are 7 years old.
15:19You are 7 years old.
15:21You are Ruth McGuire.
15:22You are 7 years old.
15:24Where do you go to school?
15:28St. Nicholas of Tallentine.
15:31What is your favorite teacher's name?
15:33Sister Bonaventure.
15:35What does she teach you?
15:37Oh, poetry.
15:40She declaims poetry.
15:42You are 7 years old.
15:44You are 6 years old.
15:46You are 5 years old.
15:48You are 4 years old.
15:50You are 3 years old.
15:51You are 2 years old.
15:53You are 1 year.
15:55You have just been born.
15:57I want you to go back, back beyond the threshold of birth.
16:01You are minus 5, minus 10, minus 20.
16:04What do you see?
16:07Look around you.
16:09Where are you?
16:11It's all vapory.
16:13What do you see?
16:14Thick, thick clouds and vapors.
16:18Cold.
16:18Oh, yes.
16:26I know where I am now.
16:27Where are you?
16:31I'm in England.
16:32Where are you?
16:33What place?
16:35Sussex.
16:38Where did your father come from?
16:41Horton.
16:42It's in the North Riding area.
16:45And your mother?
16:48Durham.
16:50That's near Newcastle.
16:52Did you ever get to the New World?
16:55No, I died in Leiden at the age of 13.
17:03It was like a dam breaking.
17:05The body screaming, shouting, pillaging.
17:10I ran and hid.
17:13Next, Ruth recalls another life and a crisis in a distant land.
17:18I always dreaded being sent away.
17:22Where were you sent?
17:23We went to India.
17:25Where in India?
17:26Calcutta.
17:28And then another place where there was an uprising.
17:36The natives were very angry.
17:37They didn't want us there.
17:39And they came in, and the bodies screaming, shouting, pillaging.
17:46Professor Holzer feels he can probe even deeper into Ruth's multiple past lives.
18:05Now, I want you to go back further, further, beyond your life in India, beyond your life in England.
18:15Go back, go back, another, another incarnation, another life.
18:20In what town are we in?
18:21Now, we are in Holland.
18:27The year is 1613.
18:35Smoke in the room.
18:37What sort of smoke?
18:38The fire.
18:39It's smoking the fireplace.
18:40Where are you to begin with?
18:41Where are you now?
18:42Well, I'm in a room in a cottage.
18:46And the fireplace is smoking.
18:50It burns my throat.
18:53My aunt and my mother are both there.
18:56And we have to wait and wait and wait.
19:00And there's something about the new world and passage.
19:03There was this large man, and he pinned me against the wall.
19:22I was miserable, and I fell overboard.
19:25For a moment, I struggled.
19:28And then a strange feeling of happiness came over me.
19:33I must have been on shipboard.
19:37I saw the coffin and the people passing by.
19:43And I wanted to tell them, I hear what you're saying.
19:47I hear.
19:48And I tried to move my arm.
19:51I tried, and it was like lead.
19:54I couldn't move.
19:56I couldn't wiggle.
19:57I couldn't even move my nose.
20:00I couldn't indicate that I was there and I was listening.
20:06I seemed to be moving on a ribbon towards a great light.
20:11What was the next sensation that followed?
20:20I, there were people.
20:25I saw shadows and presences and people, people I didn't know.
20:33But my mother, yes, I, I saw my mother and there was a comforting feeling that I had found her at last.
20:42For Ruth McGuire, the session was a revelation.
20:49The controversial concept of karma made sense to her and seemed to explain so many things.
20:56Whatever she might have suffered in past lives only seemed now to increase her chance of serenity in this one.
21:03Dr. William Yaney is a psychiatrist who has devoted years to the study of reincarnation and the laws of karma.
21:12Where I sit, I really see life as really a schoolroom.
21:17This, we're, we're living in a very, very narrow, narrow spectrum, a very narrow dimension.
21:22As, as our parapsychologists are beginning to describe to us, tell us,
21:26I really see what we're, what we've got here is a soul utilizing an expendable body, so to speak,
21:35in a lifetime, a given span of time and space, to learn something.
21:43Dr. Yaney believes the vast and complex cycle of birth, death, and rebirth
21:47must be controlled by a higher order of intelligence.
21:51Someone must be minding the store, so to speak.
21:54Who, or what that force is, remains one of the great puzzles confronting mankind.
22:24You can do that.
Be the first to comment