Past Life Regression (PLR) can be both an experimental technique and a form of therapy, but it has scientific credibility only if reincarnation itself is scientifically proven to exist. The existence of Reincarnation is not yet a Scientific Truth. Recent studies indicate that reincarnation deserves to be recognized as a scientific hypothesis because it can be falsified or confirmed through scientific research. For this reason, Dr. Ian Stevenson’s international field studies are immensely important. Any idea that has clinical utility has clinical validity, but the clinical validity of plr has yet to be convincingly demonstrated.
The most famous case of past life regression (PLR) is undoubtedly that of Bridey Murphy. It is a historical case. In the mid-20th century, Morey Bernstein, a Colorado businessman who had practiced hypnotism for ten years on hundreds of different people, decided to try regressing someone into one or more past lives. He considered a woman named Virginia tighe as his subject, knowing that she had the ability to enter a deep trance with ease. BETWEEN November 29, 1952, and August 29, 1953, BERNSTEIN MADE SIX CONDITIONS TO FACILITATE The Virginia Regression. During those sessions she recalled a brief life as a baby who died. After that the figure of Bridey Murphy emerged, more formally Bridget Kathleen Murphy.
After her first experience as a Bridey, Virginia mutated into her alter ego whenever she was invited to do so in a trance state. SHE OFFERED A NEW LOVE FOR INFORMATION ABOUT IRELAND, NONE OF WHICH I HAD ANY EXPLORE WAY OF KNOWING LIKE VIRGINIA TIGHE. She said that she had been born in Cork in 1798, the daughter of a Protestant lawyer named Duncan Murphy and his wife Kathleen. She had a brother named Duncan Blaine Murphy, who had married Aimee Strayne. Another brother had died in infancy. At the age of twenty, Bridey said, she was married in a Protestant ceremony to a Catholic, Brian Joseph McCarthy, the son of another Cork lawyer. Brian and Bridey have moved to Belfast, where he awaits school and eventually progresses to teach law at Queen’s University. They had no children and Bridey lived to be sixty-six.
No record of any of these events in Ireland has been identified. However, during her recounting of her experiences as a Bridey, Virginia mentioned the names of Two Belfast Groceers, Farr’s, and John Carrigan. It was found possible to verify that two shopkeepers with those names operated retail businesses in the city at the appropriate time. She said her address in Cork was Meadows, and it was established that there is an area in that city called Tuesdayked Meadows. Queen’s University in Belfast is by breed a renowned educational establishment. Virginia used certain distinctive words which on investigation proved to be in use in Ireland in Bridey’s time, such as ‘forsaken’ for ‘buried’, ‘linen’ to mean a handkerchief, and ‘lough’ for river or lake. Those who were convinced of the veracity of Virginia’s recollections pointed out that a child born and raised in the United States, such as Virginia was, would probably not have been familiar with these terms. The investigative reporters concluded that there was some evidence of “something”, which had not yet been explained. Credible hypnosis experts claim to have discredited this case, but the late Professor Ian Stevenson, who has investigated many cases of children remembering past lives, considered it worthy of closer scrutiny.
“Finding Carroll Beckwith” (Robert L. Snow, 1999, Finding Carroll Beckwith. Pennsylvania: Daybreak Books) is an interest in past life regression. Carroll Beckwith was a minor portrait painter who lived and worked in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He had never done anything outstanding that would make him immortal as an artist. Captain Robert L. Snow is Commander of the Homicide Branch of the Indianapolis Police Department. He discovered under hypnosis that he was Carroll Beckwith in a previous life. Snow wanted to refute the images that he had experienced under hypnosis as a form of cryptomnesia. Snow was already disenchanted with hypnotherapeutic procedures in cases of child sexual abuse. The regression took place in 1992 and Captain Snow was able to find 28 details of his regression that could be proven or disproved.
SIDE OF DISPROVING the veracity of his images, Mr. Snow proved that most of the memories he had while hypnotized actually took place nearly 100 years earlier. While on vacation in New Orleans, Captain Snow wandered into an art gallery on a dark side street where he encouraged a painting from his memory: The Hunchbacked Woman. He learned that Beckwith’s personal journals and an unpublished autobiography existed in a local New York library. For a detective, that was definitive evidence to close or prove the case. From Beckwith’s journals, he found that 26 items out of 28 matched the life of Carroll Beckwith. His recollections include Beckwith using a cane even though he was disabled, visiting France, drinking wine (whiskey was the popular drink in the US), hunchbacked woman, mother died of a blood clot, wife Berth childless, Berth used to play the piano or sing for his friends etc. Captain Snow got the wrong name of the former personality’s wife, but his frank admission adds to his credibility Mr Snow claims he has more proof of her life earlier than most MURDER CASES AND IS CONVINCED HE CARRIES SOME OF CARROLL Beckwith’S MEMORIES. Parapsychologists could offer alternative explanations for even those apparently true memories. Captain Snow simply concludes in his book: “I cannot accept that , with the billions of people who have inhabited the Earth, my case is unique, that mine would be the only case of John the Baptist, which some say that Jesus describes in Matthew”. As S er A Rebirth of Elijah”.
Extreme skeptics of past life regression might explain flashbacks of past-life hypnotic memories as a “gateway” phenomenon that has not been discussed in the scientific literature of parapsychology.