Reincarnation

I've just reading this book that Lawrence lent me. It's written by a psychiatrist who was treating this young patient for a host of psychological problems including recurring nightmares and a host of phobias. He's been treating her for 18 months using ordinary therapy techniques, but nothing worked. Then he tried hypnosis. The patient to recall with minute details her past lives, going back thousands of years. As she began to survey these past lives, it becomes apparent that her phobias such as fear of dark rooms and choking are related to past life experiences in which traumatic events took place. More astonishingly she began to speak in other voices, the voices of 'master spirits' who guide us both in this life and the next. The masters tell the psychiatrist that we are put here on earth to learn lessons, that the people we come into contact with in this life may have been known to us in the past, and that we are constantly working out karmic relationships with these souls. This idea that one's soul travels through many lives building wisdom is a wonderfully attractive one, humbling yet life affirming at the same time.