Okay.. its all good.. everyone has an opinon.. it was probably my original threadstarter.. (my first post) i was actually responding to people who were chatting with me on the other thread -(welcome the corndogwalker!) who were asking me questions about past life regression...
In my original post i said it would be fun, responding to the fact that I do it with friends when we are hanging out.. (I believe it) But I dont care if someone does it... its different and exciting.. and i am not doing it for money... or looking to do it for money on this site.. I get that..

however.. i enjoy helping people and if someone really believes a certain procedure can help them change for the better and not really hurt themself. then by god lets do it...

if there werent skeptics then the world would be boring place...

plus the fact that i have a choice today to pick and choose things to enhance my spirituality doesnt hinder my belief system.. it just adds to it...

so, when i said it was fun... it is... but isnt life fun??

Hell, I totally believe in past lives, and that people cross each other's paths when they sometimes have "unfinished business" from one of those past lives.

I like my beliefs - I'm happy with them, and they harm no one. :)

Corndogwalker, I'd love to chat about it. :D

So I had some questions about past life regression (as you offered in the first post). The mojo was nice, but I'd rather know the answers.

I love fantasizing about past lives stuff. It's great. There are definitely places I have been to for the first time that I have felt I have been before. There are also time periods that seem more comforting than this one to me. I'm interested. It sounds fun.
:)

While I completely believe in a thing akin to past lives and future lives, and constantly interacting with the same kindred "spirits" lifetime after lifetime ... I just doubt hypnosis's ability to tap into such a thing. Too many people turn out to have been Cleopatra, if you know what I'm sayin.


I'd still love to try it, and see what happens. But if I'm not particularly interested in past lives and I don't want to quit smoking ... what other things can you do hypnotically, mr. corndogwalker?

He gets me to leave doors unlocked.

and zippers ? :evil:

Even if reincarnation is real, it is statistically unlikely than any individual person now living had a string of previous lives, so if, as some claim, the success rate (in properly conditioned subjects) is more than 80% where do those lives come from?

When hypnotized and told to connect to an earlier life why is that result evidence of real events when being hyponized and told to act like a chicken (or Diana Ross) is not evidence that one was once a chicken (or Diana Ross)?

If it is just a parlor game, are the charlatons who do charge for it unethical?

If it is well established that hypnosis can be used to create strongly held false memories (most famously in discovering "repressed memories" of childhood sexual abuse and alien abduction), why is that not a more likely answer for recovered memories of past lives?

The word "charlatan" implies that the hypnotist (or psychiatrist, priest, chiropracter, dog whisperer, etc.) knows they're running a scam. If the person practicing a particular treatment believes in it and finds it useful, and the person receiving a particular treatment, whether or not they believe in it, walks away having received some benefit, would you consider that unethical? My roomate moved in as a smoker. He used hypnotherapy as an aid to quit smoking and it was successful. Was the hypnotherapist a charlatan? Was he unethical because he charged money? I'd have to say no. Whatever the hypnotherapists personal motives were, my roomate is much happier.

Your statement presumes that "unethical" or not, anyone who charges money for something you are skeptical about is a charlatan.

Don't worry. No one's going anywhere near your, or anyone else's, wallet on the LoT. Unless you want some cheese crisps.

No, my question does not presume that. My question presumes that if it is a parlor game, then the people who claim its truth are, whether knowingly or not, commiting a fraud. My question for thecorndogwalker is, if PLR is just a fun little game then what are his thoughts on people who charge for it and quite seriously defend its reality and efficacy.

I haven't said a word about hypnotherapy in general and its efficacy. Just past life regression and I feel I asked some valid questions for which I am interested in hearing thecorndogwalker's answers. Since thecorndogwalker feels it is therapeutic ("a certain procedure can help them change for the better") I'm interested in what he fundamentally thinks is happening when this is done.

So, to rephrase without the word charlatan:

thecorndogwalker:

1. When you do this, do you believe that the participants are, in reality, connecting and discovering details of actual past lives lived by that person?

2. How does this field account for the fact that a success rate is generally claimed for this procedure that is much larger than the ratio of currently living people to world populations in the past. For example, there are currently more than twice as many people as 40 years, three times as many as 100 years ago and six times as many as 200 years ago. This implies that only one out eight people currently living could have lived a life during the Rennaissance and only 50% could have a past life at all. Further defying the odds, why do so many people seem to have lived past lives of prominence (not necessarily current-day famous, but generally well above the statistical mean for the era)? Which Cleopatra is the real one?

3. If you do not believe that actual past lives are involved but rather PLR is a method for exploring how a person actually thinks about themselves, revealing their subconscious and this is known to practitioners, is it ethical for those practitioners to mislead participants in order to achieve this benefit?

4. PLR has many advocates who claim prominent examples of the therapy revealing historically verifiable information that could not possibly have been known to the participant or the therapist. But so far, most have not suffered thorough examination well, revealing either that someone involved actually knew the information, the information was actually vague and just attached to specific information, or the information was misinterpreted (such as thinking an unknown foreign language was spokent but wasn't). In your personal practice of this do you feel anybody has ever revealed such historical information and have you or the participant made any attempt to verify it?

5. Since hypnosis is most famously used to make people behave as they otherwise wouldn't. Since false memory implantation, particularly through hypnosis, is well established. Since hypnosis opens you up to suggestibility and behavior and speech known to not be true, what distinguishes PLR so that there is confidence that what is said is real and not just a response to suggestion?


So, yes, I am skeptical of past life regression. But I am honestly curious how you address such questions as a person who practices it. And if there were a "fun" group doing it I would be interested in observing (quietly, of course).