A Simple Explanation of Past Life Hypnotherapy

My brother, Dr. Bill Puett, has developed a thriving hypnotherapy practice in San Diego, California, since retiring as a Professor of Philosophy.

Bill and I have philosophized together all of our lives, since we were small children.
Bill's wife, Kathy, Bill Puett, and sister Cyd Ropp



Bill has been employing the Simple Explanation as part of his therapeutic technique for a few years now. We thought you would like to see how. Here is one of his case studies utilizing past life regression.

CASE STUDY: Jane -- burned as a witch

Jane was a 22 year old client who saw me because of a bothersome issue she'd had for as long as she could remember.  No one was allowed to touch her neck.   She was engaged to be married; and even her fiancé, John, was not allowed to touch her neck.  Jane also made it clear to John that she did not want to have a child, especially not a daughter.  Because he wanted to have children, a major problem in their relationship arose.

 

In my hypnotherapy practice, I do not lead or make suggestions based on what I think is the cause of my client's issues. I listen to what their subconscious reveals and facilitate with that information my client's recovery. I use past life and parallel life therapy to facilitate transformation. In Jane's case, I did not anticipate what her subconscious was to reveal when she was in deep hypnosis.

In a past life, she recalled being burned at the stake as an alleged witch.  Her first recollection was being in the fire.  I asked her to move out from the fire and to see herself at a distance.  She saw that she had a brace of some kind around her neck that kept her in place.  She asked to go back into the fire whereby I took her quickly through her death and into the “interim” between lives.  She was immediately relieved. 

 

While she was in the interim, I asked her if there was anyone she wanted to see again from that past life.  She said “yes,” and I asked her to call that person into the interim.  A little girl came to her who had been her daughter in that past life and had died before her mother had been killed.  They had a deeply moving reunion.  (I regularly do grief work for past life persons who have lost loved ones.) 

 

I then asked Jane to go back into that past life in order to create a “new” past life.  In the new past life she was not brought before the inquisition and her daughter did not die as a child.  I then brought Jane back to the present with full recall of the old and new past life experiences.  The original past life was now presented as merely a story with no future implications while the new past life was carried forward for positive future implications.

The results were wonderful and transformative.  The day of the past life regression was the last day of Jane’s neck issue.  She had removed the meme of being held on the stake with a neck brace.  She had also removed the meme of not wanting a child.  Within a year, she and her husband had a baby daughter.  Both Jane and John were thrilled with the pregnancy and the birth of a child.

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Here is what Bill and I think is going on with this sort of therapy--

The Simple Explanation suggests that each living person is comprised of their Unit of Consciousness (aka "soul") enshrouded by a bundle of memes considered important to that person, glued there, in a manner of speaking, by their personal karma. (you can read all about this Simple Explanation of souls and karma in Chapters 2 and 3 of the Simple Explanation book or in this little article, "Who Am I?".)

When a client is hypnotically regressed out of this life and experiences a past life, the memes important to that life are once again attracted to their UC. This is why clients under hypnosis may look and speak differently than they normally do, because the old meme bundle is again active.

In Jane's case, the experience of being locked in stocks and burned to death as a witch made such a karmic impression upon her UC that it clung to her new life, causing a neurotic fear of being touched on her neck. She also carried a meme of disappointment and longing over the early death of her daughter in that life that created such fear in this life that she was unwilling to risk having another.

In the safety and comfort of the therapeutic session, Jane was able to move beyond her traumatic death and discover the peace of the interim period following death.

In Simple Explanation terms, we would say this peace comes as the soul's meme bundle is cut loose at death. In the period between lives we are freed from earthly memes, cares, and concerns. The meme bundle later reattaches, according to one's karma, after a newly formed life enters the world.

In Jane's case, it was the newly imagined "alternate ending" of the past life that finally released all of her fears. Jane found actual peace and satisfaction with the rewritten history, and she carried that peace forward into this life. It was as though Jane's karma had been rewritten, and the memes associated with her previously unhappy life and death no longer clung to her current meme bundle. She was now able to view those memes from a distance, as if they were attached to someone else.

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Immediate resolution of clients' presenting problems is really unheard of in therapy. Usually, clients wrestle with their meme bundles for years, in and out of therapy. With Dr. Puett's past-life hypnotherapy, clients are released that very day. We believe the therapy is so effective because not only are the original incidents identified (whether in this life or a past life), but a new history is written that gives resolution retroactively to the time of the inciting incident. Rather than carrying the mourning for her lost daughter forward from one lifetime into the next, Jane's joyous reunion with her daughter plucked the loss meme right out of her bundle. When she awoke from hypnosis she felt joy rather than fear, and the fear never returned. The fear meme was replaced by a joyous meme, allowing her present life to go forward.

As for her gruesome death, under hypnosis Jane discovered she felt no pain or fear on "the other side" of death, once she had been taken consciously through. Therefore that meme was no longer a source of pain and fear. Once again, it was as if the karma associated with dying at the stake was rewritten as it was reimagined. Bill and I propose that immediate resolution of a client's problems and the transformation of a client's life is accomplished through karmic cleansing as old memes are dropped and not reattached to the present life.

Bill's therapeutic technique is a novel approach that utilizes concepts of personhood out of the Simple Explanation. Hypnotic regression, coupled with rewriting history, is an extremely effective way to drop burdensome memes.

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You need not believe in reincarnation to benefit from this technique. I personally held the position for several years that these past life sessions of Bill's were "merely" therapeutic metaphors. Useful stories expressing fears and mysteries in a neat, narrative package. Not unlike dream imagery. Since writing the Simple Explanation I have come to take these stories as something different.

Does this mean that everyone who holds that burned-at-the-stake meme was actually burned at the stake themselves, personally? Not necessarily. In the Simple Explanation, the memes in our bundles are not only held by you, they are held in common by everyone who resonates with that meme. You can come to hold onto a meme because of past life issues, but you could also be holding a meme because you picked it up in this life. It may be that you are a midwife who is currently under some sort of prosecution or review board over your midwifery practices. Considering that tens of thousands of midwives were burned at the stake during the witch trials of the Early Modern Period, it's little wonder your current situation would attract that particular meme to your personal bundle. The meme actually "lives" in the transpersonal field we all share--it's been out there all along, you just didn't resonate to it before it applied to you.