NOW AND THEN – REINCARNATION, PSYCHIATRY AND DAILY LIFE

Soul-centred therapies are based on the principle that the soul, far from being a metaphysical obscurity, can be readily engaged, and that given the opportunity, it will tell the story of its spiritual journey, both incarnate and discarnate

Just what comprises the soul is the subject of endless debate. Is it a part of the self? If so, what is its relation to the anatomy of the psyche? Sigmund Freud never found it in the unconscious, but then, perhaps he was looking in the wrong place, since he regarded the mind as an entirely individual production. Carl Jung, walking the tightrope between psychology and spirituality, enabled his patients, through what he called 'active imagination' to tap into the mysteries of the collective unconscious, a reservoir of collective wisdom transcending the individual psyche. Yet, mainstream psychology has always fought shy of opening the door to 'other worlds'.

Why should this be so? The consensus view of reality, which gave birth to Western scientific enquiry, is one bounded by the five senses and anything beyond our immediate perception of space-time has been ridiculed, pathologised, or attributed to religious wish-fulfilment. The Cartesian divide between body and soul has led to a frantic material realism that can only equate death of the body with the end of life. It follows that consciousness must be produced by the body (brain) and it would seem that the best we can hope for is to understand how this extraordinary faculty of self-awareness may serve the blind goal of evolution.

If I believed such nonsense, I would not be reviewing these two books, for I would have dismissed them as junk. I would also have to deny my own experience of 'past lives' as junk, along with my fundamental beliefs about the meaning and purpose of my life, and everyone else's too.

As farmers know, most sheep, cattle and horses can be safely left to graze in a field if the boundary is clearly marked, even only by a single strand of white tape. The trouble comes with the one in a hundred, who is possessed of insatiable curiosity to explore beyond the perimeter, for where s/he goes, the rest may follow. Humans exhibit much the same herd behaviour in the field of cultural and intellectual assumptions. The leaders set down what we should think, and most of us do as we are told, especially when we are young and impressionable.

Later, when we see what a mess our leaders are making of our planet, as well as inciting the human race to self-immolation (over 100 million killings in the 20th century – more than in all the rest of human history) we begin to doubt their sagacity and are more inclined to turn to our own intuitive wisdom. We may not be seers, but we can be reasonably sure that our truths are as worth upholding as theirs. Further, we find a delight in the vividness and authenticity of what arises from within – from the soul, dare I say.

So long as we do not expect other people to fall in line with our thinking, we are free to pursue this inner journey to our hearts' content. Yet, the human being is a social animal and we soon find ourselves drawn to others who are making broadly the same discoveries. That is how affiliations like the Scientific and Medical Network come to exist. Meanwhile, atheists get together and enjoy proving to each other that there is no God. On the atheist alliance website can be found The New Dictionary of Unbelief with - guess what - a foreword by Richard Dawkins! Such a book could come straight out of Harry Potter, for unbelief is nothing but belief in unbelief.

I am not saying 'anything goes' provided we like the sound of it, for there is still room for questioning, discernment and critical examination, yet the longer I live, the more persuaded I am that we end up having found the evidence to support our belief in what appealed to us in the first place.

I possess no extrasensory faculty, but from early childhood, I 'knew' there was a world beyond this one; when I gazed up into a blue sky, I would feel a painful yearning within my chest to pierce that diaphanous blue veil and enter the mystery beyond. I now know that this moment will come with death and that my body must stay behind. (This fact used to worry me, but as my body accrues the problems of aging, I have to say that it no longer seems such a great loss).

Having declared my hand, I can now assure the reader that if like me, you hold that the soul is eternal but has the propensity to become embodied for the purposes of its spiritual evolution, you will find both of these books immensely interesting.

Neither one is a great literary work, although Denys Kelsey writes touchingly, with humour and self-deprecation. Nor will these books persuade the sceptic of the reality of worlds beyond ours. However, the best place to start is with the phenomenology and on that account alone, both books are a mine of information.

Kelsey was a member of the Network and a founding affiliate of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (though not, I think, active in its affairs). He died in 2004, having lived for some years in Switzerland, and after reading this book, I was left with a real sense of loss that I never met him. He comes across as a warm, compassionate man yet, professionally speaking, something of a loner. I had not known about his work previously and I wish that more of us psychiatrists interested in spirituality and mental health had been aware of his original contribution.

Kelsey discovered in the '50s that he had a gift for hypnosis, and found, through trial and error, that his patients could be regressed to the womb and into other lives. These researches were powerfully corroborated by his meeting (and marrying) the clairvoyant Joan Grant. Kelsey writes clearly and impressively about what he called 'ghosts' – not apparitions of the popular kind, but unresolved neurotic complexes that have been split off and rendered unconscious in the course of 'other lives', and which come back to haunt us through impacting on our minds and bodies in this life. Kelsey works with other lives as a psychotherapist, unravelling psychopathology according to his own understanding of developmental psychology, part Freudian, part Adlerian and part Kelseyan.

Andy Tomlinson's book has a different flavour. Populated with references to all the leading practitioners in the past life and spiritual regression ('between lives') fields, the book reflects the breadth of Tomlinson's training and practice. Where Kelsey's book is interesting because it traces the author's own unique journey of enquiry and discovery, Tomlinson's is more of a compendium that depicts, by way of numerous clinical vignettes, the journey of the soul, and leaves one with a compelling picture of the immense complexity of the unseen universe of spirit. Tomlinson acknowledges his indebtedness to the work of Roger Woolger and Michael Newton and shows when the focus needs to be on working through a past life (especially with traumatic 'frozen' memories) and when the need is to work with spirit, veridically in its most pure form, between lives. The former deals with spiritual psychotherapeutics and the latter with the higher education of the soul. A third area that frequently comes the way of transpersonal therapists, spirit attachment and release, is usefully included under Intrusive Energies.

Both authors are concerned with integration of the psyche. Their aim is to undo developmental arrest, whether in this life or another, in order to bring about healing and they do so by working with an altered state of consciousness conducive to a therapeutic dialogue with the soul.

Stage hypnotism has done a great disservice to hypnotherapy by making a practical joke out of a sensitive, therapeutic tool; indeed, hypnotherapy is no longer taught to psychiatrists. Until psychiatry can open the doors of perception a little wider, the spiritual universe will slip through its fingers. Hamlet pointed out: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'. Yet it only takes a moment to snip that single strand of white tape and the world will never look quite the same again.