When I Was Someone Else

Stephane Allix is a prominent French journalist who is also founder of the Research Institute on Extraordinary Experiences (INREES) which has a magazine, conferences and a TV channel. This book is a brilliantly riveting and intensely moving narrative that sheds new light on the nature of identity and links between human lives. It begins with his waking vision in Peru where he relives scenes of the life of/as SS officer Alexander Hermann (he immediately knows his name) including a desolate snow scene, fondness for a little girl, lying next to another familiar man by a lake, a scene from Paris, and finally Alexander's violent death with blood spurting from his throat: "He is dead. He is me. His body is my body." The book is an epic inner and outer journey that ultimately reveals the stunning accuracy of his vision sequence while at the same time vividly depicting the horrors of the SS in Germany and the Russian campaign. He discovers that Alexander really existed, uncovering a detailed 80-page dossier of his life and subsequently undertaking extensive historical and geographical research.

Through his investigations, journeys and interviews with family members that he tracks down, Stephane discovers that every detail of his vision is true: there was an Obersturmfuhrer Alexander Herrmann, and he recognises from photos he is shown the girl as Alexander's niece and the other man as his brother Alfred; Alexander did spend time in Paris, and his death exactly as experienced took place on October 20, 1941 during the Russian campaign with snow already on the ground. Stephane vividly conjures up the history of the time, and is helped by his own intuitive hunches when on the ground, where synchronicities involving researchers and archivists abound – the writing is vivid and intense, reconstructing critical conversations and expounding historical circumstances in the search for leads. He remarks that 'in posing questions, you run the risk of getting answers. And the responses are capable of having us put our way of living into question' – a situation that applies to himself, although he is in a minority in seriously studying our common existential enigmas. The confrontation with Alexander's presence in Dachau brings him face-to-face with the brutality of death and suffering that calls out for healing.

Stephane consults a number of mediums, all of whom give him evidential information. A sensitive Marie-Pierre Dillenseger suggests that Alexander is part of him, a redirected warrior energy (from dark to light) that is coming back in/to him (Stephane was drawn to spend time as a war correspondent in Afghanistan as a young man) to move forward on the unresolved issue of going beyond violence. Another medium Henry picks up many significant elements from Alexander and sees the connection with Stephane as vibrational, 'the continuation of the mind energy of this person…'. This resonates with Stephane who writes: "I feel at one and the same time that Alexander is part of me and is an entity external to me." There are occasions when Stephane feels that Alexander is intuitively guiding him as an external being but others such as revisiting a childhood haunt when he feels that Alexander is in him. Stephane concludes that 'Stephane and I are not the same man, but emanations of the same consciousness. We are linked by a breath of life that moves through us both and is impregnated by the character and emotions of our two lives; and no doubt many more besides. It was given to me to measure during these months of inquiry that our lives are individual and unique, even though what animates them is eternal. I am not Alexander who returns, but an individual carried by an immortal breeze that passes from eternity into mortal bodies.' (p. 337)

In his book on memory, The Presence of the Past, Rupert Sheldrake explains such connections through self-similarity of morphic resonance. And in a personal communication with a friend and former intelligence officer Diana Fynn, Diana explained that her fiancé had been killed in the Battle of Britain and that she had ostensibly communicated with him on many occasions after his death. When he was about three, one of her grandsons began to speak about and draw fighter aircraft, which prompted Diana on her next session to ask if there was any connection between them. The reply was 'a part of me went forward into your grandson.' This intriguing answer suggests both survival and a form/energy of reincarnation consistent with what Stephane describes. This paints a more complex picture whereby, as Ramana Maharshi suggested when questioned about reincarnation, that it is only and always the One Self that incarnates, as Stephane himself proposes, but seemingly with resonances through time.

The chapters around Alexander's death are of searing intensity, exhibiting Stephane's deep humanity and moral courage in relentlessly pursuing his investigations, which many would have abandoned. These SS officers all obeyed orders and thought they were doing the right thing – this kind of unthinking obedience is terrifying and is fuelled by fear, then as now. The conscience is ground down, and Stephane even relives a pitiless memory of gunning down a whole family in a farm building: 'No one resists, no one fights back. Just a mother who holds her infant up so I can take better aim and finish it off on the first shot. Then I finish off the woman.' (p. 226)

In June 1941, Alexander's final and fateful campaign begins. Hundreds of thousands of troops die on both sides as autumn turns to winter and conditions become appalling. The records describe these last days of unimaginable fatigue and hardship, which Stephane vividly recreates by drawing on contemporary journals. He also experiences accurate intuitions in relation to where Alexander's body is buried. He visits the area on the same day that Alexander was killed in similar conditions, experiencing himself as both the dead man and the man who is alive. The final outcome of this existential odyssey is healing, even redemption, a recovery of conscience and humanity. Collectively, this process is far from complete, but I can't recommend this book too highly as an alchemical emergence of forgiveness from guilt, sensitivity from callousness and light from darkness.