Regression,
Past-Life Therapy for Here and Now Freedom

A concise and practical manual to understand and handle past-life experiences.

In the early ninteen-eighties, Samuel Sagan, a young medical practitioner, was so impressed with the staggering results obtained through regression that he made it his main modality when working with patients.

Over a period of fifteen years, this led him to develop ISIS, a full system of regression and past-life therapy, of which the main principles are presented in this book.

Excerpt

Samskara is one of the most important Sanskrit terms in Hindu philosophy. Yoga, the union with the Higher Self, is said to be achieved as soon as the last samskara has been worked out. Therefore the primary objective of all yogas, or paths of self transformation, is to eradicate the samskaras of the mind. This is why it is so important for those who to want to know themselves, or rather their Self, to have a clear vision of all the mechanisms of their samskaras.

1.1 The fundamental mechanism
You have a car accident at a particular place. Then, for a long while, each time you drive past that place you feel uneasy; a wave of fear arises. You may even feel uncomfortable just by thinking of the episode. The traumatic imprint left in your mind after the accident is called a samskara. The malaise that subsequently appears each time you drive past the place is called a reactional emotion, or more simply an emotion. The tendency of the samskara to generate a wave of fear whenever remembering the accident is called the dynamism of the samskara.

Basically, all samskaras operate in the same way. Simple. Yet, according to the Upanishads, the final chapters of the Vedas, as soon as the last knot of samskaras in the heart has been untied, the highest state of consciousness is cognised, absolute freedom is reached, and martyo 'mrto bhavati, "the mortal becomes immortal". (Katha-Upanishad 6.15 and Brihad-Aranyaka-Upanishad 4.4.7.)

1.2 How could we define a samskara?
Samskaras are the tracks left in the mind by previous traumatic experiences. Roughly speaking, samskaras are the 'scars' of the mind. (The association samskara-scar is easy to remember.) In the fourfold model of subtle bodies used in this book, the layer of the mind corresponds to the astral body (This simple model comprising physical body, etheric body, astral body and Higher Ego is outlined in section 4.3.). Samskaras can therefore be regarded as imprints or scars in the astral body, as will be examined in detail throughout this book.

Let us consider a few examples to clarify the concept of samskara. If a woman is raped by her father when she is sixteen years old, it leaves a track in her psychological organisation, and this track is a samskara. Her way of relating to men will never be the same again. In various life situations, this track will deeply influence her emotional behaviour. This means that the samskara is neither neutral nor mute. Rather, it is endowed with a powerful dynamism - an emotional charge. It generates emotions, attractions and repulsions that will significantly modify the inner life of this person. Being associated with such traumatic and painful memories, the samskara cannot remain silent; it has to express itself in a conscious or unconscious way. This applies to all samskaras - not just a few particular cases. Whether you realise it or not, in the depths of yourself your samskaras are perpetually crying out to be healed.

Now suppose that this woman, instead of being raped at the age of sixteen, was assaulted when she was three. Her experience was even more terrifying and traumatic, because as a little girl she had no way of understanding what was happening. To her, the assault was like a murder. But the shock was so unbearable that she forgot everything, completely wiping out the episode from her conscious memory. The samskara has been stored with an even greater emotional charge than in the case of the sixteen-year-old girl; but in this case, the samskara is completely unconscious. Later on as an adult, her entire emotional and sexual life will be undermined by a hidden trauma of which she is completely unaware. She may run away from men, or run after men, or display all sorts of irrational behaviour against her own free will. She may develop a major disease in the pelvic region, or miscarry when she tries to have a child. Without a process that allows her to explore the depths of her unconscious, she will never be able to understand why her life is such a mess. Any attempt to reorganise her existence will be doomed from the start, for she is missing the main piece of her personal puzzle.

Up to this point, all that has been envisaged fits into psychoanalytic models and common psychological modes of understanding quite well. Further, one could ponder on the fact that Sanskrit texts were already discussing these topics a few thousand years before Freud. But a major difference is encountered when practising regression - clients discover a number of samskaras that cannot be related to any experience from their present life.

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