How many lives does a person have, his soul? One or more? If there are several of them, then who were we before? Do we remember previous lives?
Modern studies of consciousness show that each person has a layer of the psyche, where various problems and dramatic experiences are concentrated. Under normal conditions, protective mechanisms work that do not allow these experiences to come out. “It's another matter,” comments the popular science magazine “New Scientist” (UK), “when a situation arises in which latent emotions are released.”
In the East, for thousands of years, they have been practicing a method that allows you to achieve unusual states of consciousness with the help of breathing exercises - the so-called pranayama. Using it, you can get rid of ailments and gain new knowledge about the world and about yourself. No wonder the words "breath", "soul", "spirit" are the same root in many languages.
Recently Stanislav Grof, an American psychiatrist, based on many years of psychotherapeutic experience, developed a concept that fundamentally changes the view of the nature of human consciousness. He questioned the seemingly indisputable thesis that thoughts are the product of the brain.
“The activity of human consciousness,” says Grof, “can be compared to the work of a television. After all, it never occurs to anyone that the program guide is created in the device itself. What is the basis of our belief that it is in the brain that thoughts arise? This is usually justified by the fact that damage to individual parts of the cerebral cortex causes a disorder of a person's conscious activity. However, malfunctions in the TV immediately affect the picture quality. In other words, the dependence between the work of the brain and the products of a person's conscious activity does not yet solve the problem of the true source of thoughts, ideas, ideas."
Consciousness, according to Grof, is an unlimited information field, which, through yet unknown communication channels, interacts with all existing organic and inorganic forms of life.
The structure of human consciousness is unusually complex: deep in the subconscious there are unexplored levels, the so-called. matrices that are not only responsible for the preservation of knowledge about ancient historical eras, but also contain information about the development paths of the entire cosmos.
Grof claims that as a result of the hypnotic effect that activates the activity of matrices, his patients recall the language, the customs of long-dead cultures, describe to the smallest detail the clothes, architecture, the way of life of people who died a hundred and millennia ago.
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"The main goal of Grof's research is to help people look at themselves from the standpoint of eternity, to reveal to them the old simple truth that happiness is possible only as a result of the disclosure of inexhaustible and yet unclaimed forces that exist in the depths of our subconscious," summarizes the "New Scientist" …
Aldous Huxley, who was one of the pioneers of research into unusual states of consciousness, argued that the brain is not a receiver of information, but rather a limiter, a stub of this information. And what will happen if the "limiter" is weakened, what information will the person receive?
He investigated 23 people who, in unusual states of consciousness, experienced the so-called. reincarnation - "reincarnation of the soul." Among them were 8 children who told amazing things. Say, once they lived not in southern cities, but in northern villages, where they were … adults! Children in great detail described the life of Indian tribes, told about their appearance, traditions, rituals. Based on such descriptions, the scientist determined a place where he could try to find such villages, and went to Alaska. And he was indescribably amazed when he really found there villages and people very similar to those described by the children. The kids had never been there, and before their reincarnation they knew nothing about the life of the northern aborigines.
In unusual states of consciousness, people tell such details about the culture of ancient times that are known to only a few historians and archaeologists. But among the patients there are small children and adults with a low level of intelligence who are simply not able to have such knowledge. Such experiments make it possible to speak about the fundamental possibility of gaining access to special knowledge, bypassing traditional sources of information.
Stanislav Grof does not categorically state that "past lives" exist. But his studies of unusual states of consciousness make it possible to understand how the ancient belief in reincarnation originated and why, even in our time, it possesses hundreds of millions of people, among whom there are many scientists.
During prayers, meditation (the human psyche is in a state of depth and concentration), hunger, self-torture and other religious rituals, people enter similar states and very vividly, acutely experience episodes of life "in past incarnations of the soul", which sometimes seem to them more real, than being in "this body."
Source: “Interesting newspaper. The world of the unknown”№10 2014