ENCOUNTERS WITH THE PAST How Man can Experience and Relive History

'Deep sleep. . deep sleep. Time is running backwards and you are free to choose a character in the immensity of all time.' So begins Joe Keeton as he leads another hypnotized subject back in his search for a personality from the past. No one, least of all the person hypnotized, knows what character will emerge but as Joe Keeton's questioning continues, the subject gradually assumes the voice and the attitudes of a personality from another time and place. In his new existence, the subject is able to express facts and experiences of which he has apparently no knowledge in his conscious life - not -only well-documented historical events but also the names of unrecorded people, the trivia of everyday existence which it has taken hours of research to check. The seven subjects featured in Encounters with the Past (and they are only a tiny fraction of the thousands hypnotized by Joe Keeton) show vividly what it must have been like to live in another time. Although the subjects do not use the language of the time, it is in the small, unerringly accurate, details of their lives that a rounded and totally convincing picture of another life is built up. They recount their personal hopes and fears, speak of important historical events, not as they might be described in a history book, but with the immediacy of an eyewitness account. It is this ability to bring. the past alive in the present that makes hypnotic regression such an exciting and important new field of investigation. What is happening when subjects seem to throw off their conscious personality and assume completely the character of someone in the past? Is it really reincarnation? Is it merely unknown memories from the depths of the unconscious or can memory be handed on genetically? Peter Moss explores these and other possible explanations, finding out what the subjects feel about their new personalities and how the experience has affected their lives. But whether the answer belongs to the supernatural or to the present mind, hypnotic regression is an unforgettable phenomenon which cannot be ignored.-