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The Rediff Interview/Karl Everding

'Our past lives determine what we are today'

Karl Everding can help you go back to your past life. Or lives, depending on how many you can recall. The German psychotherapist has been visiting India for two decades now, teaching Reiki, gestalt therapy, meditation, yoga and transactional analysis. But he is best known for his experiments with past life therapy and helps you fight back chronic phobias and cure sexual and psychosomatic ailments. Simply by making you regress into an earlier incarnation. The psychotherapist spoke to Pritish Nandy during his visit to Bombay.

You are a rare therapist who does not use hypnosis while regressing patients into their past lives. So how do you get them there? What is your regression technique?

I try to persuade them to look into their own lives by slowly and carefully guiding them there. Not by hypnotising them and taking them there. The choice is with the person. He or she must take the decision, must have the will to go back on his or her own. I do not take them there. I do not lead them there. I am only the guide, the counsellor.

Sometimes this journey into the past cures a chronic ailment. Sometimes a nagging fear that simply will not go away. Or a pain you cannot escape, despite all possible treatment in this life. That is because its roots lie in an earlier experience in an earlier life and nothing that you do can uproot that fear or that pain.

Can you give me a specific example?

I was in Jamshedpur last week for a session and there was this woman with headaches that refused to go away. She had tried everything and failed. Finally, past life therapy helped her get over it. Another woman had severe pains in her stomach. Pains that kept recurring and no standard medical treatment could help her. In fact, no doctor could even figure out where the pain came from and why. By the time the seminar was over, she had overcome her pain. She actually went away cured. Hopefully forever.

Another example I encountered in Europe some time back. A man with a serious problem of stomach cramps. On regression, he saw himself as a young man in the Middle Ages eating wild mushrooms to show off his courage. After therapy, during which he re-experienced his past life and came to terms with the actual happening, the cramps vanished forever.

Any such examples here in Mumbai?

One happened here, at the Anant Hotel on Juhu beach, next to the Hare Krishna temple, where I have stayed many times on my annual visits to this city. There was this woman with a very severe case of snake phobia. Even if she saw a snake on television, she would get into a panic. She came for treatment. When she went back in regression, she saw herself in a snake pit in an earlier life. We stopped there and she re-experienced the snake pit and its horrors. After that, her phobia went away forever. She could even go out into the streets and watch a snake charmer from close quarters, something she would not have dared to do before. She could even pick up a baby cobra and experience tender feelings towards it. It changed the quality of all her relationships. She became a new person because she was free of all her fears, her anxieties.

How is it that most people meet and share relationships with the same people in different lives? That is what these past life books say. That the same people come again and again in your lives, to play different roles.

That is also my experience in regression therapy. That patients, when they go into their past lives, find familiar faces, familiar experiences. Through these, they understand their present life and cure themselves of phobias they can easily do without. That is how past life therapy works, by helping you to understand the fears, the pains, the illnesses that you experience in this life because of your earlier experiences in earlier lives.

Have you ever regressed yourself?

Sure I have.

Did you regress yourself or did you seek outside help?

Both in fact. On different occasions. I took the help of the man who trained me, Maurice Netherton. He was the author of the book Past Lives Therapy. He taught me how to regress.

What did you see or experience when you entered your past lives?

I went back into animal incarnations. It was very interesting. I remembered myself as a small monkey in an earlier life.

What useful purpose did this information, even assuming that it is correct, fulfill?

Well, I used it for therapeutic reasons. Look, Sir, I do not tell people their past lives. I let them experience it. That is my role. If I told them about their past lives, they may have believed it but it would have left no durable impression. They must experience it. Only then it helps.

Any specific disease that past life therapy helps to cure more easily than others?

I have cured many people of asthma, for instance. Some of them experienced suffocation in their past lives. I helped them by making them go back and relive the experience. I also taught them breathing techniques. Most of them got quickly cured but a few did not. You must remember the simple fact that everything you experience, you feel in this life is related to your past lives. In India, it is simple to tell you all this. You are ready to listen. In fact, you know all this. But in the West it is not so easy. People are disbelieving.

How long does it usually take to regress into one's past life?

In a weekend workshop, we usually attempt it on the second day. But it differs from patient to patient. Why don't you come to Kamala? It is a few miles out of Frankfurt. We have a ten day session there in July.

Can you regress me into my past lives today?

No, not today. I usually need about three days to make it happen properly. There is a process of familiarisation required. Plus, you will have to do the exercises regularly. These will help you. Help you to discover yourself better. The more time you have, the greater your chances of success.

How did you land up here in India the first time?

I always wanted to be here. The healing techniques I practise have their roots in India and I was keen to come to the fountainhead of all this wisdom. The first time I came, I had such a wonderful time that I have never stopped coming. Every year I am here. I visit Mumbai and Calcutta; sometimes Chennai. This time I went on to Trichy for a firewalk.

Do you firewalk yourself?

Certainly. That is the essence of my courses. Experience the beauty, the majesty of life and you will discover so many things that you did not even know existed. These are tools that you can then use to cure people, heal them of permanent ailments, phobias, manias, tensions. Once you do the firewalk, for instance, your faith in your own abilities enhances. You realise that you are capable of doing anything.

Do you believe that people actually live many lives on this planet?

Yes I do. I believe we are losing the insight to realise that life is more than this experience, this experience of you and me sitting here and speaking. Life stretches across time. It stretches across centuries and you can go further and further back. The more you regress, the more the chances of you being able to cure yourself. Past life therapy is about experimenting with one's own past and finding the roots of one's present experiences in there.

When are you back here again?

In October. After the 95th birthday celebrations of my father, Walter Everding on the 2nd. I live with him.

That happens to be Gandhi's birthday as well.

I know. Gandhi has been a great influence on me. He taught me the importance of an open mind. Open enough to believe in anything, experience anything, attempt anything.

The Rediff Interviews

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