I was being treated for substance abuse and a variety of addictive and self-destructive acting-out behaviors. Therapy was not proceeding well. I know now that I was suffering then from PTSD, but at the time this was not a recognized disorder. Although under hypnosis I identified quite clearly the sexual abuse as a teenager and physical abuse as a child, which was the cause of my problems, these events were discounted because of the Freudian biases of therapists at the time and of the hypnotherapist who was treating me. The therapist decided to try to find a childhood - an early second year or first year - trauma. Negative. He then decided to regress to pre-birth and again there was a negative result. He then decided to try past life regression.
A Mayan functionary
I regressed back to a 13th or 14th century Central American Mayan city where I was a minor religious functionary in a temple where human sacrifice was regularly performed. Although I had very real private misgivings about it, I performed my religious duties rather than finding another means of employment, essentially out of lack of courage.
Back to present day, I then went to a priest to whom I confessed the sin of sacrificing humans, and the priest absolved me and gave me a fairly stiff penance, namely working to save lives to counterbalance the lives sacrificed. After receiving absolution from the priest, for the first time since I was 13 or 14, I was able to stop drinking, taking drugs and acting out sexually. I stopped smoking and stopped drinking other strong stimulants such as coffee (I used to drink pots of it daily). I continued to see that therapist for quite some time. From time to time, I had other recollections of past lives, but that one was the one with the most dramatic results. I was able to go back to college after the priest absolved me, and finished with honors at the University of Pennsylvania, which I attended through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Vocational Rehabilitation program. (I was a disabled veteran and, after my discharge from the military, had spent some time in a hospital and under therapy for multiple substance abuse and addictive sexual behaviors. I had been unable to function because of the high degree of anxiety and rage attacks I was subject to on a daily basis.
Back in ancient Egypt
After graduating from U of P, I went on to graduate school and a teaching and research career. There is one more event, which I also wish to relate, which also involved past life recollections. The therapist who was treating me was also an Orthodox rabbi, and later converted to Orthodox Christianity (and was later ordained as a priest) because of my experience with absolution from the priest. The result had been so spectacular. This man had severe personal problems and I was in therapy with him under court order as part of a deal with a judge who lowered a felony charge of drug possession to a disorderly conduct charge and put me under my therapist's supervision.
My therapist at one point started to force me to submit to sexual intercourse, ostensibly as a treatment for my own sexual addictions. At one point, he re-enacted a sexual rape I had experienced at the age of 15. After this encounter, I went to a place in the mountains and threw myself down in a grassy area near a brook I had played next to as a young child. I then suddenly found myself regressing back through former lives rapidly and finally came to my first incarnation, which was in upper Egypt approximately during the 5th century BCE. My family owned land and had official duties in the locality, and I took them over when I grew up. I died a moderately well-off local official also with some minor religious duties, but essentially a secular official with some land and a family.
Heightened consciousness
After the regression back to my first incarnation, I entered a state of heightened consciousness in which I could see that all beings essentially were connected, and that life was something that sort of passed through all of creation and did not end with death or, for that matter, begin with life. Rage and other anxieties disappeared altogether, and a fundamental calmness entered my life. Gradually the state of heightened awareness wore off and I returned to a more normal psychological state, but the memory of the experience never left me and has been a fundamental guiding experience ever since.
Before I began to drink, at age 13, I spent about a year waking up in another world when I went to sleep. Every night, I would wake up and have to live in a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. This went on for most of a year. After the experience, essentially religious, of regressing back to my first life and then seeing the continuity of life through all things, I was in a kitchen where a commune prepared its food. This particular commune also was a rock band, and it later recorded several records. Several of the musicians became quite famous superstars and the band manager a famous producer. One became a landscape architect in Delaware County, Pennsylvania and another became a well-known antique furniture restorer in Buck County, Pennsylvania. His wife is a well-known artist. At the time I am referring to, they were all dirt poor, and I had invited them to stay at one of my father's lodges in the Catskills. The cook was about to make spaghetti and had a large pot boiling on the stove. He went to take the pot off the stove and somehow poured the boiling water all over himself. The skin on his body swelled and was blistering. Something told me to pray and then I was moved to lay hands. I did not actually touch the skin because it was badly wounded and I was sure that I would only damage it further if I touched it, so I moved my hands over the wounds while at the same time feeling the healing flowing out of my hands onto the person. Before our eyes, the skin healed. The next day, there was absolutely nothing left of the burns and the skin was smooth and fresh.
A confrontation with God
Many years after that, I had been in a monastic community, which was failing. It was an Orthodox Christian community and I was in charge of social ministry, mostly to isolated aged and disabled people with no income or support network. I decided to leave the community for a number of reasons having to do with situations which I felt were not appropriate to a religious community. I was angry and I went to Max's Kansas City in New York City. I told God to take his job as monk and stick it. I told him I was quitting and going out and getting drunk. I spent the whole night drinking and spent several hundreds of dollars. (I was teaching at a university then and had a decent personal income and, under the rules of our community, this was my own money.)
After the bar closed at 4:00 a.m., as I was leaving, I discovered I was still stone sober. Before going through the outer door, and after already closing the inner door on my way out, I heard a soft laugh or chuckle in the small area between the two doors. I looked to see who had laughed, but there wasn't anybody. Then, deep inside, I heard something - not actual words, but a sense - which meant something like: So who was going to go out and get drunk? My answer at that point was. "Yes, sir. You win." I went back to my monastic duties, and a few weeks later the community was dissolved by the bishop because of the irregularities I had been angry about. Sometime later, at my own request, I was absolved of my own monastic vows by the bishop with his blessings.