PROLOGUE

I once heard a delightful story that the ancients came to earth, bringing with them the secrets of eternity. The ancients worried about how to hide these great secrets until mankind was spiritually ready to appreciate and appropriately use them. One lamented, "If we hide them on land, people will conquer the land and discover them." Another commented, "If we hide them in the sea, mankind will reach the very bottom of the sea." A third observed, "If we hide them in space, men and women will one day soar into space." They pondered.
Then the wisest said, "Let us hide these secrets in the last place they will think to search. Let us hide the secrets in their own minds." And this proved to be the perfect hiding place.

Not until recently has mankind dared to explore this final frontier; people are now searching their minds for the secrets of eternity. I am part of this exploration. I am a past-life researcher. I do hypno-regression to help people experience episodes of past lives. I also help people become channels through which voices speak from eternity. This is a book about how, and why, I do it. I have few theories to offer, but I have a quarter of a century of exploration, exhaustive testing and research to share with you. I didn't set out to be a past-life researcher. In fact, when I was young the word didn't even exist.
I did have an early desire to be a priest, to help people achieve their spiritual goals. Later, in junior high school, I thought I'd be a detective, a goal implanted by watching far too much television. Now I have become a detective of a sort, investigating clues to the mysteries of time and the soul. And I sincerely hope my work helps people grow spiritually.

My work takes a scientific and humanistic approach to previously uncharted areas of the inner mind. The belief in past lives is centuries old, but the methods of exploring and testing this belief are modern. One of the things I have realized over time is the spiritual significance of the human mind that is not to be linked or confused with religion. Religion has an important place in the community, but it oversteps common sense or becomes dogmatic if it says, "Only our religion and church have the answers; God is on our side only." No one owns an exclusive franchise on God or truth. God and the spirit are universal known to all people of all ages and places, if sometimes under different names. Naive people say jokingly, "Oh, when you talk of past lives, why is everybody Cleopatra or Mark Anthony?" But I say from experience that we were not Cleopatras or Mark Anthonys. We were street sweepers, murderers, cutthroats, rogues, and whores. We were also priests, priestesses, healers, helpers, nurturing mothers, and providing fathers. We were varied people with varied life experiences, just as we are today.

Within this context, only cynics will declare that we were all famous personalities and only egotists will hope so. As a past-life researcher, my primary tool is hypnosis - a mind-awake-body- asleep process. Unfortunately, the word is loaded with meanings, not all of them favorable. As I see it, there are three kinds of hypnotists, each using hypnosis for different purposes.

The first group comprises the stage entertainers. They use hypnosis almost entirely for entertainment, working with a person's mind to show one can do more things, or different ones, than one normally could. My early courses were in stage hypnosis and they taught me good techniques. I learned to work in front of an audience and I learned selfconfidence; it was impressive to me to see people respond to things I was asking them to do.
The next group of professional hypnotists uses hypnosis as a therapeutic tool for stress management, cigarette cessation, weight and habit control, building self esteem, and other manifestations of a positive personality and a healthy lifestyle. In my years working at a hypnosis clinic, that was the kind of hypnosis I did; I gave suggestions to clients to encourage them to respond in certain specific ways. In this type of work, the hypnotist gives what is needed, whether a formula of exercises, suggestions, key words, visualizations or metaphors, to get subjects to respond in ways they need and want - to produce a desired therapeutic result.
The third group of professional hypnotists believes that the best way to enrich lives is to enrich minds. They work to bring out information and feelings already in the mind or subconscious of people. This information can be from a present life, a past life, or both. This is how I use hypnosis now; I induce a trance and guide my subjects to reexperience past lives or to open themselves to the eternal. The object is to gain access to the subconscious by using hypnotic techniques for the purpose of allowing what is stored in the mind to come forth. I am not a magician; I put nothing in, but simply draw out what is already there. For those with a technical bent, I include information in this book on my methods.
There is not always a therapeutic intent; the subject may merely want information - you can never learn too much about yourself. Other subjects do have therapeutic aims. This kind of person believes an unsolved past problem is affecting the present life. By bringing the problem into awareness it can be dealt with and let go, the first step toward solving the present-day problem. I have found that merely taking this first step is sometimes enough to solve the problem; on the other hand, success can come after multiple sessions.

Early in my career, I had to decide how to approach my research into the subconscious. I could enter the academic world, as did Dr. Milton Erickson, a pioneer of modern hypnosis, and Dr. Ian Stevenson, whose research on reincarnation is unique. Or I could go in the direction of the spiritual entrepreneur, like Edgar Cayce, the preeminent American psychic, or Jane Roberts, whose channeling of the entity Seth made them both widely known. Even a world renowned, respected, and meticulous reincarnation researcher like Dr. Stevenson, with impressive academic credentials, has encountered resistance from his peers. So I realized that to have the freedom I wanted to pursue my hypnosis exploration goals I would have to work apart from the establishment. The academic world or even a structured organization could be stifling to my desire to map the mind and pursue truth wherever I saw it, wherever it led me.
In later years I realized that the academic world and life as a scientist in "the system" were in the words of those already there: "...tenure wars, grant skimming, departmental cocktail parties, Byzantine academic politics, Department of Defense contracts, jealous colleagues, not to mention the work of actually doing the science. It turns out that 'doing science' is quite a bit different from studying it.*

On the other hand, choosing the path of the entrepreneur meant that I would receive no financing from anyone; without grants I would have to fund all my research myself. But this is the path I chose and it has offered far greater freedom. It has been years since I've been to a cocktail party, and I'm a pacifist in the tenure wars. To compensate for lack of funding I worked slowly and used whatever resources were available. I learned patience and kept careful records of procedures and results. I suggest to others who wish to follow this path, this quest, that they first learn to keep an open mind - but not so open that their brains fall out! Build trust - not blind trust but trust for those people worthy of tnust, whether individuals or organizations.
Later, when I explain the procedures I followed in my own search, I will welcome you to test and duplicate the experiments. These experiments can easily be conducted in any quiet home setting. You do not need stainless steel labs with state-of-the-art technology, only honest questioning minds and the desire to learn and to experience. The journey within is different for everyone, so you will want to evaluate your results for yourself. Then do accept the validity of your own experience. See for yourself if this work answers any inner questions, satisfies any inner needs, or resolves any inner conflicts.

I find past-life-regression work does satisfy deep needs for me. Here are some reasons I do what I do. I have found my goal is to understand and to be understood, then to inspire others. I like to unravel the mysteries of the past through self-examination to appreciate the incredible sagas of the soul's journey. I like to awaken to awareness of my life's mission and the knowledge of my spiritual evolution, and to help others to do so. I like to recognize past friends and soul mates-echoes of the heart from some enchanted time and place; to find reasons to laugh at human folly and reasons to cry for human weakness; to realize how extraordinary every person is now and to appreciate the magnitude of their shared memories and experience.

As I give talks, seminars, and workshops around the country, I discuss the latest discoveries in the field of past lives. So much information is being discovered by other researchers every day that our vocabulary and understanding change and grow rapidly. Part of my work is to simplify these complicated new ideas. I strive to translate new ideas and concepts into familiar words and images. One of these new words and concepts is "channeling." My hypnosis and regression work led me to this exciting new field.
Again, I will clearly spell out my channeling procedures so you can test and replicate these experiences also. Hypnosis is the tool I use to guide both regression and channeling sessions. In regression work I guide people into their own inner minds. They journey deep within to examine memory imprints that we call "past lives."

Whether these visions are always actual past lifetimes or whether they are metaphoric or symbolic doesn't really matter to me. What matters is that the person experiences new insight and selfunderstanding. The regression session focuses on a person's stored memory banks, deep within.
The channeling session is completely different. It guides a person to other sources of information. These sources seem to come from "outside" the person; that is, an entity enters the body, or vessel, and speaks through him.

In this book, Daniel and Eileen are the vessels; they become channels for the entities of The Eternals and Pretty Flower. These latter entities seem separate from Daniel and Eileen "outside" them, as it were. Yet both The Eternals and Pretty Flower stress the oneness of the entity and the channeler and, indeed, of the whole universe. What can we say, then? Are the entities real? Or are they figments of the imagination? Manifestations of the subconscious? Does it matter? I think it does not. I believe channeling tunes in to a person's superconscious mind - a kind of universal mind or infinite universal intelligence. Going to this higher state of consciousness is opening new channels to divinity, accessing the soul's mind - what some people call "angelic communication," the "compassionate mind," or the "God Force."
Channeling does not originate in the conscious or subconcious mind but transcends them to the superconscious. That at least is how I understand it now. I have much to ream, as we all do, about the process. Of course I have had questions, doubt, and self-criticism about my work. I wish to help everyone, but experience has taught me that I can only help those who first ask for help, and then I have time only for a small number of those.

I see my role more as a door opener and teacher to encourage and inspire other people to become guides and channels so they, in turn, can help even greater numbers - like being a teacher of teachers. Only one minor problem has arisen from my search into the secrets of the mind. Some few people heard it rumored that my work was "speaking to the dead." Such a description is born of ignorance. Had anyone said such a thing directly to me (these things always seem to come second or third hand), I would surely have explained that anyone can speak 10 the dead. Getting the dead to answer back is the hard part. Well, that is a very old joke, born perhaps of the days of seances and mysterious tappings by unseen hands. We work differently now, I hope.

I myself have been fortunate to have received favorable notice from other explorers of the human mind. I have met and made friends with some of the advanced thinkers of our time. I consider it a great honor just to be a part of this new movement and the exciting time of enlightenment in which we live and learn. My 25-year search is a long time in which to realize how much I still have to learn. My search is still just beginning, it seems. All the secrets of the ages are not revealed in the blink of an eye of cosmic time. But in these years I have gained profound insight and experienced peak episodes that I am about to share with you in this book.

I will present my story without embellishment. I do not pretend to be more than I am, nor do I hide in false modesty. This is a story of youthful curiosity and my eager search for answers. The adventure quickens! Working with the mind is like opening a window into eternity. Every mind is like an entire living universe, a mother lode of information. When we search deep within and travel the pathways of our minds and souls there is a joy of accomplishment. Like buried treasure, mankind is finding and unlocking the secrets of the ancients - mining them, at last, from their hiding places within us.

* Jane Hooper, "Hard Science," Omni Magazine, October(1985): p.116.