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This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture.

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The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily

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the only ones to the mysteries we will examine.

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There are people who claim to remember events that happened in a former lifetime.

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It is a strange phenomenon called reincarnation.

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There's the story of Maria, a little girl who lived a long time ago in a coastal village

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of France.

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Maria had a special touch with living things.

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It was said she could cure animals and people of illness.

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The villagers called her a witch and hunted her down in the night.

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A girl living now remembers every detail of that horrible night as though it had happened

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to her.

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Perhaps it did.

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People of vision are rare in any time.

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In the pioneering days of American industrial expansion, Henry Ford was such a man.

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In his later years, Ford would be acclaimed as the father of the assembly line.

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Ford's genius embraced another idea.

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He believed he was immortal.

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Ford thought that his essential being or soul would be reborn into another body.

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Humanism is a belief that has been expressed by every civilization known to man.

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The principles governing the cycles of birth, death and rebirth are called karma.

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Karma means that a soul progresses from body to body, life to life until it achieves perfect

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harmony with the universe.

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Thus one who suffers in this life is assured of at least the possibility of a better break

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in the next.

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All right now lie down and make yourself as comfortable as you can.

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Dr. Helen Womback is a clinical psychologist doing reincarnation research in San Francisco.

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Using the technique of hypnotic regression, she will be the guide on a remarkable journey

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through time and space.

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When all discomfort leaves your body and you're floating on a cloud and your body is very,

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very heavy now, we're going to float back all around the world, back into past time.

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When I call out the name of a place, let images come into your mind.

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An image for the Far East, an image for Central Asia, an image for Europe, an image for the

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Near East in Africa, or an image for North, Central or South America.

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Now choose.

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You have chosen.

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I'd more or less pick Scandinavia.

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I couldn't get out of the snow.

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The only real scenery was just rolling snow covered hills, frozen ground, and it seemed

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like we traveled by foot most of the time from one fishing hole to another, it seemed.

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My death was an accident in one of the journeys and it seemed to have something to do with

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a sled and it sort of got thrown over and I was just left laying in a snow bank.

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It seemed to be on the foot of the steps of a pyramid, a temple.

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The ceremony that I was going to attend was attended by all the members of the village,

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all the surrounding villages, and it seemed to be a healing.

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There was some type of a healing going on on what seemed to have been maybe the chief

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of the village and I remember I had very strong belief that this was going to be helpful

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and very great interest.

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Dr. Womback has regressed more than 2,000 persons in her search for scientifically valid data

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on the reincarnation experience.

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Well actually I've been searching for five years now for evidence that we may have lived

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before.

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What I found is what many researchers have found, that there's a tantalizing mix of fantasy

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and checkable reality in past life recall.

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My belief was that if we have lived past lives, all of us have lived past lives.

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And therefore I ought to be able to explore this phenomenon in the same normative way

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that a psychologist would go about exploring any other kinds of phenomenon.

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So I evolved a technique of taking people to past lives that I found to be both safe

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and reliable and where I could get repeatable evidence.

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Well those down...

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Simply put, Dr. Womback's technique is to plant a post-hypnotic suggestion in the subject's

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minds which enables them to fill out an elaborate questionnaire after the session is over.

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The questionnaires are important because Dr. Womback finds that during regression, patients

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are reluctant to have their journey to a past life disturbed by conversation with the

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hypnotist.

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However, Dr. Womback will occasionally use the standard question and answer technique

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to explore an unusual case.

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All right now Bob, I want you to go to a time when you are listening to some of the people

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around you talk and you will hear the syllables and you will be able to repeat them.

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Nainu rakakana kum kum ta ta.

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Nainu rakakana kum ta ta.

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All right that's fine Bob.

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Can you tell me what these words mean?

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What is being talked about?

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In regard to the days, labors, the satisfaction with the tasks, the satisfaction with the

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job.

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How do you feel about this?

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Do you feel dissatisfied?

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I feel it's all in a day's time and I'll soon be on my way away from it.

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Now Bob, I want you to move in that lifetime to a time when you are seeing something written.

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Do you see anything?

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You will be able to open your eyes without coming out of the hypnotic trance.

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You will focus intently on the hieroglyphs and you will be able to copy them.

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Dr. Womback has had an expert at Stanford University study Bob's strange writing.

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She says the expert has been able to identify 80% of the characters as authentic Egyptian

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hieroglyphs.

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Very good Bob.

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Can you tell me now what these hieroglyphs mean?

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In reference to a new trade route and treaty of free movement and protection from the highest

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power for such a venture.

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Hi Bob, how was it?

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Not bad.

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Not bad, huh?

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Bob is a retired stockbroker.

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How could he write and converse in a language that vanished tens of centuries ago along

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with the builders of the pyramids?

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At the very least it's a fascinating exercise.

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This probing of the unconscious mind for scraps of information about past lives.

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There are more practical aspects to the study of reincarnation.

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Trauma from a past life sometimes seems to spill over into the present.

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It is possible that many physical and emotional problems which defy medical science can be

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cured through an understanding of this principle.

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In this lifetime for instance I've had a series of since early childhood seizure type

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of things that occurred that doctors and priests couldn't explain that.

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Shirley Crepe eventually described her problem to Dr. Womback.

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The sensation of going a million miles an hour and weighing at least a ton and it was

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pretty terrorizing to have that occurring because I couldn't make it stop.

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During the session where I was regressed to the lifetime as a girl named Maria this particular

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seizure started to occur while I was under hypnosis.

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And it was then that Dr. Womback took me to that point where it first started to occur.

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Under hypnosis Shirley described herself as a healer in a village on the coast of France.

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She said her name was Maria and that she had been summoned to the constables to help his

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sick child.

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The child died.

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One evening after the child had died on my walk home through the forest out of the bushes,

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out of the trees with torches the whole village seemed to appear and they were going to burn

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Maria as a witch because they thought she'd killed the boy and they came towards her,

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they get the witch.

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I ran as Maria.

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I didn't want to get caught and it was then that the sensation started, the sensation

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that I had been experiencing in this lifetime of absolute stark, raving terror and they

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chased me screaming and yelling, I ran and I ran and rather than be caught by the little

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burnt I jumped off a cliff and that was the feeling of weighing a million pounds and

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as Maria dropped that body and came out of that body the weight, the speeding sensation

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stopped completely and abruptly unlike any of the seizures that I'd had.

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It could be coincidence that Shirley's symptoms disappeared after she confronted the nightmare

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of a prior life or it could be just what it appears.

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Having an understanding and karma to calm the restless corner of Shirley's mind that

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is still Maria.

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Dr. Womback's collection of 2000 apparent reincarnation experiences has yielded some

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fascinating data.

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Between 70 and 80% of her subjects remember lives as working class people or peasants.

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If these prior lives were imaginary wouldn't more people think of themselves as royalty

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rather than accurately reflecting across section of society?

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In another experiment a group of white Californians was regressed to the 1850s and extraordinary

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numbers said they were Asians then.

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Could they have been the orientals who were imported to build California's railroads?

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Could they still be with us in new bodies?

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How many pasts can a person have?

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The work of other investigators may suggest an answer.

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The old chestnut inn in Kent, Connecticut has a history as rich as its setting.

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Ruth McGuire has quite a history of her own.

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It appears she may have a number of histories.

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I've had very strong feelings about the year 1857 and India.

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When I was just a child I picked up a 10 cent piece.

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I felt terribly depressed.

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The date meant something to me.

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Ruth had heard of Professor Hans Holzer, parapsychologist and author.

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She invited him to probe her mind for a meaning to the date that bothered her.

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Using hypnotic regression, Professor Holzer had enjoyed success with similar cases before.

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Your name is Ruth McGuire.

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I want you to go back with me.

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Ten years, twenty years, thirty years, forty years.

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Where do you live?

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You are now ten years old.

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You are now nine years old.

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You are now seven years old.

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You are seven years old.

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You are seven years old.

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You are Ruth McGuire. You are seven years old.

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Where do you go to school?

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St. Nicholas of Tallentown.

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What is your favorite teacher's name?

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Sister Bonaventure.

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What does she teach you?

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Oh, poetry. She declaims poetry.

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You are seven years old.

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You are six years old.

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You are five years old.

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You are four years old.

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You are three years old.

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You are two years old.

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You are one year.

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You have just been born.

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I want you to go back, back beyond the threshold of birth.

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You are minus five, minus ten, minus twenty.

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What do you see?

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Look around you. Where are you?

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It's all sapary.

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What do you see?

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Thick, thick clouds and papers.

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Cold.

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Oh, yes.

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I know where I am now.

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Where are you?

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I'm in England.

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Where are you? What place?

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Sussex.

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Where did your father come from?

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Horton.

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It's in the north riding area.

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And your mother?

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Durham. That's near Newcastle.

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Did you ever get to the New World?

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No, I died in Biden at the age of thirteen.

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It was like a dam breaking.

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The body screaming, shouting, pillaging.

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I ran and hid.

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Next, Ruth recalls another life and a crisis in a distant land.

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I was dreaded being sent away.

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Where were you sent?

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We went to India.

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Where in India?

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Calcutta.

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And then, another place where there was an uprising.

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The natives were very angry.

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They didn't want us there.

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And they came in and the body screaming, shouting, pillaging.

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Professor Holzer feels he can probe even deeper into Ruth's multiple past lives.

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Now I want you to go back further, further.

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Beyond your life in India, beyond your life in England.

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Go back, go back another, another incarnation, another life.

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In what town are we in?

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Now we are in Holland.

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The year is sixteen thirteen.

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Smoking the room.

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What sort of smoke?

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The fire. Smoking the fire.

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Where are you to begin with? Where are you now?

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Well, I'm in a room in a cottage.

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And the fireplace is smoking. It burns my throat.

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My aunt and my mother are both there.

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And we have to wait and wait and wait.

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And there's something about the new world and passage.

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There was this large man and he pinned me against the wall.

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I was miserable and I fell overboard.

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For a moment I struggled and then a strange feeling of happiness came over me.

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I must have been on shipboard.

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I saw the coffin and the people passing by.

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And I wanted to tell them, I hear what you're seeing.

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I hear and I tried to move my arm.

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I tried and it was like lead.

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I couldn't move, I couldn't wiggle, I couldn't even move my nose.

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I couldn't indicate that I was there and I was listening.

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I seemed to be moving on a ribbon towards the sea.

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It was a great light.

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What was the next sensation that followed?

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There were people. I saw shadows and presences and people.

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People I didn't know.

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But my mother, yes, I saw my mother

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and there was a comforting feeling that I had found her at last.

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For Ruth McGuire, the session was a revelation.

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The controversial concept of karma made sense to her

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and seemed to explain so many things.

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Whatever she might have suffered in past lives

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only seemed now to increase her chance of serenity in this one.

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Dr. William Yany is a psychiatrist who has devoted years

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to the study of reincarnation and the laws of karma.

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Where I sit, I really see life as really a school room.

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We're living in a very, very narrow, narrow spectrum,

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a very narrow dimension as our parapsychologists are beginning to describe to us, tell us.

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I really see what we've got here as a soul

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utilizing an expendable body, so to speak, in a lifetime,

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a given span of time and space to learn something.

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Dr. Yany believes the vast and complex cycle of birth, death and rebirth

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must be controlled by a higher order of intelligence.

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Someone must be minding the store, so to speak.

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Who or what that force is remains one of the great puzzles confronting mankind.

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oz

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Coming up next in search of

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Takes a Look at the Facts and Fiction about Afterlife Experiences

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Then agents hunt down a bank robbery gang on FBI.

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The Untold Stories

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And later tonight on In the T evolutionary allotment.

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other oddities at 8 here on the History Channel where the past comes alive.