Brenda's comments on the validity of hypnotic regression

The question as to the difference between imagination and core memories is as old as psychology and past life knowledge. With doubt as an influence there will always be this question to help keep doubt alive. Kind of an evil circle. In my own exploration of my self and the awareness I came to know of my own past lives I have little confusion between what I know to be core memories and what could be imagination. I did recieve a bit of a mental jolt when during my first regression session I referred to my fiance' with the name "Eddie" and then found that after the session with a little help from the internet I discovered genuine reference to this name in connection to historical accuracy. For a brief moment in the session I doubted the name that came to my mind, but voiced it anyway (this session is on audio tape) and then the day after I found out that there really was an Eddie who lived as I said and died as I said and was assigned to the same military unit in the same geographical theatre as I said. It amazed me that I really wasn't lying to myself all these years (I have a long history of second guessing myself and doubting my instincts). My imagination is fertile enough that I write fiction for my own enjoyment, I roleplay, and my dreams are also so vivid that I remember feeling textures, moistures (or lack of), colors, sounds, temperatures, sometimes even odors! For me there is a very distinct difference between dreams & reality, and imagination & memory. There is a different kind of feel for each of those sensations. But for one brief moment the boundries between imagination and memory were blurred. I believe this blur was caused by me in that for that moment I was a little afraid of committing a new-found, verifiable name to something that until that moment was purely speculative. The reason I say this is verifiable is because this past life occured during this century when records are kept much more meticulously than in any other time.

Back to Brenda's story