MANY TIMES I’ve experimented with breathing exercises - only to find that, like Bill Clinton, I had trouble inhaling. Years ago when I was practising pranayama, a yogic breath control technique, I had to give up after a few weeks because my nostrils kept getting blocked.
Recently I came across a powerful Spherical Breathing Technique to activate the Light Body (taught by Drunvalo Melchizedek in his ‘Flower of Life’ Seminars): once again I was frustrated by the difficulty I had trying to breathe rhythmically. How was I ever going to master the didgeridoo - not to mention quickening my Merkaba vehicle of Ascension (by which means one may achieve full mobility through all the dimensions)?
And not too long ago a holistic healer friend had given me a deep massage, after which she had diagnosed a congestion in my diaphragm area possibly linked to a "past life" trauma. So you can understand why I was very keen to see if Pritamo* could help. She was staying at a mutual friend’s apartment, having just arrived from her native Italy via Pune, India - where she had trained for years at the Osho International Academy of Healing Arts.
Pritamo showed me a computer-generated leaflet listing the various therapies she was practising, and my attention was instantly drawn to a section headed: “HYPNOSIS FOR SELF-HEALING - a soft technique that induces deep relaxation, so that you can access your own unconscious.” Among the benefits of this particular therapy, Pritamo mentioned “exploring and healing past lives to improve this present life.”
Ha! This was precisely what I had been seeking for some time. Being the “new healer in town” Pritamo was only too willing to barter a 90-minute session for a fair report to anyone interested. Not that I minded paying the RM90 (US$25) fee, which I thought totally reasonable.
The next morning I showed up, prepared for anything. Pritamo said we would begin with a 45-minute Chakra Breathing exercise to open up and relax my cellular and etheric bodies. The vigorous process would also serve to clear my memory circuits of last week’s or last year’s debris. She put on a cassette and a quiet, authoritative voice requested that I focus attention on my Root Chakra while hyperventilating through the mouth.
"Don’t be inhibited," Pritamo advised, "and make as much noise as you like. Just keep your feet comfortably apart and grounded, freeing the rest of your body to move with the energy currents."
The dervish-like rhythms and calm, friendly voice guided me through each Chakra, as Pritamo accompanied me in the exercise. At the end of 45 minutes we had completed three Chakra Breathing cycles. I felt totally relaxed, even euphoric, open to and trusting of whatever would happen next.
After a short rest Pritamo settled me comfortably on a mattress, and proceeded to ease me into even deeper relaxation with her voice. In effect she guided me through a visualization wherein I “saw” myself lying peacefully in a pleasant meadow. Soon, she suggested, a beautiful, ethereal Guide will appear and beckon me to follow her on a journey down the corridors of incarnate time...
THROUGH A GOLDEN ARCHWAY we strolled, my Angelic Guide and I, along a paved path that stretched on indefinitely ahead. I could hear Pritamo’s gentle, accented voice, saying: “Keep walking until something appears, then pause and let the image form more clearly. Trust that it will have a special message for you, to help you accept and release whatever feelings arise.” Or something to that effect.
Without any effort the first image shifted into focus: I was looking at a very old and frustrated English gentleman, bent over in his rocking chair, experiencing the last moments of his life. A dull, heavy sensation hung over his chest: was it bronchial congestion? Or sheer heavy-heartedness, the fatigue of a soul worn out by struggle? I could feel his profound bitterness and pain, his terrible sense of despair and futility; above all, his sense of utter failure and isolation.
Details flitted in and out of my mind’s purview: he had been a swashbuckling, dashing Colonial Officer in British Malaya, a veritable Tuan in every respect. He had lived like a king and felt like a mythical hero. But then something had gone very wrong, and he found himself recalled to England in his prime: end of illustrious career, end of glorious freedom and unfettered adventure. He was treated with coldblooded, efficient formality and forced to retire with a handsome pension.
He could write his memoirs - and he did, but it left him dissatisfied and hollow. He had been so close to some incredible breakthrough... so very close to cracking the Mystery of the Ages and returning home in triumph, exalted and divine. His domestic life was a tragic farce. Friends and family had drifted further and further away - till at this final hour he felt completely bereft of warmth or hope or even the faintest memory of happiness. True, he had been a stalwart member of a Masonic Lodge - a lot of good that did him now. Nothing had value or meaning, nothing whatsoever, not even the prospect of oblivion.
My chest was heaving with the effort of dying. My angel gently put her hand in mine and led me further down the corridor of ghostly memories.
“Where are you now?” I heard Pritamo as from a great distance. “What do you see?”
“I’m a little girl of three or four. European, I think. Alone in a room, holding a toy. No one knows my thoughts. I am dying of a disease, I don’t know what. Asthma? Tuberculosis? There’s a light in my heart region. I feel totally calm and self-contained. Not sad, no self-pity. I know things other people don’t. I know I shall soon be free again, there’s great power and wisdom in my spirit self...”
My angelic guide and I move on, leaving the little girl with her dreamy thoughts and her very brief span on earth.
I see a white-haired, portly gentleman at the kitchen table, puffing on his pipe. Retired merchant, Italian, living somewhere in Greece. He has outlived his wife, and two of his five children. The others are living far abroad. He isn’t sad or afraid of death, which he knows is approaching very soon. He’s had a good life, good friends, good meals, and satisfactory family bonds. But somehow he feels cheated, disillusioned, abandoned by God. His private life as a mystic and scholar is known only to his colleagues in a secret fraternity. He has seen the group splinter into bitter factions, torn asunder by petty ambitions and betrayals. All the lofty principles of the ancient creed, the solemn oaths of loyal and faithful service to humanity... what a load of crap!
Is there hope for human beings on this earth? Probably not, but what the hell, que sera, sera and so on. Still, it’s very hurtful that life can play such dirty tricks on us benighted souls. What is left? Not much. A favorite pipe, dusty shelves of once so-precious books in a concealed library no one will inherit. Hello, Big G... where the hell are YOU?. He sighs and feels a black hole where his heart once was.
MY HEART! I can feel Pritamo’s energy soothing my etheric body as my chest convulses into a tight knot. Heart attack? Can’t breathe. A sour taste... no, a bilious, horrid, shattering sense of deep betrayal and broken dreams. I’m seated on my throne, clutching my belly in acute agony.
They have poisoned me. How? It can’t be... impossible! My queen, could she...? NO! Death, take me swiftly upon thy wings... I can see the carved pillars of my palace, barely a few years old, the patterns on the polished tiles. Pharaoh of the New Aeon, you have failed in your mission. What can save us now? Ha, I’m out of the crumpled fleshly body in my ka - my etheric double - floating above the earth, where my vision penetrates the future... please, 0 Great Ones, spare me this dreary sight! The darkness stretches before me without end: age upon age of tragedy and horror, a ceaseless nightmare of evil piled on evil. Massacres, famines, plagues, catastrophe... no light at the tunnel’s end! Spare me this accursed foresight... WHY? WHY?? WHY???
My ka has swooned with the impact of the ugly truth revealed: no Golden Dawn for humanity, not yet, not for a very, very, very long time. Hundreds, possibly thousands of years from now, perhaps... but two golden, shining beings have come to take me to a distant sanctuary, where my soul can heal. This place is not on planet Earth.
MY EYES SNAP OPEN in surprise. Pritamo waves her hands over my face, whispering that I should keep my eyes closed for a while longer - as my angelic guide takes me back along the corridor, past the events shown before, through the golden archway, and back into the green, sunny meadow where my physical body lies.
“Count after me,” Pritamo murmurs, “Ten-a, nine-a, eight-a, seven-a, six-a...” By the time I get to “one” she’s already up and out the door. “You take-a your time-a,” she says. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thank you, Pritamo,” I say quietly, as we give each other a long, strong hug. The healing is accomplished. But it may take some time to filter through the molecular levels of my being.
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*The name Pritamo means 'Beloved.' Pritamo is a healer and therapist at the Osho Ashram in Pune, India.
NOTE: I prefer the term "parallel lives" to "past lives" since the linearity of time is essentially illusory. I'm more inclined to view "flashbacks" and "flashforwards" as crosstalk from different time-tracks occurring simultaneously and accessible from the core of one's being.
[First published in the New Straits Times, July 9, 1996, posted 14 April 2013 & reposted 2 May 2017 & 19 April 2019]