by Hang Ming

[PureInsight.org] I am a Mainland Chinese living in the United States. It was purely by coincidence that I started to explore past lives and to confirm a belief shared by many cultures that good deeds will ultimately be rewarded in this life or the next. The year 1995 was the darkest period in my life. I fell into depression after a severe car accident and a failed romantic relationship. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I lost faith in life. I asked myself repeatedly the meaning of life. On the other hand, I also believed that each man must carry out certain responsibilities for society so I must not allow myself to become overcome with depression. Eventually I began to feel strongly about pursuing the meaning of life and a person's responsibilities in life.

As a start, I began to recall the car accident. It should have been just a purely random accident, but there were some signs that told me that it was not. There seemed to be the result of some unknown forces at work. Three days before the car accident, someone told me to take precautions because he thought I was going to run into a big trouble. I didn't believe him at all. "How can anyone predict the future?" I thought. Going against all probabilities, I did have a severe car accident three days after the warning. It was then I decided to conduct my own research on lives and incarnations. I did a lot of reading and two books written by western psychiatrists were very inspiring to me, especially Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives, a million-copy bestseller by Dr. Brian L. Weiss, a noted psychiatrist and a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Medical School. I followed the instructions in his book for hypnosis and tried to hypnotize my friends as experiments. I found that I have a natural gift for hypnosis and have became quite good at hypnotizing people over time. I found out that all the volunteers who participated started to make very positive changes in their lives after the hypnosis and their experiences had very good influences on their families and society. In this series of exploring the cycle of incarnations, I will share some real stories of incarnations I heard during the hypnosis sessions with my friends.

A Restaurant Owner and Her Son
A friend of mine is a restaurant owner and often quarreled with her son. She had a career plan for her son, but her son was determined to take a different path. "I have been slaving away in the restaurant to make more money for your education," she thought. "I have your best interests in mind when I plan your future, but you are not grateful for my efforts and my good intentions. You even quarrel with me constantly!" She told me that she had become so frustrated with her son that she began to lose interest in running the restaurant and wanted to retire. Later her son agreed to be hypnotized as an effort to improve their relationship. My friend was present during the hypnosis when her son visited many of his previous lives, so they both learned the cause and effect relationships between them.

First, the son visited a previous life in India. He moaned for water and said that he was a lonely old man accompanied by a monkey only. There was a drought in his village and he volunteered to go out and seek a source of water. He traveled in the desert and struggled to keep going, leaning on a walking cane. After a lot of trials and tribulations, he finally found a water resource following the lead of his monkey. He was overwhelmed with joy and hurried back to report his discovery to the chief of the tribe. Because of him, his entire village of people survived the drought. The chief of his tribe was immensely grateful to him. The chief became his father in the present life. His father has been very affectionate to him. Obviously he has been trying to repay him for what he had done in the previous life. There was also something else that is worth mentioning. He also saw his future girlfriend in the present life although he has not met her yet. The daughter of the chief will be his girlfriend in the present life. Although he is only 19 years old and has not met his girlfriend in the present life, she is going to enter his life soon.

Next, he visited another of his previous lives set in Korea. In that life he was a handsome young man in a village. He fought with another young man from the village for a girl. During the fight, his opponent cut his right lower arm with a knife and fled from the scene. We were shocked to find that my friend's son carries a birthmark in the present life in the same location on his right lower arm that looks very much like a scar. I asked him if he had met the young man in the present life. He said that he has met him and the young man has become a good friend of his in New York in the present life. The friend has been extremely nice to him. Obviously he has been trying to repay him for the assault in the previous life. I asked him about the girl they were fighting over again, and he told me that she has not entered his life yet.

Finally he visited a previous life in Taiwan. He was the owner of a pharmacy in Taiwan. One day a farming woman entered his pharmacy timidly. She told him, "My entire family has become ill and I need medicine right away, but we cannot afford the expenses. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to give us some medicine for free?" He was a kindhearted man. He could tell that the farming woman was not a fraud and she truly needed medicine, so he gladly gave away the medicine and saved the lives of her entire family. The farming woman was very grateful and pledged that she would repay him. It appears that one's wish in one life will determine the next life. They become a family in the present life. The farming woman became his mother in this life.

My friend immediately understood the cause and effect relationship between them. All the hard labors and sacrifices she has made for her son resulted from the debt she had pledged to repay in the previous life. The many incarnations of her son that were revealed under hypnosis demonstrated that each man's destiny is a result of what he has done in his previous lives. Even as a mother, she can change her son's life no more than she can change hers. She decided to resign herself to god's will and let her son take the path he has chosen. She had thought that she was doing a good thing to arrange his future, but that may not be his destiny.

After the hypnosis, they stopped fighting. My friend's son continues his studies and my friend closed her restaurant and started a new business.

This story of my friend and her son has illustrated that the cause and effect relationship, as well as karmic retribution, are by no means creations of the ancient Chinese people's imagination or superstition.