Reincarnation and Karma: Freedom of the Self and from the Self, with Dick Sutphen

On August 23, we talked with best-selling author Dick Sutphen, a skilled and vastly experienced hypnotist who has been doing past-life regressions for a quarter of a century and keeping careful records.

His research into past-lives and their meaning was unprecedented when he began it in the early '70s. Today, the body of information that he has collected probably surpasses that of any other source of information on this subject.

In Dick Sutphen's seminars, or by using his tapes, people learn how to ''time travel'' to their past-life experiences (see Exploring Our Own Past Lives). In looking at these experiences, we can understand the source of our subconscious fears and the ''errors'' that we keep on making, lifetime after lifetime. This exploration enables us to integrate the fears and correct the errors, thus ''balancing'' our karma.

Like the article on Decision Therapy, the subject of correcting karmic errors would have been appropriate for our issue on alternative healing. But processing karma and achieving wisdom is also about reincarnation, and is the method by which we reach ascension, if that is our goal. Whether we seek ascension or simply joy and self-actualization, success requires that we cease to resent ''what is,'' replacing our negative emotions with love and wisdom. And reincarnation keeps on giving us opportunities to do just that.

Wisdom, to Dick Sutphen, involves the Zen concept of non-attachment. By acknowledging ''what is'' in a spirit of peace, we release the suffering that is caused by resistance. ''Wisdom,'' he likes to say, ''erases karma.''

Past Lives Offer a Glimpse into History
In private sessions and through his group-hypnosis workshops, Sutphen has collected huge files of case histories and past-life memories. By cross-correlating similar time periods and events, he has been able to retrieve much that has been lost — events that history itself has not been able to record. We may trust these reports because of the large number of others that corroborate them.

Conversely, people experience things in regressions that we can prove, but which they cannot possibly have known from this-life experience.

For example, in some of his earlier research, Dick said, he asked people to speak in the language of the country where they found themselves in their past-life regressions. There were so many hypnotic subjects who were able to do this that he soon went on to other things. ''It got boring,'' he said.[1]

Reincarnation With Ole Ma-in-Law
It appears from Dick Sutphen's recorded sessions, and those of most people who relate to past lives, that we tend to reincarnate with those we've known before. Certainly this goes a long way to explain instant attraction and instant dislike — and that feeling we often have that we've known someone ''forever.''

The energy that draws us to others with whom we have karmic ties guarantees that we will continue to work through our karmic ''lessons'' until we get it right. Even without spiritual knowledge, we may be able to ''integrate the fear,'' as Sutphen says, that caused us to resist ''what is.''

Doing this over and over again, he feels, we eventually learn to accept ''what is'' and live in harmony with ourselves and others.

For example, he writes, ''If you are prejudiced toward East Indians, they somehow represent a subjective threat. When an East Indian couple moves next door, at first you are upset and reticent about contact. But there is no way to avoid occasional meetings as you come and go, water the lawn, pick up your mail. In time, you grow to like your new neighbors, and they become friends. The fear is integrated — replaced by a greater potential to enjoy life — and you are one step closer to wholeness.''[2]

''When you act with intent,'' Dick said, ''you create karma.'' If the intent is good, then we create ''good karma.'' If not, then the opportunity to remake our intentions returns to us — over and over, if necessary. Karma stops ''when you forgive yourself and everyone else,'' he said.

In this connection, a seminar participant once complained that he absolutely could not learn to accept his mother-in-law. ''If you don't learn in this life,'' Sutphen told him, ''you can always reincarnate with ole ma-in-law in your next one.''

''Oh, my God,'' the man exclaimed. ''I'm learning. I'm learning.''[3]

Here are some examples of karmic returns that Sutphen shared with us:

A man has an accident and is burned over 80% of his body. He is in a wheelchair, and shortly after that, his wife leaves him. In a past-life regression, he learns that he was once a commander who allowed his men to torture prisoners. He didn't actually contribute to these deeds, but like his wife in this lifetime, he did not step in to help. ''Now,'' Sutphen said, ''he has chosen a very severe way'' to understand his former sins of omission.

A couple has not been able to get along. In regression, we learn that in Ancient China they were also husband and wife, and when the woman could not get pregnant, the husband kicked her out and took a new wife. ''In this lifetime, she is the one who causes him to suffer.''

In another relationship, a woman has an irrational fear of abandonment. In regression, she learns that she was married to this same man in a former lifetime, when he had gone off to war and never returned home.

When we find our past-life dramas, Sutphen said, we can understand where our feelings are coming from. At that point, he advises, we can use an affirmation to change the energy: ''I understand the cause, and I release the effect.''

Group Reincarnation
In addition to our tendency to repeat past-life relationships in order to eventually get it right, quite a number of sources claim that large groups often reincarnate together. Many New Age leaders and channeled sources claim, for example, that groups from Atlantis have returned now in order to participate in the new spiritual and technological crises we face, and hopefully to help us avert them this time around.

And other groups supposedly represent Ascended Masters who return to Earth together in order to create breakthroughs in human social conditions. The men who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution have often been cited as one such group.

The implication with these kinds of groups is that the new incarnations are chosen ''from the other side.'' The image one gets is of discarnate souls watching events on Earth and waiting to become reincarnated at just the right point in history.[4]

But Dick Sutphen has an experience to report in his work that seems unique in the annals of group reincarnation: 25,000 people in Teotihuacan, Mexico, in the spring of the year 381 CE, who made a pledge while still living to reincarnate together every 700 years.[5]

The Teotihuacan Experiments
The tragedy that occurred at Teotihuacan was mentioned briefly in one of Dick Sutphen's earlier books of the '70s. Subsequently — because he himself had been one of the central figures in what transpired there — he began to investigate the truth by all means possible. His research tools included automatic writing, his own past-life memories, psychic readings, and archeological records. But his main source of information was past-life regressions.

In one seminar of 300 people, he conducted a group regression to the Teotihuacan happenings, and 250 members of the group ''went'' to that lifetime. The similarities in their reports were astonishing, and all the more impressive because they were not always what Sutphen wanted to hear.

For example, a large percentage of the group ''saw'' that extra-terrestrials had been an important part of the Teotihuacan community in those days. They also ''saw'' that the use of crystals had been central to the knowledge of the priesthood, who claimed roots in Atlantis. Since Dick Sutphen at that time considered interest in UFO's and crystals to be in the domain of what he calls ''foo-foo spirituality,'' it's certain that he was not leading his subjects in these areas.

Sutphen himself was first introduced to the Teotihuacan story when he visited a cemetery in Mexico and collapsed there, weeping. This, he later learned from others who had had the same experience, was the graveyard where he and hundreds of his beloved colleagues lay buried after having been tortured to death by the Spanish during one of their 700-year returns.

Then, on the same Mexico trip, Sutphen had similar experiences of recognition and deep sadness in visiting the pyramids themselves.

Since then, Sutphen has reconstructed, from his own memories and from the written reports of the group cited above, plus scores of private sessions conducted over the past 25 years, an account of what really happened then, and how it has affected him since.

Briefly, Teotihuacan — then called Xocoma (pronounced Sho-Co-ma) — was in those days a theocracy in which a benevolent dictator had abolished human sacrifice and maintained many decades of harmony and prosperity. His priests believed in reincarnation, the law of karma, and the doctrine of personal responsibility: What you do comes back. But upon the ruler's death, the Jaguar priesthood wished for a return of war and blood sacrifice. Their coup was successful. Followers of the way of peace were executed, and the priests themselves were buried alive in a giant pit.

But before these final events, the knowledge from Atlantis and the stars, stored in crystals, was hidden away. And at a giant ceremony — attended by 25,000 people — the peaceful priests and their supporters vowed, like King Arthur, to return.

They are here today, according to Dick Sutphen, and are drawn to him and to his books and seminars. And the books he has written, he claims, are an attempt to fulfill his own karmic mission, or dharma, of returning to the world some of the knowledge that was lost in those terrible times.

You can read the full story in his book Earthly Purpose[6].

Freedom of the Self and from the Self
As we can see from the above stories, there are many different kinds of karma. Sutphen has grouped all of the karmic configurations he's ever found into five categories: false fear, false guilt, balancing, physical, and reward. Reward, of course, is what we call ''good karma,'' when service we have given is returned.

False guilt, he feels, is one of the most prevalent karmic errors and provides great relief once it is understood and released. It is ''where we have accepted blame where this was not valid.'' He cites the case of a workaholic who ''relived a situation where he was burying a child who had starved to death. He felt guilt because he did not feed his child.'' By working ceaselessly, he was still trying to make sure that if children didn't get fed, it would not be his fault.

In false fear, we are afraid of something that cannot hurt us in this time but which represents a fearful situation from a prior life.

Balance can be illustrated by the situation of the murdered man who is reborn as a murderer — or vice versa. ''When you act with intent, you create karma,'' Sutphen said. Because we draw events to us by what we think, the murder is a cooperative endeavor, even though, for the murdered man, the intent is probably subconscious, a hidden agenda. But karmic balance requires that we experience both sides. ''As Khalil Gibran says,'' Sutphen observed, ''the murdered is as guilty as the murderer.''

Finally, in physical karma, we represent in our bodies prior situations that we have not resolved. We may have a birthmark in this lifetime that was actually a scar in a previous one. An abdominal injury might ''come back'' as digestive disturbances. And so on.

Our primary search, Dick Sutphen feels, is to be free. Not only free from the past and from the control and coercion of others, but also, and perhaps mainly, free from ourselves.

''The search for true freedom,'' he writes in Radical Spirituality, ''is what all my communications are ultimately about — freedom of the self and from the self. Freedom of the self means literal freedom: freedom from oppressive environments and relationships, the freedom of a satisfying career, and the freedom to make life meaningful. Freedom from the self means freedom from domination by fear-based emotions such as prejudice, anger, selfishness, jealousy, hate, repression, greed, possessiveness, envy, guilt, inhibition, egotism, malice, resentment, and blame. These fears are your karma. They keep you earthbound on the wheel of reincarnation.''

Some people complain that Sutphen's approach is insufficiently spiritual. He avoids dogmas and rituals, has no use for gurus, and looks upon Harmonic Convergences, Earth Changes, and End-of-Time scenarios as arcane concepts.

But he also admits to having once felt the same way about crystals and UFO's, as we've mentioned earlier. It's simply that his primary focus and mission seems to involve helping himself and others to release imprisoning delusions — and so he simply has neither time for, nor interest in, anything that might sidetrack this learning process.

''In the end,'' he writes, ''it will all come down to integrating your fears. ... If you experienced no fear, all that would be left would be love. How much more spiritual can you get?''

Photos in this article are copyright Sutphen Corp and used by permission. Author of Past Lives, Future Loves and You Were Born Again to Be Together, Dick Sutphen has written 15 books, including those mentioned in this article. You may find them listed at his website, dicksutphen.com. Other contact information and seminar schedules may be found there, along with many of his writings. You may also write to him at Valley of the Sun, P.O. Box 38, Malibu, CA 90265.

Exploring Our Own Past Lives
We asked Dick Sutphen what he thought about attempting to do past-life regressions by ourselves.

We can, of course, he said, ''but we would have to spend years learning how.''

One way around this would be to self-record a regression using a prewritten script. Sutphen offers these in some of his books, including several in Earthly Purpose, his book about Teotihuacan.

Another, easier approach is to use commercial regression tapes. There are many on the market. Sutphen has a whole library of audiotapes and CDs to help with many different kinds of self-therapy. One, titled simply Past-Life Therapy, is a 74-minute course that includes a guided past-life regression. ''That's the one I like to see people with,'' he said.

Here are some suggestions that may be of assistance if you decide to pursue these ideas further:

Begin by selecting an approach that works for you. If you try one method or one tape and find that it has little effect, try another.

Don't think that in order to get results you must have a vivid multisensory experience, especially not at first. It happens, but it's not necessary in order to achieve understanding.

If you have a negative thought, it's a good idea to repeat it out loud three times. The most common negative thought in regressions is, ''This isn't really happening.'' Guess what? That thought is usually what we were thinking in the past life. ''No! This can't be happening.'' It could, and it did. By repeating the words, you can launch yourself into the past, where that thought originated.

If in regression you have a sense of being somewhere but it's too vague to mean anything, a powerful technique for grounding in the past life is to mentally look down to see what you are wearing on your feet. Interestingly, most people can do this almost at once.

Here are some other questions you can ask yourself to drop into the reality of the past: ''Am I male or female?'' ''Am I alone?'' ''Am I indoors or outdoors?'' ''How old am I?'' ''What time of day is it?'' ''What season is it?''

If you are working with a tape and your mind says ''I don't know'' in answer to these kinds of questions, the best response is to ask yourself a leading question. For example if you don't know what you are wearing, you could ask: ''Am I wearing a red chiffon evening gown?'' Surprisingly, you will realize that your mind knows enough to answer no to this type of question. From there, you can begin to allow in what is.

Try not to second-guess your impressions. Just go with whatever comes up. If you ''just seem to have a vague idea of a tree,'' go with it. Accept it. Don't reject an impression just because it's not clear or striking or significant.

Of course, the best way to investigage past lives, Dick Sutphen said, is by going to a reputable professional hypnotist. We agree. Then, whatever impressions you are getting, the professional guide will know how to pull you into them and allow you to expand on them. ''And it may be of great value for you to do so,'' Sutphen advises, ''especially if you are really, really hurting.''

Through uncovering a past-life scenario that explains our emotions, we can come to terms with present-life events and people. It works, Sutphen says, ''even if you don't believe in it.''

Footnotes:

The writer has had similar experiences. In one case, a young girl was regressed, as part of an investigative project at UCLA, to the Lost Continent of Mu and asked to draw symbols from the Mu alphabet. In trance, she did so. A few days later, while we were doing library research, a book literally fell out of the stacks and landed at our feet. It was an old, obscure tome about the Lost Continent of Mu, and in it were the symbols this girl had drawn.

Radical Spirituality: Metaphysical Awareness for a New Century, by Dick Sutphen, Valley of the Sun Publishing, Malibu, CA, p. 18.

Ibid. p. 32.

For more on this idea, you might wish to refer to Return of the Bird Tribes by Ken Carey, (Reprint edition, July 1991, Harper San Francisco).

Teotihuacan (tay-OH-tee-wah-KAHN) is a complex of step pyramids near Mexico City. Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Sun, though not so tall, is actually bigger around than the Great Pyramid at Khufu.

Earthly Purpose: The Incredible True Story of a Group Reincarnation by Dick Sutphen, Pocket Books (1990) New York, NY.