After a few days of 17^th March 2002 session, SD came to me and said that since the last session, he was having recurrent dreams of a lady and want to have additional session to see if it has any links with his past life. We agreed to have a session on Sunday, 7^th April 2002. He came at the scheduled time. I asked him to lie down on the bed and delivered the instructions for relaxation based hypnosis, counting deepener and tested the trance through arm levitation. Then I used instructions for past life regression. After the instructions he began to speak:

It is an ashram. I am five years old. My name is Karmendra. Guruji’s name is Bramhananda. His beard is white and he wears white clothes. Gurumata is also there. She wears saffron clothes. She does not speak. She is giving me food; I am eating. She is not speaking. Gurumata is not allowing me to come back from there. (I urged him to take permission). Guruji has permitted me to return back, but Gurumata is not ready. Guruji is advising her not to have too many wishes; else he would have to take re-births with her. He got permission for returning back to current life. Trance was terminated.

SD revealed that it was Gurumata who was coming in the recurrent dreams. On follow up, SD reported that his dream of the lady has disappeared.

This revelation provided an additional direction to me for revision of my concepts of dreams. I conceptualized that dreams could also be related to previous lives. I am aware of paranormal concepts and implications of dreams. Some people claim that they receive information regarding some future events in the dreams; the dreamt events come true afterwards. So I mentally noted that I would further explore the relationship of dreams and past life regression sometime in my life.

Inkblots are specialized procedures in clinical psychology which are mostly used to formulate a diagnosis of psychological problems and understanding the psychological issues. Rorschach is the most popular inkblot. The inkblot procedures are my second line interest area apart from hypnosis and past life regression. Prof. B.L.Dubey and Prof. Wilfred Cassell have jointly developed an innovative inkblot procedure in the name of Somatic Inkblot Series (SIS). I had little exposure to SIS and I contacted Dr. B.L.Dubey who was working in Punjab University, Chandigarh. He agreed to train us on SIS. Dr. Ajai Srivastava and I visited Chandigarh on 1-3 November 1998. He is a great teacher; he dedicated those three days exclusively to both of us and comprehensively trained us on SIS. During the training he had taught us that this projective technique has the power to elicit dreams. That is, after receiving this inkblot test, one or the other dream can get activated as a result of the exposure to SIS images and an analysis of these dreams can point out to unconscious wishes and conflicts which can in turn aid in psychotherapy. Since 1998 I was using SIS technique and the concept of dreams activation for my clients which quickly helped me in expanding my concepts that a session of past life regression too may have the potentials for activation of dreams resulting in a manifest content directly relevant to former lives of a person.

In 2004, I visited DJ College, Baraut as usual and one of my esteemed teachers Dr. Uma Rani told me that she has a candidate interested in doing doctoral research on dreams and she has been to several prospective guides, everyone have either discouraged her or refused to guide her research on dreams. She asked if I could supervise her. It was a blessing for me. The divinity connected me to a candidate who could pursue my vision of research on dreams. I agreed to supervise her doctoral research on dreams. The candidate, Preeti Sharma approached me in Baraut and when it came to finalizing the topic and synopsis, I swiftly zeroed down to recurrent dreams. The proposed research work was submitted to CCS University, Meerut for approval and registration for Ph.D program in 2004. The finally approved topic for the research was “Nature and Function of Recurrent Dreams”.

In Part-I of this study, a dreams questionnaire was prepared which was given to 60 subjects with recurrent dreams and 30 subjects with non-recurrent dreams. A comparison of the content of recurrent vs. non-recurrent dreams was done through a sophisticated content analysis system. The analysis revealed that the content of recurrent dreams is significantly different from the content of non-recurrent dreams on following dimensions:

1. Male/Female Percent
2. Animal Percent
3. Aggression/Friendliness Percent
4. Indoor Setting Percent
5. Familiar Setting Percent
6. Bodily Misfortunes Percent
7. Friendliness
8. Success
9. Striving

In Part-II of the study, 20 subjects with recurrent dreams and 10 subjects with non-recurrent dreams were individually put into hypnotic trance and the content of their dreams was presented to them in the trance state with an open ended instruction that they shall report whatever comes in their mind in response to this content. As expected all the 20 subjects of recurrent dreams group got regressed to previous lives without any explicit instructions to this effect and came up with the relevant experiences which produced their recurrent dreams. But none of the ten subjects of non-recurrent dreams had such a regression experience. Non-recurrent dreams group narrated experiences of their current life only. For illustration purposes, I am citing one case of recurrent dreams.

A middle aged male reported following recurrent dream since puberty. “I see pearls and Rudrakash in my dream, I am going to handover them to someone and meanwhile I wake up”. In hypnotic trance, this subject associated followings with this dream content.

He found himself in another time and identified as a sage named Kapil he lived in an ashram, located in Nepal, with his wife named Ratigandha and his many students. There were many cows and many women working in the field. He taught his students Sanskrit and Hawan. He had done the ‘Penance’ by standing on one leg in the water. The king of Nepal named Joytidhar, was living in Patliputra. The subject did the “Niyog” with the queen of that king and had four children. He came to know Rudraksh can save life of the king. He ordered his students to pluck the Rudraksh from the trees. They brought six Rudraksh and he started his journey to the Patliputra.  On his way, robbers asked him to give four Rudraksh; the name of the robber was Shimadangh who used to steal the things from the Pashupatinath temple. When he refused. Shimadangh tide him with a tree and cut his hands.

This thesis posits an innovative methodology for studying recurrent dreams. On follow up it was found that the recurrent dreams of these subjects disappeared. In addition to the above, this methodology of exploring recurrent dreams can have healing potentials too, the investigation of which would make next step of this study. This thesis got completed on 15^th August 2011, the day when I am finished writing this chapter.