#64 Simon Bown: Past Lives and The Survival of Conciousness
Johnny Burke: Welcome to Closer To Venus, I’m Johnny Burke. Today’s guest is Simon Bown. He is a hypnotherapist who is certified in past life regression therapy and is also the host of The Past Lives Podcast, which now has over 180 episodes. Today, we’ll be talking about reincarnation, children with past life memories, near-death experiences, spirit communication, and other topics that suggest the survival of consciousness after death. Simon, welcome to the program.
Simon Bown: Hi, it’s good to be here.
Johnny Burke: So you are a hypnotherapist by trade. What made you want to explore past life regression?
Simon Bown: Well, I’ve always been interested in reincarnation and, the afterlife, but when I was 10 years old, I’d go to the local public library, and I would get books out and all sorts of unexplained things. It could be big foot, and ghosts and these wide variety of things. But the older I got, my interests sort of moved together into some smaller areas. So there were two things, there was UFO’s and there was the afterlife. And because I had such an interest in the afterlife, I would go and see mediums, and I would read the books on the subject. Not too far from me in London was the College of Psychic Studies. I would go there often. And that wasn’t because I was a student there, they were teaching mediumship and they were teaching all sorts of things. And you could book time with the medium students or with the teachers. So I would go maybe once a month, sometimes every couple of weeks. And I would see a different medium every time. And I sat with the channel, and it was there that somebody was doing past life regressions. And that was back in the 1980s.
I did my first one and I was taken back to a life in, it was about 1895 in London. And then I saw a few years of that life. So when it came to be doing hypnotherapy and to train, to be a hypnotherapist, I wanted to do past life regression. But I didn’t want to not get proper training, so I did a hypnotherapy course, which was 10 months, and it was 160 hours of classroom and so many case studies. And I learned so much about hypnosis and hypnotherapy. And I learned all these techniques for helping somebody stop smoking or lose weight or work with anxiety attacks and all these different things. Ultimately, I was learning hypnosis specifically to do past life regressions. So when I got my diploma, I then went on to study past life regression therapies as a specific modality to be used, because even though by then, I’d gone through several past life regressions, and I knew how they worked. me. I just want to be properly trained and know exactly what I’m doing before I take somebody through it.
Over the years it’s been a pathway I didn’t really expect that I’d be taking because I remember the college of psychic studies two or three times different mediums would say to me, “are you going to be a healer when you get older?”and I was thought, wow, I don’t think so. I didn’t feel like me, but then was, maybe 25 years old. And so obviously over time, you get older, and you change pathways and you look for different things. And here I am as a healer, but it reminds me of the matrix.: There’s a bit with Neo knocks the vase over, and the woman says to him, “don’t worry about the vase,” but she says to him before he knocks it over, “don’t worry about the vase.” He turns around and knocks the vase over. Did he knock it over? Cause she said, don’t worry about it, or did she have the premonition he was going to knock it over?
Johnny Burke: And we have a new matrix movie coming up this Christmas, I believe.
Simon Bown: Yeah. Yeah..
Johnny Burke: Interesting development, how you stumbled onto this. I’ve talked to hypnotherapists that eventually, discovered past life regression, but it seems like you were pretty much steeped in that whole world- visiting mediums and so on, where that informed your decision to do hypnotherapy. Also, I wasn’t aware that you were visiting mediums at such an early age, but you’ve also had paranormal experiences before all this happened, including UFO sightings and other events that you couldn’t really explain. When did this happen and, and can you give us some more detail on that?
Simon Bown: I was having dreams that were very vivid and. There was a point where I was going to visit a friend in New Zealand. She was getting married. A couple of weeks before I was to fly out to New Zealand, she asked me to get some kind of awful touristy stuff from London. And I bought her a tea towel with the London tube map on it. And I was walking through this area in London called Soho. And suddenly I had this, I don’t know if you call it a waking dream, or a vision where I was in New Zealand, and I was sitting next to her in her car. And she was driving, and we were going through suburban Christ Church. And there is real specific look to these houses that you don’t really see anywhere else in the world, not where I’ve been anyway. And this lasted a couple of minutes, and then like two weeks later, I’m New Zealand, and those two minutes, it happened exactly as I’d seen them while I was in London two weeks before. I remember the road names were the same. The conversation we were having was the same. The car was the same model make and color and the way the houses looked. And the thing is I’ve never been to suburban Christ Church before. I’d have no idea what the roads are called or what the houses looked like. And some people might say, well, this is a Deja Vu. But then Deja Vu doesn’t last two minutes when you’re actually living that experience
Johnny Burke: So is that a lucid dream or what exactly would that be called?
Simon Bown: I don’t know because it, it was, a-
Johnny Burke: premonition?
Simon Bown: Yeah, yeah. Precognition. It was just a Saturday afternoon in London. It wasn’t like I was asleep, or I was sitting down, I was walking down the street. So that that’s one of my weird experiences. But with the UFO, I was gigging with my band outside of London. This was a Sunday night gig. It was a blues bar, and we were the house band and people would get up and jam with us. Then we finished and I was heading back into London. It must’ve been around 1:00 AM and I was on this motorway. And up ahead of me to the left, there was a really bright light. In one of the fields and I I’ve driven this motorway a lot, and I know this field and I know it’s empty. And I thought this is weird, really bright light there. And when I got to the space where I could really see in that field, there was a, some sort of a craft and it was very close to me. It was just off the edge of the motorway.
It didn’t move an inch. The whole time I looked at it, it was shaped like a rugby ball and. Half of the bottom that was covered in red pin spotlights. There’s a really powerful kind of spotlight beam pointed at the ground from the other end of it. And I dropped my speed to maybe five miles an hour and was leaning forward, looking up at it and I did get a good look at it. It’s completely silent. Didn’t move an inch, was the size of a large house. I think about that spotlight beam that was coming off the end of it, and this idea that you see these images of alien abductions, and there’s a beam coming out of the UFO and something’s flying up within the light. it kind of made me feel well, maybe I saw an abduction in progress when I went past it. There is an idea with UFOs- they can be completely covered up. You won’t see them unless they want you to see them.
Johnny Burke: You talking about the craft itself?
Simon Bown: Yeah.
Johnny Burke: They’re cloaked?
Simon Bown: Yeah. I, don’t know how you’d explain it. And so, there’s a couple of times I’ve seen UFOs like this,
Johnny Burke: You’ve seen them more than once?
Simon Bown: In producing the episodes that I do, I try and read the book of every guest and just about every guest has got a book out. And so I’ve learnt so much about this stuff and I can see that with the UFOs and alien abduction, there’s some kind of spiritual connection there with the afterlife. And I interviewed Whitley Strieber, who’s a famous author. And he had a book out called Communion, where he talked about his encounters with ETs. He said to me during the interview that they had this cabin in the woods, and some nights the ETs would show up, but then he’d see apparitions of the dead show up at the same time. So it’s almost like the ETs-
Johnny Burke: Occupy the same space, the quantum realm.?
Simon Bown: Yeah. It’s like, the veil, as they call it between us and the afterlife, is removed or a lot thinner when they’re there, so other things can come through. So it’s just fascinates me how these connections are starting to show.
Johnny Burke: Indeed, since we’re talking about UFOs and aliens and other worldly beings, the difference between near-death experiences and out-of -body experiences , the conditions or the aftereffects are very similar. I’ve had some people tell me that, if I astral project, what am I likely to encounter?
And the answer was, well, what are you not likely to encounter? because there’s all kinds of things there. There’s past lives, there’s star beings, there’s things maybe you don’t want to see- there’s different levels. So there seems to be a connection. There’s something to it then it’s not just made up, it’s not just fiction. Would you agree?
Simon Bown: Yeah. The one thing that really makes me think, is that the professor John Mack at Harvard medical school, who was a professor of psychiatry, and he works with over 130 people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. And he said that there’s definitely something happening here. He said these people aren’t crazy. They’re not hoaxing, they’re not confabulating, you know what confabulation is? It’s when they’ll tell you something they believe is absolutely true, but it’s not true. It’s their belief. But he said that there is definitely something external to these people that is interacting with them. And as a psychiatrist in Harvard medical school, you got to be a damn good psychiatrist to get that job. So, if he says there’s something happening here and these people aren’t crazy, I think you got to listen to them.
Johnny Burke: I think so. Another thing that people seem to talk about, speaking of mediums, I know of one who told me that, many of the star beings are trying to teach us to be more loving creatures -as out there as that sounds. And ever since that I’ve had other people telling me the same thing. The subject of UFOs and star beings, it’s just, it’s so vast. But there’s obviously some connection between us and them and the veil. We just haven’t really figured it out yet, but you make a good point. What other metaphysical events did you experience when you were younger?
Simon Bown: I had some weird dreams and some strange experiences with it. I woke up one night it sounds so bizarre. you know, the grey alien sort of faces it was like the image of that was being projected onto the wall of my bed. I know I woke up and I saw it and I was like, what’s going on? Yeah. suddenly there’s adrenaline and it’s such a strange thing, why would that be happening? And I’d switched the light on next to the bed and you couldn’t see it, switched off and it was still there. And then it moved along the wall and just went into the corner of the room, and it was gone. Why would that happen? Where’s that image coming from, and why would they do that?
Going back to Whitley Strieber when he published this book Communion, which is about, 19 88, 89, he was sent loads of fan mail His wife would read every letter that came in, there were so many people who were reporting encounters, this kind of alien abduction thing that really Strieber was talking about in his book. After reading all these letters, she said to him, ” the more bizarre the story is, the more likely I’m to believe it.” And she also said that she could see there was a connection with death amongst what’s going on here.
I had these dreams that were hyper vivid. There was one, I was in this gray space. It was full of gray smoke. So I couldn’t see any walls or ceiling or anything. There were three guys there wearing identical gray suits with a white shirt and a black tie. I couldn’t see their heads because the way the smoke was, but the guy at the front held up this sign that was quite big and it had numbers on it.
It said 22, 22, 11. And then I just got from him this thing that said, “these are your numbers, this is what you’ll see now. “And then that was the end of the dream. And then for a while after that dream, I just saw those numbers everywhere and you could say, well, you’re looking for them, so you’ll spot them, I think they turned up too much.
Johnny Burke: 22, 22 11?
Simon Bown: Yeah. Yeah. And then I had another dream that was that same guy. And he had one of those things in his hands, where you press the button and your car doors unlock- one of those things. He just lifted it up and pointed it at me and pressed the button. And then the alarm went off the alarm clock. I think about how would my brain know to synchronize that button press with the alarm clock going off? Is my body clock that good that it knew exactly the time? So many things that happen and then lose track of them. But I was being taken through a past life regression.
Johnny Burke: You’ve been regressed several times. The question for you and for your patients is, how do you know it’s not just your imagination? What are some of the key factors that really ground it where you come out of it and say, I did not imagine that- it’s not fiction. That’s real.
Simon Bown: I think one of the things is, the lives that can be seen can be so dull. And if you think about, I could imagine a lifetime from any point in human history. And then I choose one where I’m just a Victorian guy in a dull job. Would you really choose that for yourself? If you wanted to imagine something?
Johnny Burke: Probably not.
Simon Bown: But people do see those lives in past life regressions, but they might be coming for some kind of therapeutic thing maybe to do with anxiety or some people might be talking about relationships, and why do I behave like this? And in this past life, you may be in the dining room with the family and you’re having your dinner. And I was saying to the client, “so if you look at these people in this family, do you recognize them as somebody that’s with you in this life? And they’ll say”, hang on a second- that person there? That’s my wife in this life. We’ve incarnated together again.” And I can see that in the past life, they’re having the same relationship problems as their current life. And so there’s like patterns going across the lives as something that needs sorting out. I did a regression today, there was a woman who was trying to start a small business and she just couldn’t find the motivation to get this thing off the ground. And we found in the past life, she went back to something that was like 1825 and she’s in a very similar sort of business, but it was taken apart by the locals. They didn’t like her, and they ruined her business. You could almost see some kind of energetic bond there where she’s had this past experience of starting a small business that was destroyed. And in this life, she’s really lacking motivation to get this business up and running.
Johnny Burke: Because of that experience?
Simon Bown: Well, we don’t know. The past lives seem to be symbolic of the problem that you’re having now, metaphorical, or there’s a connection there. You could argue that it’s subconscious is just making it up, but sometimes the emotions are so powerful. I see them through the camera on zoom, where they’re really in tears and they’re really upset. I’ve had some powerful stuff happen to me in past life regressions. One thing that stands out is that these lives can be confirmed. Sometimes you get enough information. I had a guest on the podcast called Robert Snow, who was a homicide detective for 38 years. I think it was Chicago, but he was bullied into doing a past life regression. And he said there was a woman in his precinct who kept on saying to him,” oh, you should do this.” And he thought it was absolute rubbish. And he got to this point, he’d be walking down the corridor at work, and he’d see her coming and he quickly dive into a room to avoid it. So in the end he said,” look, I’m going to do it. I’ll prove it’s rubbish. And then that’ll be the end of it.”
But he did the past life regression, and he saw this past life and he went on to use his skills of investigation to track down that life. And he had found what he called 28 proofs. And this all happened before the internet. He had to go to the local library, the museums, he had to travel around, searching for the documentation because the life that he’d seen was an obscure life. It wasn’t like he was famous. This is one of these criticisms that past life regression gets is people say, how come everybody’s always Cleopatra, or King Henry the Eighth?
Johnny Burke: Right. I think that myself, but what you just described sounds a lot like what Dr. Ian Stevenson did in the sixties. He discovered he could interview children that had past life memories, then he’d go and find the past life family. And I think in about 1500 cases, the child knew all kinds of things about the family that he couldn’t have possibly known, including family secrets, where that family then acknowledged him as their deceased loved one. And this is in the sixties and seventies before we had Google and all of that. It’s really hard to argue against that. How do you? how do you explain that?
Simon Bown: And also there’s the physical effects as well. The children will talk about a past life, and they died in a certain way, and they have some kind of a birthmark or physical defects, which matches the injuries. You could say, well, the children have an injury or defects. So they made up some life where that defect occurred. But they can’t make up the life that accurately. And with that much detail that the family accepts them as the deceased person. There’s a boy who remembered a life as a schoolteacher and he was on his way to school one morning, and he was shot. He was murdered, and Ian Stevenson was able to get hold of the autopsy. And could see the birthmarks on the child’s skull were in exactly the same position as the entry and exit wound of the bullets. So it’s an amazing kind of verification.
I’ve got this book he’s written, called “When Biology and Reincarnation Intersect” and it’s got a hundred of these cases in the book and a load of photographs as well. So you can actually see these, birthmarks and deformities and things. There’s a great picture of a boy. He remembered a life as an American bomber pilot over Burma during the second world war. The British army were fighting the Japanese, and the American air force was supporting the British army by bombing where the Japanese were. And the aircraft was shut down and crashed in Burma. And so this boy was born. It’s a, Myanmar, now isn’t it- Burma.? The picture in the book shows him and he’s got blonde hair and blue eyes and light skin. And he’s standing next to somebody who’s who has such dark skin and black hair and brown eyes. It’s just amazing how these connections happen. I’ve heard it described as some kind of soul energy matrix that brings stuff through. And it seems to be mostly when it’s traumatic deaths that the child remembers their previous life.
Johnny Burke: Really?
Simon Bown: Because you might’ve thought it would be there’s some perfection there as why is this happening? But it’s probably just part of nature that this comes together.
Johnny Burke: When we talk about past lives and reincarnation, inevitably the subject of the in between stage life between lives, what Dr. Michael Newton, wrote about. Have you had experiences either with yourself or with any or patients, where they kind of tripped into that space where they remembered in between incarnations?
Simon Bown: Yeah. Yeah. I did, somebody took me through a life between lives, hypnotic session. I went through that whole process of where you meet the soul group, your soul guides, they have a place they called the council of elders and there’s a healing place. And there’s the library of knowledge I took somebody through a past life regression recently. What we might do is I take the people through the past life, and we go through the death of the past life which is almost always easy. People usually say they’re just very old and they just kind of drift away and then they’re dead. We go into this afterlife space where I ask their spirit guides to come forward, and they can ask the spirit guide some questions. we usually just say, stay in this kind of space of light. And that’s where the communication happens, but two or three times people have said,” oh, we’re going now.” I said,” where are we going?” He said, “well, the guide wants to take us somewhere.” I said, okay, let’s see where we go. And they went to a massive library; they couldn’t see the other end of it was so big. And the librarian brought a book over.
Johnny Burke: Isn’t that a reference to the Akashic Records , or the Akashic hall of records?
Simon Bown: Yeah., That’s what I thought. Those words weren’t used, but that’s what it reminded me of. And so she opened this book, and there’s this writing in there she couldn’t read, she didn’t know what language it was. So I said to her, well, ask the librarian. Why give you this book? If you can’t read it? And she said, they told her, “It’s just to show you everything happens for a reason. It’s all written down in the book.” So that, that was an interesting one.
I had a couple where somebody’s relative may have died in the last couple of years. One of them, while we were in a past life, this lady was in the kitchen and she’s in the Victorian era. And she said, “she’s just doing some cooking.” And she goes, “my brother’s just walked in.”. I said, okay, your brother in the past life? She goes” no, my brother, he died a year ago and now he’s just walked in, and he’s just come to tell me he’s okay, and then he was gone again.” So that was really weird. And somebody else was in the space with the spirit guides after her life. And then their grandmother just walks in and says, “don’t worry about me. I’m fine. You know, I’ve, I’ve passed on. “So it’s amazing.
Johnny Burke: Is this in the in-between space or ?
Simon Bown: Yeah. One of them was in that kind of in-between space and the other one was during viewing a past life.
Johnny Burke: Now you’ve experienced this yourself -the in-between space?
Simon Bown: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Burke: So what did, it feel like emotionally?
Simon Bown: I don’t know, I say it felt like home, really. It was weird. I get the impression that we’re all in these soul groups, and the soul groups have different aims at different times. And when I, went to this soul group, the aim was fun, and happiness. And so when I first arrived with them, it was like I was in a disco, it was like a seventies disco with all the lights on the floor, everybody’s dancing. And my spirit guide came over. And he started dancing and he was doing the Charleston and walking like an Egyptian and all this kind of stuff.
Johnny Burke: That’s incredible.
I think it’s incredible, but it’s not what I was expecting to hear. I heard one account that was so much of this which was not fun. And it was very daunting, but I’ve never heard anyone who’s actually been in that type of a session who said, “this did happen, I experienced it”.
Simon Bown: Yeah. So we did go onto the council of elders and a space where you choose your body that you’re going to live in, in your next life to come. When I got to the council of elders, there was a whole group of people there and it was like a Greek amphitheater and everyone’s there in togas, and they looked very wise and very serious. And the guy at the front stood up and kind of pointed away, like he was going, ” what do you think you’re doing presenting yourself?,go and get out of here. ” And it was later on that somebody took me back to that space, to sort of ask what was happening, that was pretty weird. This idea of reason why I chose this body for this life about it being a strong body, but not strong in a muscular way. It’s strong. If it was to get ill, that it would be good at fighting off illness.
Johnny Burke: So, you actually get to choose a body, and you get to choose your parents? Or is a soul group established for you?
Simon Bown: I hear different things from different places. There’s a thing that talks about how you have a life plan, and all these different things are set up across your life. it’s a plan though. It’s not set in stone; you can go off the plan. Other members of your soul group will be part of the plan. They may come in as your mother and father, or your husband, or wife, or your children. And they behave in certain ways and do certain things to help you learn lessons, throughout that plan as well, there’s what they call exit points, where basically where you could die and just leave the life if you need to. There’s still free will though. And any member of your soul group that’s involved in your plan might just go off and do something else and not help you out with your plan and you might do that to them. The thing about the soul groups and choosing your parents, then it’s a kind of thing where I suppose a whole group of you would get together and decide who’s going to play which role in that life.
So you agree with which souls will be your parents, but then there’s a story of a guy called James Leininger, who was a child that remembered the life of a fighter pilot in the Second World War over the Pacific. He talked about this before he was born. And he said, to his mum and dad, he’s only like four years old and he says,” I remember when we were in Hawaii, and you were staying at the big pink hotel, and you had dinner on the beach. And that’s when I saw you, and I chose you to be my parents.”
Johnny Burke: I think I heard that episode. Yeah. That’s, wow. That’s crazy!
Simon Bown: Yeah. The parents confirmed it. they were at a pink hotel in Hawaii.
Johnny Burke: Right. and he chose them, and he was in that in-between space. So between yourself and your patients, you’ve heard this probably quite a few times by now?
Simon Bown: Yes.
Johnny Burke: About the past life, about the in-between space, soul groups, parents, the elders, the elders, when you saw them, were they stern and serious or what would they like?
Simon Bown: Yeah.
When I went back, the first time I was there, they just threw me out. This guy just stood up and said, “you have to leave.” But the second time I went back there, this guy took me through talking to them and talking to different members of the council. So when we turned up last time, why was I thrown out? And they said, well,” the guy that did, that was actually a junior member, and this is one of the first times he’s ever been on a council, and he got it wrong.” And then there was a woman that looked about 50 and she had short blonde hair. And we went to her, and we said, “okay, so what was your job on the council? And she’s,” I’m in charge, I’m in charge of this whole council.” she was pretty stern. They all were wearing like these togas, these robes, and they had different color sashes on, on the sash seem to identify them in a certain role. Hers was gold and she was in charge and there was a guy with a black one and he says, his role is pain. And it was like, what do you mean pain? Is it physical pain? emotional pain? And he’s kind of like,” yeah, whatever”. But his attitude, he was quite funny. He was like a mafia guy. And he was sitting there smoking. these Marlboros and, he was a bit of a tough guy, and he said,” yeah, I’m about the pain.”
Johnny Burke: Smoking?
Simon Bown: Yeah.
Johnny Burke: Okay. I’ve never heard that before. That’s interesting.
Simon Bown: These are energetic beings, and they could present themselves to you in any way they wanted. So this guy is sitting there, he’s looking about 50 and he’s quite big. He’s got a big belly. He’s smoking his hair’s all ruffled up, but actually he could present himself as a little girl or as a Moose perhaps anything he wants to.
Johnny Burke: So you’re feeling as they can present themselves the way need to for that particular person, which is you in this case. Going back to the regressions, what is the farthest back in terms of time, a hundred years ago? 5,000 years ago? What is the farthest back that one of your patients or you remember a life?
Simon Bown: I had a client who went back to a point where they said they had no language. It was kind of like Neanderthals. They hadn’t even developed language yet. The client was female, but the life was male. Just talked about trying to scramble to get food and how she was part of a tribe, but they hadn’t formed a society, so they fought each other over food. But then with other things they would cooperate. That’s probably the furthest back that I’ve had a client go, but I had a couple of clients go to other planets and that, was interesting.
Johnny Burke: I’m sure that was bound to come up sooner or later. What about ancient civilizations, which, haven’t really been proven to have existed like Atlantis or Lemuria or Mu or anything like that?
Simon Bown: I haven’t had anybody go to those places.
Johnny Burke: But you’ve had people come from different planets.
Simon Bown: Yeah, there was a lady who went into the past life, and she said she was in a cave, and she was really scared, and she did not have a human body. And she was kind of saying, they’re coming to get me. And it’s, didn’t seem like they had technology wherever she was, she said, whatever it was coming to get her we’re like human size rats, was her best description. But they weren’t actually rats like human sized rats, but that’s similar to what she wanted to say. And there was another lady went to a life where, when we first go into a past life, we just get some basic questions. Like, are you male or female? And how old are you? And I said, “if you look down, can you see your clothes?” And she said”, I haven’t got a human body, but my legs, each of my legs has two knees instead of one knee.” we couldn’t really get much more than that. Cause she was just kind of in this desert space and she wasn’t wearing anything, and I was trying to move the narrative forward, but we didn’t really go anywhere. So that’s all we saw on that one.
Johnny Burke: Interesting. So, that does tend to support the theory that not everyone is reincarnated from earth. People talk about being reincarnated from not only different star systems, different planets, but when they’re in that in-between space, sometimes the spirit guides or the elders and whoever is the governing body will suggest” earth has a bit harsh, maybe you should go there because, it would be better for you.” Have you had any experiences like that?
Simon Bown: I haven’t heard that. I have heard, it’s a pretty tough place. I had a guest recently say, “humans are the drama Queens of the universe, cause everything’s so tough. ”
Johnny Burke: That’s incredible. I love that. I think people need to hear this, so. What was his or her basis for saying that? Where did they come from?
Simon Bown: He’s a guy called Shepherd Hoodwin who channels somebody called Michael. And he said there are a lot of people that channel Michael and that’s where his information comes from. He didn’t say Archangel Michael. He just says Michael. And I did interview a woman. I think she’s from New Zealand, called Suzanne Hanson. And she’s got a book out called The Jewel Soul Connection. She remembers past lives as a grey, and ET, and when she’s come into this life. So she’s kind of like partly soul is grey and partly her soul is human. That’s why the book’s called the Jewel Soul Connection. So that this idea of past lives and other planets does seem to make sense in a way. You could say everything that we’re talking about doesn’t make much sense. Cause it sounds crazy,
Johnny Burke: Not reincarnation though, not past lives. I think we’ve seen or heard firsthand enough accounts in addition to work, by Ian Stevenson and Raymond Moody and Brian Weiss it’s really kind of hard to argue against, but you’re right. Talking about being reincarnated from other worlds? It’s probably a stretch for most people. But I wouldn’t discount it., I’ve had a lot of people that came onto the show and said, well, I remember life in Atlantis, I remember life in Lemuria, I remember being a Pleiadean, and I don’t know whether it’s true or not, that’s just what they’re telling me.
For someone who’s interested in doing the therapy, the past life regression sessions, how can they best prepare for it?
Simon Bown: But I think there’s different levels to this. I always recommend people doing meditation. And even if it’s just five minutes and when you’re meditating, kind of send a request out into the Universe and your soul guides to ask for their help in the past life. Because the idea is during the regression, the life that you view is chosen for you by your soul guides. And they’ll choose the life for you that was most beneficial for you to view right now. So in preparation for doing the past life regression to do that, meditation helps. And that also, it’s that training your mind to calm, and that helps with the hypnosis. There’s that idea of sending that request out to the soul guides, but also, I think that they might be pushing people into doing a past life regression. They may have this idea that they know what will be really good for you right now will be to view a certain past life. They’ll put the idea and the drive to do it into your subconscious, and it may come through to your conscious mind when you think it’s your idea, but it’s actually the spirit guides who are kind of prodding you in the back saying go into a past life.
Johnny Burke: like that idea as well. that’s really, really cool stuff. It seems to me that this kind of work for you has been very rewarding the research and interviewing people and gaining knowledge and disseminating knowledge, wouldn’t you say?
Simon Bown: Yeah, it’s been, an education because, even though I’d had my experiences over time, I read a lot of books when I’m doing these podcast episodes, over 180 now, and just about every single guest has a book. And I read the books to harvest the questions I gained so much from reading all those books. And then I’m in the lucky position that I can ask questions to the author. Some of these people who’ve had near death experiences, some of them had reincarnation experiences or mediumship stuff. I don’t think there’s many people around who get to talk to so many people who’ve had a near death experience and have asked them detailed questions about how it works and how they experienced it.
Johnny Burke: I think that you going to see mediums, early on is an important piece. Those experiences did seem to have an effect on you that kind of spurred you forward on your path, didn’t it?
Simon Bown: Yeah, it’s interesting to see what comes up, because one instance that’s springs to mind was in the eighties. I was sitting with a medium and she said, “well, George is here to talk to you”. And I was saying,” I don’t know a George.” And she says, “okay, we’ll move on”. And 10 minutes later she says “George is here. He’s very insistent. He wants to talk to you. And” I don’t know a George” and she’s “okay. “So I got home, and I said to my mum,” Yeah, there’s somebody called George wanted to talk to me “and she says, “that’s your granddad”. He died when I was a kid only ever knew him, his granddad, so that was some kind of verification there for me that, I didn’t know someone called George, cause there’s an idea, mediums will read a person sitting opposite them to make stuff up, or that the mediums getting the information from your brain psychically.
So I couldn’t have given her any clues about a George, psychically or, through cold reading me because that made no sense to me at all. It was only when I got home, and my mum told me who George was. That’s one of those kinds of verifications that really makes you think. If you’re the person that experiences it, it can be quite powerful. That goes for a lot of experiences that people have; they seem small, but if it happens to you, it really makes you think.
Johnny Burke: That is definitely an important piece. Here’s a question, which I’m not sure anyone really has the answer for, but I’m going to run it by you anyway. If there was a widespread acceptance of reincarnation, what do you suppose the implications would be for our civilization?
Simon Bown: I don’t know. One of the things about reincarnation is you’re not supposed to remember your past lives because then your current life; you’re here to learn a lesson and knowing about all your past lives and that you reincarnate wouldn’t help you at all. I don’t know how it would affect civilization.
Johnny Burke: The reason I bring that up is that someone- his name is Walter Semkiw , basically took Ian Stevenson’s work, which is written for the academics , what Walter did is he just distilled down the most important cases into like a story form so people can actually read it. And one of his thoughts was: if there was a widespread acceptance of reincarnation, there’d be a decreased fear of death. With a decreased fear of death, there’ll be no need for faith. With no need for faith, there would be less importance of religion. With less of an influence of religion, there would be no wars. I don’t know if we’re going to see that in our lifetime, but definitely does make you think.
Simon Bown: You might say that if people are so sure there’s an afterlife and reincarnation. Some people might just get sick of this life and suicide.
Johnny Burke: Yeah, but that’s a different discussion and it’s true, but also there’s implications with that too, which means you get sent back to school, and you got to do everything all over again. So, it’s not an easy question, but I always thought, that one discussion was pretty interesting.
Other than the advice that you just gave us on how best to prepare, which is great the way, what else do people really need to know about past life regression?
Simon Bown: they need to know that while they’re hypnotized, they will remember everything during the hypnosis they’ll feel completely in control. They feel like they could just get up and stop it anytime they wanted to. The images they come to you in your imagination. So, that is where we make stuff up, so it’s not surprising. People would think, I don’t know if I made it. But it’s the way it’s given to you and the emotions that can be so powerful. In a past life regression, you just need to be physically comfortable for about an hour and, follow the guidance of the hypnotist.
Also the hypnotist should ask open questions, basic questions. Because hypnosis is the power of suggestion. And if you start getting really complicated in the way you talk, then that might bring up false memories. So, I did wonder if my clients, if they sometimes think, you know, what Simon’s questions were pretty awful. He didn’t really ask much, got to keep it basic.
Johnny Burke: Got to keep it basic. Excellent. All right, Simon, thanks so much for joining us today. Excellent. Excellent information on all of the above, how can our listeners find you online?
Simon Bown: The website is pastliveshypnosis.co.uk. The podcast is the past lives podcast. I’ve got the websites, part of it’s for the podcast. Part of it’s for the hypnosis. You can book a free 20 minute consultation if you’re thinking of doing a past life regression with me and I’m starting a new podcast next year in January, that’s called the alien UFO podcast.