Book Review: Have You Lived Before This Life?

Have you lived before this life? It is an unusual book. Not because I am reporting on past life type phenomena. Past lives have been reported by people for thousands of years all over the world. Many religions are based on this phenomenon. Where do we go after death? It is unusual because it contains so many past life case histories of ordinary people.

This book by L. Ron Hubbard was first published in 1959 after he gave a congress of many lectures in London on the subject. Here the theme of past lives came up again and again. Here the students were learning to hone their counseling techniques, called auditing. For auditing to work effectively, it seems that one must have the recipient access memory from previous lives. It would also seem that one’s problems in this life do not start at the beginning of this life, but go further and further back. This concept only differs from the Indian concept of reincarnation in that, according to Scientology experience, man does not cross species from man to another species.

Scientologists have the help of the electronic e-meter that measures thought. The counselor can then quantify and measure the trauma, whether in this life or a previous one. Additionally, the meter can find thoughts that are otherwise hidden from view. Also, when a person being counseled talks about the experience he is seeing in memory, the charge dissipates. This is seen and measured. The meter finally shows when the charge has run out and the counseling session is over.

The book Have you lived before this life?? has 42 case histories of people who experienced previous lives during auditing. This is what makes this book unique. Each of the counseling sessions was written down and the problems the person had before the sessions, as well as the details of the session and what was handled by reviewing past memory, are all in the book. Case histories of what was revealed in the sessions can go back hundreds of years, or even thousands. It is a fascinating read.

The book doesn’t mince words and the stories it contains are told by those who went through the experience. Scientology counselors do not tell a person what to think or what to find, so whatever comes to mind for the person being counseled is exactly what is discussed in the session. The book reads as a great interesting read as a result of this approach.

The book also has some excellent essays by L. Ron Hubbard on the subject of past lives and is recommended for those who have audited with Dianetics and who have contacted past lives.

The dust jacket reads: “Is death an end or a new beginning?”.