Insanity.

This is one of the darkest aspects of reincarnation, and one that is quite hard to talk about. I have been thinking about it the last few days, trying to put into words something that most of the times is just a weird feeling during regression. Weird, hard to understand, mysterious... but also crystal clear.

I have observed that when you remember to have done "evil" things in a past life, the first thing you ask yourself is whether you were sane or not when you did it. I suspect being insane is a great excuse to do things you know are unjustifiable. It is also a natural tendency we all have: when we watch in the news a serial killer killed a dozen women in the last five years, we all want to think there was something in his mind that didn't work quite right. And if this is not the case, we just think he was "evil" or a monster. Believing someone can do that just because he likes to kill is almost inconceivable. However, I think this is so in the majority of cases. And the worst thing is we can't do anything about it. It is his choice, as is everything else we do in our human lives.

Then I read a book called The Projection of the Astral Body by Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington. It said that one of the reasons a person can stay in the astral after their death is precisely insanity: an alteration of the mind, so frequent in the last years of many people who suffer from dementia, for instance. I don't remember to have stayed in the astral for this reason, but it made me reflect on how deep an alteration of this kind can affect your behaviour. If it does after death, I guess it is equally (or more) powerful while alive, obviously. And though I don't think I have even been so insane as to not be able to act perfectly knowing what I was doing, and therefore, being totally responsible of my actions, I have felt in a few occasions, in more than one life, how certain events influence your mind, and pain can indeed make you lose your sanity. I can understand how someone might end up killing all their family, in a given moment, out of suffering, jealousy, despair, fear, or whatever emotion overcomes that person. I guess our minds are the tool we use to control our basic instincts. Sometimes feelings are too overwhelming and cause a lot of confusion. And, scary as it sounds, sometimes they win the battle against the mind, and then we lose it.

Well, when doing a regression, you can feel it. You can feel how your thought patterns have changed and they are not the same anymore. You also can feel how cultured you are, whether you were good writing or reading, or you hadn't learned these abilities, or how intelligent you were. Of course, this is obvious for people who regress regularly, but maybe it is not so obvious for people who haven't tried to remember past lives using this method. This is how we believe our minds are different in each incarnation. And feeling how it can be altered, unbalanced or destroyed through events happening to you, is surprising and so, so interesting. Frightening too, as it makes you realize none of us is immune to commit certain crimes, insane or not. You also realize you could have done even worse than you did, so at least you can be glad of this fact. When terrible things happen to you it is not easy at all to keep your balance and make the right choices. And I am sure all this has a lot to do with what living means, with that gut reaction we all have to certain events, the results of which will determine our future and the outcome of that particular life.