Blossoming Within the Lotus Wheel of Consciousness
Mary Lynn Adzema*
An Essay Review of Roger Woolger's
Other Lives, Other Selves:
A Jungian Psychotherapist
Discovers Past LivesClick on Book Cover to Buy the Book Today!To believe . . . or not to believe — in reincarnation, that is — is not what Other Lives, Other Selves is all about. What even the most ardent skeptic will come away with after reading this book is a greatly expanded appreciation for and perhaps even awe of the creativity, resilience, and fertility of the psyche and its healing powers.
And for some of us — perhaps I should say all of us, for who has not tiptoed to the edge of the abyss and asked, Why am I here? — there will also emerge a clearer understanding of the psychodynamics of existence and a heightened awareness of this great cosmic drama — or is it a comedy? — in which we are all players.
I was impressed by the style of Woolger’s presentation as well as the substance: Clarity, integrity, and humility are the qualities that come to mind. In Other Lives, Other Selves the author provides a dispassionate and yet compelling look at the possible value of past-life therapy, as well as a disarmingly honest account of his own evolution from Jungian analyst — and skeptic — to Jungian past-life therapist. At no point does he proselytize, instead he sets forth the evidence from his many years of work with clients, and he never deviates from his central concern — relieving their suffering by using whatever tools he has at his disposal for that purpose. His approach throughout is eclectic, syncretic. Thus his resources include Jung, Freud, Reich, Gestalt, subpersonalities, body language, psychodrama, breathwork, and more. If there is one simple equation that would define Roger Woolger’s philosophy, and which is eloquently borne out in this book, it is simply: Healing = Truth.
He tells us from the outset that he is not invested in, nor concerned with, the metaphysical or philosophical truth of reincarnation. Whether the events occurring during a therapy session genuinely are past-life experiences is not the issue for Woolger. He is only concerned with his clients’ "psychic truth" — that which is real to them. He tells his patients: "It doesn’t matter whether you believe in reincarnation or not for this therapy to be effective" (p. 82). He asks them only to believe in a concept that is basic to nearly all the schools of psychotherapy which derive from Freud and nineteenth century hypnotic-regression work, and that is "the healing power of the unconscious mind" (p. 82). As he says, the psyche is fundamentally a "story-teller." Whether or not these stories are "real" or "fantasy" is not important. What Woolger has come to over the past decade — while listening to literally thousands of hours of these "stories" — is the inescapable realization that by accepting them as "true" and allowing his clients to cathart freely around the issues that they involve he is able to facilitate an ever-mysterious process of healing.
Let me state right now that what resonated so strongly with me in reading Woolger’s work was its implications for bringing in the new worldview, which is a broader paradigm for dealing with human suffering. Unfortunately it is also one which is being resisted might and main by mainstreamers blindly insisting on the "science only" dogma — a cruel dogma indeed, for at every turn it denies the fundamentality of consciousness and the integrity of subjectivity as valid instruments in the relief of human pain. However, sooner or later the die-hard materialists will have to acknowledge that this new worldview is not only more all-encompassing and compassionate but also that it derives from a more comprehensive, long overdue understanding of our essentially Divine nature. In this worldview the head can no longer ignore the heart, specialists of any ilk must be willing to network and broaden their views for the higher good, everyone of us will be obliged to stretch our focus and concerns to include all of humanity, and so on. As Woolger puts it, in his one swipe at old-paradigm thinkers: "A belief in the final interpretive power of rationality and science to explain everything is itself a pernicious form of monotheism and only leads to all kinds of irrational, inexplicable, and even occult reactions from the repressed polytheistic unconscious" (p. 49).
And is he qualified to shake the scientistic pedestal? Yes! The most ardent rational materialist, I believe, will be obliged to expand her or his universe after reading this book because of the sheer weight of evidence presented. And by evidence I mean the irrefutable kind: case after case of trauma reexperienced, painful emotions released, confusion dispelled, and healing realized. By healing, I mean on all levels — body, mind, spirit. For as new-paradigm facilitators (those of us in holotropic breathwork, for example) will assure you, only the holistic approach brings lasting results.
As Woolger himself says,
The wheel has come full circle in psychotherapy. From the cathartic cures of the nineteenth century and Freud’s early emphasis on trauma many therapies followed Freud in moving away from the experiential to an interpretive or, as in behaviorism and psychiatry, to a manipulative approach to psychological illness. Now, thanks to Moreno, Perls, Janov, and all who have stressed the direct reexperience of trauma and attendant catharsis and also the larger visions of Stanislav Grof and Morris Netherton, experiential therapies are once more available to heal the psyche in all of its complex levels. (p. 127)In this regard one of the most valuable contributions in this book is the author’s new therapeutic model — a model grounded in his own findings which only in the past decade have come to include those of past-life therapy. According to Woolger there are six levels that belong to any complex1:In Woolger’s epistemology these levels can be symbolized as petals of a lotus, and the power of this lotus wheel model — as he calls it — lies in its delineation of multidimensional aspects of the complex, as both overlapping and resonating with one another. Instead of the linear or hierarchical model, which one finds in Ken Wilber’s (1980) work for example, Woolger’s concept is an organic one in which circles radiate from the central core (or feeling nucleus of the complex) overlapping, resonating, and moving in and out of each other.1. The Existential Aspect, which concerns current reality and situations.
2. The Biographical Aspect, involving memories from early childhood or later.
3. The Somatic Aspect, e.g., as revealed in the client’s body language (chronic stiff neck, back pain, or whatever the physical symptom which traditional medicine has not "cured").
4. The Perinatal Aspect, womb and birth trauma.
5. The Past-Life Aspect.
6. The Archetypal Aspect, involving spiritual insight into the basis for the complex. For example, the element of karmic debt perhaps involving a deep connectedness with a significant other from this life which has carried over apparently from past lives. (p. 116)
A striking benefit of this model is that in overlapping with each other the petals portray how all aspects of the complex mirror or interface with all others. As Woolger explains, no single aspect is more "important" than any other or any "deeper" (as the Wilberian model would suggest, for example). Instead, as Woolger has observed in his own practice, at any point in the client’s healing process any of the aspects might present itself. The first session may bring up a past-life experience; the second, a pre- and perinatal one; the third, a biographical. There is no logical sequence; rather the psyche, as healer, has demonstrated to Woolger over and over again that it transcends time in order to catalyze needed healing. For each client the process is unique and a different sequence occurs. In the same light, Woolger acknowledges that if a more directive approach seems to work with a particular client, and the therapist stays with one particular aspect — be it perinatal or past life, for example — sooner or later the feeling core of the complex can be reached.
Woolger’s theory of the complex and its recurring and interrelated aspects I felt resonated well with Grof’s COEX system (system of condensed experience)2 idea — a concept which Woolger refers to in Chapter Five. He states that his own work has validated the COEX principle, and he also acknowledges how he has benefited from Grof’s model of basic perinatal matrices (BPMs) as well.
Like Woolger, but based on our own experiences as primal-breathwork facilitators, my husband and I are firmly convinced that only the individual psyche "knows" the healing path. We have learned that we need only provide the setting, an unconditionally accepting context, and allow the patient, him- or herself, to lead the way. In reading Woolger’s book I was inspired to find such reassuring and strong validation for this healing principle — one which we first learned from Stanislav Grof and which in the course of our own practice has gained the force of self-evident truth.
In Chapter Six of his book, titled "Unfinished Soul Business: The Psychology of Karma," Woolger demonstrates once more his wide-ranging eclecticism and catholicity of mind by embracing certain principles hitherto confined to Eastern yogic epistemology: namely the concepts of karma — the law of cause and effect; samskara — past-life impressions manifesting in this life; and klesa — painful negative tendencies brought forward to be acted upon in this life. He does this, he says, in order to bridge the gap between Eastern and Western psychology. In the West we have been conditioned for over a century now to think in the purely physical terms of genetic inheritance. But because of Woolger’s exposure to Jung and the collective unconscious and the archetypes, as well as the now thousands of experiences of his own clients in regressing to past lives, he tells us he is ready to use terms like samskara (karmic complex) and klesa to provide a broader terminology and a more inclusive model for human sufferings, a model which the Western psychotherapist can benefit from.
From life to life, Woolger says, we are doomed to replay our old unfinished business — our "plays of passion" as Jung would have it, the soul’s way of providing an opportunity to make the unconscious conscious at last. And once we do, we can release ourselves from the unconscious compulsions of these samskaras and become the true directors of our destinies.
One of the more poignant case histories in this regard — and one which also appears to validate the premise of relative equality of the aspects of a complex as depicted in his lotus-wheel model — was the story of Sol, a respected osteopath and healer in his late fifties. Sol came to Woolger suffering from a lifelong history of sinusitis, which he thought might have something to do with a past-life memory he had experienced at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. As his process unfolded, Sol did not immediately reexperience a past life in Jerusalem as Woolger had half anticipated. When asked to go to the source of his sinusitis, Sol immediately regressed to a this-life experience as a young boy, when he had stoically repressed his sorrow at impending abandonment by his mother who was hospitalized at the time with a life-threatening illness. To make a long story short, Woolger had Sol give full and free rein to the feelings that he had buried at that time. Then, sensing that there might be another part of the client’s complex to be accessed, he asked Sol to repeat the emotionally charged words, "I’ll never see her again," and to allow the words to take him to any other story to which they might apply.
His therapeutic intuition was in tune, for Sol regressed immediately to a past life as a Roman watching the crucifixion of Jesus. Over time in that life he had apparently been profoundly moved by Jesus’s teachings: "We can learn to heal if we have faith and love. . . . We are all one. . . . We must love one another," and so on (p. 130). Upon watching the death of this man he so admired Sol found himself saying: "They’ve taken Jesus. I’ll never see him again. I’ll never see him again!" (p. 129). As Woolger describes it, Sol emerged from his story with great emotion. It had been a genuine catharsis for him, and he now recognized the spiritual origin of his vocation to be a healer in this life.
As Woolger explains, this particular case was a touching example of how experiential exploration at more than one level of a complex had succeeded dramatically where a more narrow and focused treatment had failed. To me this case history not only validated some of the components of Woolger’s unique approach but also provided an illustration for the skeptic of how important the archetypal or transpersonal aspect of therapy is. To put it another way, by helping Sol to access the somatic level of the complex (his sinusitis); and the biographical (an early-in-this-life experience); as well as assisting him to regress to a "past life" (as the Roman); Woolger was able to facilitate his client’s healing — a healing of the whole person, body-mind-spirit, in a compelling testimonial to the efficacy and power of his approach.
In Chapter Nine, "The Great Wheel: Death and Beyond," Woolger cites a number of cases wherein clients, having regressed to their "death" in a past life, felt an expanded sense of awareness, a moment of deeper understanding of the Self — as Jung would say — in all its many and conflicting forms. In that state many patients experienced visions that somehow integrated the "sublime heights and barbaric depths that go to make up the human comedy" (p. 297). Woolger emphasizes in his work the value of seizing the opportunity that this kind of reexperience can bring. Often clients who have been "stuck" in a particularly painful pattern of, say, self-punishment or self-blame can find the resolution they so desperately need in this form of regression.
He tells of one client, Madeleine, who comes to him because she is unable to overcome chronic, suicidal depression and guilt feelings. With his help she regresses to a series of past lives in which it seems she had been an extremely violent perpetrator, having caused the deaths of many victims. While recalling one particular life in all its grisly detail, she is gently encouraged to reexperience her "death" as well. In the after-death state (which Woolger likens to the Tibetan bardo) she finds herself reliving a long period of "atonement." After what appears to be a kind of interminable purgatory in which she sees one after another the faces of each of her victims and expresses her sadness and remorse, a guide finally assures her: "Enough, enough. You have done enough."
In her very next session Madeleine then recalls a positive past life, one in which she had a sense of her goodness and had enjoyed love, nurturance, and happiness. "How could I deserve such a good life?" she finds herself asking when that life ends. This time, the inner voice of wisdom tells her, "You must learn through love, not just from suffering." (p. 300)
With this experience made fully conscious, Madeleine was able to reown her capacity for happiness. There was no longer a need to perpetuate the cycle of violence, which the painful samskaras of self-hatred had contributed to. She was at last able to break free of the cloud of depression and guilt that had oppressed her her entire life. The words of Jesus come to mind: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Madeleine, by having the courage to undergo this form of self-exploration, had achieved the catharsis and attendant spiritual understanding and insight to forgive herself at last and move on.
This particular case also struck me as a validation of the-other-half-of-the-cure concept, to use Mickel Adzema’s (1995) term. Briefly, this is the idea that in primal therapy, for example, it is not enough to simply feel the Pain but one must also tap into her or his inner "joy grids" in order to complete the healing. This axiom was proven for me in Madeleine’s experience (and there are many other examples in Woolger’s book of this need to access the positive for full resolution to occur). It seems that otherwise we remain stuck in one part of the dualism which is the format for existence on this physical plane.
In Chapter Eight, "The Great Wheel: Birth," Woolger pays tribute to Thomas Verny and to Gerhard Rottman for their pioneering work — work which, as he says, has gone largely unnoticed by the mainstream for two decades. This work has laid a scientific foundation for the concept of consciousness en utero and has therefore also prepared the way for acknowledging the vulnerability of the developing fetus and the traumatic nature of birth. Though praising the contributions of Stanislav Grof, as well, in this chapter, Woolger parts company with primal therapy over the issue of seeing pregnancy and birth as the ultimate cause of the patterning of all succeeding neuroses; this is a view he labels "simplistic" (p. 258).
While Woolger acknowledges the validity of the latest findings — which confirm that the mother’s (and father’s) emotions, thoughts, and actions have a strong impact on the developing fetus — he brings in the unique dimension that is past-life therapy’s contribution to our understanding of this critical time. As he puts it, "The incoming soul is attracted to a mother (or father) who will help mirror his or her unfinished karmic business during pregnancy and birth" (p. 253). He goes on to say that "The buck doesn’t stop at the mother’s door" (p. 258), for there are already preexisting impressions (samskaras) embedded in the infant’s unconscious at the time of conception. Many of these are a result of past-life deaths, Woolger says. And these deep impressions can be restimulated and thus reinforced by the mother’s thoughts and feelings throughout her pregnancy, not to mention the actual experience of birth itself. I might add that this stance is held by other professionals in the field, e.g., Michael Gabriel (1995) in his book, Remembering Your Life Before Birth, and Winifred Blake Lucas (1993) in her opus, Regression Therapy, A Handbook for Professionals, Vols. I and II.
Be that as it may, it was obvious to me that the author, of course, fully supports the efforts of many primal and other deep experiential therapists today who work devotedly and steadfastly to help clients reexperience the trauma and release the pain around birth. What Woolger’s work does is to broaden and deepen the cognitive map of these therapists; it is a map that can only be enriched by the findings from his and other past-life therapists’ experience. As he says, birth offers a unique opportunity for release, and the insights that clients gain from working through their birth trauma are indeed powerful, not only because of the experience in and of itself, but also because each birth is a "highly condensed reminder of karmic residues of previous deaths" (p. 264).
In the chapter "Eros Abused" Woolger describes the pendulum swing in our incarnational histories between male/female, victim/perpetrator, and assorted other dualities, which we appear to have to experience before some kind of transcendence and integration can take place. For example, he points out that thousands of years of violence against, and suppression of, women has created an enormous Shadow in this regard in our collective unconscious. Past-lives therapy helps and is needed by both men and women if a healing resolution is to take place, first in individuals and then in society at large which is only now and with great reluctance beginning to let go of its patriarchal character. Men need to "own" and heal the buried feminine in their own past; women need to heal and "own" the violent and/or cruel male in their past in order to make peace with and benefit from their masculine side. In addition, Woolger takes pains to point out and emphasize (as in the case of Madeleine earlier described) that "Not just the victim, but the bully and the rapist in all of us also are in need of healing and forgiveness" (p. 212).
In closing I feel that Woolger not only sets an eclectic example for psychotherapists by providing references to a wide range of therapeutic modalities of this and the last century, but also he shares the valuable gift of his own experience in eliciting healing components from each, which he has used to such good effect in his Jungian past-life therapy practice. He does this humbly and articulately. Perhaps for this reason the case histories he shares stand on their own merits by demonstrating in instance after instance how his clients were not only empowered to release their Pain but also, and as importantly, to weave whole cloth out of the ups and downs, the triumphs and tragedies of past lives. Because this therapy includes a spiritual or transpersonal component, clients who persist in their process may often be rewarded with a coherent picture of their own soul’s evolution, thereby becoming empowered to realize as did the poet: "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."3 Many more narrowly focused or nonexperiential therapies simply do not provide the same depth of healing — not to mention liberating vision — as the unique path Woolger shares with us.
And through it all he demonstrates patience with himself, his clients, and the process; for as he says, quoting Shakespeare’s King Lear:
Woolger does offer a cautionary note in his last chapter (which, given the subtle power of the ego, each of us might do well to keep in mind) when he tells us that he cannot work with those who are obsessed with any particular theory. "Unfortunately any philosophy, theology, or metaphysics [including the scientistic! emphasis my own] can all too easily become an ego defense against the shadow sides of the personality." He repeats his mentor, Carl Jung’s, famous injunction: "We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious." (p. 311)Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
Ripeness is all. (p. 335)Finally, I found this work a call to all of us, therapists and lay persons alike, to persist in our own healing process in order to win the sacred prize of inner peace and wholeness. Ultimately, I felt, it does not matter whether we define our predicament here according to a linear model of successive "lives"; or whether we prefer Seth’s concept of an extended Now wherein all of these "dramas" are happening simultaneously for our own mysterious ultimate good; or even whether we prefer the Course in Miracles’s approach, which, like Buddha, neither confirms nor denies the "truth" of past lives. Whichever of these scenarios is "true" really is not the issue, as Woolger so brilliantly intimates. What does matter is the healing. I know that I feel a sense of gratitude to the author for helping me to refocus on my own process. To borrow Shakespeare’s metaphor: on this stage, with its backdrop of eternity, it seems we have all played many, many parts. I do believe that, even as I felt motivated by my reading of Woolger to finally ring down the curtain on all "the sound and fury" of my this-worldly sojourning, just so will other persevering readers be motivated by Other Lives, Other Selves to indeed "get on with it!"
1. Complex is a Jungian term Woolger uses that is identical or nearly identical to terms from other contexts, such as samskara (Eastern philosophy) and COEX system (Grof), and is similar to such terms as an issue (general psychobabble), a feeling or pattern (Primal), and a problem (ordinary parlance). [return to text] Notes
2. "A COEX system is a dynamic constellation of memories (and associated fantasy material) from different periods of the individual’s life, with the common denominator of a strong emotional charge of the same quality, intense physical sensation of the same kind, or the fact that they share some other important elements" (Grof, 1985, p. 97). [return to text]
3. Originally attributed to the poet, W. E. Henley (1849-1903). [return to text]
Note: Click on book title or its cover icon for more info on book or reference, including how to purchase.
Adzema, Michael D. (1995). Reunion with the positive (self): The other half of "the cure." Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology, 1(2), 72-85.
Gabriel, Michael. (1995).
Remembering Your Life Before Birth. Santa Rosa, CA: Aslan Publishing Co.
Grof, Stanislav. (1985). Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Lucas, Winafred Blake (Ed.). (1993). Regression Therapy: A Handbook for Professionals, Volumes I and II. Crest Park, CA: Deep Forest Press.
Wilber, Ken. (1980).
The Atman Project. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House.
* This article was originally published in Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 1996, pp. 93-100.
Copyright © 1996 by Mary Lynn Adzema
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MARY LYNN ADZEMA is a former journalist, civil-rights activist, and poet, whose writings have appeared in a number of West-Coast, national, and international publications. She has been a student of yoga and Eastern spirituality for over thirty years. She has also been a lecturer in psychology at World University in Ojai, California, where she had previously earned a Master’s degree in Consciousness Psychology and an A.B.D. in Philosophy. She wrote a chapter for and co-edited a book about the experiences of Sai Baba devotees titled Transformation of the Heart. Mary Lynn has received training with Stanislav Grof in holotropic breathwork and with various people in primal therapy. Having served with the International Primal Association on it Board of Directors and as Assistant Editor of the publications, Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology, a professional journal of psychology, and Primal Spirit: The Deeper Wave of the New Age, a magazine; she now serves as Assistant Editor of those some publications in their reincarnation on this website, and as consulting editor for Primal Spirit website in its umbrella-role for those publications plus all its other facets. Most importantly, she serves as Assistant Director of the newly opened Primal Spirit Center for Human Evolution, offering primal breathwork, primal therapy, a community of healing -- to name its major intentions. Mary Lynn's extended bio can be found at Mary Lynn Adzema's Writings. She can be contacted at P.O. Box 1348, Guerneville, CA 95446-1348; phone: (707) 869-9008; e-mail: marylynn@primalspirit.com. Biographical Note
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