Review of ‘Past Lives : Case Histories’, by Dilys Gater

This review is by Julie Bunting, and was published originally in The Peak Advertiser, the Peak District's local free newspaper, and is reproduced with Julie's kind permission.

Dilys Gater, a psychic consultant for the past 15 years and now living in the Peak District, has assembled this wide range of case histories. Many readers will identify with déja vu comments familiar to Dilys, for instance 'I have been here [on earth] before' or 'Have we met before?' - both providing relevant chapter headings here.

Belief in reincarnation is widespread around the world, in many civilisations and religions, including in earlier centuries the Christian Church. There remains a spiritual aspect to reincarnation and, remarks Dilys, it is the spiritual personality of a sitter which she is able to sense through her own telepathic abilities, not any former physical state, therefore searches for historical accuracy are interesting but not essential. Contrary to a conception imparted by the media, it is rare for a famous person to emerge in past-life sessions.

Sitters commonly regress to past childhoods. The big difference is that this time around, the sitter meets Dilys. A sequence of past lives is often revealed during these sessions, not generally in chronological order nor confined to one gender. Regression occasionally indicates present-day couples who share joint past lives, or may even reveal non-human life forms. Dilys reveals that she herself has passed through one incarnation as a stray ginger cat in Victorian times.

Past Lives obviously mean past deaths and past rebirths, which begs the unanswered, perhaps unanswerable question, 'Are any of us experiencing a first-time existence?'

The author includes a brief guide to exploring one's own past lives but only after balancing her beliefs with 'the case against' phenomena which others believe are just an illusion.

Review by Julie Bunting