"From the cradle to the grave" frames only a small segment of your existence as an evolving soul. Beyond Reincarnation offers for the first time a lifespan approach to the study of reincarnation. It explores the full landscape of your existence—from your pre-existence before your first lifetime to your post-existence beyond your last. At no point does the book rule out the possibility of lifetimes in other realities—perhaps on a distant planet or even some other unknown universe.

I first became interested in reincarnation as an eight-year-old kid growing up in the Deep South. At that early age, I discovered in a vivid dream that my fear of water was past-life related. In the dream, I was a toddler playing in the water along a French coastline when I was swept into the deep by a strong undercurrent. Awakening in the night, I knew at once that I had discovered the source of my fear. The next day, I went swimming for the first time with my two brothers. Fearlessly diving right in, I was conqueror of the deep! I had experienced for myself the transforming, liberating power of past-life knowledge. Little did I know at the time that I would devote much of my adult life to the study of reincarnation and the empowerment possibilities of past-life knowledge.

Years later, upon completing my doctorate in psychology at the University of Alabama, I joined the faculty at Athens State University where I initiated an instructional and research program in parapsychology, a first for the state of Alabama. The scores of scientific studies that followed, some federally funded, provided the essential basis for the new concepts and strategies presented throughout Beyond Reincarnation. Here you'll discover totally new ways to explore your past life and retrieve from it whatever is personally relevant. You'll even learn how to determine the exact number of past lives you've lived!

Self-Hypnosis: A New Approach
This book introduces a highly innovative strategy using self-hypnosis to uncover important past-life experiences, including the sources of personal insecurity, conflict, and fear. Here are a few examples drawn from our studies:

• Fear of crowds was a reaction to public execution before a jeering mob
• Fear of enclosed places was the result of death from being buried alive
• Fear of sunlight and the compulsion to wear dark shades even while indoors were reactions to past-life torture in which the eyelids were cut away
• Depression at sunset was associated with having been hanged at sunset
• Compulsive hand-washing and fear of germs were results of past-life imprisonment in a plague-ridden dungeon

Fortunately, the empowering effects of past-life knowledge, especially in extinguishing phobias, are almost always instant and permanent. Knowledge is power, and past-life knowledge is one of the most powerful forces known.

In this book you'll also learn how to use self-hypnosis to retrieve the rich experiences of your preexistence as well as your existence between lifetimes. Included are never-before-published descriptions of these dimensions based on the amazing experiences of our subjects.

Interacting With the Spirit Realm
Aside from procedures that probe the past, I've included in this book several procedures specifically designed to explore the spirit realm as it exists today. Through new, laboratory-tested astral projection strategies, you'll discover how to travel out-of-body to the spirit world and tap into its abundant resources, particularly its rejuvenating fountains and healing planes. You'll also discover how to use table tipping to engage the afterlife realm and interact with it. Though not widely known, table tipping has been practiced in such diverse settings as major university classrooms, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, corporate boardrooms, and even the highest seats of government, including the White House. In this book I've included complete transcripts of two table tipping sessions—one conducted aboard a private jet in flight over the Caribbean and the other under a full moon on a university campus. The thirty-eight students gathered for the campus session set a world record for the highest number of participants in a table tipping session.

Discarnate Manifestations
There's a mountain of evidence that discarnate interactions can be initiated by the departed themselves, often in apparition form. You'll find in Beyond Reincarnation several detailed accounts of discarnate manifestations, including an Alabama stable boy who was kicked by a horse and died of a head injury; a legendary Philadelphia opera singer who died in an 1800's carriage accident; a notorious gangster gunned down by the brother of a man he had himself killed; a wealthy merchant who left behind a hidden fortune and an honor student who died during surgery—each returned after death with important messages for those left behind. In all instances, intelligence and personal identity remained intact.

Our studies found that compassionate spirit guides were usually present at the time of death to ease the homegoing transition. Rather than "angels of death," they were familiar, loving guides who had facilitated growth over a lifetime. How comforting to know that the wondrous resources of the spirit realm are available to us now and will be with us when death leans against the door!

Not to our surprise, our studies repeatedly showed the existence of animals in afterlife. I've included several examples, some of them deeply personal, of animals who returned after death to visit their friends left behind. As beings of great dignity and worth, animals bring enrichment and joy into our lives on earth. Could it really be heaven without them?

The Soul
A centerpiece of this book is the concept of the soul, not as something you possess but as the very essence of who you are. You'll discover that each soul is unique in makeup and design, which I call the soul's perpetual cosmic genotype. As a soul, you are ageless—without either beginning or end. Difficult though it may be to comprehend, you existed forever before your first lifetime, and you will exist forever after your last. Like your existence, your soul span, or your capacity to integrate experiences of many lifetimes, is limitless. It follows that your potential for growth as an endless soul is likewise without bounds.

Finally, Beyond Reincarnation presents evidence of a critical phenomenon I've labeled preservation of peak growth in which, at death, each soul regains the highest peak of all past growth. Any loss of mental functioning, whether memory, reasoning, creativity, or other faculty, is instantly restored at the moment of your transition. That highest of all peak experiences ensures that the achievements of your past remain forever with you as essential resources working together for your continued growth and enrichment, time without end. That's your destiny as a soul!