MANAN FF - TILL THE END OF TIME

THE CONNECTION

Dr. Dhawan's point of view –

Sometimes life's most significant events are upon you before you are aware of them, like the silent approach of a jungle cat. How could you not have noticed something of such magnitude? The camouflage is psychological.

Denial, the act of not seeing what is right before your eyes, because you really don't want to see, is the greatest disguise. Add in fatigue, distractions, rationalizations, mental escape, and all the other businesses of the mind that get in the way. Fortunately destiny's persistence can pierce the disguises and distinguish that which you need to see, the foreground emerging from the background, like mastering one of those magic-eye pictures.

Over the past fifteen years, I have often treated couples or families who have discovered each other together in past lives. Sometimes I have regressed couples who simultaneously and for the first time have found themselves interacting in the same prior lifetime. These revelations are often shocking to the couple. They have not experienced anything like this before. They are silent while the scenes are unfolding in my psychiatric office. It is only afterward, after emerging from the relaxed, hypnotic state, that they first discover they have been watching the same scenes, feeling the same emotions. It is only then that I also become aware of their past connections.

But with Nandini and Manik, everything was backward. Their lives, and their lifetimes, were unfolding independently and quite separately, in my office. They did not know each other. They had never met. They were from different countries and cultures. They came to the office on different days. Seeing them both separately and never even suspecting a link between them, I did not make the connection. They had loved each other and lost each other across lifetimes.

Why didn't I see it before? Was it even my destiny? Am I supposed to be some cosmic matchmaker? Was I distracted, fatigued, in denial? Was I rationalizing away "coincidences"? Or was I right on schedule, the idea dawning at its sunrise, the way it was planned all along.

It came to me one evening. "Eli?" I had heard it from Nandini, weeks before, in my office.

Earlier that day, Manik could not remember his name. In a hypnotic trance, he had emerged in an ancient lifetime, one he had previously remembered in the office. In that lifetime, he had died after being dragged by leather-clad soldiers. His life ebbed away as his head rested in his beloved daughter's lap, and she rocked rhythmically with despair.

Perhaps there was more to learn from that time. Once again, he remembered dying in her arms, his life fading away. I asked him to look at her closely, to look deeply into her eyes and to see if he recognized her as someone in his current life.

"No," he sadly answered. "I don't know her."

"Do you know your name?" I asked, returning his attention completely to that ancient lifetime in Palestine.

He pondered this question. "No," he finally said.

"I will tap you on the forehead as I count backward from three to one. Let your name just pop into your mind, into your awareness. Whatever name comes to you is fine."

No name popped into his mind.

"I don't know my name. Nothing comes to me!"

But something came to me, popping into my mind like a silent explosion, suddenly clear and vivid.

"Eli," I said aloud. "Is your name Eli?"

"How do you know that?" he responded from the ancient depths. "That is my name. Some call me Elihu, and some call me Eli. . . . How do you know? Were you there, too?"