MANAN FF - TILL THE END OF TIME, COMPLETED - Page 3

Originally posted by: AKHIAWAL

Very nice promo.Manik ka memory loss.Cont soon!

Two weeks had elapsed between Nandini's appointments because she had to be away on another business trip. Out-of-town trips were not rare for her. The beautiful smile with which she ended her last session had faded; the realities and pressures of everyday life had once again taken their toll.

Yet she was eager to continue the journey back through time. She had begun to recall important events and lessons from other lifetimes. She had experienced a glimmer of happiness and of hope. She wanted more.

She rapidly reached a deep trance state.

Nandini remembered the stones of Jerusalem with their distinctive colouring, which would change according to the light of the day and night. At times golden. At other times a tinge of pink or beige. But the golden colour would always return. She remembered her town near Jerusalem with the small dirt and rock roads, the houses, the inhabitants, their clothing, their customs. There were some vineyards and some fig trees, some fields where flax and wheat grew. Water came from the well down the road. Ancient oaks and pomegranate trees were near the well. This was a time in Palestine, as it always seemed to be, of intense religious and spiritual activity, of new changes, always the hope and yet the heaviness, the harshness of the days, of eking out a living, of being oppressed by the invaders from Rome.

She remembered her father, named Eli, who worked at home as a potter. Using water from the well, he created shapes from clay, making bowls, jars, and many other items for his home and for the villagers, and even some to sell in Jerusalem. Sometimes merchants or others would come through the village and buy his jugs or cookware or bowls.

Nandini supplied many more descriptions of the potter's wheel, the rhythm of her father's foot on the wheel, and details of life in this small village. Her name was Miriam, and she was a happy girl living in turbulent times. Soon her life would be forever changed by the spread of that turbulence to her village.

Dr. Dhawan helped Nandini to progress to the next significant event in that lifetime: her father's premature death at the hands of Roman soldiers. The Roman soldiers frequently tormented the early Christians who lived in Palestine at that time. They devised cruel games merely for their own amusement. One of these games accidentally killed Miriam's beloved father.

At first the soldiers tied Eli around the ankles and dragged him behind a horse ridden by a soldier. After an endless minute, the horse was stopped. Her father's body was battered, but he had survived the ordeal. His terrified daughter could hear the soldiers howling with laughter. They were not done with him.

Two of the Romans then wrapped the free end of the rope around their chests and began prancing around, as if they were horses. Her father lurched forward, his head striking a large rock. He was mortally injured.

The soldiers left him in the dusty road.

The senselessness of it all added to her piercing anguish, added a bitter anger and hopelessness to her father's violent demise. This was just sport to the soldiers. They had not even known her father. They had not felt his gentle touch as he tended to her minor childhood cuts and bruises. They had not heard his humour as he worked over the wheel. They had not smelled his hair after he bathed. They had not tasted his kisses or felt his hugs. They had not spent every day of their lives with this gentle, caring man.

Yet in a few terror-filled minutes they had snuffed out a beautiful life and had filled Miriam's remaining years with a grief that would never quite heal, with a loss that would never be replaced, with a hole that could never be mended. For sport. The senselessness outraged her, and tears of hatred joined those of her pain.

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[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCVFMUAdGI0[/YOUTUBE]

She rocked back and forth on the dusty blood-stained ground, her father's large head cradled in her lap. He could no longer speak. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. She could hear gurgling in his chest every time he laboured to breathe. Death was very close. The light in his eyes approached dusk, the end of his day.

"I love you, father," she softly whispered to him, looking sadly into his darkening eyes. "I will always love you."

His dimming eyes looked back and blinked in understanding as they closed for the last time.

She kept rocking as the setting sun ended its day. Her family and the other villagers gently took his body from her so that it could be prepared. In her mind she could still see his eyes. She was sure he understood.

As Dr. Dhawan sat quietly, immobilized by the depth of Nandini's despair, he noticed the tape recorder was not running. He put in a new tape, and the red recording light flashed. They were recording again.

Dr. Dhawan's mind connected Nandini's current grief to the grief from Palestine nearly two thousand years ago. Was this another case in which ancient grief was compounding current grief? Would the experience of reincarnation and knowing that there is life after death heal this grief?

He returned his attention to Nandini.

"Move ahead in time. Go ahead to the next significant event in that life," he instructed.

"There is none," she answered.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing else happens of significance. I can look ahead . . . but nothing happens."

"Nothing at all?"

"No, nothing," she repeated patiently.

"Do you marry?"

"No, I don't live very long. I don't care about living. I don't really take care of myself."

Her father's death had affected her deeply, apparently leading to a profound depression and an early death.

"I have left her body," Nandini announced.

"What are you experiencing now?"

"I'm floating. . . . I'm floating. . . ." Her voice trailed away.

Soon she began to speak again, but the words were not hers. Her voice was deeper and very strong. Nandini could do what Mukti and very few of Dr. Dhawan's other patients could do. She could transmit messages and information from the Masters, high-level, nonphysical beings.

"Remember," the voice said. "Remember that you are always loved. You are always protected, and you are never alone. . . . You also are a being of light, of wisdom, of love. And you can never be forgotten. You can never be overlooked or ignored. You are not your body; you are not your brain, not even your mind. You are spirit. All you have to do is to reawaken to the memory, to remember. Spirit has no limits, not the limit of the physical body nor of the reaches of the intellect or the mind.

"As the vibrational energy of spirit is slowed down so that more dense environments such as your three-dimensional plane can be experienced, the effect is for spirit to be crystallized and transformed into denser and denser bodies. The densest of all is the physical state. The vibrational rate is the slowest. Time appears faster in this state because it is inversely related to the vibrational rate. As the vibrational rate is increased, time slows down. This is how there can be difficulty in choosing the right body, the right time of re-entry into the physical state. Because of the disparity of time, the opportunity might be missed. . . . There are many levels of consciousness, many vibrational states. It is not important that you know all of these levels.

"The first level of the seven is that which is most important to you. It is important to experience in the first plane rather than to abstract and intellectualize about the higher planes. Eventually you will have to experience them all. . . . Your task is to teach of experience. To take that which is belief and faith and transform it into experience so that the learning is complete, because experience transcends belief. Teach them to experience. Remove their fear. Teach them to love and to help one another. . . . This involves the free will of others. But to reach out with love, to reach out with compassion, to help others this is what you must do on your plane.

"Humans always think of themselves as the only beings. This is not the case. There are many worlds and many dimensions . . . many, many more souls than there are physical containers. Also, the soul may split if it wishes and have more than one experience at the same time. This is possible but requires a level of development which most have not achieved. Eventually they will see that like a pyramid there is only one soul. And all experience is shared simultaneously. But this is not for now.

"When you look into the eyes of another, any other, and you see your own soul looking back at you, then you will know that you have reached another level of consciousness. In this sense reincarnation does not exist, for all lives and all experiences are simultaneous. But, in the three-dimensional world, reincarnation is as real as time or as a mountain or as the oceans. It is an energy like other energies, and its reality depends on the energy of the perceiver. As long as the perceiver perceives a physical body and solid objects, reincarnation is real to that perceiver. The energy consists of light and love and knowledge. The application of this knowledge in a loving way is wisdom. . . . There is currently a great lack of wisdom on your plane."

Nandini stopped speaking. Like Mukti, she could remember the details of her physical lifetimes but nothing of the messages she delivered from the in-between lifetime state.

***

NEXT: Manik remembers his lifetime as a potter in ancient Palestine.

On another day, another session of past life regression, Manik entered the middle of a difficult lifetime. Immediately Manik was angry, and he clenched his jaw tightly. "They're making me go, and I do not want to. ... I do not wish that kind of life!"

"Where are they making you go?" asked Dr. Dhawan, looking for clarification.

"Into the priesthood, to be a monk. ... I do not want this!" he said, insistently. He was silent for a moment, still angry. Then he began to explain.

"I am the youngest son. It is expected that I do this. But I do not want to leave her. . . . We are in love; but if I go, someone else will have her, not me. ... I cannot bear that. I would die first!"

But he did not die. Instead, he became gradually resigned to the inevitable. He had to separate from his love. His heart was ripped out, but he continued to live anyway.

Years passed.

"It is not so bad now. The life is peaceful. I am very attached to the abbot and I have chosen to stay with him. . . ." After more silence, a recognition.

"He is my brother . . . my brother. I know it is him. We are very close. I can see his eyes!"

Manik had finally found his deceased brother. Dr. Dhawan knew that now his grief would begin to heal. The brothers had indeed been together before. And if before, they could be together again.

More years passed. The abbot grew old.

"He will leave me soon," Manik predicted. "But we will be together again, in heaven. . . . We have prayed for that." The abbot soon died, and Manik grieved.

He prayed and he meditated, and the time of his death approached. He had contracted tuberculosis and he was coughing. Breathing was difficult. His spiritual brothers stood around his bedside.

Dr. Dhawan let him pass quickly to the other side. There was no need to suffer again.

"I learned about anger and forgiveness," he began, not even waiting for Dr. Dhawan to ask about the lessons of that lifetime.

"I learned that anger is foolish. It eats at the soul. My parents did what they thought best, for me and for them. They did not understand the intensity of my passions or that I had the right to determine the direction of my life, not they. They meant well, but they did not understand. They were ignorant . . . but I have been ignorant also. I have commandeered the lives of others. So how can I judge them or be angry with them when I have done the same?"

He was silent again, then resumed. "This is why forgiveness is so important. We have all done those things for which we condemn others. If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive them. God forgives us. We should forgive, too." He was still reviewing the lessons.

"I would not have met the abbot if I had my way," he concluded. "There is always compensation, always grace, always goodness, if we just look for it. If I had remained angry and bitter, if I had resented my life, I would have missed the love and the goodness that I found in the monastery."

There were other, smaller lessons.

"I learned about the power of prayer and meditation," he added. He was silent again as he pondered the lessons and implications of that saintly life.

"Perhaps it was better to sacrifice romantic love," he conjectured, "for the greater love of God and my brothers."

Dr. Dhawan wasn't sure, and neither was Manik. Several hundred years later in Germany, Manik's soul, in Magda, chose a very different path.

The next step in Manik's journey to find the meeting point between spiritual love and romantic love occurred immediately after his memory of the monk.

"I'm being pulled back to another life," he announced abruptly. "I must go!"

"Go ahead," Dr. Dhawan urged. "What is happening?"

He was silent for a few moments as he watched the scene play before his eyes.

He was gravely wounded and lying on the ground. There were soldiers nearby. They had pulled him over the ground and the rocks and he was dying. He gasped.

"My head and my side hurt badly," he muttered in a thin voice. "They are no longer interested in me." The rest of this poor man's story slowly emerged.

When he stopped responding, the soldiers left. He could see them above him in their short leather uniforms and boots. They were not happy. They were having their fun, but they had not really meant to kill him. They were not sad. These people were not worth very much. All in all, an unsatisfying escapade.

His daughter came to him, wailing and sobbing, and she softly cradled his head in her lap. She rocked rhythmically, and he could feel the life ebbing from his shattered body. His ribs must have been broken because there was a sharp pain with every breath. He tasted blood in his mouth.

His strength was diminishing rapidly now. He tried to speak to his daughter but could not utter a word. A distant gurgling came from somewhere in the depths of his body.

"I love you, father," he heard her say softly. He was too weak to answer. He loved her very much, this daughter. He would miss her beyond human endurance.

His eyes closed for the last time, and the incredible pain disappeared. Somehow he could still see. He felt extremely light and free. He found himself looking down at his crumpled body, his head and shoulders resting limply in his daughter's lap. She was sobbing, completely unaware that he was now at peace, that the pain was gone. She was focusing only on his body, a body that no longer held him, rocking slowly back and forth.

He could leave his family now, if he wanted. They would be all right. They only needed to remember that they would also leave their bodies when their time arrived.

He became aware of a marvellous light, brighter and more beautiful than a thousand suns. Yet he could look directly at it. Someone in or near the light was beckoning to him. His grandmother! She looked so young, so radiant, so healthy. He desired to go to her, and instantly he was with her near the light.

"It is good to see you again, my child," she thought, the words appearing in his consciousness. "It has been a long time."

She hugged him in arms of spirit, and they walked together into the light.

Dr. Dhawan was completely engrossed by Manik's haunting story. Moved by his grief at leaving his daughter, Dr. Dhawan could feel the profound sadness of his parting words. However, he rejoiced at the uplifting encounter with his grandmother.

If Dr. Dhawan weren't so overwhelmed by the emotions of the moment, which also evoked the tragic memory of his own son's death, perhaps his mind would have made the connection between Manik and Nandini.

He had heard the daughter's words before. As Miriam, Nandini had rocked back and forth on the bloody ground, cradling her dying father, and she had whispered the same lament. The stories were eerily similar.

At that moment not only was Dr. Dhawan's view obscured by emotion, but several weeks and dozens of other patients had intervened since Nandini's recounting, thus dimming his awareness even more.

The discovery of their entwined destinies would be delayed to a different day.

* * *

Dr. Dhawan's mind flashed back to the short life of his firstborn son, Ranbir. The grief of Manik's daughter in that ancient life had precipitated this memory.

Dr. Dhawan and his wife had rocked in each other's arms after the early-morning phone call from the doctor at the hospital. Ranbir's life had ended at twenty-three days. Heroic open-heart surgery could not save him. They cried, and they rocked. There was nothing else that they could do at that moment.

Their grief seemed overwhelming, beyond physical and mental endurance. Even breathing became difficult. It hurt to take a deep breath, and air was hard to come by, as if there were a constricting corset around their chests, a corset of grief, but with no ties to undo.

With time the intensity and sharpness of their sadness slowly abated, but the hole in their hearts remained. They had two children after that and they were unique and special children, but they did not replace Ranbir.

The passage of time did help. Like ripples in a pond after a heavy stone disturbs its peaceful surface, waves of grief spread slowly outward. Like the first waves which tightly encircle the stone, everything in their lives was connected to Ranbir.

With time, new people and new experiences came into their lives. They were not as directly connected to Ranbir and to their pain. Ripples spreading ever outward. More new events, more new things, more new people. Breathing room. They could take deep breaths again. One never forgets the hurt, but, as time passes, one can live around it.

Dr. Dhawan met Ranbir again ten years later in Miami. He talked to him through Mukti, and his life was never the same. After a decade of pain, Dr. Dhawan and his wife began to understand about the immortality of souls.

***

NEXT: Nandini still grieves over the man she loved centuries ago.

Originally posted by: aseelashah

Oh dear I didn't know about this story till now
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Nandini sobbed softly as she sat in the familiar recliner. Her mascara was running in jagged lines away from her eyes. Dr. Dhawan gave her a tissue, and she dabbed absentmindedly at her eyes as the black mascara lines gained speed in their descent toward her chin.

She had just finished recounting a life as an Irish woman, a life that had ended peacefully and with much happiness. Yet the stark contrast to her current life, with its losses and despair, was causing her pain. And so she cried, despite the happy ending. These were tears of sadness, not of joy.

The day's session had begun much less dramatically. Nandini had only recently regained the energy and self-confidence to enter into a relationship, this time a short-term encounter with an older man. Nandini was initially attracted to him because he had money and position. But there was no chemistry, at least not on her part. Her head urged her to settle, to accept that he was secure, he seemed to care for her quite a bit, and who else was there for her anyway?

Nandini's heart said no. Do not settle. You do not love him, and without love, what is there?

Her heart's argument finally won. He was pressing her to deepen the relationship, to have sex, to make commitments. Nandini decided to end it. She was relieved, sad to be lonely again, but not depressed. Overall, she was handling the end of this relationship very appropriately. And yet here she was, eyes red, nose stuffy, mascara running wildly.

When they started the regression process, Nandini lapsed into a deep trance, and Dr. Dhawan took her back in time once again. This time she emerged in Ireland, several centuries ago.

"I'm very pretty," she commented immediately upon finding herself. "I have dark hair and light blue eyes. ... I dress very plainly and wear no makeup or jewellery ... as if I'm hiding. My skin is so white, like cream."

"Hiding from what?" Dr. Dhawan inquired, following her lead.

She was silent for a few moments, looking for the answer. "From my husband . . . yes, from him. Oh, he's a lout! He drinks too much, and he becomes violent. . . . He's so selfish. ... I curse this marriage!"

"Why did you choose him?" asked Dr. Dhawan innocently.

"I did not choose him. ... I would never choose him. My parents chose him, and now they are dead. . . . They are dead, but I still have to live with him. He is all I have now," she said, a fragile sadness joining the anger in her voice.

"Do you have any children? Does anyone else live with you?" Dr. Dhawan asked.

"No." Her anger was subsiding, but the sadness was more evident now. "I cannot. I had a . . . miscarriage. There was a great deal of bleeding . . . and infection. They say I can't bear children. . . . He is angry at me for that, too. . . . He blames me ... for not bearing him sons. As if I wanted this!" She was upset again.

"He hits me," she added, in a suddenly soft voice. "He hits me as if I were a dog. I hate him for that." She stopped talking and tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

"He hits you?" Dr. Dhawan echoed.

"Yes," she answered simply.

Dr. Dhawan waited for more, but she was reluctant to elaborate.

"Where does he hit you?" he pressed.

"On my back, my arms, my face. Everywhere."

"Can you stop him?"

"At times. I used to hit back, but then he hurts me more. He drinks too much. The best thing I can do is accept the beating. Eventually he tires and stops . . . until the next time."

"Look at him closely," Dr. Dhawan urged her. "Look into his eyes. See if you recognize him as anyone in your current life."

Nandini's eyes narrowed, and her brow furrowed, as if she were looking, even though her eyelids remained closed.

"I do know him! It's Madhyam... It's Madhyam!"

"Good. You are back in that lifetime. The beatings have stopped."

She had recognized the banker, Madhyam, with whom she had had a relationship a year and a half earlier. That relationship had ended when Madhyam became physically abusive.

Patterns such as abusiveness can persist over many lifetimes if they are not recognized and broken. At some subconscious level Nandini and Madhyam had remembered each other. They had come together once again, and he tried to resume the abuse. However, Nandini had learned an important lesson over the centuries. This time Nandini had the strength and self-respect to end their relationship soon after the abuse began. When past-life origins are discovered, it is even easier to break destructive patterns.

Dr. Dhawan looked over at Nandini. She was quiet. She seemed so sad and hopeless. He had enough information about her abusive husband, and he decided to move her ahead in time.

"I will count backward from three to one and tap you lightly on the forehead," he told her. "As I do this, move ahead to the next significant event in this life. Let it come into complete focus in your mind as I count. See what happens to you."

On the count of one, she began to smile blissfully. Dr. Dhawan was glad there was a little light in this bleak life.

"He has died, thank God, and I am so happy," she gushed. "I am with a man I love. He is so kind and gentle. He never hits me. We love each other. He's a very good man. We are happy together." Her blissful smile never faded.

"How did your husband die?" Dr. Dhawan inquired.

"In a tavern," she answered, as her smile faded. "He was killed in a fight. They tell me that he was stabbed in the chest with a long knife. It must have pierced his heart. They tell me blood was everywhere.

"I am not sad that he died," she continued. "I would not have met John otherwise. John is a wonderful man." Her radiant smile had returned.

Once again Dr. Dhawan pressed forward. "Go ahead in time," he instructed, "and see what happens to you and John. Go to the next significant event in your lives."

She was silent, scanning the years.

"I am very weak. My heart is fluttering so," she gasped. "I cannot catch my breath!" She had progressed to the day of her death.

"Is John around?" asked Dr. Dhawan.

"Oh, yes. He's sitting on the bed and holding my hand. He's very concerned, very attentive. He knows he's going to lose me. We are sad about this but happy that we lived so many good years together." She paused, remembering the scene with John at her bedside. Only Nandini's relationship with her beloved mother had approached this incredible level of love, joy, and intimacy she had shared with John.

"Look closely at John. Look at his face and in his eyes. See if you recognize him as someone in your present life." Recognition often immediately occurs with an unmistakable certainty when a patient looks into the other person's eyes. The eyes may truly be the window to the soul.

"No," she said simply. "I do not know him."

She paused again, then spoke with alarm in her voice.

"My heart is giving out," she declared. "It's very erratic now. I feel like I want to leave this body now."

"It's okay. Leave that body. Tell me what happens to you."

After a few moments, she began to describe the events following her death. Her face looked peaceful, her breathing relaxed.

"I am hovering above and to the side of my body, near the corner of the ceiling. I can see John sitting with my body. He's just sitting there. He doesn't want to move. He will be all alone now. We only had each other."

"Then you never had children?" Dr. Dhawan asked, for clarification.

"No, I could not. But that was not important. We had each other, and that was enough for us." She lapsed back into silence, her face still very peaceful, a small smile forming.

"It is so beautiful here. I am aware of a beautiful light all around me. It pulls at me, and I want to follow it. It is a beautiful light. It restores you with energy!"

"Go ahead," Dr. Dhawan agreed.

"We travel through a beautiful valley, with trees and flowers all around. ... I am becoming aware of many things, much information, much knowledge. But I don't want to forget about John. I must remember John, and if I learn all these other things, I might forget John, and I can't!"

"You will remember John, too," Dr. Dhawan advised, but he was not really sure. What was this other knowledge she was being given? He asked her.

"It is all about lifetimes and energies, about how we use our lifetimes to perfect our energies so that we can move on to higher worlds. They are telling me about energy and about love and how these are the same . . . when we understand what love really is. But I do not want to forget about John!"

"I will remind you all about John."

"Good."

"Is there more?"

"No, that is all for now. . . ." Then she added, "We can learn more about love by listening to our intuitions."

Perhaps this last comment had more levels of meaning, especially for Dr. Dhawan. Years earlier the Masters, speaking through Mukti, had told him at the very end of her sessions and their amazing revelations, "What we tell you is for now. You must now learn through your own intuition." There would be no more revelations through Mukti's hypnosis.

Nandini rested. There would be no further revelations today either. He awakened her, and after her mind reoriented to the present time, she began to cry softly.

"Why are you crying?" Dr. Dhawan gently asked her.

"Because I loved him so much, and I don't think I will ever love someone that much again. I've never met any man that I could love like that, and who loved me back the same way. And without that love, how can my life ever be complete? How can I ever be completely happy?"

"You never know," Dr. Dhawan objected, but without much conviction. "You could meet someone and fall madly in love again. You could even meet John again, in another body."

"Sure," she said with some sarcasm. Her tears kept falling. "You're just trying to make me feel better. I've got a better chance of winning the lottery than of finding him again."

The odds of winning the lottery, Dr. Dhawan remembered, were fourteen million to one.

* * *

NEXT: Dr. Dhawan and Manik dig up details of more previous lifetimes.

Manik was perspiring profusely now, for the second time, despite the heavy air conditioning in Dr. Dhawan's office. Sweat poured down his face, drenched his shirt, rolled down his neck. A moment ago he had shaking chills and his body shivered. But malaria could do that, alternating bone-chilling cold and inflaming heat. Francisco was dying from this dreaded disease, alone and thousands of miles from his loved ones. It was a terrible, painful way to die.

Manik had begun this office visit by drifting into a deeply relaxed, hypnotic state. He quickly went back through time and space, into a past lifetime, and immediately he began to sweat. Dr. Dhawan tried to dry his face with tissues, but it was like trying to stop a flood with one's hands. The sweat kept pouring down. Dr. Dhawan hoped that any physical discomfort caused by the drenching sweat would not affect the depth and intensity of his trance state.

"I'm a man . . . with black hair and tanned skin," he gasped through the sweat. "I am unloading a large wooden ship . . . heavy cargo. . . . It's boiling hot here. ... I see palm trees and flimsy wooden structures nearby. . . . I'm a sailor. . . . We are in the New World."

"Do you know the name?" inquired Dr. Dhawan.

"Francisco . . . my name is Francisco. I am a sailor."

Dr. Dhawan had meant the name of the place, but Manik had become aware of his name in that lifetime.

"Do you know the name of this place?" Dr. Dhawan asked again.

He paused for a moment, still sweating profusely. "I don't see that," he answered. "One of these accursed ports. . . . There is gold here. In the jungle . . . somewhere in the distant mountains. We will find it... I can keep some of what I find. . . This accursed place!"

"Where are you from?" asked Dr. Dhawan, looking for more details. "Do you know where your home is?"

"On the other side of the sea," he answered patiently. "In Spain . . . where we are from." He was including his fellow sailors, unloading a ship's cargo in the broiling sun.

"Do you have family in Spain?" inquired Dr. Dhawan.

"My wife and my son are there. ... I miss them, but they are all right . . . especially with the gold I send back. My mother and my sisters are there, too. It's not an easy life. ... I miss them greatly."

Dr. Dhawan wanted to learn more about his family. "I am going to take you back in time," he told him, "back to your family in Spain, to the last time you were together, before this current journey to the New World. I will tap you on your forehead and count backward from three to one. When I reach one, you will be back in Spain with your family. You can remember everything.

"Three . . . two . . . one. Be there!"

Manik's eyes were moving under closed lids as he scanned a scene. "I can see my wife and my small son. We are sitting to eat. ... I see the wooden table and chairs. . . . My mother is there also," he observed.

"Look into their faces, into their eyes," instructed Dr. Dhawan. "See if you recognize them as anyone in your current life." He was concerned that shifting between lifetimes could be disorienting and might pop Manik entirely out of Francisco's time. But he handled it smoothly.

"I recognize my son. He is my brother... how beautiful!" He had found his brother before, as the abbot, when Manik was a monk. Although they had never found them as lovers, Manik's brother made an endearing soul mate. Their soul connection was wonderfully close.

He ignored his mother, focusing completely on his young wife.

"We love each other deeply," he commented. "But I don't recognize her from this life. Our love is very strong."

He was silent for a while, enjoying the memory of his young wife and the deep love that they had shared four or five hundred years ago in a Spain so much different from today's.

Would Manik ever taste this kind of love? Did the soul of Francisco's wife also cross the centuries to be here again, and, if so, would they ever meet?

Dr. Dhawan took Francisco back to the New World and the search for gold.

"Go back to the port," he instructed, "where you have been unloading the ship. Now move ahead in time to the next significant event in that sailor's life. As I count backward from three to one and tap your forehead, let it all come into focus-the next significant event."

"Three . . . two . . . one. You are there."

Francisco started to shiver.

"I'm so cold," he complained. "But I know that infernal fever will return!" As predicted, a few moments later the heavy sweating began anew.

"Damn!" he cursed. "This will kill me, this sickness . . . and the others have left me behind. . . . They know I cannot keep up. . . . They know there is no hope for me. ... I am doomed in this God-forsaken place. We didn't even find the treasures of gold they swear is here."

"Do you survive this illness?" the doctor gently asked.

Manik was quiet. "I died from this. I never leave the jungle. . . . The fever kills me, and I never see my family again. They will be very grieved. . . . My son is so young." The sweat on Manik's face was now mixed with his tears. He was grieving his early death, alone in an alien land, from a strange disease that no sailor's skill could defeat.

Dr. Dhawan had him detach from Francisco's body, and he floated in a state of calm and tranquillity, freed from the fever and pain, beyond grief and suffering. His face was much more peaceful and relaxed, and Dr. Dhawan let him rest.

He pondered this pattern of losses in Manik's lifetimes. So many separations from his loved ones. So much grief. As he made his way through the uncertain and nebulous mists of time, would he be able to find them again? Would he find all of them?

Manik's lifetimes contained many patterns, not just losses. In this regression, he remembered being a Spaniard, but he had also been an English soldier, killed by the Spanish enemy when his forces invaded their fortress.

He remembered being male, and he remembered being female. He had experienced lifetimes as a warrior and lifetimes as a priest. He had lost people, and he had found them.

After he had died as a monk, surrounded by his spiritual family, Manik had reviewed the lessons of that lifetime.

"Forgiveness is so important," he had said. "We have all done those things for which we condemn others. . . . We must forgive them."

His lives illustrated his message. He had to learn from all sides in order to truly understand. We all do.

***

NEXT: Nandini receives a message from her mother.