José Luis Cabouli: “Your ego cannot bear the whole truth”.
La Vanguardia, Saturday, August 23, 2003. La Contra.
José Luis Cabouli: «Your ego cannot bear the whole truth».
I am 52 years old. I was born in Buenos Aires. I used to be a plastic surgeon, but of those who never become rich, and now I am a regression therapist. I have a child which is 10 months old, and another one who is 20 years of age. I believe that in this life we pay for errors of past lives which we must solve with love, and terrible traumas which we must overcome bringing them to our consciousness.
José Luis Cabouli. Photograph: José María Alguersuari.
Regressive therapist.
–One of my patients used to tell me that he had a tummy ache which became worse in his discussions with his partner, because of his fits of jealousy.–
–What did you suggest to him?–
–I asked him to describe his ache and he told me: «It is as if I had a knife stuck in my stomach». I understood his expression literally, as my patient’s subconscious mind would understand it, and I interrogated him until he had the experience which was causing his problem.–
–An ulcer?–
–A fight in a pub where my patient had just found out that his wife had been unfaithful and the other man stabbed him.–
–Then it is normal that it hurt…–
–The fact is that the fight was in a previous life. During the therapy he went again through the rage, the hate, the anger and the mistrust against his wife, and this made him free. Because, when death happens in seconds, our consciousness becomes caught in stupefaction before it understands that it is dead.–
–And how does he remember now that he was another person?–
–You only get to the past through emotions, so I try to avoid the patient to reason, he must just recall sensations and feelings.–
–Phew! What a story!–
–If you don’t want, you needn’t believe in past lives, but you should believe in the subconscious which, as Sabato used to say, is more real than reality. Then we shall try to exhaust all these unpleasant sensations in order to free the consciousness frozen in time through the shock of the sudden death.–
–And what if the ache is caused by an ulcer?–
–Then the patient would not have come to my practice. The fact is that when we face a situation similar to that of a previous life, the tummy ache comes back, because the consciousness is caught in that instant. I try to get the person to go again through those emotions of rage and pain, so that his consciousness may get free of that body which has nothing to do with him.–
–And what if he has made up all the story of the fight, or has taken it from a film which has influenced him?–
–I have already told you that some people think that those events are just fancies from the subconscious mind: well, in any case for the subconscious mind anything it knows is true. So if the pain comes to an end, the patient will be free from his ghosts. Perhaps at a later time he will reach the certitude that his trauma happened before his own life.–
–How can I remember other lives?–
–To start with, you cannot embark in a regressive therapy through curiosity, it must be done because of the need to clear an unexplainable symptom. This symptom of the present will guide us to the past trauma through the emotions we go through. There are three great moments where those previous traumas show themselves: death, the foetal experience, and the early childhood.–
–Do you remember your birth?–
–Yes, I have felt the emotions of wanting to get out, the cold in the room, feelings of compression, suffocation… But I cannot recall images. I had a patient which remembered her anger at the absence of her mother…–
–During her delivery?–
–Yes, her mother slept under anaesthesia and it was her mother’s sister which actually washed her when she was born, and then she explained to me that she always had a very special relationship with that aunt of hers, while on the contrary she felt some coldness towards her mother. The fact is that nobody had explained to her that her mother had had anaesthesia when she was born.–
–Perhaps she heard about it without being aware…–
–I think she lived through it and could recall it. Why not? Besides, there is a clear analogy between the trauma from past lives and birth. For example, the death through hanging or through suffocation in another life may show itself in coils of the umbilical cord during birth in the present life.–
–Couldn’t it be just a bad memory from childhood?–
–I was a surgeon before taking up regressions, and after becoming familiar with Dr. Morris Netherton works. One of my patients had continuous and unexplained aches in her back, with unending contractures…–
–A wrong position? Stress?–
–She had surgery twice, and we took away some of the shoulder blade bone without any result. I tried Netherton’s therapy and together we went through an experience of torture in the middle ages.–
–What a story!–
–But it worked. I myself had an unexplainable gastritis until I went through a battle in a previous life, in which they thrust a spear in me.–
–Well, I prefer a gastritis, then.–
–Our subconscious mind takes us where our consciousness must strive to to free us from a traumatic experience.–
–And what about the great Roman bacchanalia, cant they be remembered?–
–Pleasant memories do not leave any footprint. Traumas are overcome when we go again through them, and when we make up for our mean, selfish or cruel behaviours with a new love which brings back universal balance.–
–And what if I cannot bring to memory any past life?–
–The obstruction in the therapy only happens when the patient has something to hide, and uses his energy to stop it from coming up. Your ego does not bear all the truth because it is too humiliating, and tries to hide it.–
–And if you were Cleopatra or Napoleon?–
–I never had any patient who in a previous life had been famous or dazzling. All of them remember the cruel lives and deaths of unknown and unhappy human beings.–
Lluís Amiguet.
A step.
It was a very small step for mankind, but very great for me, but I cannot remember the time of my birth clearly, even if I have dedicated several hours to this task. This however does not stop me from inviting you (there is no danger in it) to try, from the starting point of sensations, as Cabouli says: smells, cold and heat, noises, lights… And after discovering the mystery of your own birth, eternity. Metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls is an act of faith common to several religions, and a possibility considered in Jungian psychoanalysis. Now I try to consider regressive therapy with what I think is a healthy distance which I recommend to everybody, even if I do not see a greater risk in the adventure than that which may affect your wallet. And we can take care of this.
Translation: Loto Perrella.