DISCLAIMER: I totally believe in past lives, just not the regression thing.
Not all great discoveries lead to great things. Some lead to disasters like nuclear bombs and past life regression.
There is a re-birth and that is the basis of Karma which is the basis of astrology. Since astrology works, re-birth has to be true. Indic religions like Hindusim, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism have always preached about past lives.
While, the mostly Christian West did not believe in this idea. However, with the explosion of knowledge in past 30 years, the West got hold of this idea, and as usual, ran with it, to the point of commercialisation.
One interesting book called “Many lives many masters” spawned an entire industry of “Past Life Regression” with “Masters” giving therapy sessions and even running certificate training courses.
Some TV programs added to this frenzy, and it spread like a virus. Today one Google search in any city would get you dozens of “Past Life Therapists”. And this horrifies me to the core.
Here are my reasons:
#1. IT IS NOT THAT EASY:
There have been instances of great souls remembering their past lives (there is even a word for it “Jaati Smaran”). Enlightened masters like Sai Baba, Krishna and Buddha could even see the past lives of others as well. There are many stories of them telling other people about their past lives.
For example, Sai Baba had a devotee named Shama, who Baba said, had been with Him since past 72 births (if there is a man in human history I envy, he is Shama).
Baba would occasionally tell people who they were in past lives. Similarly Krishna used to tell some people about this. However, even these divine beings won’t “regress” anyone into a past life. As they knew the dangers of doing such a thing.
And here we have “certified therapists” taking people on a paid tour of the past lives. Lord have mercy…!
2. KARMA LIES AND MENTAL VIDEOTAPES:
Some of the “therapists” are my astrology clients and I told EVERY ONE of them to quit this practice immediately…!
I told them that they could continue to teach things like meditation and yoga etc. but must not do any past life regression.
Reason, even they were not sure if it really worked. I asked them if they knew for sure that what their patients saw was the truth of the past life and not a “MENTAL MOVIE” projected by their brains. Not even a single one could say that with certainty. I told them that if they were not sure of the truth, they were committing a fraud . What’s more, they could be doing a lot of damage to their clients and accumulating very bad karma. I tell them “Forget past life of others, start worrying about your own future life. Looks tough to me already.”
3. IT CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE: Okay let’s say a lady is going through marital problems, and then in a past life regression session, she “finds out” that her husband had killed her for another woman in the past life, and that other woman is her maid in this life. BOOM here we go for a divorce…!
Or imagine that a man just “saw” that his wife was his mother in the past life…we have some awkward feelings here.
There have been several instances where trained psychiatrists have messed up people’s lives trying to dig out “repressed childhood memories”. (Google: False Memory Syndrome). Mind you these were educated professionals with years of training and experience, and they were talking about child hood.
Your misadventures with a “certified therapist” hunting for the past life may ruin your present life….!
4. ALL EXOTIC PAST LIVES: This is my personal favourite, and using this I have been able to convert people out of this madness. Some of my clients who have been through such sessions, tell me their “past life” stories, to which I listen with detached amusement. 100% of them are exotic.
All were kings, queens, prostitutes, military commanders, pirates etc. who almost always died in tragic violent circumstances. War, fire, water, poison, snake bite, concentration camps are the favourite ways of dying.
It seems as if everyone had a blast in the past.
There were no normal boring people with normal boring lives and normal boring deaths.
I am yet to meet a person who was a peasant or a cobbler in the past life and died of something non exotic like cholera or old age. And these were 90% of the people…!
Looks like all the normal ones got moksha and only the exotic ones are cursed to return to earth.
I rest my case.
Dear reader: If you are undergoing “past life regression therapy” please stop wasting your time and money and stop living in your imagination.
No you are not a commander in Rome or a prostitute in Persia. Most probably you are an Indian working for an IT company .
Welcome to the real world…aka the present 
Stop wasting that time and money and invest it in something that would help you when AI takes your job.
There, you just got some “future life progression” for free . 
(You are welcome.)
I would like to end this with the best line I ever heard about past life regression.
A friend of mine had this fascination with past life (all spiritual people have I guess) and was trying to take past life regression sessions. However his wise spiritual trainer asked him to discontinue immediately.
“The hint is in the name it self.” The wise man said. “They call it ‘Past Life Regression’. Now decide
DO YOU WANT TO REGRESS OR DO YOU WANT TO PROGRESS??”
God Bless,
G. Vijay Kumar
Edit: One of my dear clients for the USA visited me personally and told me that he has personally met Dr. Brian Weiss. While he is with me on the point of most people getting fake experiences, he told me that Dr. Weiss himself took a long time (many months) to get to the real thing, and he is not fake. I promised to put this edit in the end of this article. All the same we both agreed that this is a very long term process and most of the “weekend sessions” regression Gurus are fake and taking this through them can be dangerous.