About ten years ago, Doug visited a hypnotherapist, and while in an altered state, he experienced several past lives. Although I saw the same person, my experience was different: I didn’t experience much of anything.
I have always been skeptical of such things, tending more toward the “if I can’t smell it, taste it, eat it, or experience it, it’s not my truth.”
Doug said that the experience changed his life, giving him a larger perspective on life and death. He shares his experience with only a few like-minded friends, some of whom have also had what many would call a paranormal experience.
One friend has had troubling visions and emotional shocks since childhood, seeing and feeling himself perishing on the Titanic in April 1912. He told Doug that he wouldn’t wish his chaotic emotions and disturbing visions on anyone. It has been a lifelong trial for him. Doug is convinced his friend’s experience is authentic.
I remain politely skeptical.
Doug often says, “Why should you believe something you’ve never experienced? There’s no truth in it for you.” Doug goes on to say, “I know—without any doubt—that I have lived many lives and I have had experiences that go far beyond what I have experienced in this lifetime.”
19th Century Fashion Plate, flickr
Doug and I both love history and historical characters. We have often speculated about how we would react to suddenly finding ourselves in the 19th century when there were no cars, no computers, and no antibiotics. The customs, the mode of dress, and the language were vastly different from those in our time. In a way, Earth in the past was an entirely different planet. If we were tossed back there, how would we respond, and how would we survive? What would the people of past times think about our customs, dress, and way of speaking? No doubt, they’d think we came from another planet.
Doug and I love to spin out time travel stories, just for fun. We have currently written three-time travel novels, and a fourth will be released in September 2018.
Our latest novel, The Lost Ring of Mata Hari, is a time travel historical novel. Doug wanted to explore both reincarnation and time travel. I said, “Are you kidding? Time travel is hard enough to handle. Reincarnation too?”
But once we began researching Mata Hari’s story in 1916, the people surrounding her and the dramatic possibilities of her life, we both grew increasingly galvanized and excited—especially about Mata Hari and Picasso.
Is time travel possible? Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State University, told Space.com that “The physics of our universe appear to forbid this situation, at least as far as we can see. But surprisingly, some of Einstein’s equations from the theory of general relativity may allow time travel into the past.”
Okay, what do those equations show?
Sutter continues, “When it comes to the past, the mathematics of general relativity does allow a few strange scenarios where you can end up in your own past. But all of these scenarios end up violating other known physics. Why does general relativity allow past time travel, but other physics always jump in to spoil the fun? We honestly don’t know.”
time travel, max pixel
The fun of writing a time travel novel is diving into the rich melee of time, place and characters. When you read old letters or postcards—or see old photographs—it stirs the emotions and colors the imagination.
After researching Mata Hari’s life in detail—and I won’t go into specifics here—Doug and I decided that the novel would be about redemption. After all, don’t we all have regrets—events in our lives we wish we could rerun and do over?
Even more so, how alluring, frightening, and fascinating it would be to travel back in time and then meet yourself as you were in a past life. Wouldn’t that be scary and enlightening? What would you say to yourself? What would you do differently? Can you really change the past? What if, in that life, you actually met your one true love—whom you’d missed in your present life? All these “what ifs” intrigued us and propelled us to our computers to begin writing a story that captivated us for many months.
Mata Hari, rarehistoricalphotos.com/mata-hari-1905-1917
The Lost Mata Hari Ring was a beautiful struggle, a labor of love, an ordeal and a delight. We knew we were writing a novel that was “out-of-the-box” but the concept was simply too much of a temptation to resist.
Doug believes that reincarnation is a fact. I remain skeptical. But then, Doug also believes in happy-ever-after.
Okay, I agree with him on that, although there are times when I’m the tiniest bit skeptical. But please don’t tell Doug that.
Copyright © 2018 by Elyse Douglas
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