Jesus and the Essenes

Jesus and the Essenes

By

Dolores Cannon

© 1992 Dolores Cannon

Originally published by Gateway Books, The Hollies, Wellow, Bath, BA2-8QJ, United Kingdom.

First Printing 1992, Reprinted: 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998

First American Publication (0 2000 Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc., Second Printing 2001)

All rights reserved. No part of this book, in part or in whole, may be reprinted, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, photographic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc. except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles and reviews.

For permission, or serialization, condensation, adaptions, or for our catalog, please write to: Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 754, Huntsville, AR 72740, Attn: Permissions Dept.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cannon, Dolores, 1931 -

Jesus and the Essenes by Dolores Cannon

Eyewitness accounts of the missing years of Jesus, the portions that have been removed from the Bible, and the community of the Essenes at Qumran. The information was gained through regressive hypnosis, conducted by Dolores Cannon. Includes Bibliography and Index.

1. Jesus 2. Essenes 3. Dead Sea Scrolls 4. Hypnosis 5. Reincarnation

1. Cannon, Dolores, 1931 - II. Essenes III. Title

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-076754

ISBN# 1-886940-08-8

Cover Design by Drawing Board Studio

Illustrations by Joe Alexander

Book set in Times New Roman

Published by:

P.O . Box 754

Huntsville, A R 72740

WWW.OZARKMT.COM

American Edition printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface

SECTION ONE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

SECTION TWO

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

ADDENDUM ADDED IN 2001

Bibliography

About the Author

Preface

Who am I to think that I dare to write a book which will upset or at least shake the foundation of the beliefs of many, Jew and Christian alike? I respect beliefs. Man must believe in something, even if he believes there is nothing.

This is the story of a people who dedicated their lives to the protection and preservation of knowledge. I can relate to that. To me the destruction of knowledge is a very terrible thing. These people seem to have passed the proverbial torch to me through the eons of space and time. This information was not given to me to lie gathering dust on a shelf. It was meant to be revealed once again to others hungry for knowledge. It is as though the Essenes almost speak in whispers in my ears. Write, they say to me, the knowledge has been hidden too long. Write, do not let the knowledge be lost again. So, I feel I must pass along what I have learned. If this upsets some, I hope it is understood that I am not setting out to do so. If it makes some think, this is my intention.

I cannot claim that what I have presented in this book is the absolute truth, facts beyond dispute. I don't know, and I doubt seriously whether anyone alive has the answers. But maybe, for the first time, break loose from the mold that has held you prisoner since childhood. Open the windows of your mind and allow curiosity and the quest for knowledge to enter like a fresh spring breeze and sweep away the cobwebs of complacency. Dare to think the unthinkable. Dare to question the unquestionable. Dare to consider different concepts of life and death. And your Soul, your eternal Self, will be all the richer for it.

SECTION ONE

The Mysterious Essenes

CHAPTER 1

How It All Began

It is possible to travel through time and space and visit long lost civilizations. It is possible to speak with those long dead and relive again with them their lives and their deaths. It is possible to travel backwards hundreds, even thousands of years to explore the past. I know, because I have done it not once, but hundreds of times.

I have done it with regressive hypnosis. This is a technique or method that allows people to remember and often relive their past lives. The idea that we live not once; but many times, is called reincarnation. This should not be confused with transmigration, which is the mistaken belief that man may be reborn as an animal. According to my research this does not happen. When the soul of man incarnates it will always inhabit a human body. He may, unfortunately, sink so low as to become animalistic in nature, but he will never take the form of an animal. This is an entirely different type of spirit.

I don't know why some people find the idea of reincarnation so hard to understand, when they can relate it to their own lives. Everyone is constantly changing. Not to change would mean you have stopped growing. At that point you become stagnant and start to die. We change so much that many times we may feel as though we have lived many different lives in this one. We go to school, marry, have children, sometimes marry again. We may change occupations, sometimes going in an entirely different direction. We may travel or live in a foreign country for a while. We may experience trauma and sorrow with the death or unhappiness of loved ones. We hopefully learn to love and attain our goals in life. Each of these are stages in our lives and they are totally different from the other. We make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. We hear people say, I don't know how I could have done such dumb things when I was younger. It's almost as though it happened to someone else.

I know I could never return to the young teenager in high school that I once was. I would not even be able to relate to her, so naive and shy. We would not have anything in common now. And she would have never been able to understand the complex person I have become. Yet we are one and the same person.

This is the way I look upon past lives. We know we lived them, just as we know we lived our childhood . They could be called the childhood of the soul. Hopefully we have learned to apply the knowledge we have gained through hundreds of years of making mistakes, of being human . But just as there are people who take longer to grow up , there are also people who must live many lives before learning even one lesson.

We can look upon our own bodies as a form of reincarnation. We know our bodies are ever changing. Cells are constantly dying and being renewed in a never-ending cycle. We certainly don't have the same bod y we had ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. It has changed for better or worse.

We can see reincarnation as a school for the soul, a series of lessons and grades to be learned for our education and growth. Then we can stop cursing the bad times that often befall us and learn to think of them as tests and exams which we must pass or fail. We can't change what has happened to us in this life or in others. We can only learn from it and go forward, letting the past guide and teach us.

The doctrine of reincarnation is a philosophy, and as such it does not detract from any established form of religion. Rather it enhances, makes it fuller. Anyone who really studies the idea with an open mind will find that they are able to believe in both. The two really do not conflict at all. Reincarnation does not belong to the dark arts. It should not be lumped indiscriminately together with the occult. It is a tenet of love and thus can be combined with any religion whose main basis is love. Many people groping blindly in the dark for answers may find what they are looking for here. It is like a bright light at the end of a tunnel.

You actually do live forever because the soul is eternal, it cannot die. Life is one continuous existence, merely going from one body to another. You change bodies as easily as you change a suit of clothes. A suit is discarded when it becomes too old and worn-out or too torn and damaged to be repaired . This is difficult for some people, they are reluctant to discard it no matter how ragged it has become. You do become attached to the thing, after all. But you have a body, you are not a body.

There will be those who think the idea of rebirth too complicated, too radical, too hard to understand. These are people who are perhaps not yet read y for the concept of reincarnation. These should endeavor to live the best life that they can through their own belief, one which they can relate to and feel comfortable with. No one should try to force these beliefs on anyone.

The concept of going back in time has a fascination for many people. Why? The search for truth, the allure of the unknown, or the desire to see how the ancients really lived? Perhaps a suspicion that somehow the past was better than the present? Is this why the stories of time machines are so popular? Maybe man secretly wishes to unshackle him self from the chains that bind him to the present and to roam freely through time with no limitations or restrictions.

I am a regressionist. This is a modern term for a hypnotist who specializes in past-life regressions. I do not use hypnosis in the conventional manner, such as to help others lose weight, stop smoking or ease pain. I have been deeply interested in reincarnation for over twenty years. It all began when I watched my hypnotist husband conduct regressive experiments. He used conventional hypnosis methods and stumbled onto reincarnation quite by chance while working with a woman who wished to lose weight.

The story of our first adventure into the unknown and its tragic aftermath was told in my book, Five Lives Remembered. My husband was almost killed in a terrible car accident and spent a year in the hospital. After a long, difficult recuperation he no longer had any interest in hypnosis. His life has proceeded in an entirely different direction.

But my appetite had been whetted by the taste of the past-life experiences to which I had been exposed. The door had been opened on a w hole new world of possibilities. I have always loved history and this was a fascinating way to explore it. It became more alive than the history books with their dry, musty facts and dates. This method was similar to going through a time tunnel and actually meeting people living in the past. It was possible to speak to those experiencing history as it was occurring. Yes, the door had been opened and I had glimpsed the unknown . I would not allow it to be closed forever to me. If my husband was no longer interested, then I would have to learn how to conduct my own research.

The conventional methods of induction did not appeal to me. I thought them too time-consuming and tiring - on both subject and operator. They contained many tests to determine the depth of the trance. I have often suspected most people subconsciously resent being tested. Conditioned by many years of schooling, they resent being placed in a position where they feel they must either pass or fail. It is difficult for them to relax if they are on the defensive. These tests are used to gauge the depth of the trance state under the mistaken belief that this has something to do with the ability to reach the subconscious. This has been proven incorrect. People are in a hypnotic state many times during the day and do not even realize it. They expect it to be different from what it really is, a purely natural condition.

At least twice during the day everyone passes through the deepest possible trance state. This occurs when they are falling asleep at night and just before becoming fully awake in the morning. It has been proven that every time we watch television and become absorbed in the story, we have entered an altered state of consciousness. It also happens many times as we drive down a monotonous stretch of highway or listen to a boring sermon or lecture. We all enter altered states very easily and the majority of people would be shocked if told they had been unknowingly in a hypnotized state.

I felt there must be a quicker, easier way of inducing trance for regression purposes that could utilize this natural state. I studied the modern techniques and found there were indeed many faster and simpler methods. These methods are currently being used by some doctors to control disease and pain. They mostly utilize the visualization areas of the brain, allowing the subject to participate in a game by using guided imagery. I improvised a satisfactory method and began experimenting in 1979 . I found subjects easily because there seems to be an interest in this philosophical idea, even if the interest is only from the standpoint of curiosity.

Critics claim that the hypnotist tells the subject to go to a past life and the recalls are the results of the person wishing to please the hypnotist. In my technique I go to great lengths not to suggest. Under normal circumstances I never tell them to go anywhere. It all occurs spontaneously.

I planned to treat my method as a scientific experiment and see if it was repeatable. I wanted to use it on as many different types of people as possible. If the same results were obtained, I felt this would add to the validity of the theory of reincarnation. I tried to remain objective, but when ninety-five percent of those I hypnotized followed the same pattern coming up with a past life and corroborating each others stories - it was difficult to remain entirely neutral. People have said there could be other explanations besides reincarnation. This, of course, is possible. But my research leads me to believe the subjects are recalling actual memories from their past. As I regressed more and more people, I found the method repeatable on all types, even the uneducated and skeptical. Often the subjects did not believe in past lives or even understand what I was doing. Yet the results were the same.

Like others working in this field of reincarnation research, I hoped to add my data to the growing mass of material being gathered by others. Some researchers are only interested in statistics, how many people recall lives in certain time periods. But I love people, therefore I am interested in their stories. I prefer to work on a one-to-one basis with the individual rather than with group regressions. This way the whole story can be obtained. Also the operator (or guide) has better control over any trauma that may arise from the memories.

With this technique virtually everyone can remember their past lives even in the lightest hypnotic state. There are many different levels of hypnotic trance. These have been measured in the laboratory on scientific instruments. In regressions, the deeper the state, the more details it is possible to obtain. I have found the degree of trance can be gauged by the physical reactions of the subjects and the way they answer the questions. In the lighter states they will not even think anything unusual is going on . They will swear they are fully awake and cannot understand where the information comes from . Because the conscious mind is still very active they will think it is only their imagination. In the light states the subject will often watch the events of the past life as though watching a movie. As the hypnotic state deepens the subject will alternately watch the life and participate in it. When they are observing everything through the eyes of the other person and experiencing emotional reactions, they are dropping into a lower state. The conscious mind becomes less active and they become involved in what they are seeing and experiencing.

The best subjects are those who can reach the somnambulistic state. In this state they will completely become the personality and relive the life totally, even to possessing no memory of any other time period. They become, in all respects, the person living hundreds or thousands of years ago. They are in a position to relate their versions of history. But they can only tell what they know . If they were peasants they would not have knowledge of what is occurring in the king's palace and vice-versa. They are often ignorant of events which can be found in any history book but which had no personal bearing on their lives at that time.

They will remember almost nothing when awakened unless they are directed to do so. The subjects think they have just fallen asleep and any scenes that may remain in the conscious seem like the fading fragments of dreams. In the somnambulistic state they can release much information because they are, in all respects, that personality actually living in that bygone time period. To someone who has never seen this phenomenon the effects can be quite startling. It is a fascinating and sometimes unnerving experience to watch a subject change completely and take on the mannerisms and voice inflections of someone totally different.

The somnambulist is hard to find. Dick Sutphen, noted reincarnation expert, says they occur in one out of every ten subjects. He says that if there are thirty people present in a room, three of them will likely be capable of the somnambulistic state. My odds have not been that high. I have found it to be about one in twenty. Most people have a great curiosity about what is happening and they keep their walls and guards up, even in trance. This prevents them from dropping to the deepest state. I have found that an element of trust must be built before these walls will crumble. The subject must know they are perfectly safe. I believe the protective devices of the mind are still functioning because I have had people awaken immediately from a deep state if they see or experience something distasteful or frightening to them. This is much the same way we awaken ourselves from nightmares. My hypnotic technique is not control over another person's mind, but the ability to build trust and cooperation within that mind. The greater trust establishes a fuller release of information.

No, I have never yet found a Cleopatra or a Napoleon. To me it is a sign of validity that most people recall lives that were ordinary and routine. It is my opinion that if someone were to go to the trouble to make up a fantasy story to please the hypnotist (as has been suggested by experts) he would create an exciting adventure. To me this would be a fantasy. They would see them selves as a hero performing wonderful and extraordinary deeds. Such is not the case. The occasional different, exciting life is unique. The dull, the boring, the mundane far outnumber these. This would be equivalent to real life. There are far more ordinary, common people going about their run-of-the-mill lives than the few who manage to make the headlines of the newspapers.

The regressions which I have performed are full of such cases. Soldiers who never went to war, native Americans who lived peaceful lives instead of fighting the white man. Farmers and early settlers who knew nothing but back-breaking work, sorrow and unhappiness. Some never did anything but tend their animals, raise their crops and eventually die, worn out before their time. The most exciting event in their lives was a wedding, the birth of a child, a trip to town or a funeral. Most of the people living today would fit into a similar category. No, the thing that is impressive about most of the regressions is not the person's deeds and adventures, but the very real, human emotions that they experienced. When a person is awakened from trance with tears still fresh on their cheeks after recalling an event that took place over two hundred years ago, no one can tell them it is fantasy.

It is similar to reliving a traumatic event from one's childhood, brought forth again with all the repressed feelings rising to the surface after many years. No one can tell you that such a childhood event did not happen because often you will remember it consciously or it can be verified by others. Thus the regression is similar to the dredging up of childhood memories. One can put it in its proper place, see how it has influenced the present life and try to learn from the unearthed memory.

One explanation for this phenomenon is cryptoamnesia or hidden memory. This is the theory that you read it, saw it or heard it somewhere, sometime, and tucked it away in your mind . Then under hypnosis you conveniently bring it forward and weave a story out of it. To me this is not a sufficient explanation. If you retain hidden memory, you also retain the memories of everything that has happened to you in this life. This is a fact. But the somnambulist subject will forget anything that does not pertain to the time period being relived. There are numerous examples of this in this book. Many times the subjects will not know what objects I am talking about because they do not exist in their time frame. Or I will use a word or a phrase that they do not understand. It is often difficult trying to explain things we are well acquainted with in simple terms. Try it sometime. If the subject was using hidden memory, then why are these modern things forgotten? They are also part of the memory of the present personality.

Another theory is that the subject will play it safe and only discuss a time period or country of which they have some knowledge. I have disproved this many times. It is quite common for a subject to discuss a life in a culture totally unknown to them. Often they don't even know where they are, nothing is familiar. Their excellent recall of the country and the customs or beliefs can later be checked out through research. This has happened many times with the subject featured in this book. I would hardly call it playing it safe to discuss a lifetime that occurred two thousand years ago in a country halfway around the world. Yet her extreme accuracy can only be marveled at. Research has revealed her recall to be astounding. And this is only one of the lives that she brought forth during our work.

Since I am a writer with an insatiable curiosity, I became involved in this research project with a motive. I intended to regress as many volunteers as possible and compile their information in books describing different periods of history. I have had many people go to the same time periods and verify each others stories by giving the same information about conditions existing at the time. This project may yet become reality.

But when I met Katherine Harris, (a pseudonym) I realized my work with her would supersede previous plans and become books by themselves. The information that came forth from her subconscious mind was unique and informative and I considered it to be highly important.

CHAPTER 2

The Subject

Who was Katherine Harris and how did our lives happen to cross? At the time of our meeting I had no idea what the fates had in store for us. I could not have guessed that we were about to embark on a journey that would last a year and take us backward to the time of Christ. I believe such meetings are never coincidental.

I was at a party given by a group of people interested in metaphysics and psychic phenomena. There were many there whom I had already worked with in hypnotic regressions, but there were also many strangers. Katherine, who had an interest in and a curiosity about the unusual, was there with a friend. During the evening talk got around to my work and as usual, many people volunteered and wanted appointments to be subjects. There is a greater interest in this field than most people realize. Often there is a genuine reason to want a regression, such as looking for karmic relationships or to get rid of a phobia, but for the most part there is just curiosity. Katherine wanted to volunteer, so we set up an appointment.

Katherine, or Katie as she was known to her friends, was only twenty-two years old when I met her that important day. She was short and rather buxom for her age, with close-cut blond hair and eyes that sparkled and seemed to see beneath the surface. Her personality seemed to radiate out of every pore of her skin. She seemed so happy and alive, so interested in people. I was to discover later through our association that often this was a facade to cover her basic shyness and insecurity. She was a Cancer, and people born under that astrological sign are usually not that gregarious. But she had a genuine sincerity about her. She really cared about people and would go out of her way for them . She possessed an innate sense of wisdom that belied her true age. At the times when signs of immaturity would come through, it seemed out of place. I had to keep reminding myself that she was only twenty-two, the same age as my own son. Yet they seemed nothing alike. She seemed like a very old soul in a deceivingly young body. I wondered sometimes if anyone else got the same impression.

Katherine was born in Los Angeles in 1960 to parents whose job required much travel and frequent moves. They were members of the Assembly of God Church, so Katie's religious background was certainly not one that would encourage thoughts of reincarnation and hypnosis. She said she had always felt out-of-place at the church services. Much of the noise and gyrations that went on frightened her. As a young girl in church she often had the urge to cross herself in the manner of the Catholics. It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. But after being sternly reprimanded by her mother, she thought it better not to do this in public. Her parents considered her the odd one in the family. They couldn't understand her reluctance to be like them. It was mostly out of concern for her parents' feelings that she requested to be anonymous in this book. She felt they would never understand, even though the idea of many lives was an easy concept for her to grasp. She didn't want to risk the possibility that her private life would be upset. I have agreed to respect her wishes and keep her identity a secret.

Her family's many moves through many states of the USA had finally brought them to Texas when Katie was sixteen. She had moved twice during her sophomore year in high school, and now again at the beginning of her junior year. She was tired of the constant adjusting to new schools, different teaching methods and temporary friends. Over the protest of her parents, she dropped out of school at the beginning of her junior year. This was the full extent of her formal education, two years of high school. This was to become an asset for our work. We could be positive the things she spoke of under hypnosis were not coming from her schooling. I know of no school that teaches such things anyway. They no longer even stress geography as strongly as they once did. She is an extremely intelligent girl but her knowledge did not come from books.

Once out of school and with apparent freedom, she found she couldn't find work easily with such a lack of education or training. After a year of disappointing menial jobs, she decided at seventeen to take a GED test (high school equivalent test) and joined the Air Force to get job training. She spent two years there specializing in computers. Another important point for our work was that she never left the United States during her time with the Air Force, yet while in deep trance she has described many foreign places with minute detail.

When she left the service, she and her family moved once again to the middle-western city where I met her. She is now using her computer skills working in an office. She seems well-adjusted and has a normal social life. The extent of her spare time reading is romance and fantasy novels that are so popular now. The idea of researching in a library for the information that is so vital to these regressions would not appeal to her at all.

From the first session I knew this was no ordinary subject. She went deep quickly, showed sensory sensations such as taste and smell, experienced emotion and remembered nothing upon awakening. She had always thought she would have no difficulty going in to trance, but she was also surprised at the ease with which it was accomplished. I knew I had found the perfect somnambulistic subject. Since this is the easiest type to work with, I wanted to have more sessions with her if she was willing. She was also curious and agreed to do it as long as her parents didn't find out. I hoped there would be no problems in this area, but legally she was an adult and could make decisions for herself. She then confessed she had been haunted by memories all her life that seemed out-of-place. She thought the answers might lie in reincarnation and she w anted to find out.

When it became apparent that I would be able to obtain much valuable information from this girl, we began to meet regularly once a week. Since I live in an isolated rural area, we agreed to meet at my friend Harriet's house. It was located in the city and was easily accessible to all parties concerned. Harriet is a fellow trained hypnotist. She had never worked with a somnambulist and was interested in my work with Katie. She was eager to see what would happen. After the information began to come forth I was glad to have Harriet as a witness. Later others were also present during the sessions. It was hard enough for us to believe what was happening. We could use all the witnesses we could get in order to rule out the possibility of an accusation of hoax.

After the first two sessions I conditioned her to go into a deep trance upon the mention of a keyword. This is much faster and saves time-consuming preliminary work. We had no idea where this experiment was going