What was your past life like?

This is the building in which I take my autoconocimiento class (it means self-knowledge and involves a lot of meditation and eastern philosophy). Last Friday, I walked into my class to find a "regression hypnosis" underway. Basically an Ecuadorian student was laying on the floor, blanket up to his chin, while our professor was guiding him through what was apparantly his "past life."

He had begun the hypnosis in the last class, and the guy had begun to explain all the stages of his past life, from early childhood to death. Our class came in near the end of his life, which was one of a campesino (farmer) in some random village in South America. He lived in a house made of mud, by a river and worked his whole life in the fields. By the time he was in his 70s he was very much alone and near the end, which we came to and the kid explained feeling pain throughout his body, trouble breathing, and extreme tiredness. At one point, the kid was able to look at the body as if from the ceiling, and then the professor began to ask him questions about what he learned through this life and such.

I think our class was very split on whether or not to believe this kid. I mean honestly, the life of a campesino is a rather easy one to tell, everyone is familiar with it so it is quite likely he could have invented it. When he "woke up," from his state, he expressed feeling like he was jolted back to the class, and that the previous experience was much more palpable than any dream. He claimed he could smell, hear, feel everything going on around him in his "past life." There was a moral to the hypnosis, because apparantly his past life of solitude and sedation meant that now, in this life, he loves to travel and be social. I really did not know what to think, but afterwards the professor backed it up with several other accounts of regressions that involved all sorts of strange occurances such as an Ecuadorian in a past life dying in clan conflicts in some African tribe in which he could feel the spear piercing his chest which killed him.

I would like to have this tried on me, but what they say is that you must already believe it is possible for it to work. I am so horrible with meditation (honestly I have to lie in my meditation journal!) that I do not know if I could find myself in that deep of a state. However I am open minded and the idea is cool, I just feel like people quite possibly could piece together random things they already know about to invent a past life which makes sense for them.

Ultimately, though, if you believe it, its real for you right?