You have to maintain state one way or another. There are a myriad of ways without using session_register(), as a matter of fact you should not use session_register even if you are maintaining state with native $_SESSIONs, but whatever you do you need to perform some sort of session management.
For simply refressing a page, though, any $GET or $POST data will be re-submitted so you do have a form of mini-session management going on that way.
