Hypnotic Progression
(Chapter 8 of the original Book of the Soul)
© Ian Lawton 2004 & 2008
Individual Progressions in Current Lives
The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Land will appear off the east coast of America. There will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanoes in the torrid areas, and there will be the shifting then of the poles – so that where there have been those of a frigid or semitropical will become the more tropical, and moss and fern will grow. And these will begin in those periods in ’58 to ’98 when these will be proclaimed as the periods when His Light will be seen again in the clouds.
This is a prophecy – difficult grammar and all – made by Edgar Cayce. In fact he had predicted that there would be great ‘earth changes’ during the thirties, but when these did not come to pass his attention switched to the period from 1958 to 1998. We can see that he associated these physical changes to the earth with a profound spiritual change that he said would be ushered in by the dawning of the age of Aquarius – which in turn was associated with the reemergence of Atlantis and the ‘second coming’ of Christ. Cayce passed away in 1945, far too early to know that his predictions at least as regards physical earth changes had not come to fruition by 1998, and nor have they at the time of writing over five years later. Of course, this has not deterred some of his followers from falling back on the failsafe position that the content was right, it was merely his timing that was inaccurate.
In 1980 Helen Wambach decided to experiment with progressing subjects forward into the future, rather than regressing them into the past. As her collaborator Chet Snow reports in his 1989 book Mass Dreams of the Future, she was clearly interested to see how her subjects’ reports might compare with those of seers like Cayce, with whose predictions she was entirely familiar. Of course, both at the time she was experimenting, and even when Snow subsequently published his book, there was still plenty of time for Cayce’s predictions to be proved correct. Using exactly the same hypnotic techniques she used for regression, she worked with both groups and a number of individual subjects, but there were problems with the latter. Some early results from group progressions to the year 2100 – which we will examine shortly – indicated that life had become pretty bleak by then. Her curiosity was piqued as to what might have caused this, but when she took her first eight individual subjects forward into the twenty-first century they all reported they were just ‘floating’ – their current personalities had clearly died, and they had not reincarnated. So she decided to instruct one of her relatively young subjects to progress to a specific date in the late-nineties – Snow does not say exactly what year, but given her interest in the Cayce readings I would not be surprised to find it was 1998. Although this was less than two decades away and the young woman might reasonably have been expected to still be alive, Wambach was shocked to find her choking to death from a ‘big black cloud’ of some sort.
This is clearly the most difficult type of hypnotic journey. Being regressed into a traumatic death in a past life is bad enough, but because it is in the past and cannot be changed most subjects can accept the experience from an emotional perspective. Being progressed far ahead into future lives does not seem to represent a major psychological problem for some individuals either. But being progressed in the current lifetime, and especially to the point of death, is understandably a frightening experience – indeed one that most of us would probably prefer to avoid altogether, even if we do have an awareness that death is merely a transition.
Nevertheless, Wambach persevered. After some delay because of health problems and other commitments, in 1983 she selected two relatively young and stable subjects and took them forwards carefully a year at a time, concentrating on normally happy occasions like birthdays and Christmas. To make them focus on general issues that she hoped would hold the least emotional charge, she asked them to see themselves buying provisions and to describe the nature of the foodstuffs available and their prices. She also suggested they report on any television or radio broadcasts of which they became aware. But when they progressed to about fifteen years ahead, again they were both just floating. Despite her curiosity, Wambach did not force them to relive the events that precipitated their deaths.
The most prominent of her progression subjects was Snow himself. He was a civilian employee of the US Air Force who had come to her in 1983 for regression therapy related to recurrent back pain and a writer’s block that was affecting his work as an archivist and military historian. He was impressed by the results, Wambach was impressed by his abilities as a regression subject, and they formed an increasingly close working relationship. It is worth looking at their progression work together in some detail because it will help us to understand the nature of the phenomenon and its associated pitfalls. But clearly we must temporarily suspend our knowledge of the fact that, just as with Cayce, none of Snow’s own predictions for the world have come to fruition at the time of writing.
In July of that year they undertook their first progression session in which she took him forwards directly to his birthday in July 1998. He found himself on a ranch somewhere north of Phoenix in Arizona. But the noonday clouds were dark, and it was cold – totally unlike the normal summer climate. It appeared to them both that the earth changes Cayce had prophesied had come true. He realized he was part of a commune that had been set up some years before in an area that was expected to escape the worst of the dramatic climate changes to come – which their unofficial leader, who he identified as a woman called Patsy, had foreseen. But their purpose was not just to survive the catastrophe, and to avoid being overcome by lawless marauders fighting for their own survival afterwards, but also to develop their spiritual abilities – especially by learning to make telepathic contact with similar groups that had been set up in a variety of other locations. It would be their job to help to rebuild the shattered world.
In October 1983 she took him forward again, this time to Christmas 1996. He was again at the ranch, but this time making preparations to stock foodstuffs and so on, and the climate was much hotter so the main catastrophe had clearly not occurred yet. But in watching a television bulletin he could see that the process had begun, with freak storms and new records of hot and cold weather, excessive droughts and rainfalls in various parts of the globe, and widespread flooding already occurring in coastal areas as sea levels rose. Global inflation was rife, food prices especially had rocketed, and the world’s economy was already going into a tailspin. In the same session she then took him forward to Christmas 1997, when everything was much the same except they had all their provisions in place at the ranch. But when she took him forward another year to Christmas 1998, a very different picture emerged, similar to the one he had seen in his first progression. The climate in Arizona was cold and wet, and black clouds of ash and debris hung permanently in the sky. Aftershock tremors still occurred frequently. There was no television now, but local radio stations were still keeping people in touch with the outside world. They reported that much of the west coast of America had sunk into the sea, along with parts of the east coast although other parts of this had risen right up. The sea had also rushed into the low-lying parts of middle America from the Gulf of Mexico in the south and up through Texas, almost cutting the country vertically in two. Millions of people had died right across the planet.
It was not until April 1984 that Snow and Wambach were able to conduct their third progression, but in this session they established more details. The major problems had been triggered in March 1998 by the massive volcanic eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan. In America this had caused widespread problems of flooding especially in southern California, and major panic, but many people had been evacuated to higher ground and the government – which was still in control – was insisting that the worst was over. They were wrong. In May of that year the real event took place, a huge quake in southern California, as well as massive disruption in other parts of the world. Even the survivors could no longer trust the government, which lost all control. The sun did not return for months, and all the crops at the ranch withered and died.
When asked in this same session to move forward to a time when things were getting better, Snow progressed to late 2002. He was making the journey to somewhere in Alberta in western Canada to work with another spiritual survivor group, who had retained more technology because their part of the world had been less affected. In fact, possibly as a result of Cayce’s predicted pole shift, the climate there had become more temperate, and there were several thousand survivors in this group, although they still lived in lightweight and temporary structures for fear of further tremors causing collapse. They wanted him to make radio broadcasts encouraging people to develop and use their spiritual talents, on account of his voice having special qualities that helped people to open up psychically.
Wambach worked with five other subjects individually to see whether they would confirm Snow’s predictions. His reports of their progressions are insufficiently detailed for us to gain any real insight into the extent of their corroboration, but in general it seems they too saw increasingly severe climate problems leading to a major catastrophe some time in the late nineties. It also seems that most of them had died by the time of the new millennium.
What are we to make of all this? Admittedly some people are becoming more and more preoccupied with climate change and increasingly erratic weather patterns – with great debate surrounding whether these changes derive from man-made global warming or, for example, solar flares and sunspot radiation whose fluctuations have always affected our planet. But, for example, no major financial collapse has begun yet, over five years after 1998, despite many other commentators continually warning of impending doom. Nevertheless, in his prologue Snow uses the failsafe gambit that ‘I would be the first to agree that the exact timing of individual future events is by far the least reliable aspect of precognition, prediction and prophecy’. So might he still be proved right at some point?
Another aspect we cannot escape is the similarity of Snow’s predictions to those made by Cayce. Not only is the date of 1998 ‘confirmed’ but also – despite his details of events in other parts of the world being sketchy – he specifically mentions, for example, the bulk of Japan falling into the sea. He devotes considerable time to discussing Cayce’s predictions in his book, and openly indicates Wambach’s prior knowledge of them – for example, one of her group progression workshops was actually conducted at the Association for Research and Enlightenment in early 1983, and over two hundred Cayce followers attended. So, although he is somewhat reticent on this point, it is only reasonable to suggest that he too probably knew about them, and that in large part his imagination was creating a future fiction based on them. Unfortunately this conclusion is bolstered to the extent that his ego may have been at play in giving him a future role of some importance.
We do not know about the extent to which prior knowledge may have influenced the other five subjects. Indeed we are not provided with detailed transcripts from any of Snow’s or the other subjects’ sessions, but we cannot discount the additional possibility – normally rare with regressions – that Wambach to some extent subjectively led them on with her questioning. We will discuss to what extent they may have been seeing any sort of ‘real’ future later, but for now I must make a vital distinction so that I am not accused of adopting double standards. If these are not real lives as such then, unlike past lives, the subjects would be far more susceptible to subjective and leading questioning. It might even be possible that Wambach projected her own preconceptions about the events of the late nineties to her subjects without saying anything at all, just by telepathy.
Group Expectations of Catastrophe
Despite these various objections, to dismiss all this lightly would still be a mistake. And although it is not directly relevant to the issue of hypnotic progression, I would now like to consider the extent to which our expectations might influence the future. We know that our thoughts and intentions as individuals have great power to influence our lives in either a repetitive or a progressive way. Positive thinking does work, but so does its negative counterpart. And Snow himself hints that if a significant proportion of the human population is expecting something to happen then they might just make it happen via the mechanism of the collective unconscious – or, as I would prefer to call it, group karma. So are there definite trends in new age consciousness that might have an impact on our collective future?
Galvanized as Wambach clearly was by the Cayce readings, many other people do associate worldwide catastrophes with a new spiritual dawn. In fact, rather like the Hindu concept of ‘world cycles’ of degeneration, destruction and reemergence, she regarded them as regular cyclic events – although tying them into precessional cycles of a little less than 26,000 years that are then subdivided into twelve astrological ages of approximately 2160 years each, all of which are far shorter than those in the Hindu view. Snow himself devotes a whole chapter to this idea, tying the great flood that supposedly occurred some 12,500 years ago during the age of Leo into a prediction of a similar event around about now during the transition to the age of Aquarius – at the halfway point of the precessional cycle. However his attempts to prove this is a genuine cycle of more than two events fall somewhat short, relying on various native traditions of multiple ages of man that arguably have little archaeological, geological or other scientific evidence to back them up. Moreover, with greater or lesser degrees of relevance he uncritically quotes material from researchers such as Zecharia Sitchin in respect of supposed twelfth planets and cosmic collisions, and Peter Lemesurier in respect of the Great Pyramid’s internal geometry supposedly acting as a predictive timeline of the future of the human race. Because I have spent considerable time demonstrating the poor scholarship behind these ideas in my previous books, I have no intention of repeating the arguments here.
Despite these additional reservations, and although my reasoning is somewhat different, I too tend towards the view that catastrophes and spiritual awakening are closely linked, except not in a regular cyclic way. As I mentioned briefly in the introduction, one of the main themes of my last book, Genesis Unveiled, was that the ancient texts and traditions all around the world suggest that there was a huge catastrophe around 11,500 years ago, brought on by humanity’s increasing focus on materialism at the expense of their true spiritual roots. I argued that although in a natural sense this catastrophe was precipitated by an asteroid or comet impact of some sort, from an underlying spiritual perspective it was a karmic event working off the universal karma of humanity as a whole – and that the destruction effectively gave us a fresh start to try and get it right. I also argued that the esoteric wisdom displayed in these same ancient texts – concerning, for example, cosmology and the formation of the universe – precluded the materialistic explanation that they were written by philosophically primitive people who, having experienced a major catastrophe, automatically assumed that the gods were blaming them for some misdemeanor. I then concluded that in treading a path we have been down before we have failed again, and so may well face the same karmic consequences. I was not specific about dates or possible natural causes, or even that such an event would definitely occur – after all, karma is all about choice whether applied to the individual or on a more universal scale, which is another reason why I reject any predictable cyclic element to catastrophes. But I did argue that it was a definite possibility that was worth considering.
I should emphasize that I do not long for a return to the past, or at least I am not against technological progress per se inasmuch as I strongly suspect that it is an unavoidable and ethereally anticipated part of humanity’s evolution. What I am extremely concerned about, as are so many others, is our obvious failure to integrate technological progress with our spiritual birthright, so that the two are maintained in balance. On top of this, in my private discussions I repeatedly agonize about whether the reinstatement of a universal spiritual worldview that I so wish for can ever be brought about without some major collapse to break the stranglehold of self-interested and ruthless global power brokers – who may stop at nothing to protect the status quo.
So we must still ask whether a major catastrophe may not indeed be precipitated if a sufficient proportion of the world’s population merely expect it to happen – whether or not they agree with me that we mightdeserve or even need it as well. These expectations were running mighty high in the run up to 1998, with the fast-approaching new millennium of the Christian calendar also playing its psychological part. Those key points have now passed without the predictions of catastrophe coming to fruition. But, showing admirable fluidity, plenty of people have now switched their allegiance to a slightly later date for the coming of the age of Aquarius – this being feasible because it is virtually impossible to pinpoint the transition from one age to another with any accuracy due to the poorly defined boundaries between the zodiacal constellations. Many also couple this with, for example, Mayan calendrical predictions focused on the year 2012 – although in their original form these seem to be at least as much about spiritual awakening as they are about any form of catastrophe.
Perhaps the increasingly erratic weather and climate changes we have seen developing over recent decades, whether man-made or not, are indeed a sign of things to come. Perhaps we are ready for a major spiritual awakening, which does need a major catastrophe to precipitate it and to strip out all the deadwood of materialism. Or perhaps by choosing a more spiritual path of our own volition humanity can avoid the need for such a catastrophe. Or, then again, maybe this is all so much new age hype, and the struggle between materialism and spirituality will continue on for centuries with no major resolution one way or the other. Perhaps, even, I am completely mistaken about group karma, and a natural catastrophe may occur that has nothing to do with spiritual reawakening. There are numerous possibilities, and I do not even begin to have any definitive answer as to which is most likely. But I will have more to say about the bigger picture that encompasses such discussions at the end of this chapter.
Group Progressions to the Twenty-Second and Twenty-Fourth Centuries
Let us now consider progressions into the more distant future. As I indicated earlier, from the outset in 1980 Wambach also worked on progression with groups of subjects, just as she had in her regression research. She offered them a hypnotic journey to a choice of any one of five time periods: three past ones before 1900, and two future ones of 2100 or 2300 – which, being beyond any subject’s current lifespan, would hopefully minimize any potential psychological blockages. With two of the five options involving progression then, all other things being equal, the assumption at the outset was that at least forty per cent would experience the future rather than the past. In fact, given that on average over sixty per cent of group subjects indicated a biased interest in progressing rather than regressing when questioned before the sessions, and given that one might expect current population expansion to continue, she hoped that the figure would be more like fifty per cent. But that was not what happened. She consistently found that only between five and seven per cent of the subjects in each group progressed to 2100, and another eleven to fifteen per cent to 2300.
Although Wambach did evaluate other possible explanations, she could not avoid the conclusion that this unexpectedly small percentage of progressions was caused by the catastrophes before the new millennium that both Cayce and her individual subjects had predicted. Far fewer humans would be on the planet and so far fewer souls would be incarnate at these points. This would also explain why nearly twice as many were going to the more distant time period, at which point the population would presumably be recovering somewhat. From this perspective her group data might seem to support the fact that a significant catastrophe is indeed on the way, although we must allow for the probable existence of a considerable number of other mostly unforeseen variables that might have an impact on her data.
Wambach conducted several dozen of these group workshops right across America from 1980–4, while a number of identical sessions were held by an associate, psychologist Leo Sprinkle from the University of Wyoming. Wambach unfortunately passed away quite suddenly in 1985, so Snow himself was left with the job of collating the results. More than this, however, because he had by now left his former job and qualified as a hypnotherapist himself, he performed a number of similar group sessions from 1985–7 in both America and France – although in these his subjects were primarily offered the chance to go to 2100 rather than 2300. In his analysis he differentiates between his own findings and those obtained earlier by Wambach and Sprinkle, but for our purposes they display sufficient similarities that we can concentrate on the combined results.
Despite the small percentages that progressed rather than regressed, and the fact that a small proportion of the progression data sheets were too incomplete to form part of a proper analysis, Snow was left with a total of nearly four hundred progressions to study. As Wambach had previously in her regression studies, he commenced with an analysis of future life sex, which more or less showed a fifty-fifty split between male and female in both future periods, despite their being as usual a far greater proportion of currently female subjects in the groups. He is right to argue that this is again indicative of the validity of the experiences – remember that the group subjects were not in therapy, so that if we can infer they were more likely in the progressive stage then they would be less likely to favor one sex over another for their incarnations. Interestingly, about five per cent of subjects reported they were androgynous in 2100, with this figure rising to six per cent in 2300 – a factor that is clearly absent from past-life regressions. By asking how old subjects were when they died in their future lives he also established that, although there were some significant individual and collective extensions, average life spans in both periods seemed to be more or less consistent with today.
But by far the most interesting aspect of Snow’s analysis was the emergence of different types of life experience that were broadly speaking common to both future periods. He categorized these into Type I, which involved living in a traveling spaceship, a space station or a colony on another planet; Type II, which involved living in spiritually evolved, new age communities in predominantly mountain or coastal environments on earth; Type III, which involved living in usually enclosed, high-technology, city environments on earth; and Type IV, which involved living a relatively backward life usually in small rustic communities on earth.
The totals for each type in each period are shown in the table, and I will summarize a few of Snow’s more pertinent findings about each. If we start with the progressions to 2100 or thereabouts, as we might expect the Type II experiences seemed to be by far the most pleasant and fulfilling. Part of their spiritual development was to coordinate their limited use of technology with their natural environment – there being a suggestion that they were able to maintain their pleasant habitats by their spiritual approach, while many other parts of the planet remained virtually uninhabitable. Their diet consisted of natural fruits and vegetables, and their average life spans had increased to over ninety years of age. A few reported that they used telepathy to communicate, and that they could ‘vacate’ their bodies if they chose once their life tasks were completed. The Type IV’s also experienced largely pleasant and uncomplicated lives, but their distinguishing factor was the absence of any spiritual emphasis, an almost complete lack of technology, and a reversion to relatively backward nineteenth-century style living in small communities – usually in a rural or small town environment, but occasionally in ruined cities.
The Type I and III experiences were linked inasmuch as high-technology cities on earth still acted as the home base for many of the space travelers. Both types indicated that contact and cooperation with extraterrestrials was commonplace. And although a degree of continuation of a family-style life was reported by both, and the Type I’s tended to be slightly more fulfilled by their scientific work, many of these subjects also reported boredom, isolation and loneliness, brought on it seems by the dominance of technology in their environments. Type III’s especially emphasized the extent to which mere survival seemed to be the name of the game in their cold and mechanical society, in which art, literature and other humanistic aspects seemed almost completely absent. Most reported that if they left their enclosed cities there was no greenery or vegetation, and that they had to wear full breathing apparatus because the atmosphere was poisonous – as well as suits that protected them from the sun’s radiation – and that if these failed they died. Their purely functional domed cities were often built partially underground, or even underwater.
The progressions to 2300 and beyond were in many ways similar. The proportion of Type I’s had increased, especially as a result of human colonization of planets outside our solar system. Although domed structures were often mentioned in these reports, in many cases it seems the planets had a similar atmosphere to earth and vegetation was commonplace. While the lives of the Type 1’s in spaceships, space stations and enclosed colonies on planets within our solar system continued to be somewhat lonely in many cases, those on planets in other parts of the galaxy were more family-oriented and fulfilling, and also in many cases spiritual. The lives of the Type II’s had continued much as before except in some cases the relatively small community settlements had expanded into major population centers with more modern technology, but without losing their fundamental spirituality. There were hints from some that their higher vibrational state had made them less densely physical, and extraterrestrial contacts for these people often had a strong spiritual dimension.
Although considerably more than half of the Type III’s continued to live in enclosed cities because of the still-polluted atmosphere, a change was detectable in that a significant minority reported the atmosphere in their part of the globe was safe. These latter also reported that their lives were more fulfilling, and it seems that they were living in a far less harsh, more humane and even spiritual environment. Snow suggests that a process of convergence between the Type II’s and III’s was at least partially under way by this point, and in fact I am not at all sure why he did not categorize these more spiritual Type III’s living in unpolluted environments as Type II’s in the first place. Meanwhile, apart from an apparent increase in the size of their communities, the rustic Type IV’s lives seemed pretty much unchanged. From a general perspective it seems that by this time attitudes to death had changed completely, with most people fully realizing it was just a transition to another state. As a result reports of choosing to leave a body that was worn out, or because all tasks for that life had been accomplished, were commonplace among all types.
What are we to make of these group progressions? Many of the Type II’s, III’s and IV’s from both time periods reported living in various still-identifiable parts of the globe that overlap considerably. Is it possible that the members of two of these groups could be quite happily living in pollution-free environments while, at the same time and perhaps only a few hundred miles away, those in the other did not dare to emerge from their domes without protective suits and helmets? Somehow I doubt it, which must at the very least cast some doubt on the extent to which these can all be regarded as genuine glimpses of the future. The only solution would be if the Type III’s were mistaken and were actually, like the Type I’s, living in colonies on other planets and not earth. But this is pure conjecture on my part.
Snow himself seems to be quite ambivalent about the extent to which we should regard these as genuine lives. On the one hand, he emphasizes that the equal distribution of the sexes supports the view that they are genuine and not just based on fantasy projection. And he backs this up with the argument that only a relatively small percentage of group subjects progressed into new age lives, even though we might reasonably expect that the sort of people who would attend such workshops would have a far greater than average desire to see humanity evolving in a spiritual direction. But on the other hand he seems to go along with a plethora of supposedly extraterrestrial channelings of recent decades that suggest that humanity is facing a critical time in its history and must make a choice between spiritual evolution and apocalypse – which stands in direct contrast to the idea that the two might go hand in hand that we discussed earlier. This suggests that he does not regard all these progressions as genuine, at least in any fixed, deterministic sense, and that the apparent mutual exclusivity of the two types of atmospheric environment encountered on earth represent at least two alternative futures: one apocalyptic, the other spiritual. So, despite a certain lack of coherence in his arguments, it seems that he does favor the idea that these are ‘mass dreams’ of the future that are not fixed and unchangeable. As to my own view, that will have to wait until the end of the chapter.
Individual Progressions into Future Lives
Apart from Wambach, most of our pioneers hardly mention hypnotic progression. But in Journey of SoulsMichael Newton emphasizes the vagueness of any impressions his subjects have received from the future:
The opposite of past-life regression is post-life progression, which enables some subjects to see snatches of the future as incomplete scenes. For instance, some have told me earth’s population will be greatly reduced by the end of the twenty-second century, partially due to adverse soil and atmospheric changes. They also see people living in odd-looking domed buildings. Details about the future are always rather limited, due, I suspect, to built-in amnesia from karmic constraints.
He adds a few more details in Destiny of Souls:
While in the ring people are not able to view events into the future beyond the next immediate life span of the bodies presented to them. Evidently, this might cloud the way souls see the lives they are viewing. Taking my cue from this spirit world practice, I prefer not to work with progression in hypnosis except in spiritual screening rooms [that is, the ring]. Once in a while, in conjunction with something else under discussion out of the ring, a subject will get brief flashes of scenes where they are participating in a future event, such as being on a starship. I usually don’t push for more information here. Moreover, these flashes of future existences are mercurial since people may only see a single possibility that could change when the time actually arrives, owing to a whole host of new circumstances and decisions based upon the timelines of history leading up to these events.
Clearly Newton has actively avoided progressing his subjects, precisely because he regards any results as far too open to change to be of any value, and this seems to be the general consensus among pioneering regressors. So as far as I am aware the only other researcher to have consistently experimented with progression is Bruce Goldberg. His scientific background meant he had no particular interest in reincarnation until he began to read about past-life regression while at dental school. After graduation he took a course in clinical hypnosis, with the idea of using it to reduce anxiety or as an alternative to anesthetic, but when subsequently asked to regress an acquaintance into her past lives he immediately became convinced of the reality of reincarnation. So in 1976 he set up a joint dental and hypnotherapy practice in Baltimore, while some time later in 1984 he also gained a qualification in counseling psychology, before moving his practice to Los Angeles in 1989.
In his 1982 book Past Lives, Future Lives Goldberg discusses a number of the important themes that we have discussed separately: the transition to the interlife assisted by guides and other soul mates, with us at least initially seeing what we expect to see; the life review with guides and elders involving the akashic records; choosing and planning the next life with guides, elders and other linked souls; the ideas of group and progressive karma, and of free will to ignore interlife advice and plans; and the absence of punishment in hell or by reversion to animal form. However, only the ideas of group and progressive karma and of non-reversion to animal lives are definitively placed in the context of his own regression research. The rest are only introduced under the heading ‘popular explanations of karma and their basic principles’. It is because of this doubt about the extent to which he was merely summarizing the interlife findings of other pioneering researchers rather than his own that I have not previously included his work alongside theirs.
He also provides a number of detailed case studies of regression, the most extraordinary of which involved two patients who, he reports, came to him quite separately and were completely unknown to each other. The first, Arnold, recalled the life of Thayer, an apprentice to a master guildsman called Gustave in Bavaria in the twelfth century. Thayer was brutalized by his master, who completely denigrated him at work, kept him chained up like a slave at home, and took his frustrations out on him not only violently but sexually as well. He also thwarted Thayer’s potential romance with a well-bred local girl called Clotilde. Eventually Thayer snapped, and in trying to murder his master was stabbed and killed himself. The second patient, Brian, came to see Goldberg about eighteen months later. Incredibly he regressed into the life of Gustave, and confirmed all the main names, dates and events – albeit that, as one would expect in any such account, his perspective on certain aspects was slightly different. Arnold reported that he knew Clotilde as his current sister-in-law, but did not know Gustave in this life, while Brian was not asked the same question. Despite this apparently incredible synchronicity, Goldberg decided that it was not his karmic role to introduce the two.
If we turn now to Goldberg’s experience with what he describes as ‘hundreds’ of progressions, he accepts that many people are fearful of them and that this in itself acts as a block, making them much less easy to initiate than regressions. He also indicates that even when subjects are progressed, their experiences are far less stable than in regressions, and tend to swap from one scene to another without warning or continuity. As to why he experiments with them at all, he argues that the past, present and future are all happening now, so that in some cases progressions can have as much therapeutic effect as regressions. He accepts that karma involves choice, and that to some extent this might act as a further intrinsic block, but also insists that ‘if we weren’t supposed to know the future, progressions simply wouldn’t work’. We will return to these issues later, but for now we might note that he summarizes the future of life on earth over the next five centuries based on these cases, and his summary does not seem to correlate with the Cayce predictions of catastrophe – and remember that at the time Goldberg was writing, 1998 was still some years away. Instead, Goldberg’s patients predict that a major nuclear war will decimate the population, but not until the twenty-fifth century, after three hundred years of world peace.
As part of his desire to see hypnotic regression demonstrated on television, Goldberg worked with a presenter from his local network in 1980. But when the following year this subject indicated a willingness to explore progression into the future as well, he decided that the best way to try to prove its validity would be to take him forward one week and look at the news he would be presenting. In two sessions he came up with six news items that on subsequent checking proved to have some validity, although any skeptic would point out that at least some of the items might have been expected to happen anyway – such as house fires, road accidents and political developments. But while in most of these cases few details were provided, in some they were sufficient to seem impressive. A balanced view would be that the information was by no means foolproof, but may have been more accurate than pure guesswork or chance. Of course, one thing that everyone wants to know is, if it is possible to look into the near future, why do people not do it to predict lottery numbers and so forth? The standard response to this is that karmic dynamics do not allow for such greed-motivated activity, so such details would be blocked.
One case in which Goldberg felt that progression had a therapeutic effect was that of Janet, a dietician who came to him suffering from low self-esteem after the break-up of a relationship – one in a long line of bad experiences with partners, apparently caused by her choosing the wrong sort of men who regularly cheated on her. Two past-life regressions revealed some repetitive group karma between Janet, her most recent ex-partner, and his ex-wife to whom he had returned. But Goldberg wanted to go further, and to take her into the future. So he progressed her to an apparent life in the year 3015 – considerably further ahead than any of the other cases we have studied so far – where she described her life as a confident, assertive and successful scientist on another planet, who ended up having a highly successful relationship with one of her senior colleagues who was unknown to her in her current life.
Goldberg reports that Janet subsequently became more self-confident and gained a far more suitable partner. But he also asserts that it was her progression more than her regressions that led to this improvement, because it assured her that by that time in the future she had worked out her karma with her ex-partner in that he was no longer present. However, he provides no details of how many sessions he had with her, and he certainly does not indicate that, for example, he only took her into the future because she had failed to respond to past-life therapy alone. Indeed, I suspect that the karmic ties revealed by her regressions would probably have satisfied most of our pioneers in terms of their therapeutic benefits. Nor does he allow for the fact that her ex-partner might simply have been absent from that particular future life. So, all in all, his suggestion that the progression itself had significant therapeutic effect is somewhat unproven. Having said that, if it were clear to any of us that our current problems were definitely going to be resolved by the time of a future life, it would almost certainly make us feel better. But can such guarantees really be given? Would they not act as a short cut to violate the basic concept of ongoing choices dictating future events? We will return to this issue shortly.
The case that I want to examine in some detail is that of another patient called Pete. He came to Goldberg with a hand-washing obsession, something he readily recognized as a clinical psychologist himself, and which he said was related to an intense but apparently illogical fear of contamination. He was regressed into three past lives that again threw up details pertinent to his compulsion, and this time Goldberg indicates that his symptoms were starting to be alleviated after these sessions. Nevertheless, in the next session Pete progressed into his next life, and it appears this was spontaneous rather than as a result of a deliberate instruction by Goldberg. He found himself as a young man called Ben Kingsley attending a high-school physics class in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the year 2074. He reported that his father was a psychiatrist, his mother an architect, and that he had a loving and stable family background. The only problem was that he had a tendency to lose his temper, and was being treated for it by one of his father’s colleagues. This was an especially sensitive issue because he wanted to work as a technician at the local nuclear power plant, and if his problem was revealed his hopes would be dashed. So his father ensured that it stayed off the record.
Ben’s life progressed well. He went to work at the plant, fell in love, married, had children and gained increasing responsibility in his job. He was something of a workaholic, but even this did not seem to be a problem for him or his family. His temper tantrums had not surfaced for some years, and his psychiatric treatment had been discontinued. Goldberg kept progressing him forwards in that life, probing for further causes of his current problems, and it must be said that his commentary is illuminating. He was clearly adamant that Ben’s temper problems would resurface at some point, even though the patient himself was equally adamant that they were under control – and understandably expressed some irritation that Goldberg should keep coming back to them. From the transcripts one could certainly argue that Goldberg was leading his patient far more than most of our pioneers would, based on his own subjective judgment of the situation and his desire to find an incident related to the current compulsion. One might even use the term ‘bullying’ to describe the tone of his questioning, and as we will see there are other examples of this in his work.
In any case, his relentless pursuit appeared to pay off when eventually Ben found himself alone one night at the nuclear research facility that he by now headed. His calculations contained a mistake that produced an emergency he could not control. Apparently unable to accept his failure, instead of requesting assistance he went into meltdown himself. He knocked a security guard unconscious, sealed off the unit, and let it blow up. Not only did he kill himself and the rest of the skeleton crew, but the surrounding area was heavily contaminated by the blast. After death, he realized his stupidity. But, more tellingly, Goldberg had apparently uncovered the major cause of his current compulsion.
But that is not the end of the story. Clearly this was a highly negative scenario that hardly inspired Pete to look forward to his next life as Ben. Nevertheless Goldberg had an answer for this as well, and it was based on certain assumptions he makes about the way in which different spiritual planes operate. He separately describes five lower vibrational planes – the physical, astral, causal, mental and etheric – and seven higher ones, and states that we cannot progress from one to another until we have raised our vibrational rate sufficiently. This bears some resemblance to Qabalistic ideas, although his descriptions fall well short of providing a coherent practical framework in my view. In any case, with even less discernable logic he then suggests that any future life has five alternative frequencies that apparently correspond to the lower planes: these are then labeled very bad, below average, neutral, above average and excellent. Nevertheless, they all share the same basic patterns in terms of family circumstances, key people and so on. So all he had to do was progress Pete through his four alternative-frequency lives and let him choose the one he liked best – in this case, not surprisingly, one in which he did not go into meltdown along with the research facility, and lived on happily. According to Goldberg, merely ‘programming’ Pete to this ‘ideal frequency’ was sufficient to finally alleviate all his problems.
It will perhaps be obvious by now that I have certain doubts about the reliability of Goldberg’s work. These stem from other issues as well, which I must mention before we can draw any proper conclusions. For example, if I have understood him correctly he reports that he had performed of the order of 25,000 regressions and progressions by the time he published this first book in 1982. This seems a great many in only about six, or at the most seven, years. Even if he worked seven days a week and took no holidays, it would require him to encounter of the order of ten different past or future lives with his subjects every single day throughout that period – and even if this were possible, one wonders where he got the time to simultaneously carry on with his dental practice. The only pioneer who comes even close to this degree of activity is Edith Fiore, but her report of 20,000 regressions was achieved in some twelve years of full-time dedication. It is therefore only reasonable to suggest that Goldberg might be somewhat prone to exaggeration.
It is also clear that he is something of a self-publicist who consistently sought television and other media exposure at the earliest opportunity. I do not automatically denigrate such an approach – indeed I applaud his efforts to gain further public exposure for the benefits of hypnotic regression – but I cannot help but report that his whole demeanor appears somewhat different from that of most of our pioneers. A further example of this is related to my earlier suggestion of his occasional bullying tone, when we find that in another case he had apparently regressed a patient to his time as a ‘light being’ with a higher than normal vibrational rate, and the patient had questioned Goldberg’s authority to interrogate him about what he was doing while in some sort of apparent interlife state. As a result Goldberg issued this threat: ‘It is your function to report your progress to me at this time. Your vibrational rate will be altered downward if you don’t cooperate.’ This is hardly the sort of respectful approach to sensitive issues adopted by most of our pioneers.
Worse, though, was my personal experience with him. Despite these other reservations, I was deeply troubled by his work. Although most other commentators summarily reject hypnotic progression as far less reliable than regression, it was clear to me that the level of detail emerging in many of his progression case studies was just as impressive as that contained in the best past-life regressions – Pete being an obvious example. He identified key dates, the names of all key people in his life, and even the detailed names of the different units at his research facility. So how could I reject them like other commentators without being guilty of double standards?
Yet if I were to accept them I would have even greater problems, because I do not find Goldberg’s suggestion that karmic free choice is maintained by having the choice of five alternative frequencies for future lives at all persuasive. For him these alternatives still share the same basic circumstances in terms of parents, environment and other key people and interactions. But, according to our interlife pioneers, these are exactly the things we choose as probabilities only for the life we are about to enter – that is, effectively, the current one. To fix them for all future lives as well would drastically reduce, indeed completely minimize, the extent to which ongoing events, actions and decisions would have an impact on our choices of future lives – in fact, it would border on predetermination. Even Pete, discussing his life in the late twenty-first century, was progressing at least one life in advance. And even though we are given no details of her other future lives we can only assume that Janet, in progressing over a thousand years ahead, was going far farther than this.
It is precisely because this issue is so important that I have spent some time discussing my general reservations about Goldberg’s work. It is also why I wrote to him expressing these concerns, and asked him in the politest possible terms whether he felt he could shed any further light on this important conundrum that his research had raised. His somewhat curt response was as follows:
I suggest you read my later books Custom Design Your Own Destiny and Time Travelers from Our Future for answers. Check my homepage for fees and procedures for consults. I charge for my time.
I was somewhat taken aback at this insistence that he charges for his time, when I was clearly asking a research question related to my own book rather than requesting therapeutic assistance. Moreover, subsequent investigation of his own summaries on his website and various less than positive reviews gave me no confidence that these two further books would be at all relevant to my enquiry. So again I responded politely but pressed him on the important point. His reply was again a curt one – that being so ‘cheap’ as to not buy his other books would not ‘win me any friends in this or any other field’. At this point I must admit that I sent him a rather stronger-worded reply, not to continue a pointless disagreement but as a last attempt to elicit some sort of meaningful response to my question. And, given that being polite had not worked twice, I changed tack and goaded him that if he did not attempt to answer my question I would have to assume that it was because he could not. This did indeed elicit a reply, but not one that I expected even from someone who had been as unhelpful as he already had. I will not reproduce it in full, but suffice to say that he called me some rather rude names, accused me rather strangely of trying to ‘weasel free consults from him’ and, above all, resolutely refused to make any attempt to answer my question. Arguably this reveals more than anything else about the strength and validity of his arguments about how progressions operate.
I would not normally raise such issues, but as I have already suggested Goldberg’s findings would clearly have serious implications for karmic choice – which is, after all, the primary theme of this book – if they were completely reliable. The fact that they are so at odds with those of our pioneers, and that they may be somewhat less than reliable, are therefore of the utmost importance. That having been said, I still believe there is enough in Goldberg’s progression research to leave us with questions that deserve some sort of answer, even if I regard his own explanations as completely unsatisfactory. So I will now try to pull all this material together and offer some tentative conclusions.
Detailed but Changeable Futures
Snow discusses Einstein’s theory of relativity in some detail in what appears to be an attempt to suggest that time does not operate in a flowing linear fashion – that is from the past, through the present and intothe future. Goldberg does likewise, although by mere passing reference that suggests little real understanding. But I would argue that both are somewhat misrepresenting this theory. It is true that Einstein proved that space and time are not independent of each other and that, because light takes time to travel over long distances, events can only be described with complete accuracy by knowing the combined space-time coordinates of the observer. This is best illustrated over the massive distances encountered in outer space. To take the most extreme example, galaxies in the furthest reaches of our universe can now be detected by modern space telescopes. Because of their distance from us and the time it takes for the visible light they emit to get to us, what our astronomers are observing is the state of these systems as they were many billions of ‘light years’ ago – that is, much closer to the point when the physical universe came into being. But this does not imply that time does not flow as a linear phenomenon – it merely indicates that it can only be measured relative to the position of the observer.
Nevertheless, on the face of it this theory suggests that we cannot objectively define anything called ‘now’ because that moment is indeed relative to the observer. But this is a red herring for the type of analysis that is relevant here, especially because modern science – via the EPR experiment and Bell’s theorem for the technically-minded – has also proved beyond doubt that other forms of non-light-based communication occur not only faster than the speed of light but in fact instantaneously. So, for example, if I were sufficiently advanced to be able to develop a telepathic rapport with an extraterrestrial on a planet 10,000 light years away, and I asked them what they were up to now, they would not translate this into the context of visible light delays and try to tell me what they were doing all that time ago. Indeed, such an experiment would test their past-life memory to the full. Instead, they would understand that in the instantaneous world of telepathic communication their now is exactly the same as mine. So it is perfectly acceptable to use the concept of a universal ‘now’ when we are operating in areas that are clearly beyond the normal constraints of the visible, physical world.
On that basis I would propose that we think of time operating something like this. The past, present and future do exist as separate linear concepts, so that cause and effect do occur. However, there is a sense in which the future has already happened. Or perhaps it is better to say that a virtually infinite number of futures have already been envisaged, but not happened in any physical sense.
To understand what I mean by this, let us remind ourselves of Newton’s place of life selection. Let us imagine that we can freeze time at a particular now, when one particular soul is seeing the next life they might lead, and a number of major probabilities in that life, as if it was already happening. This represents the most likely outcome if they follow their life plan and recognize their various triggers, and so on. But we know that their life plan interacts closely with those of a number of other souls, to a greater or lesser extent. And the life plans of particularly more removed souls will interact with a completely different group of souls that must then be considered in this version of the future. In fact, especially now that we live in times of extensive global travel and communication, it is almost certain that we could extrapolate the connections in our original soul’s life plan to every other soul on earth. But these connections would not just stop when our original soul dies in that life. They would carry on into the future ad infinitum. And this future of life on earth would almost certainly at some point allow for space travel and colonization as a major probability, thereby connecting it to the future of every other inhabited planet in the universe.
In other words, the sum total of all the actions and decisions of all souls both incarnate and discarnate that have accumulated up to this particular point in time must by definition produce a ‘most probable’ future at that point. And we can see just how complex and all encompassing this version of the so-called future envisaged by the highly experienced souls who control the tapestry would have to be. I would suggest that this means there is a sense in which this future does already exist – in the exact detail that is seen by thetapestry controllers at the particular point in question. At this point, as Cannon’s subject confirms, the tapestry is there with all its threads interwoven, both from the past and into the future. We as individual souls are not experiencing that particular version of the future, and we never will. It will never happenexactly like this, but at our fixed point in time it nonetheless exists as a conception.
The real complexity occurs, however, as soon as we move away from this particular now and onto a new one. It is obvious that, even in the split second it has taken you to read the last few words, millions of decisions that were not part of people’s original life plans have just been made around the world. These effectively infinite and continuous adjustments to the tapestry are totally overwhelming to our mortal minds, but from all the evidence we have been given by our pioneers we must assume that they are well within the compass of the tapestry controllers. This process is arguably the closest we might get to understanding the real meaning of the common suggestion that all possible futures occur in parallel universes.
The Pre-eminence of Choice and Free Will
So what are the implications of this analysis? The past is indeed fixed, and cannot be altered. But the future is not. At any one now point there is only one version of the future that is most probable, but it changes almost instantaneously based on decisions taken by individual souls from moment to moment. I would argue that this means that at any now point a subject can be hypnotically progressed so that, with varying degrees of clarity, they see the most probable version of the future envisaged in the tapestry at that point in time.
However, this leaves us with no definitive explanation as to how subjects in the same group progression sessions could see apparently mutually exclusive atmospheric environments on earth in more or less the same place at more or less the same future time. On this issue I can only conclude that some other subjective factors come into play, perhaps related to the individual subjects’ own expectations and imaginations – which might be able to exercise more influence on some subjects’ visions of the future than on others, especially in a group rather than a one-on-one hypnosis environment. On this basis, for example, we might turn Snow’s previous conjecture right around, and argue that the albeit-significant minority of subjects who foresaw an unpolluted future in a new age or even rustic environment were the very ones who allowed their individual hopes to conquer the underlying realism of the connection that the other group subjects made with the tapestry at that point in time. But this is purely conjecture on my part, and nor do I want it to suggest that I am unduly skeptical – because I was as heartened as anyone by their hopeful visions of the future.
By contrast, what about Snow progressing to a consistent future in his current life over a number of sessions spanning nearly a year? We know that his vision of the future was inaccurate, at the very least as regards his timings. But where did his consistency come from? In this case I would argue either that his preconceptions from the Cayce readings subjectively dominated and distorted his visions, or that after he had ‘genuinely’ progressed once his experience formed a blueprint or imprint that dominated his future sessions – and acted as a block to viewing any alternative future. Or, perhaps, he was seeing his own thread in the tapestry all the way through, and it simply did not change much for the duration of his progression sessions. But, again, all of this is purely conjecture on my part.
So, in a more general sense, what does all this actually mean for us as individuals? I would suggest that it means virtually nothing. If as we have seen progressions only a few decades into the future are arguably rendered valueless by the changes to the tapestry in the interim, how much more valueless is any progression into our next life – let alone into lives several centuries or even millennia in the future? These future lives may have been envisaged in the tapestry at the time the progressions took place, but they have not been, nor will they ever be, individually experienced by the relevant subjects in genuine incarnation. These subjects have not loved, suffered, made mistakes and learned in them as they do in the lives they genuinely experience when the proper time comes. This is exactly why I believe that the evidence of life progressions does not contradict the fundamental assumption that underlies this book – that karma does indeed involve choice and not predestiny.
In fact Goldberg unwittingly supports this interpretation when he makes an important general observation:
It is interesting to note patients’ lack of emotions during future progressions. With rare exceptions, the scenes, no matter how horrible, are described with little reaction. Earthquakes, nuclear wars, accidental deaths, and so on, do not seem to bring out the same emotional response during progression as they do during past-life regressions. The reason for this is unclear.
I would argue that the reason for this is actually completely clear – and it is because the lives they are progressing into are only conceptions, and not genuine in any physical sense. Of course, this would tend to suggest that using progression as a therapeutic tool should have no value. Is this a feasible argument in the light of Goldberg’s experience? On the one hand, most patients like Janet go to a positive future life – although why she ended up so far in the future is entirely unclear. So the experience appears to have a positive impact, but this is arguably only a placebo and has no underlying validity. On the other, on those rare occasions when patients like Pete progress to an unpleasant future life, the therapy involves programming them onto a different vibrational frequency. Not only do I regard Goldberg’s suggestions concerning these highly similar alternative lives entirely unconvincing and contrary to the findings of all our pioneers, but I also regard his suggestion that merely reprogramming a patient to a more positive frequency – without them having to do any real work or learning for themselves – as a complete travesty. It seems there are very good reasons why our pioneers do not get involved in progression, particularly for supposed therapeutic purposes, and I would argue that any therapist like Goldberg who refuses to properly consider the real implications of what they are doing is treading on dangerous karmic ground.
To Snow’s credit, although as I previously suggested his arguments tend to meander back and forth and do not leave us with any real sense of coherence, he does make the following statement that I regard as highly perceptive:
What we see in such cases need not be considered a rigidly fixed and predetermined future but the most probable outcome of all the untold multitudes of already expressed choices of all the self-aware components of the Ultimate Reality.
This is undoubtedly consistent with the ideas I have put forward. And Joan Grant provides further support in her first autobiographical account of a past life, Winged Pharaoh, published in 1937 – with a poetic beauty far superior to anything I could achieve:
The past is fixed, that which has happened cannot be changed. But every action changes a future that is fluid and can be modified in a past that is lasting. Your next day or the next life you will be born in is like your mirrored image in a pool. At any moment you can check what the pool of your future looks like, but through your own free will you can make storms rage over it or make waves on its peaceful surface. That is why so few forecasts bear out.
All of that having been said, we must also consider the possibility that all progressions into the future – whether individual or in groups – are entirely based on imagination, and do not involve genuine access to the tapestry at all. This view would still mean that the tapestry does exist as I have described above, but it would satisfy those who feel that access to it must surely be denied – except to a limited extent in the place of life selection. Indeed, Cannon’s subject indicates that incarnate souls do quite regularly come to view the tapestry when meditating or asleep, but that looking at the future portion is not encouraged. Nevertheless, my own view is that Wambach’s and Snow’s finding concerning equal sex distribution in future lives does seem to reflect more than just imagination. Moreover, the impressive level of detail encountered in many individual progressions might also be thought to preclude complete fabrication.
Finally, it is fitting that we should return to the issue of what all this means for humanity as a whole. If we imagine our collective future as represented by the branches of the ubiquitous tree of life, one route through it may take us more or less directly towards the more spiritual existence that many think is our ultimate destiny. Another route may be much more tortuous and winding, but it may still, eventually, emerge into the light of the sun. But I do not think we can be foolish enough to ignore the fact that some branches will wither and die, trapped in dense foliage before they get to the sunlight. Because of choice and free will, these are all possible courses for the future of humanity. If we were to end up taking a dead end and destroying our magnificent planet it would be a terrible indictment on our ability to treasure our physical birthright. But, even then, most earth-connected souls would in all probability transfer over to other inhabited planets – to continue with the ultimate quest of the transcendent evolution of all souls, wherever their temporary physical home might be.
Source References
Cayce, Edgar, Edgar Cayce on Atlantis (Howard Baker, 1969): earth changes reading, chapter 6, pp. 158–9 (for an analysis of Cayce’s earth changes prophecies see also Johnson, Edgar Cayce in Context, chapter 3, pp. 81–5).
Snow, Chet, Mass Dreams of the Future (McGraw-Hill, 1989): personal progression, chapter 1; background to experiments with progression, chapter 2; inaccurate timings, prologue, p. xviii; cyclic linkage between catastrophes in ages of Leo and Aquarius, chapter 3; details of Cayce predictions, chapter 4; group progressions to 2100, chapters 5 and 6; group progressions to 2300, chapters 7 and 8; extraterrestrial contacts and channeling, chapter 10; discussion of issues in theoretical physics, chapter 9; references to karma, chapter 3, pp. 56–7; progressions as most probable future at that time, chapter 4, p. 94.
Lawton, Ian, Giza: The Truth (Virgin, 2000): analysis of Sitchin’s work, chapter 2, pp. 95–108; analysis of Lemesurier’s work, chapter 3, p. 157.
Lawton, Ian, Genesis Unveiled (Virgin, 2004): more on Sitchin’s work, chapter 3, pp. 53–4, chapter 9, pp. 168–9, chapter 14, p. 275 and chapter 16, p. 315.
Newton, Michael, Journey of Souls (Llewellyn, 2002): views on progression, chapter 12, p. 204.
Newton, Michael, Destiny of Souls (Llewellyn, 2003): more views on progression, chapter 9, pp. 362–3.
Goldberg, Bruce, Past Lives, Future Lives (Ballantine, 1993): background, chapter 2, pp. 13–14; the interlife, chapter 3, pp. 36–42; karma, chapter 3, pp. 25–33; Arnold and Brian cases, chapter 12; introduction to progression, chapter 14, pp. 134–5; nonlinear time, chapter 3, p. 44 and chapter 5, pp. 64–6; general predictions for earth, chapter 14, pp. 135–6; news item experiments with local reporter, chapter 15, pp. 137–41; Janet case, chapter 21; Pete case, chapter 22; spiritual planes, chapter 3, pp. 34–5 and 42–3; number of cases, chapter 3, p. 27; bullying example, chapter 7, p. 83; lack of emotion in progressions, chapter 14, p. 136.
Cannon, Dolores, Between Death and Life (Gateway, 2003): visits to, and viewing the future in, the Tapestry Room, chapter 5, pp. 71–4.
Grant, Joan, Winged Pharaoh (Harper, 1938): changeability of future, p. 130.