WELCOME TO THE FUTURE
Life Before Life – Helen Wambach
I’m so sad that this is the third and final post I’m destined to make about the woman – the legend! – that is Helen Wambach. The queen of past-, pre- and future-life regression only penned two books – this one, Life Before Life, and Reliving Past Lives, which I’ve blogged about previously; plus one of her acolytes wrote Dreams of the Future in continuation of her life’s work. I shall miss her unshakable curiosity, creativity, and optimism in the otherwise predictably male-dominated world of hypnosis!
For those of you unfamiliar with her legend, Wambach (1925-1985) had a PhD in psychology, and taught psychology and psychotherapy (and parapsychology) at colleges in the US. She sometimes goes by ‘Dr’, including at the end of this book, but I can’t find any credible sources that she was a medical doctor or clinical psychiatrist.
She’s best described, IMHO, as a lady adventurer gallivanting through the lands of believed in imaginings. (I mean: the woman declares on page one that she got so bored of teaching psychology and Skinner – “the father” of behavioural sciences – that she plumped for the occult instead! Legend!) Helen, however, would have you believe she’s a misunderstood Galileo with reality shaking insights to share with the world. This gives a tragicomedy vibe to her writing as she decries science, reason, and statistics while blinded by her glaring and indefensible biases.
Life Before Life was published in 1979, hot on the heels of Reliving Past Lives, also published that year. Wambach’s work can (generously) be described as qualitative studies finding commonalities and themes in guided group hypnosis sessions; the first study/book focused on past lives and this second one on the pre-birth and birth ‘journey’. The first book stoked public attention, with Wambach featuring in magazine articles and on the local chat show circuit. Her confidence is notably elevated from the first book as a result, and she’s clearly becoming a de facto cult leader with every word she types into this manuscript, making for a refreshingly fun read!
Seriously. I’m considering retraining as a midwife so as to make a study of the look on new-born babies’ faces as they absorb the beautiful terror of it all and go forth into this world. It is Wambach’s supplementary suggestions/questions, rather, that give what is generally agreed to be the cosmic regret of existence meaning and positivity. For instance, it is suggested that ‘souls’ might reconnect with past fellow travellers; so, a father is revealed as a past wife and a mother as a mistreated servant – and a karmic psychodrama starring the hypnotee as protagonist is thus in play in this life. Or people ‘chose’ to be born in the then-present as innovators and/or prophets... before we all went out with a bang in the year 2000. (Or not, as it turned out.)
Books written by hypnotists often have a weird ‘Being John Malkovich’ effect, and Wambach’s book is quite the ride! She jumps from credible musings on, say, memory, Ernest Hilgard’s ‘hidden observer’ theory, or the correlations between her hypnotic ‘birth journey’ and those practised by Est and Silva Mind Control. But she then waxes lyrical about Edgar Cayce and cloning and cosmic beyonds. I’d almost applaud her audacious efforts to bend reality to her will if it wasn’t for her preposterous explanation as to how adopted Beings magically engineer not only their births but the bureaucracy of appointing their chosen parents, too.
The closing chapter is a trippy blend of reality and fantasy, as Wambach preps for a chat show discussion on this latest phase of her work. Her psychoanalysis of, and strategic plotting against the predictable arguments of, her fellow guests is a joy to experience. A woman from a conservative Christian group worried about upsetting Jesus and God; a leading Jewish psychiatrist bemoaning the denigration of hypnosis; a paranormal investigator with his own agenda; and an ethical hypnosis committee leader who wants to take charge of the whole mess barely let Wambach get a word in edgeways – assuming Wambach’s lively literary account is faithful... and even happened in the first place.
No matter! The night after the chat show, Wambach astral projects up from her body and bed into the cosmic beyond – as you do. There, she meets an Entity who gives her a pep talk and then summons her fellow chat show guests, who receive pep talks via, respectively, ‘Jesus’, ‘Freud’, ‘Einstein’, and their ‘grandfather’. In conclusion to this meaning-of-life-fest, the Entity tells Wambach that her life challenge is to love everyone that she meets.
“Do you think you can do that?”, the Entity asks Helen.
“No, I don’t think I’m up to that,” Helen replies bluntly. “I’m going to feel nasty, and mean, and I’m going to fight with other people whose ideas I disagree with.”
The Entity replies that all she can do is try, and implies she might have to live many lifetimes before learning the lessons of love and oneness.
Ugh, how unoriginal! No wonder Wambach spent the rest of her days influencing the future instead. Whether she’s now waiting in the cosmic beyond or reborn and roaming among us on Planet Earth, I hope she’s still a nasty and mean and disagreeable hypnotist – but ideally with a better grasp of maths and science this go-round. Humanity may want messengers of peace and love, but perhaps they need grouchy female agents of change more.
