Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994 TAG: 9406100002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JAMES D. DAVIS FORT LAUDERDALE (FLA.) SUN-SENTINEL
DATELINE: FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. LENGTH: Long
``Like space.''
``Dark?''
``No, light.''
``Where do you live?''
``Like a city in the sky. Everything is white. It's a different material than I've ever known. Angular shapes. Tall. Like condominiums.''
``What time are you living in?''
``The 2500s.''
Alice is seeing through closed eyes. Lying on a dais, under the hypnotherapy of Chet B. Snow, she has been catapulted into another life - and, she believes, the body she will occupy in a distant future.
The 33 observers, ringing her in a small hotel conference room, listen intently, some with eyes closed, as if in trances of their own. This is, after all, a seminar on ``Future-Life Progression Therapy:'' projecting oneself into the future to retrieve a lesson for today.
Such is the pace of public interest that past-life regression - the alleged ability to uncover traumas in past incarnations - is being considered old hat. The future is the new frontier, a concept so novel that it has only about a dozen practitioners nationwide.
``We're not predestined; we can change the future,'' Snow tells his listeners. ``What we do in the present life affects the next. We can preview and see where the change points will be.''
The workshop participants need no convincing. Having recently finished the three-day semiannual conference of the Association of Past-Life Research and Therapies at a Fort Lauderdale hotel, they've already been exposed to a bewildering array of concepts.
Joining 150 other psychologists, psychiatrists, hypnotists and assorted counselors, they've heard about ``cellular memory'' and ``how souls make decisions concerning lives they are about to enter.'' They've learned about losing weight and kicking the cigarette habit through their ``inner selves.'' They've been given tips on ``soul releasement'' - also known as exorcism.
Now they've paid an extra $85 for eight hours with Snow. He will discuss such exotica as chakras (bodily energy nodes) and avatars (godlike humans) and karma (moral cause and effect). He'll casually refer to the lost continent of Atlantis, to famed seers Edgar Cayce and Nostradamus, even to modern apparitions of the Virgin Mary. He'll show two psychically produced maps of the United States in about the year 2000 - with water covering the Northwest, the Mississippi Valley and South Florida.
Among his listeners is Annick Desmeules of Miami, who is studying for a doctorate in clinical hypnosis while working for a European airline. She declines to say which airline, fearing an image problem. But make no mistake, she's a believer in hypnotherapy - and in reincarnation. ``Is it true? Absolutely. Can I prove it? That's irrelevant. What's relevant is that people can experience it on their own. If you know that there is something past this life waiting for you, it could give you a peace about it.''
Although past-life regression is better known - especially since Miami psychiatrist Brian Weiss published his ``Many Lives, Many Masters'' in 1988 - the future-life counterpart is almost as old. Snow, a resident of Scottsdale, Ariz., says he began training under Berkeley, Calif., psychologist and APRT founder Helen Wambach in 1983.
Wambach, now deceased, had written a landmark book on past-life research five years earlier. In it, she claimed that people in trances could accurately recall minutiae about the Roman Empire.
During research interviews, Wambach told Snow, she was surprised to have some subjects answer her questions two or three minutes before they were asked - as if their minds were dipping into the immediate future. ``We decided that if she did that well without trying, we might be able to go years ahead.''
Snow tried some sessions, which became the theme of his book ``Mass Dreams of the Future,'' published in 1989 by MacGraw-Hill and reprinted last year by Deep Forest Press.
Snow estimates that fewer than a dozen therapists nationwide go into future lives, but the metaphysical concept is the same as for past life: that all time - past, present, future - is running forward simultaneously, like soundtracks on a compact disk. However, in an altered state like hypnosis, the consciousness can rise above time and come back down onto another ``track'' - either past or future.
Therapeutic goals differ, however. Past-life regression is geared toward coping with personal problems previously incurred. Future-life progression is for preventing problems in another life, as well as learning lessons to use in this one.
``Time is not frozen or static,'' Snow tells his students, ``and it includes all possibilities.''
To demonstrate his theories, Snow has ``Alice'' - he asks that her real name not be used - lie on the dais with a blanket over her and a pillow under her head. He lights a stick of incense. ``Fire is an important part of all religious traditions,'' he explains. ``And there is a spiritual element in this work.''
As the scent fills the air, Snow has Alice relax by thinking of energy rising through her seven chakras or energy nodes. Following a carefully worded script, he guides her into a mist and up a stairway. ``Let yourself go into a future body and life, where there is something of interest and value to you.''
She describes seeing a husband and son off on a spaceship journey from a 26th-century space city. Her brow clouds as Snow directs her forward to ``the most important part.'' Her eyelids flutter. ``They don't come back.''
Snow moves her ahead to the day she dies at the age of 140. ``What is it that you've found that you need to have learned?''
She answers: ``If you can deal with situations in the future, they don't need to happen.''
Now it's time for everyone to try their own flights. Having brought pillows and blankets from their hotel rooms, they lie on the floor or across several chairs. Snow advises them to remove their wristwatches. ``It's best not to meditate with them; they have their own energy source, you know.''
The lights are dimmed, and Snow begins his hypnotic script again. No stair this time; instead, he guides them onto their own rooftops, then into flight. ``You see a cloud, just your size. Fly over to it ... go deeper in it. Float higher and higher ... through time.''
He invites them to choose a period they'd like to explore: 2100, or 2250, or 2400, or beyond 2500. As with ``Alice,'' they are asked to examine their hands, their feet, their bodies, their clothes, their surroundings.
Snow directs their attention to their food, their jobs, their companions if any, then their last day in that time. He asks them to remember the continent, or planet, or whatever. He asks them to decide what lesson they can take back from that future life, then returns them to their time-travel cloud.
Barbara Wheelhouse, an APRT study group leader in Hollywood, says she found herself in the year 3200. ``I was an elder. People came to me for advice and help, but not for much else. I moved all around the universe by thought, in my moving space city.''
The lesson? ``I'd always believed anyone can get out of the reincarnation path, detach, go back to God,'' says Wheelhouse, who has done some future-life therapy herself. ``But I'd also thought it would be nice to teach and travel wherever I want. I've found out that that's what I'm going to do.''
How do mainstream psychologists handle the notion of reincarnation? Very carefully.
``I wouldn't rule out the possibility,'' says Carol Williams of Fort Lauderdale, a clinical psychologist and former president of the Broward Psychological Association, during a separate phone talk. ``But I won't buy into it unless I see some scientific evidence or experience it myself.''
For his part, Snow believes some psychologists are ``threatened'' by his specialty. ``Modern psychology attempted to divide mind and spirit,'' he says over lunch the next day. ``If the mind is more than they're studying, they've roped themselves into a corner.''
He acknowledges that there are other explanations for apparent mental time travel. One is the ``collective unconscious'' theory of pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, who suggested that ``archetypes'' or basic symbols reside in each human mind. ``We have some Jungians in our group,'' says Snow, a former APRT president.
Spiritually, Snow was raised Presbyterian and tried worshipping with Hopi Indians. He also inherited a stack of books on reincarnation and faith healing from his grandmother - who he says told him about them from beyond the grave.
He now believes everyone and everything is part of God, although he squirms at the term ``pantheism.'' He says he has a continuing ``personal relationship'' with Jesus Christ. ``For me, Jesus is very much alive, since all time is simultaneous. And I believe in the basic gospel message: that we're all in the image of God, that we're basically good, that we can miss the mark sometimes, that we can atone - although I prefer the word `attune.' ''
But when pressed on whether people actually travel mentally to past or future lives, he retreats to a therapeutic attitude. ``I'm not dogmatic. For me, the visions and dreams are real, and an infinite number of alternate futures makes sense. But I'm not here to prove it. What's more important is that people agree in the details. That's what makes it valuable for therapy.''
For more information on the Association for Past-Life Research and Therapies, call the association headquarters in Riverside, Calif., at (909) 784-1570.
by CNB