Lately I’ve been reading Helen Wambach’s 1978 book Reliving Past Lives. Wambach was a somewhat controversial researcher in the field of reincarnation. Her technique, which evolved gradually, was to hypnotize groups of subjects, who then wrote down their posthypnotic recollections of past lives. Wambach tabulated these stories according to gender, age at time of death, economic status, etc.
Her results seem to be broadly consistent with the historical facts. Roughly 50% of the lives remembered were female, and 50% male (even though a large majority of the research subjects were women). A significant majority of the recollected lives were spent in poverty; a smaller number of lives were middle-class, and a minimal percentage were affluent. This matches what we know of preindustrial societies. Many lives were brief, ending in infancy or early childhood — just what we would expect of an age before antibiotics and other lifesaving treatments.
Those who say that the subconscious is simply confabulating all this information might be hard-pressed to explain why the subconscious would so often invent a life that ended in infancy or that was played out in poverty and obscurity.
Of course, as with any such research, there are questions and potential problems. Few of the test subjects provided readily verifiable information. Some of the information that purportedly came through was highly dubious. On pages 150-151, we are told of one particular test subject who claimed to remember living in a highly technological society prior to 2000 B.C. He even remembered "operating an electronic board" and wearing "some kind of soft silver-metallic cloth, like a jumpsuit." Wambach wonders if this particular memory, which was unique in her studies, had something to do with Atlantis. It sounds like confabulation to me, probably inspired by science fiction stories.
Two passages in Wambach’s book stood out for me, not because they cast any particular light on reincarnation, but for other reasons. The first comes from the regression of a female test subject who remembered herself herself as an Italian woman born in 1540.
At her death in that life she described herself as quite old and very willing to go. Her family, gathered around her, was crying, and she wanted to reassure them. She described her death experience as follows: "As soon as I get out of the body, I want to tell them that I’m fine, but I can’t reach them. Then it seems as though I am going somewhere. It’s almost like being pulled somewhere. The feeling is like a subway, I’m going through a tunnel and there’s a lot of white light, hazy white light at the end of the tunnel. like it’s really nice." [page 67]
Wambach’s book was published in 1978, three years after Raymond Moody’s famous book Life After Life, which popularized the ideas of the tunnel and the white light. It is, therefore, conceivable that Wambach was simply drawing on Moody for this description. But the hypnotic regression in question occurred some years earlier — the exact date is unclear, but it was certainly before the publication of Moody’s book. If Wambach is reporting the subject’s testimony accurately, then it predated Life After Life, while mirroring many of the NDEs described there.
The second excerpt recounts one of several dreams Wambach had during the early stages of her research, when her mind was opening up more fully to the reality of paranormal phenomena.
A third interesting dream came several weeks later. I had set an alarm to wake myself in the middle of the night, hoping to catch more of the delightful new dream series I was experiencing. When the alarm rang at 2:00 AM, I awoke slowly and came gradually up to consciousness from the deeper ranges of sleep. I was aware that I had been conferring with two other persons. I don’t know where we were, and I didn’t see the faces or bodies of the other two, but somehow I knew that we were very closely allied in some activity. In the midst of our discussion — or thought exchange — the alarm had gone off. I was startled, and I looked at the other two and thought to myself, "Who am I supposed to be? Where do I go when I wake up? Oh yes — I’m pretending to be Helen Wambach." [pages 56-57]
The author herself does not place much emphasis on this dream, regarding it as quite possibly a product of her subconscious. But I find the statement "Oh yes — I’m pretending to be Helen Wambach" highly interesting. It reminds me of the occasional disorientation I’ve experienced upon waking from a deep sleep. I’ve found that I ask myself nonverbally, Where am I now? and then a rapid series of places where I’ve lived flashes through my mind until I settle on the particular location where I’m currently living. It’s as if I have to relocate myself in space and time.
I would imagine that this experience is not unusual, and while it’s certainly not proof of anything, it perhaps lends some credence to the idea that our ego-persona is akin to a costume or mask that we can put on and take off as circumstances require.
Which, in turn, would tie in quite neatly with the whole idea of reincarnation, wouldn’t it?