Past Life Regression - Future Life Progression?

About 39 years ago a movie called “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” was released in the theaters. It stared Barbra Streisand as Daisy Gamble and Yves Montand as the psychiatrist Dr. Marc Chabot. Daisy had come to Dr. Chabot to be hypnotized to stop smoking. During the course of the treatment, Daisy spontaneously regresses back to Lady Melinda Winifred Waine Tentrees, a seductive 19th century coquette. Dr. Chabot becomes fascinated by this 19th century character and continued to explore the past life. The dean of the university with which Dr. Chabot was associated told Chabot to stop investigating past lives as it was giving the university a bad name. A little later he returns and tells Chabot to continue with his research as one of the major benefactors of the university would like to know who he will be in a future life so that he can leave his money to his future self.

Can we go forward in time to see a future life? Dr. Bruce Goldberg a dentist and hypnotherapist was one of the first to popularize the concept of future life progression in his book “Past Lives, Future Lives”. It is now accepted by most Past Life Regression Therapists that it is possible to progress a client to a future life. But going forward in time presents us with a bit of a quandary. Are all our lives, past and present, predetermined? How can we know something that has not yet happened? How can our karma influence a life that has already been lived?

The West has always viewed time as linear; but the East, particularly the Hindus and Buddhist have viewed time as cyclical. However, Western science is realizing that time is a very real dimension in which we can travel. Because of Einstein, we often call time the fourth dimension. Spatial relativity shows that time behaves surprisingly like the three spatial dimensions and that time expands as speed increases. Time does exist and interacts with us and space in ways stranger than anyone would have thought. "Minkowski spacetime", states that time and space are not separate entities but intermingle in a four dimensional space-time. Quantum Physics, which I will not go into here, adds more support to time as a dimension.

How does this relate to past lives? Well, since time as we know it only exists while we are present on Earth, after we die we are not subject to the linear aspects of time. When we incarnate, our soul can choose a life in the 18th Century or the 22nd Century depending on which life provides the best chance for development. In this theory, all lives are lived simultaneously. Each life interacts with all the other lives and is governed by some interactive Karmic Law.

Dr. Brian Weiss, in his book “Same Soul, Many Bodies”, discusses future life progression. He explains that our future lives are variable and how we live now will determine the type of future life we will have. This, to me, appears to be somewhat of a compromise between the linear concept of time and the implications Minkowski’s spacetime. Dr. Weiss’ position on future lives is very understandable. We can hypothesize that all lives are lived simultaneously; but, it is very difficult to imagine. We are creatures of a three dimensional world and imagining a fourth dimension is as difficult for us as imagining a third dimension was for the inhabitants of Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland”.

It is possible to progress a client forward to a future life or regress them back to a past life. It is evident from all the available evidence, that nothing is predetermined. It is also theorized that all lives, past, present and future, influence each other in accordance with the Laws of Karma. But, I do not progress my clients forward to future lives. I know that we in the West are conditioned to think of time as linear. If you go back in time to a miserable life, we view that life as done and finished with except for the Karma it may carry forward. However, if we go forward in time to miserable future life, we feel a sense of impending dread. You may inappropriately change the way you live your present life in order to avoid that future life. It is not unlike the person who sees a psychic who tells them that they will have an accident next month. When next month comes, they avoid doing anything that could lead to an accident. Their unnatural avoidance behavior may in fact lead to the accident. The only time I take people forward in time is to see the winning numbers of a lottery. Unfortunately, so far it hasn’t worked; but, I am always hopeful!