Reviewed by Hazel Denning, Ph.D
In JRT Issue 7, Spring 1989
In Mass Dreams of the Future, Dr. Chet Snow has accomplished the nearly-impossible feat of making the incredible sound credible. If you are concerned about the global problems facing mankind today: ecological conditions, political unrest, a society riddled with crime while physical and mental illness cripple millions, you will find this book challenging, fascinating reading, as well as philosophically satisfying. The “gloom and doom” criers over the past few centuries, including some New Age psychics with their perennial predictions of disaster are all compared and given due recognition. Nonetheless, this 350-page book, published by McGraw-Hill, goes beyond popular doomsayers to present positive alternative views of what the Age of Aquarius may bring, even if it isn’t portrayed as “pie in the sky” or Heaven on earth.
This monumental work began with the research of Dr. Helen Wambach, whose books on past-life research are well known. Having accumulated remarkable statistics on large numbers of subjects regressed into the past, she became obsessed with the idea of projecting subjects into future time periods to explore life on planet earth. This venture proved highly informative. Subjects apparently had no trouble finding themselves in future centuries. Dr. Wambach, however, had a problem with what they reported, for it hardly matched the popular picture of a New Age of spiritual enlightenment. She suspended her research for many months as she struggled with her own moral and ethical responsibility regarding the sharing of what she had discovered. In a private conversation with this reviewer, Helen Wambach said she felt she had been given this information for a purpose and that it must be shared. She reasoned that if she were supposed to do this, the way would be opened for its dissemination.
Shortly after this, as the book’s Prologue explains, Chet Snow came to Dr. Wambach seeking help for a personal problem. Mass Dreams’ first two chapters describe their work together and how Dr. Snow’s vivid personal projections into the period around 1998 to 2000 A.D. supported the reports of Helen Wambach’s earlier subjects. He soon became so caught up in her future-life research that sharing these findings for the benefit of mankind became a driving force for him as well. Thus, when Dr. Wambach made her transition in 1985, he assumed the responsibility for carrying on and completing the research she had so courageously begun.
In 1985 Chet Snow moved to France, thereby adding subjects from another culture to the research. Even there he found his results matched the patterns which had first emerged in earlier American groups. Another therapist, Dr. Leo Sprinkle of Laramie, Wyoming, had already been collaborating with Dr. Wambach and had produced similar findings. These were also included in the final analysis.
Chapter 2 describes the meticulous details of Helen Wambach’s procedure. For example, she discovered that the predictions of forecasters were not as reliable as those made by psychics. This encouraged her to explore what her subjects might foresee under hypnosis, in the belief that the unconscious mind has access to knowledge, including future events, unknown to the conscious mind. The early revelation that only 5.5 percent of her subjects reported being alive in physical bodies in 2100 A.D., and 11 percent in 2300 A.D., puzzled her because nearly 90 percent of her subjects were able to report on their past lives. She enlisted Dr. Sprinkle to run identical but independent workshops to test these startling results. He confirmed them, reporting just 6 percent alive in 2100 and 13 percent in 2300. Why were so few people on the planet in the future?
Having so few subjects finding lifetimes in her two future time periods posed a serious problem in the research. If these small percentages continued, Dr. Wambach and her associates would have to hypnotize 10,000 people under identical conditions to come up with enough cases for a valid comparison. Time and resources didn’t permit this kind of operation but, between 1980 and her transition in 1985, she held numerous workshops from California to Chicago and on the Atlantic Coast. Combined with those run by Dr. Sprinkle and Dr. Snow, she collected data from over 2,500 subjects, enough to provide several hundred reports on the two future time periods under study. Everywhere the evidence was the same: a decline of up to 95 percent of the world’s population within a couple of generations, followed by renewed growth thereafter.
Mass Dreams of the Future analyzes this data, taken from subjects who reported a life in either the 2100-2200 A.D. or 2300-2500 A.D. time periods. The details of these reports are dealt with in Chapters 5 to 8. Chapter 2 further gives the reader a glimpse of possible in-between conditions, where a few individuals who were progressed just several decades ahead report finding a bleak, barren land with few modern conveniences. For most the emphasis is on physical survival.
Having described Dr. Wambach’s research procedure and discussed how the reports of several of her subjects progressed to the near-future basically coincided with his own personal visions, Dr. Snow begins Chapter 3 with the following sentence: “A burning desire to understand, predict, and control the future has inspired the human race since history’s dawn.” This all-encompassing statement launches a two-chapter encounter with age-old traditions of prophecy and their consequences on the cultures of the past. Chapters 3, Hunting for the Future, an Age-Old Tradition,” and 4, “Channeling the Future: Ageless Wisdom and Edgar Cayce,” contain a wealth of information for the historian as Dr. Snow weaves an intricate tapestry of man’s efforts to know and control his destiny.
Using the astrological concept of the “Great Tropical Year” as a model of historical Time cycles, Dr. Snow argues that part of our current Apocalyptic thinking may spring from man’s subconscious memories of the Great Flood which sank Atlantis around 12,500 years ago. Is the planet preparing for a repeat performance of that or some similar cataclysm as we pass from the Age of Pisces into that of Aquarius? This look at the repeated failures of human culture that resulted in the annihilations of ancient civilizations has a powerful impact on the reader for it points only too clearly to the conditions of our own world today. Lord Action’s statement that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it is a clear warning, which it is hopefully not too late to heed.
In Chapters 5 through 8, Dr. Snow returns to the future-life research begun by Dr. Wambach. He reports in detail the division of their several-hundred subjects into major social and environmental groups both on earth and in space between 2100 and 2500 A.D. Several basic future lifestyles are portrayed using information about food, clothing, occupations, and family relationships gleaned from the progressed subjects. Environments pictured include life aboard orbiting space stations, small New Age-style communities, ultra-modern artificial underground cities, and small, isolated rural communities. Personal vignettes highlight the analysis. An overview comparison indicates a fractured world culture in 2100 and in two to three centuries a civilization that has grown spiritually and is living in harmony with its environment.
Dr. Snow courageously explores New Age concepts in Chapters 9 and 10, titled “Is the Future Already Past?” and “Spaceship Earth,” respectively. Not only is this fascinating reading but also his clear literary style is superbly exemplified in these and the book’s concluding chapter. In these three chapters, Dr. Snow makes logical sense out of subjects many people consider too abstract to understand or simply nonsense Readers who have a problem with the new physics and the notion of a holographic universe or with the concept that all Time is a projection of a single reality will find this book an invaluable addition to their library. As an added bonus for space age buffs, an entire chapter deals with UFOs, Star People, Walk-ins, and out-of-body experiences.
The closing chapter, “In His Presence,” will be a spiritual experience for many readers. In it Dr. Snow shares himself and his own awakened consciousness to the greater reality of life’s goals. The purpose of the book is made clear in this concluding chapter. Man holds his destiny in his own hands. Rarely before have the alternatives facing us been so clear as today. Whether we fall into another catastrophic Apocalypse or are able to handle the challenge of a world-wide awakening to our true nature as spiritual beings is truly up to each and every one of us now alive. Crammed with facts and figures as well as entertaining tales, Mass Dreams of the Future is an important book, one you will refer to again and again. In presenting the choices we face so clearly and decisively, Chet Snow is another prophetic voice pointing the way to changing history and creating a future world of harmony and peaceful co-existence.
ISBN-13: 978-1882530106