because so many people erroneously believe that
hypnosis will help a person recover forgotten memories
or details from vague memories. Mark Twain once
said, “I find the further back I go, the better I remember
things, whether they happened or not.”
And this is exactly what can happen in age regression—clearly
remembering things that never happened or erroneous
details of what may have happened.
Dr. Michael Yapko defines age regression this way:
“Age regression” is a hypnotic procedure in which
the client is immersed in the experience of memory.
The client may be encouraged to remember events
in vivid detail, a procedure called “hypermnesia.”
Or, the client may be encouraged to relive the
events of the past as if they were going on right
now, a procedure called “revivification.” Either or
both of these procedures are commonly used in
memory recovery-oriented therapies.2
The Handbook of Hypnotic Phenomena in Psychotherapy
(The Handbook) says, “Hypnotic age regression
entails a therapist using hypnosis to facilitate a
client’s going back, experientially, to an earlier time in
life.”3
The Concise Encyclopedia says:
Relived emotional experiences (abreactions) are
induced by regressing the patient back to traumatic
episodes and then having the patient
experience them to the point of physical and
emotional exhaustion.4
Prenatal Lives
In this highly popular form of hypnosis a person is
regressed to an earlier time in his life to remember,
and possibly relive, past experiences. Otto Rank, a
contemporary of Sigmund Freud, believed that the
birth process was the most significant event in early
life, and therefore, the source of later anxiety. Hypnosis
sometimes leads people back to what they identify
as their birth experience and even to their prenatal
period of existence in order to cure psychological and
physical problems. Using regressive hypnosis as a base,
some claim that fetuses in-utero and babies at birth
are able to understand the words, attitudes and actions
of those around them.
Brain/Mind reports:
Under the influence of hypnosis and psychotropic
drugs many people have recalled pre-natal
and birth experiences that related to current
58 Hypnosis
physical and psychological problems: headaches,
respiratory disorders, phobias, depression, anxiety.
Recalling the experiences frequently relieves
or eliminates the symptoms.
A client of San Francisco therapist Jack Downing
“relived” a painful fetal memory of rejection
while under hypnosis. The memory: When his
mother said she was pregnant, her husband was
upset and wanted her to get an abortion. He said,
“I’ve been saving to buy a Chrysler.” A bitter
argument ensued.
The client related his current feelings of insecurity
to the father’s rejection. . . .
Fetal perception of such events is taken very
personally, Downing said. “the knowledge involved
in such pre-natal conditioning is extremely
literal.”5
If the fetus understands language prior to birth, why
does it take so long for a young child to learn the
language? How would a fetus have any concept of what
a Chrysler or an abortion might be?
The same article includes the following report from
a medical doctor:
Head pain is frequently associated with birth
trauma, said gynecologist David Cheek. Patients’
hypnotic recall of painful pressure to the head
during birth is often enough to eliminate symptoms
of chronic headache, including migraine.
Cheek’s patients commonly relate their
reported birth experiences to present moods and
behavior patterns. Many patients with asthma and
emphysema were nearly suffocated during birth.
Age Regression and Progression 59
Ability to recall the details of one’s birth under
hypnosis is uncanny, Cheek said. His patients can
correctly indicate which arm freed first during
delivery and which way the head turned as it
emerged. He has verified the accuracy of such
reports by checking them against obstetrical notes
made during delivery.6
Brain/Mind states that up to the age of twentythree,
individuals “under hypnosis accurately report
their birth experiences.” The report goes on to say that
the information derived under hypnosis “corresponds
to the mother’s recounting of specifics, such as her
hairstyle, the obstetric instruments used, conversations
in the delivery room, the character and behavior of
nurses and doctors, and the mother’s own emotional
and physical state.”7
However, this all flies in the face of the well-known,
neurological, scientific fact that the myelin sheathing
is too underdeveloped in the prenatal, natal, and early
postnatal brain to store such memories. David Chamberlain,
a San Diego psychologist, paradoxically reports
that people “can indeed remember their own births in
extraordinary detail” through hypnosis, but that the
birth memory is not stored in the brain.8
This raises a
question: If memories are not stored in the brain, where
are they stored? What might be the source?
Francuch, in his book Principles of Spiritual
Hypnosis, explains the hypnotically revived natal,
prenatal, and postnatal experiences in spiritual terms.
He says:
Since the inner mind is present from the very
moment of conception (in a unique combination of
60 Hypnosis
the genes and in God from eternity before individuation),
it is obvious that it registers, records,
and understands everything that is happening
from the very moment of conception. And since
the ability to understand language is imprinted
in those genes, and while in God from eternity who
originated language, it is thus ever-present in the
inner mind.9
This explanation, if accepted, plunges man into a
spiritual puzzle of metaphysics that explains physical
phenomena (conception, etc.) in spiritual terms that
are neither biblical nor scientific. Such spiritual
gibberish can open people up to the quagmire of satanic
influence. However, hypnotherapists who use the
prebirth, birth, or rebirth approach claim relief for
everything from asthma to phobias through this
process.10 And, desperate people become vulnerable to
the promises.
Past Lives
Some of these same hypnotherapists regress people
to so-called previous lives. This form of enchantment
begins with the hypnotherapist leading a person back
to his early years and then beyond those years, beyond
the womb, beyond conception to what they identify as
a former existence. The patient is encouraged to recall,
recount, and relive past life experiences for the therapist.
The description of Helen Wambach’s book Reliving
Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis reports,
“A noted psychologist presents historically valid data
from over 1,000 past-life recalls that strongly suggest
most of us have lived earlier lives in different bodies.”11
Age Regression and Progression 61
In their book Past Lives Therapy, Morris Netherton
and Nancy Shiffrin report numerous cases of individuals
who receive relief from physical and emotional
symptoms through hypnotic regression.12 Some cases
could come from the imagination or they could be
fabricated during the process of hypnosis through
suggestions made by the hypnotist. However, when
cases of past lives accurately match history, one questions
the source of the information.
One man who suffered from migraine headaches
reports the feelings he had when his mother suffered
headaches while he was in her womb. Then he “remembers”:
In a previous life he was captured by Indians
and leather bands were twisted and tightened around
his head. He describes the intensity of the pain; it
becomes tighter and tighter until his skull snaps and
he is no longer in the body. Later he moves into a
“different life” in which he is an Indian and this time a
metal band is around his head. He is being punished
and tortured until he dies. After several other accounts,
he “recalls” the birth experience of his present life.
Voices are saying that his head is stuck and he feels
metal on his head as he is pulled through the birth
canal. After the fourth session of hypnotic regression,
his migraine headaches vanished.13
Psychiatrist Brian L. Weiss, author of Through Time
Into Healing, is a proponent of past-life therapy. A
Longevity article reports on his work as follows:
A recent client—one of more than 200 that
Weiss has treated with past-life therapy over the
past 11 years—was a depressed woman in her
forties. As he does with all regression-therapy
patients, Weiss hypnotized her and suggested she
62 Hypnosis
could mentally travel back to a different time and
place to find the cause of her symptoms.
Under hypnosis, the woman recalled wearing
the lacy garb of a nineteenth-century prostitute.
She had died, she said, after neglecting her body.
After the second session with Weiss (whose typical
charge is $150 an hour), she began to shed her
depression. Weiss says she realized that she had
gained weight in her current life to make herself
less attractive, thus protecting herself from sexual
advances. After about ten sessions, she was exercising
regularly and losing weight.14
While under hypnosis, Elizabeth Howard, a
respected pharmaceutical researcher, recounted details
of her “former life.” As Elizabeth Fitton she had
supposedly lived during the reigns of Queen Mary and
Queen Elizabeth I of England. She told about illegitimate
births that would not have been public information.
She accurately described the interior of the house
in which the woman had lived, even though she herself
had never been inside.15 Although many use such
accounts to support the notion of reincarnation, such
vivid “memories” could easily come from demonic spirits
influencing the mind during hypnosis.
Some individuals, either voluntarily or by suggestions
of the therapist, even “remember” a previous life
on another planet. Paul Bannister reports on a massive
five-year study of over 6,000 individuals who underwent
hypnosis. He says, “One-fifth described earlier
existences on other planets.” Bannister concludes,
“More than 45 million Americans have lived previous
lives on other planets.”16
Age Regression and Progression 63
Through past lives therapy, the authors of one book
claim “to reveal the cause of traumas and problems
from sexual inadequacies to phobias to stuttering and
migraine headaches, and deal with them effectively.”17
The beneficial effects of past lives therapy are tempting,
but the God of the Bible has said, “It is appointed
unto men once to die” (Heb. 9:27). It is obvious to most
Christians that past lives therapy is demonic, but how
much does early life hypnotherapy open up an individual
to the power of the Prince of Darkness? And,
how far back should a Christian permit himself to be
regressed before the danger point is reached? What
would a Christian hypnotherapist do if a hypnotized
person moved from an early memory to a so-called past
life or life on another planet?
Age Progression and Future Lives
Besides past life hypnotic therapy, some practitioners
are doing future life hypnotic therapy.18 In this
activity, persons are supposedly hypnotized into the
future. According to descriptive reports, the
hypnotherapist guides these individuals into future
places and future times. The hypnotized person
supposedly sees future events, solves murders, and
reveals the future fate of well-known personalities.
Kroger has pointed out that the great therapeutic value
of age progression or future life hypnotherapy is to see
how the subject may react in future situations.19
According to Omni magazine, past-life therapist
Bruce Goldberg has:
. . . performed future-life progressions on over 2,000
people and reports that their descriptions of the
future are in agreement about 80 percent of the
64 Hypnosis
time. According to his subjects, world peace will
come in the twenty-first century, but political strife
in the twenty-third century will result in a smallscale
nuclear war. By the twenty-fifth century we
will control the weather, and androids will perform
all menial tasks. But it isn’t until the twenty-sixth
century that we make contact with beings from
other planets.20
The Handbook discusses how two authors of an ageprogression
article dealt with two separate cases. In
one case, a woman wished to die and to be reunited
with her recently deceased husband in heaven. In the
other case a woman “promised a dying person that she
would be with the person before very long” and “felt a
commitment to the promise” after the person died.21
The Handbook reports:
With these cases, the authors reported that they
first age regressed patients back to the point
where the initial promise or death wish took
place. Once the nature of the patient’s selfperceived
transgression or commitment was
discovered, they were age progressed into heaven,
where of their own accord they engaged in
conversations with the lost loved ones or with
Jesus Christ himself. In the patients’ conversations
with the loved ones, they worked through
the promises that they had made and had the
chance to see that the person was doing well. In
their conversations with Jesus, they would hear
that they were understood, forgiven, and that it
was not their time to be in heaven. This was a
strikingly imaginative technique, and one that
Age Regression and Progression 65
the authors reported being so highly effective that
the psychoses improved dramatically, the depressions
lifted quickly, and ego functioning improved
significantly.22
Please note that besides deception and lies, the sin of
necromancy (communication with the dead) is committed
during such hypnotic sessions.
On a variation of future-lives therapy, Longevity
reports:
Lawrence Casler, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the
State University of New York at Geneseo, recruited
100 students into a lifelong study 20 years ago.
He hypnotized them, telling one group that they
could live to be “at least 120 and probably well
beyond that.” The others got no hypnotic suggestion
relating to longevity. Twice a year, Casler
sends his subjects, who are now about 40, questionnaires
asking about their general health and
life-style. So far, longevity hypnosis seems to be
working.23
Francuch explains past, present and future experiences
in the hypnotic state as follows:
Such terms as “past,” “present,” and “future” are
irrelevant and meaningless at the spiritual level,
and they are replaced by corresponding states,
conditions, and occurrences without any dependency
on time or space elements.24
Francuch describes some experiments in which he
participated involving “the plenary state of hypnosis.”
He says:
66 Hypnosis
The person in the plenary state was able to defy
space and time. The person was able very precisely
to describe in minute detail what was happening
in another friend’s house 300 miles away. At the
same time, the person was able to describe exactly
what was happening a month ago, a year ago, and
ten years ago at the same place, and paradoxically,
the person was able to describe exactly what
was going to happen in the same place the next
day, one month from then, and one year from then,
etc.25
In this hypnotic time travel, where is the line of
demarcation between the demonic and the medical,
between the realm of Satan and science? At what point
does the door of darkness open and the devil gain a
foothold?
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