Coming Back
by Raymond Moody
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Book Summary Information
Author: Raymond MoodyContributor: Paul Perry
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-02-01
ISBN: 0553763229
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Bantam
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780553763225
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Coming Back
Book Review: Therapeutic Value Trumps Literal Truth or Falsity
Summary: 4 Stars
Having respect for Raymond Moody, based on my prior readings of his work on near-death experiences ("Life After Life") and grief ("Life After Loss", with co-author Dianne Arcangel), I wondered what he would have to say about past-life regression. Aimed at the general reader, Coming Back provides a readable, informative overview that reviews a variety of perspectives on past-life regressions and comes down on the side of their therapeutic value regardless of their literal truth or falsity. His citing "The Journal of Regression Therapy" (including contributors Irene Hickman, Hazel Denning, and Chet Snow) throughout "Coming Back" provided helpful continuity with my previously reading Winafred Blake Lucas' "Regression Therapy" volumes.
Although trained in hypnosis, Moody had viewed it as "a way to deep relaxation, easy sleep, and nothing more" (p. 5) until a psychologist friend facilitated a regression for him that took him through a series of nine purported past lives. That he was "essentially an average person in each . . . shot down the theory that everyone who goes into a past life sees himself as . . . some . . . glamorous historical figure" (p. 27). This is congruent with Helen Wambach's findings, outlined in her 1978 "Reliving Past Lives: The Evidence Under Hypnosis." Through his subsequent research, Moody identified twelve traits of past life regressions, at least several of which one could expect to encounter in any genuine regression experience. These include an uncanny feeling of familiarity (p. 36) and the fact that these experiences often mirror present issues in the subject's life (p. 39).
Throughout the book Moody maintains an attitude of ambivalence bordering on skepticism toward past-life regressions as evidence of reincarnation. He attributes this (on p. 112) to his Christian upbringing and scientific training. (On this point it is worth noting that Episcopal priest William V. Rauscher, in his 1975 "The Spiritual Frontier", entertains reincarnation as a possibility without viewing belief in it as necessary for salvation. His view then modifies Moody's assertion (on p. 112) that belief in reincarnation is the "antithesis of Christian thought"). However, Moody also sees great therapeutic value in the use of past-life regression regardless of one's acceptance or rejection of the theory of reincarnation. This puts him in the same company as several contributors to "Regression Therapy", Volume I: Reynolds, Woolger, Fiore, Jue, and Snow (see Lucas, vol. I, p. 558) and psychoanalytically-oriented hypnotherapist M. Gerald Edelstein (author of the 1981, "Trauma, Trance, and Transformation"), all of whom stress the therapeutic value of regression experiences over belief in reincarnation as such.
Moody is perhaps more scientific in his approach than many so-called "skeptics" who would reject past life regressions on ideological grounds. Moody recognizes that attributing all purported past-life recall to cryptomnesia is not "a sufficient explanation for the images in all regressions" (p. 148). His position regarding the risks and contraindications of past-life regressions seems most sensible. He cautions against contentious use of regression to "prove" reincarnation, or using regressions to stroke or inflate the ego. He discusses the value of regression in healing phobias which, in a passage entitled "Symbols for Symbols," he describes as "themselves . . . symbolic illnesses. Usually the object . . . is just representative of a neurotic condition [and] not to be taken literally" (p. 75). Such symbolic thinking is also evident in Chapter 8, "Do Past Lives Tap Our Personal Myths"? Inspired by the work of Joseph Campbell (whom Moody quotes as calling myths the public dreams and dreams the private myths), Moody identifies mythological or archetypal themes that emerge in regression scenarios. He concludes, "By successfully tapping these myths through past-life regressions, it is possible to understand and even alter the psychological truths that may be hidden or repressed in the unconscious" (p. 175).
Summary of Coming Back
Dr. Raymond Moody?s pioneering research of near-death experiences changed the way we perceive dying. Now, in Coming Back, he examines the new field of regression hypnosis to discover if we can indeed recall ?past lives??and what such memories tell us about the possibility that death is not the end.In Coming Back Dr. Moody presents the startling findings of research conducted of psychologically healthy patients who, under deep hypnosis, could describe in vivid detail episodes from other historical periods they could not possibly have known?unless they?d lived before! Once a confirmed skeptic, in April 1986 Dr. Moody himself underwent a deep hypnotic trance that dramatically changes his belief about past-life regression. Inside you?ll learn:
?How almost anyone can experience past-life journeys.
?How past-life regression can help you overcome phobias, compulsions, addictions, depression, and guilt.
?How to recognize and identify the twelve traits common to all genuine past-life regressions.
?How recent findings in science, psychiatry, and sociology contribute to our understanding of past-life regression?and what they say about life after death.
?Plus a special self-hypnosis script to guide you on your own past-life journey.
Dr. Moody takes a provocative look at the possibility that we have lived before birth and will go on living after death?and shows how this knowledge can help improve the lives we?re living here and now!
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