Five Lives Remembered & The Power of Non-Local Consciousness

Book Overview: Five Lives Remembered by Dolores Cannon

- What do you do when you discover information that is before its time? What do you do when your curiosity takes you on an adventure that is so bizarre that there is nothing “normal” in your experience to relate it to? This is what happened to Dolores Cannon in 1968, long before she began her extensive career as a past-life hypnotherapist and regressionist.” This is a description of the eye-witness account of the regression hypnotherapy conducted in 1967-68 on one woman named Anita, a neighbor friend who came to her for medical hypnosis.

Five Lives Remembered was Dolores Cannon’s first book, but due to the relatively new and seemingly bizarre nature of the subject matter at that time in 1968, it was not published until 2009, long after her numerous other books which are based upon her hypnotic regression work as well.

In 1967, Dolores, along with her husband, Johnnie, who was a budding amateur hypnotist at the time, started getting requests from friends and neighbors for hypnosis sessions for the common things which people want hypnosis for, such as to quit smoking, lose weight, sleep better, etc.

Anita was a Navy wife, in her 30s, with three children. We had met her socially and she and I were active in the Navy Wives’ Club, but we had never been close friends. Anita was of German descent, blonde and fair, a friendly type of person, and Catholic by faith. She had been going to the Base doctor for treatment of kidney problems and high blood pressure, both of which were aggravated by overweight. She couldn’t seem to lose weight, and the doctor was having trouble lowering her blood pressure. All of this, combined with several personal problems, had transformed her into a nervous eater. She asked us if we thought hypnosis could help her to relax, relieve the tension, and keep her from eating so much Johnny worked with her for many weeks, giving her suggestions about relaxing. He gave her suggestions that, if tempted to overeat, she would have a mental picture of the girl she wanted to look like, and this would stop her from going to the refrigerator. It all seemed to be working because the doctor reported that for the first time her blood pressure was coming down, and her kidneys were improving. Her weight also dropped by a significant amount. Eventually, while Johnny worked with her, her health reached the point of being very near normal.

And then one week, at her request, she asked Mr. Cannon to try to regress her into a past life. Why you ask? What prompted this request? It was not suggested by Dolores or her husband. Does anyone here recall the book The Search for Bridey Murphy? It was a popular American book about reincarnation published in 1952 followed by a movie version in 1956. It was a sensation at the time and that was about all that was known about reincarnation in those days well into the 1960s; in fact for quite a long time, considering the speed of information flow we know today.

There was a good deal of skepticism about the validity of the Bridey Murphy story because it was later discovered that a lot of the ‘rememberance’ of the subject was more or less recall from a boo she had read years earlier and had consciously forgotten about. Not to worry about this sort of thing happening in Dorlores Cannon’s work because the method she employs uses extensive cross-checking.

In his attempts to check the validity of her trance, Johnny often regressed Anita to childhood. On such occasions, we were both deeply impressed by the completeness of her regression. She would become very articulate, talking and talking, going into elaborate detail and requiring little or no prodding. Anita turned out to be not only an excellent subject – a somnambulist, but also turned out to be a reservoir of information…

That was the way it began, as a curiosity, a one-time thing to experience and discuss later. Little did we realize the Pandora’s Box we would open up. The tape recorder was ready as Anita settled into the recliner and went easily and quickly into a deep trance, as she had so many times before. Johnny took her slowly back through the years of her childhood. Almost too slowly, deliberately, as if he was afraid to make the jump beyond the knowable and the familiar.

Drawing a deep breath, Johnny said, “I’m going to count to five, and when I reach five, you will be back before you were born. One, two, three, four, five. What do you see?” “It’s all black!” “Do you know where you are?” he asked. Anita said she did not. He continued, “As I count to ten, we’ll travel even farther back… What do you see now?” “I’m in a car,” she replied. “What!?” This was a big emotional letdown. We had thought if she were to go back into a past life, it would certainly be long before the day of the automobile. But a car? That sounded too modern. Surely we had failed! “It’s a big, black, shiny car,” she exclaimed. “A Packard, and I just bought it.” “You did? What town are we in?” “We’re in Illinois. We’re in Chicago.” “I see. And what year is this?” Anita shifted around in the chair and literally became someone else. “You don’t know what year it is?” She laughed, “Well, Silly, it’s 1922!”

As they progressed over the weeks, it turned out that in that particular life, June, whose birth name was actually Carol, had been born into a farm family in downstate Illinois and had been married off to a repulsive older man at a tender age. She was so poor that she literally ran around barefoot and had but one dress to her name. One day at the local grocery store she met her future boyfriend and took the opportunity to escape to a new life in Chicago. As the life is slowly revealed over several sessions we learn that she is a bootlegger’s girlfriend!

It’s an intriguing story all by itself and there are four more in the book, which are equally engrossing. It is well written and well worth the read. And I need to say that Dolores did whatever she could to research and verify all the past lives they encountered and gives details all throughout the book. Some of Anita’s lives went back hundreds of years, yet you, the reader feel like Edward R. Murrow on CBS TV who used to say, “You Are There!” …there in Real Time, and the experience is like ‘right now’ for the subject as well. Fascinating!

Dolores also takes great care to tell about their reactions to what they were uncovering at the time as well as how they planned to go about handling future sessions. For the reader, we are taken along on the journey of discovery with them more or less as it happened! In subsequent sessions she relates what she is experiencing in her “in Between” lives as well. And something I found interesting about that “in-between” state is that she was sometimes able, with prompting, to see into the future to some degree to reveal things that could be revealed without disturbing the future course of events.

For instance, this came in handy when a few years later Dolores’s husband Johnnie was involved in a terrible head-on car crash when a drunk crossed over the line and smashed directly into his VW Bus. He was rushed to the hospital and the doctors said he wouldn’t live, but Dolores remembered what Anita had told her under hypnosis about their future – that they would live long enough to grow old together. And Johnnie did indeed survive that accident and lived another 25 years, albeit in a wheelchair, but he did have his faculties.

Cannon’s early understanding of reincarnation seems rather simplistic compared to how far her work has evolved to now. However, in looking back at where she started and how she received the information, Dolores realized she and her husband were slowly being lead to lay the foundation upon which she would understand, communicate and explain far more challenging and complex ideas and concepts she would be receiving in the future. EXAMPLE?When I met Dolores Cannon to conduct a radio interview here in San Mateo about 1999, she had just completed Conversations with Nostradamus: Volumes 1 – 3.

Dolores Cannon is now a world-renowned hypnotherapist who has explored thousands of cases in the forty plus years since 1968, and has written fifteen books about her discoveries. Her books are translated into more than 20 languages and she teaches her unique form of hypnosis called QHHT (Quantum Healing Hypnosis Therapy), all over the world.

Some of her other book titles include: “Jesus and the Essenes” and “They Walked with Jesus” which are considered classics in the life of Jesus and also, Between Death and Life, which I am currently reading and which is an extremely detailed discussion about the Afterlife and the Death experience and what lies beyond.

To put the contribution of Cannon’s work in perspective, popularized versions of past life therapy did not fully come into vogue until twenty years later when Dr. Brian Weiss published his first book on the subject called Many Lives, Many Masters in 1988, followed by Dr. Michael Newton’s book, Journey of Souls, published in 1994.

I am also reading the clinical work of Winifred Blake Lucas’ (a 2 Volume Set) called Regression Therapy, A Handbook For Professionals, which is a collection of about 10 well-known advanced clinical professional regression therapists who share their insights into the field of Regression Therapy, which was not published until 1998.

Looking at the larger context, we have to also recognize the part that non-local reality plays in this work. In the late 1990s I had a weekly radio program in Chicago dedicated to interviewing authors on the cutting edge of consciousness. Dr. Larry Dossey was one of the guests on my radio program when I lived in Chicago, who was promoting non-local consciousness back then.

I emphasize the concept of ‘non-local’ consciousness because that seems to be the key to understanding the machinations of the larger Reality. This is a hotly debated topic in scientific circles, yet we Spiritualists are already hip to it. We have been doing ‘non-local’ for over a hundred years. Consider some of the Manifestations of Non-Local Consciousness:Mediumship, Psychic Phenomena, Precognition & Premonitions, Exceptional Capabilities, and Spontaneous Healings.

The spiritual view of reality has been ignored and mostly dismissed by modern science. Yet, our spiritual teachers have taught us for millennia that we all have the ability to experience transcendent states of awareness and intentionality and that they are clearly resident in the human condition. These states are now beginning to be understood as fundamental properties of our consciousness. These transcendent states have been experienced and described for millennia by our ancestors.

We are now re-awakening to these states through deep meditation and also through hypnosis. I feel that more needs to be done by modern day researchers following in the footsteps tread by pioneers such as Dolores Cannon. She is now in her mid-80s and is still traveling all around the world, lecturing, giving interviews and leading workshops. She even has a weekly radio podcast called the Metaphysical Hour!

Dolores Cannon was also the owner of OZARK MOUNTAIN PUBLISHING, INC.,which specializes in the recovery and cataloging of Lost Knowledge. She is considered an authority on Nostradamus and one of the World’s Foremost Experts on Prophecy.

Dolores’ technique involves inducing an individual to the Somnambulistic state of trance through visualization. A state which under ordinary circumstances is experienced only twice daily: the moment just before you become consciously awake and the moment just before you drift off and fall asleep. Historically, hypnotists have avoided conducting research with patients in this state because of the strange and often inexplicable results that are recorded.

Not one to be limited by this disciplinary stigma, it was working with clients specifically in the Somnambulistic state and exploring the possibilities that led Dolores to discover that any individual can gain access to experiences of Past Lives they have lived as well as healing and knowledge of Parallel and Future Lives.

It was also by exploring with clients in this state that she discovered an infinitely knowledgeable and powerful aspect of each individual that can be contacted and communicated with. This part of ourselves, as Dolores has learned, is always present with us and exists just below the surface of our conscious mind, so she appropriately chose to label it The Subconscious – The SC. The Subconscious is what gives her and her QHHT practitioners access to past lives and which performs instantaneous healings – when appropriate.

Over her 45-year career, her technique has proven to be effective on thousands of people all over the world regardless of their Age, Gender, Personality, Physical Symptoms, Religious Beliefs or Cultural Backgrounds. Supplementing the vast body of work Dolores has produced, the results experienced by QHHT Practitioners, students of Dolores who have learned her technique and practice it with their own clients, conclusively support the finding that we have all lived Multiple Other Lives and we all have a Subconscious which holds the answers to most any question we may have about ourselves and the life we are living.

I encourage you to check out this or any of Dolores Cannon’s numerous other books because they could be a potential catalyst to your spiritual growth and expansion.