Preface - Through My Looking Glass: A Memoir

Throughout history, we have searched for meaning in various ways. Sometimes, we have explored ideas rationally, perhaps interjecting a few confirming experiences. At other times, we have depended on experience or on inner intuition, occasionally including some rational framework.

In the beginning of my search for meaning, I relied on the convictions of my culture, which, in the twenties, usually involved some form of Christian doctrine. However, I came to see that I could not trust doctrine to provide an answer, so I set up other requirements. I decided that I needed to experience a concept personally and sense it intuitively before I could accept it. Then I looked in scientific research for hard evidence of the working out of my theory. Finally, I wanted to be able to fit the theory into the most valid current statement of the nature of our world, which in this century is found in quantum physics. The possibility exists that reality is itself evolving, so even theories that meet these criteria could still be subject to modification.

I wrote this set of three books in part to help me understand my own journey. I began by tracing the major dynamics of the life in which I grew up. After that, I scanned the impact of nearly a century of cultural changes, both here in the United States and in many countries throughout the world where I have lived. I pondered these changes in my meditation and in various altered-state experiences and recorded them in my Journal. I concentrated particularly on my body, its wellness, its control of weight, its ability to traverse these older years with comfort.

Then I searched to understand the energy fields that determine not only the state of my body and of my general course of life but also how healing works. I sensed a spread of ideas about healing, and to evaluate them I combined my training as a scholar and researcher with my experience and my intuition. I tried out various alternative healing methods. Many of my experiences, not only in healing but also in contacting my inner Guides and relating to animals, moved beyond what my world considered to be established and acceptable.

In the second book, I describe in depth my experiences beyond conventional space and time. I plumbed many lifetimes and the influence of those lives on who I am now. I went deeply into each prenatal experience and also into what occurred after I left my body at the end of each lifetime. I explored particularly the time between lives and came to understand its nature and the significance of my experience there.

The third book deals with over sixty years of professional experience. This began with a childhood incident with my father that impacted nearly my entire life. I needed to understand this experience and make my peace with it, which in these closing years I have been able to do. I explored the meaning of dreams and the significance of projective techniques and psychedelics. I particularly scanned the effectiveness of my own psychotherapy over twenty-five years. Then, typing together these experiences with what I had determined about the energetic nature of life, I put together my conception of psychotherapy and how transformation is accomplished.

During my life, I have often moved into difficult times and my determination has sometimes faltered, but I have never forgotten that my goal is to understand. Sometimes goals that my conventional world considered appropriate, such as my first doctorate, have become bypaths that I have had to renounce. These renunciations often led to periods of painful alienation.

At other times I came upon aspects of reality, including yoga, projective techniques, the mind-body connection, and past lives, before my immediate world found them acceptable. These concepts are eventually becoming accepted, but while I wait for this to happen, I find myself not fitting into my intellectual world.

Nothing in these books is simply theory. Everything has been tied to actual procedures of living; I have not included anything that I myself cannot live out. Sharing my own experiences of nearly ninety years is my gift to my readers. I want eventually to communicate my profound conviction of the depth of meaning I have found in the love energy that forms the foundation of my being and of all life. I want to share my joyfulness that I am a creative living self in charge of my own life and destiny, which makes up a possible script for everyone.

I believe that most people struggle to find meaning. I hope that these volumes will suggest bridges that will make life richer and less anxious. I offer my own experience, won through struggle and seeking, to suggest some directions for this journey.