Memoir: OUT NOW

What This Book Is

Winafred Blake Lucas had one unbreakable rule as a writer: she would never include anything she had not personally experienced herself. Every altered state in this book was entered firsthand. Every past life was her own. Every territory of consciousness described here was personally traversed and brought back.

What does consciousness look like when explored fearlessly across an entire lifetime — from a child wandering the shores of Puget Sound in altered states, through Jungian analysis in wartime Munich, LSD research, past-life regression, the interlife, and the consciousness of animals? This book is that exploration, in one remarkable woman’s own voice.

Through My Looking Glass is not primarily a memoir. It is a firsthand map of consciousness itself — charted across nearly a century of direct experience, rigorous scholarship, and fearless inner travel. Dr. Winafred Blake Lucas did not theorize about altered states. She lived inside them, studied them, and spent her professional life helping others navigate them. This book is her life’s final testimony — and it arrives at precisely the moment the world is ready to receive it.

Why This Book Now

We are in the midst of a renaissance in consciousness research — psychedelic therapy, transpersonal psychology, near-death studies, past-life regression, energy healing, and the science of altered states are moving from the margins to the mainstream. Dr. Lucas was at the frontier of every one of these fields, often by decades.

She participated in LSD research at UCLA before its prohibition. She pioneered past-life regression as a recognized therapeutic modality. She explored prenatal consciousness, the interlife, the energy body, and the consciousness of animals long before these were acceptable areas of inquiry. She didn’t follow the wave. She was the wave.

This book provides something no research paper or clinical study can offer: the full human context of a consciousness explorer’s life, from the inside.

The Transmission Behind the Title

In 1938, in Munich, she was in analysis seven days a week with Joachim von Specht — a direct disciple of Carl Jung. It was von Specht who introduced her to the Golden Flower as an image of Truth, and who taught her, in his words, “to go consciously through the Looking Glass.” While she was in analysis with him, he was seized by the Nazis and lost to a concentration camp.

She carried his transmission for the rest of her life. More than seventy years later, she dedicated this book to him. His words became her title. The book you are holding is, in part, his legacy too.

The Dedication

To Five Great Teachers:

To my grandmother, my first mentor, Christine Vsendal Blake.

To my Greek professor, Harvey Bruce Densmore, beloved through many lifetimes.

To my first analyst, Joachim von Specht, who taught me to go consciously through the Looking Glass.

To Carl Rogers, the opener of my Therapeutic Gate.

To my guide through the maze of my doctoral years, Bruno Klopfer.

A Taste of Her Voice

From the Interlife, before Winafred’s birth into this lifetime:

“They handed me a Golden Flower. ‘This will be the image of Truth for you. Keep it in your heart.’

I took the Golden Flower and looked into it and saw such beauty and joy that no words could describe. Then, plucking up my courage and taking the Golden Flower in my hands, I walked into the mists of my conception.”

The Scope of the Exploration

This is not a book about one aspect of consciousness. It is a lifetime’s survey of the whole territory — pursued with the rigor of a scholar and the courage of a true explorer:

The altered states of a solitary child on the shores of Puget Sound. Jungian analysis in wartime Munich. Freudian psychoanalysis. Carl Rogers and Rollo May as personal therapists. LSD research at UCLA. Transpersonal psychology and psychosynthesis. Dream work and projective techniques. The energy body and its role in healing. Past-life regression — dozens of her own lifetimes explored in depth. Prenatal consciousness and the unborn soul. The interlife — the realm between lives. Guides and spiritual archetypes. Animal consciousness, explored through a lifetime with her beloved Salukis. The approach of death, and what lies beyond it.

Each of these is not merely a chapter topic. Each is a territory she entered directly, mapped from the inside, and returned from with findings.

A Daughter Completes the Circle

This book was two decades in the making. Winafred was still writing and exploring when she passed at 95. Her daughter, Dr. Afton Blake — herself a Jungian depth psychotherapist with fifty years of practice specializing in past-life regression — carried the manuscript the rest of the way home.

Dr. Afton Blake edited and modernized the manuscript, wrote the introduction, and contributed the opening chapter of the book — placing the reader immediately inside a joint regression between mother and daughter, healing their relationship across time and across the threshold of death. It is the most direct possible answer to the question: what can consciousness exploration actually do for us? The rest of the book is Winafred’s lifetime of answer.

The exploration that began on the shores of Puget Sound found its way, at last, into the world.

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About the Author

Dr. Winafred Blake Lucas (1911–2006) was a pioneering psychologist whose career spanned the entire evolution of 20th-century psychology. She earned her Ph.D. from UCLA, underwent Jungian analysis in wartime Munich, participated in early LSD research, and pioneered past-life regression as a therapeutic modality. She authored Regression Therapy: A Handbook for Professionals, the definitive textbook in the field, still in use today.

About the Editor

Dr. Afton Blake is a Jungian depth psychotherapist with fifty years of practice, specializing in past-life regression therapy and the Enneagram. She carries forward both her mother’s depth psychology legacy and the Srinagar Saluki breeding program.