Mass Dreams of the Future:
An Overview from 2001
Chet B. Snow, Ph.D.

"Do we face an Apocalypse or a Global Spiritual Awakening?" is the subtitle of this remarkable book, product of the researches of psycho-therapists Drs. Helen Wambach and myself over 15 years ago as we tried to assess humanity's hidden inner-vision of our species' future. In a series of experimental seminars between 1980 and 1988, we tested thousands of volunteers, putting them into a light dream-like state that I have named a "waking trance." Then we "progressed" them forward across time and space using Helen Wambach's unique method of "Future Life Progression Hypnosis," to preview Earth's and humanity's most-likely alternative futures both 150 and 300 years from now. No one—not even the different therapists conducting the sessions—could have predicted how closely the "mass dreams" of these perfectly normal, ordinary volunteers would coincide with little-known historical prophecies from many of the world's indigenous cultures as well as those of celebrated individual prophets such as Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce.

This exceptional research forms the basis for my book, Mass Dreams of the Future, that was first published by Mc Graw Hill & Co., in November 1989. Now in its fourth paperback printing by Deep Forest Press, it gives us an incredible glimpse of the results of everyday life and choices in the 22nd Century and beyond, based on the timeless visions stored deep within the subconscious minds of ordinary men and women from our own time. Their amazing stories, told in this first ever scientific survey of what our culture's "collective unconscious" really believes about what we will have to face after the year 2000, cannot and should not be ignored. Its message, that hidden within our dreaming mind may lie essential keys to unlocking and even altering the future, is more timely today than ever before.

As we begin the twenty-first century of humanity's current era, it is clear that Earth and our solar system are in the throes of a profound evolutionary transformation. This meticulously conducted research, coupled with my vivid personal "future memories" taken under hypnosis by Dr. Wambach, reveals many important changes in the years ahead with possible massive climate shifts, world-wide earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the Pacific Rim, all leading to severe Earth Changes, including Japan's imminent collapse into the sea and the sinking of large portions of our own West Coast. Although the dating of some of my own personal "future memories" has proven premature, the sequence of events that I describe remains not just possible but plausible, especially if some of the more dramatic incidents are understood as symbolic warnings—a way for my own subconscious to galvanize me and my readers into action while there is still time to modify some of the more extreme conditions I foresaw happening already today.

But what is next? What will happen if and when still-suffering humanity and our Mother Earth survive current challenges and disasters? What may life be like in the years of 2100 AD and beyond? Vivid, personal "dream accounts" from two future periods of 2150 and 2300 AD reveal such extraordinary developments as these:

1. Most of humanity will live in just four environment types: First: sylvan, ecologically-sound creative and spiritual communities widely scattered in temperate zones; Second: hi-tech cities dependent on domes and other artificial protections against a harsh exterior environment; Third: isolated, rustic settlements of people who have forsaken technological solutions to Earth's problems, returning to a simpler, less-complex life-style; and Fourth: space-farers who inhabit artificial space stations above the Earth, or build protected colonies on nearby planets like Mars.
2. The emergence of clans or tribes of people born with enhanced telepathic and other psychic powers.
3. A period after 2300 AD, known as the "Outward Wave," when humanity will no longer be bound either by this solar system or by present-day concepts of 3-D reality.

Before dismissing these accounts as mere science fiction or fantasy, critics must acknowledge that several of my 1983 predictions for the mid-1990s, including the Yugoslav civil war and break-up, the rise in Pacific Rim volcanic, and world-wide seismic activities, have already happened. Other, more-extreme forecasts like the sinking of part of California and Hawaii have not happened in the late-1990s time frame predicted. Nonetheless, the extreme weather patterns with temperature spikes and severe droughts vs. floods in unusual places are definitely still taking place.

Moreover, our findings have had a profound impact on such authorities in the alternative health field as Dr. Raymond Moody, who wrote that Mass Dreams of the Future is "an important and significant book . . . in this time of both great crisis and great opportunity for the world." Death and dying researcher Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has said: "I could not stop reading this fascinating book and although many aspects of it look grim, it also looks very realistic . . . It is very important we begin to realize that our minds create our future." Finally, The Aquarian Conspiracy author Marilyn Ferguson called Mass Dreams of the Future: "A compelling vista . . . Snow has tackled his subject with the thoroughness of a scholar and the spark of a storyteller."

Since the publication of our pioneering research, I have continued compiling data on the future visions of the mass consciousness from around the planet, studying indigenous cultures like Arizona's Hopi nation and Australian Aboriginal peoples, to compare their points of view with those of the subconscious minds of our Western subjects. The results, as yet unpublished, demonstrate that today's humanity, whether from Hotevilla, Johannesburg, New York or Woomera, continues to see significant cultural and environmental changes just beyond the horizon. Striking contemporary events like massive UFO sightings and the enigmatic crop circle formations bear witness to the fact that we continue to live in "interesting times." All of the four future civilization types outlined in my book are currently distinguishable, albeit still in somewhat embryonic form. Only the reason behind the massive decline in world population that both our dreamers and indigenous seers foretell for our current century has yet to be identified in a clear and unambiguous fashion. And, even there, there's no lack of potential causes, ranging from a massive outbreak of an Ebola-like virus or other plague, to a solar flare, asteroid strike (or even a near-miss), or the cumulative effects of over a century of fossil fuel burning, provoking severe global warming.

So, as we move forward beyond such celebrated dates as 1984 and 2001, we must continue to ask the question posed by Dr. Helen Wambach and myself: "Do we face an Apocalypse or a Global Spiritual Awakening?" And the ultimate response that we found in the mid-1980s still remains true because the ultimate choice between these two widely-touted future archetypes is still ours to make today. Let us choose wisely, with humility and compassion. Our children's future, and just possibly our own, depends on what we choose now.