The Friday Night Book Club: Exclusive excerpts from Pan Macmillan every weekend!

Staying in this evening? Settle in with some hot chocolate and this extended excerpt from Rebecca Davis’s new book Self-Helpless: A Cynic’s Search for Sanity.

About the book

Everywhere she looked, the world was in poor shape. And because she’d quit drinking, she no longer had the comfort blanket of alcohol to tamp down her anxiety. How did sober people stay sane?

In recent times, the self-help industry has exploded into a multi-billion dollar global industry – and along with it has come every imaginable type of therapy, healing or general woo-woo. In the past, Rebecca scoffed at this industry, mocking its reliance on half-baked science and the way it appears to prey on the mentally fragile.

But as she searched for a meaning of life that did not involve booze, she found it increasingly hard to rationalize her default scepticism. This shit really seems to work for some people, she reasoned. And it’s not like I have any particularly solid alternatives.

Rebecca lives in Cape Town, the undisputed epicentre of ‘alternative’ paths to peace and enlightenment in South Africa. She decided that over the course of a year, she would embark on a quest for personal wellness, spiritual enlightenment and good old-fashioned happiness. She was willing, within reason, to try anything. She would open herself to even the most outlandish contemporary fads in self-improvement.

What followed was a twelve-month immersion in the world of auras, chakras, hallucinogenic drugs, sweat lodges, sangomas, past lives and more.

And by the end of it? Maybe she would find some new ways of thinking and living. Or maybe she would emerge with her prejudices untouched.

Either way, it would be a good story.

• Read previous Friday Night Book Club excerpts here!

 

Read the excerpt:

~~~

A Cat with Seven Lives

Words are flowing out like endless rain into the universe. I am describing a scene I have never consciously experienced – yet I appear to know its intimate details. I can see myself moving through a landscape that is utterly foreign, but I talk of it with easy familiarity. Was I there? If so, when? Who is this ‘I’?

Whatever the appropriate state of mind is for a past-life regression, I wasn’t in it.

For one thing, I had a nasty cold. For another, the Daily Maverick had just been leaked 160 000 emails from the Gupta family, so I had spent the previous few days hunched over an air-gapped Mac reading so much of their personal correspondence that I had started to feel like a Gupta myself.

By the time Saturday morning came along, I deeply regretted having made my appointment with Belinda.

‘Two and a half hours!’ I groused to Haji. ‘How can this kak take two and a half hours?’

I wasn’t even certain what ‘this kak’ was, exactly. Hearing of my new openness to spiritual adventures, a friend had suggested I visit a hypnotherapist to learn more about my past lives. ‘Everyone’s doing it,’ she said.

This improbable claim proved to be at least partly true.

Belinda – the hypnotherapist I’d selected online because she seemed to be the bee’s knees when it came to past-life regressions – was booked up for weeks.

Fucking Cape Town, I thought, making an appointment for a month’s time.

~~~

The idea that it is possible to access past lives under hypnosis is one that sounds like it belongs to the era of skull measurements and predicting the future from animal entrails. It’s actually a more modern phenomenon, becoming a craze in the West in the mid-20th century as a result of the experiences of two women.

One, Virginia Tighe, was a Colorado housewife. Under hypnosis in 1952, she recalled astonishingly precise details of a past life as a 19thcentury Irishwoman called Bridey Murphy. Despite never having been to Ireland, Tighe accurately described parts of the coastline, a journey from Belfast to Cork, and even the name of a grocer’s shop that was found to have indeed existed.

The second popular case was that of a woman from Wales given the pseudonym Jane Evans, who was hypnotised in the 1970s. Evans’s testimony was even more sensational than Tighe’s: she recalled no fewer than six past lives, all richly detailed and seemingly historically accurate for the most part. She had been the tutor to the son of the Roman governor; a 12th-century wealthy Jewish woman in York; and the lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, to name just three.

Both cases gripped the public imagination, and became the basis of bestselling books. In both instances, people who heard recordings of Tighe’s and Evans’s narratives while under hypnosis were impressed by how natural and unselfconscious the women appeared to be. Tighe adopted a broad Irish accent; Evans seemed to be in the grip of profoundly felt emotions while recounting times of turmoil.

Today, you can still find countless websites pointing to the experiences of Tighe and Evans as evidence for the authenticity of past-life regressions.

Advocates say that learning about your past lives gives you more than an intriguing snapshot into your history.

The idea is also that you are unconsciously carrying baggage from these past lives into your current existence. Once you understand how these ancient experiences are influencing your behaviour and outlook in the present, you can gain a greater sense of control over your life. There’s something very appealing about this idea. It’s not your fault that you’re an entitled little prick: it’s because you spent your past life as a courtier to Louis XIV, and now nothing can live up to that. Perhaps I would find plausible explanations for all my bad ways.

~~~

When I’d reserved my past-life regression slot, Belinda had asked me to arrive with a list of questions that I wanted answered by my session.

A few days in advance, I shot her off an email plaintively asking for examples.

Belinda wrote back with two sample questions from recent clients. One had wanted to know what his ‘main lesson is’ in his current life.

The second client had asked what happens to a person when they end their own life.

It made me sad to think that people would turn to a past-life hypnotherapist for help dealing with the impact of suicide. Then again, I mused, is it any wackier than seeking out a priest?

I resolved that I wouldn’t ask Belinda such profound questions. After all, she wasn’t the Dalai Lama. On the other hand, I didn’t want her to think I was just using her for shits and giggles.

I decided on two open-ended inquiries:

1. What were my past lives like?

2. What is the purpose of my current life?

In truth, I’d never been someone who spent much time wondering about past lives. I saw no reason to believe that I’d ever existed in any form other than my current one.

I found it curious, moreover, that people who had looked into their past lives always seemed to have emerged with the news that they’d been a significant and awesome historical figure.

We can’t all have been Joan of Arc, I thought. It stands to reason that some of us must have been the serfs who emptied Joan of Arc’s chamber pot.

My suspicion was that people who were drawn to the notion of a past life were individuals who were unhappy with their current place in the universe. Believing that you were rich and important in a bygone era could provide some consolation that you suck in your present life.

I supposed that seeking comfort from a past existence was technically no more dotty than placing your hope in the next life. Personally, I felt confident that this was it for me. No past lives, no future lives. Just this one.

I wasn’t thrilled about that, to be clear, but I accepted it as a regrettable reality.

The morning of my appointment with Belinda found me frantically filling out a ‘Past Life Regression Intake Form’ before leaving home.

The form comprised a strange mixture of psychologically probing questions – ‘How do you remember your mother when you were a child? What would you change?’ – and biological queries, including the state of my urogenital system.

Under ‘Waterworks/Bowels’, I wrote ‘FINE’.

Under ‘Phobias’, I wrote ‘STARCHY FABRICS TOUCHING CUTICLES’.

‘Do you have an inexplicable draw to, or dislike of, a country?’ was another question posed by the form.

Ha! I thought. Not so fast, Belinda!

I reasoned that any answer I gave there would be hopelessly suggestive. If I said I was inexplicably drawn to Jamaica, she would have me down as a Kingston-dwelling Rasta in my past life before I could say ‘Irie’.

She was getting no such help from me. I left it blank.

~~~

I had previously placed bets on Belinda sporting curly dark hair, dangly earrings and exciting eye make-up.

She did have long brown hair, but nothing about the rest of her appearance screamed ‘I am regularly in contact with the spirit world’. She lived in a nice house with a swimming pool in Blouberg.

Belinda ushered me into her study. There was an S-shaped reclining leather chair in it, of the kind that people sometimes buy to have sex on. I wondered if Belinda intended to have sex with me on it.

I also wondered if I should ask my regular therapist to explore why I assumed that everyone into alternative forms of healing wanted to lure me into sex.

I lay down on the sex chair, and Belinda sat down next to me. Her chair was normal, except for the fact that it was covered in fur, like a gangster’s car seat.

Incense burnt in a corner of the room. The walls were papered with the kinds of images you used to get on posters at Cardies in the 90s: Native American men hugging dolphins underneath a yin-yang moon. There were so many dreamcatchers that a humble reverie would not stand a chance of escaping the chamber.

Before long I was required to close my eyes.

Belinda explained that although I would be ‘going under’, I would still be conscious: capable of hearing regular sounds from the outside world. She also announced that it was not uncommon for people under hypnosis to take on unfamiliar voices or accents.

Exciting! I thought. I do a wicked Australian impersonation, and a decent Desmond Tutu. Fingers crossed those ones come out.

Now that the moment had arrived, however, I was a little anxious about what would happen next.

I wasn’t scared that I would find out something horrible about my past life, because I didn’t believe in that stuff. What was making me tense was the prospect of undergoing hypnosis itself.

My sole experience with hypnosis up to this point had been as an audience member for Andre the Hilarious Hypnotist, a South African showman who makes people behave like tits on stage. I actually did find Andre moderately hilarious, but I also assumed that the people he managed to manipulate into loony pantomimes were either paid actors or massive simpletons.

I now knew from my reading that hypnosis is real: researchers from Stanford University have worked on developing a ‘brain signature’ of people who are susceptible to being hypnotised. It has nothing to do with your personality, and everything to do with the region of your brain responsible for focused attention.

I also knew that not everybody could be hypnotised. I firmly expected to be among the steely-minded 25% of the population who are estimated to be immune to hypnosis attempts.

If I wasn’t, I knew I would think less of myself.

But beyond this, I was also quietly terrified at what might come out under hypnosis – about my present life, I should specify.

The idea that the mind can repress traumatic memories that only surface in response to certain triggers – like hypnosis – is controversial, to say the least. But the theory persists, and has been a contentious element of old sexual abuse cases.

I knew that Belinda wasn’t going to put me under and then drill me about whether I’d been touched inappropriately as a child. Nonetheless, I still feared that if I entered a state of hypnosis at all, something might emerge.

Part of my unease stemmed from the fact that I had no idea how Belinda was proposing to hypnotise me. I assumed that things had moved on a bit from the fairground technique of swinging a watch chain in front of someone’s eyes and repeating: ‘Do you feel sleeeeeepy?’ But if so, what did modern hypnotherapists use?

Meditation techniques, it appeared. Belinda initially led me in some deep-breathing exercises, but it was soon clear that I was not relaxed enough for her liking.

She told me to imagine that I was in an elevator.

‘When I press you on the shoulder, you are going to drop two levels in relaxation to floor A,’ Belinda said. ‘Tell me when you get there.’ She pressed my shoulder quite hard.

I concentrated on dropping down in my consciousness. Belinda had given me a blanket and a pillow, so I was quite comfortable. If push came to shove, I could probably have taken a nap with relative ease. Still, I was anxious. How would I know when I reached floor A?

‘A,’ I said. I don’t have all day, I reasoned.

‘Wonderful,’ Belinda said, and seemed to mean it. I felt pleased with myself.

‘Now, when I press you on the shoulder, you are going to drop two more levels in relaxation, to floor B.’

She pressed my shoulder elevator. I waited what seemed like an appropriate amount of time.

‘B,’ I said. I was very relaxed, I decided. I couldn’t even feel my hands. I just wasn’t sure if Belinda’s Floor B was my Floor B.

When my elevator had plunged to sufficient depths, we worked on ridding me of my conscious mind by counting back from a hundred, and then back from ten.

‘Tell me where you are,’ Belinda said.

I was silent for a bit. Then I started to talk.

~~~

I know exactly what I said, because Belinda sent me a recording of the after the fact. I can’t listen to it again any time soon; it makes me recoil with embarrassment. But at the time, the words came freely and unselfconsciously.

I told Belinda it was a sunny day in my past life. I had bare feet. I was a child.

From the sight of a dwelling, it appeared that I was somewhere in Europe. There were two old white people there. I had a pet goat. It too was white and bristly, and it let me stroke it.

In the recording the narrative is flowing fluently from me, like an accomplished liar giving an elaborate excuse.

‘What is important about this day?’ Belinda asked softly.

If spirits from another world were feeding me my tale, they didn’t seem to have the answer to that.

Later, I thought it quite a reductive question. Maybe it was just a lovely sunny day! Maybe my goat had just consented to be petted for the first time! Did I have to be gang-raped by the villagers for it to become significant?

We moved ahead in the story, as if pressing fast-forward on an old VCR. This time I saw myself with another young girl I understood was my sister.

I could immediately tell what was important about this day: we were underneath some form of mountain, and a storm was coming. There didn’t appear to be any adults in charge of us. We huddled underneath a rock as bits of the mountain broke off in alarming chunks.

After night fell, we had to move. Making our way – barefoot – along the mountain path, we saw ahead the flickering red glow of a fire. There were people there. I understood that they were friendly. Later, they would wrap us in some kind of animal skins to sleep.

‘I’d like to move forward to your teens or adulthood,’ said Belinda.

Maybe she was getting bored.

On the recording there is a brief pause, and then I’m off again. This time I had long blonde hair, and I was wearing a dress and an apron. As usual, I was barefoot, and stirring something in a bowl. I was cooking a grey sludge that did not look particularly appetising, which was a detail that struck me later as highly authentic.

Someone – a female friend, I understood – poked her head through the door to shout at me to join the revelry outside.

People were whirling in circles, holding hands. They only appeared to be women and girls, and were clearly joyful.

‘What is the celebration about?’ asked Belinda.

‘Springtime?’ I hazarded doubtfully. ‘Summer? Men coming home from war?’

I was serving as a tour guide to a place I’d never been before. Give me a break, Belinda!

A flash forward: I was in some kind of barn, now, milking a cow tied up with a rope. I had mad skills in my past lives!

And then, suddenly, the rope was around my neck, and I was being dragged. It was hot; the stones hurt underfoot. I was taken to what looked like a village square, and pulled up onto a kind of makeshift stage. I looked down at men jeering and realised I was going to die, but I felt no fear. I was high on some kind of crazy martyr’s certainty. I could feel my neck lolling, and a sense that something inside me desperately needed to escape or it would suffocate. It burst free from the top of my head, a thin spiral of light and energy, and then I was rocketing through the sky.

~~~

Let me pause at this point to consider the obvious question.

Was I consciously pulling this story out of my ass, or was it emerging from some deep place of hypnosis?

Reader, I could not tell you.

Later I compared it to being drunk at a Theatresports event, being pulled up on stage and just – going with it.

~~~

Belinda informed me that we would now enter the Temple of the Higher Spiritual Realm and meet my Higher Self.

I was mentally transported to a bridge walking towards my Higher Self, who turned out to be a man who looked exactly like one of the characters on Game of Thrones.

Even in my apparent spiritual trance I knew that was a bit too convenient, so I tried to blink it away and replace it with another vision, but I couldn’t. It appeared that my Higher Self was stuck as Jaqen H’ghar, the Faceless Man.

Belinda now asked my Higher Self for wisdom to guide my current life.

‘What is Rebecca’s purpose in her current life?’ she asked.

Visions of massive eyeballs were flashing in front of me.

‘To see,’ I said.

An alternative explanation occurred to me later. Maybe I should have been an optometrist?

Belinda asked my Higher Self what character traits from my past life I had brought with me to this one.

On the recording of the session, my voice is low but certain.

‘Isolation. Martyr. Drama,’ I answered.

‘How many past lives has Rebecca had?’ Belinda asked.

‘Six,’ I replied, without a flicker of hesitation.

‘Do you have any advice for her current life?’ Belinda asked my Higher Self.

‘You can withstand disaster. Fear betrayal,’ I said sombrely.

~~~

Later, sitting in the car in front of a windswept beachfront, I laid it all out for Haji.

‘One thing is for certain,’ I concluded. ‘This is definitely the first life in which I have had access to shoes.’

‘Weeeell,’ she said slowly. ‘You are literally the only adult I have ever met who can’t tie their shoelaces.’

I slapped her in excitement.

‘That makes so much sense!’ I hissed. ‘And the way I have so little interest in shoes that I wear the same pair every day till they fall apart! And my Converses always give me blisters!’

It didn’t make sense, of course. Nothing about it remotely made sense.

In the moment, though, it was easy to be swept up on a wave of strange conviction. Maybe this past life malarkey was real! After all, the story I’d told Belinda had arrived so easily! Where the fuck did it come from?

Upon closer inspection later, I could see very clearly where it had come from.

Under pressure from Belinda to perform, I had produced a shabby montage of references from books, movies, and TV series, with some Joan of Arc vibes – the martyr shit – thrown in for good measure. Nothing about it was original.

That stuff about sheltering under the mountain during an avalanche? Tintin In Tibet. Being wrapped in animal skins in front of a fire? Clan of the Cavebear. The advice from my Higher Self? Pure Godfather. A good seasoning of Game of Thrones was sprinkled throughout.

The only thing hypnosis had unearthed, I realised, was my inner plagiarist.

~~~

Much the same thing was eventually thought to have happened in the cases of Virginia Tighe and Jane Evans.

It emerged that Tighe had lived opposite an Irish immigrant – called Bridie – in her early childhood. There was no suggestion that Tighe had consciously tried to deceive her hypnotist or the public: instead, it seemed likely that she had unknowingly repeated stories told to her by the real Bridie at a very young age.

Jane Evans’s six past lives, meanwhile, were found to tally closely with the plots of a number of different novels and films of the recent past.

I could now understand how these women had produced such fluent and seemingly authentic narratives under hypnosis, because I’d done the same thing.

One point bugged me, though.

Research has established that one factor, above all others, determines whether someone will perform like I had while undergoing past life hypnotherapy: their belief in reincarnation.

If you believe in past lives, studies have shown, you’re much more likely to be able to ‘remember’ a past life. That makes perfect sense. But I emphatically do not believe in past lives.

A tiny part of me still found it spooky, too, how rapid and unforced my answers sounded on the session recording.

For now, I’ve tucked it away in my email archive.

Maybe when I’m old, I’ll listen to it again – and discover that the whole rambling narrative of my current life suddenly takes on new meaning.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Book excerpts Book extracts Friday Night Book Club Pan Macmillan SA Rebecca Davis Self-Helpless