Customer Reviews

The Near-Birth Experience: A Journey to the Center of Self

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My favorite quote from the book is, "...that who you are is not primarily a human being having a spiritual experience but rather a spiritual being having a human experience."

This book addresses our connection with God without the confines of religious thought. It addresses very human experiences. This book gives support for the idea that the "unexplainable" things we experience may have meaning in the bigger picture.

I recommend pages 135 - 136 as a preface to reading the book for anyone who struggles with the role of God in their lives. This is an excellent book for everyone, even skeptics! This is an uplifting and quick read. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Here is the entire quote I offered about this book, which the website abridges drastically: Rev. Gerald Bongard's work as a spiritual counselor is pioneering and extraordinarily valuable for science and society alike. The term <<near-birth experience>> will soon be widely known and used, with great acclaim. It identifies a new psychotherapeutic means by which people can consciously contact their own soul or spirit-center for healing, wisdom and love. Unlike the near-death experience, which likewise profoundly alters a person1s manner of living, the near-birth experience can be voluntarily accessed and does not require a person to nearly die. It demonstrates the reality of existence before and after this life; it also demonstrates the eternal presence of the divine and its intelligent design for our lives. This book is a beautiful contribution to the worldwide process, now rapidly accelerating, in which humanity is awakening to its true nature and is returning to its source, God.

I am the author, and I want to thank you for featuring "The Near Birth Experience." I also want to suggest that this book be categorised as Spirituality -- New Thought rather than associating it with the occult. The subtitle of this book: "Journey to the Center of Self," describes the theme. The book is about what is meant by "The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You." This book is about spirituality and psychology. it is not about the occult or something "far-out", but is about what spiritual teachers have always said: Your wisdom is within you, as close as your own heart, and it is available to you.

What is different or new is the approach that allows you to access this knowledge in a way so powerful that it has changed not only my life, but the lives of many others.

Thank you for letting others know of this work.

As I came to the final pages of this book, I felt a sigh of deep satisfaction. This is an extraordinary revelation of our ability to remember not only our life in the womb, but our existence before conception. In an engaging and candid style, Gerald Bongard describes how we can experience ourselves as soul, and even remember the choices we made before coming into the world. The book is rich with stories of real people and how the "near birth experience" has changed their lives. These soul-awakening experiences place our lives into a much bigger context than the usual "cradle-to-grave" view, and allow us to see our circumstances as both chosen and meaningful.

The Near Birth Experience by Jerry Bongard is one of those landmark publications that opens the windows of our minds. We all ask, "Who am I?, Where did I come from?," and "What is my purpose in life?" The Near Birth Experience leads us to the answers to those questions. Very importantly, Jerry Bongard leads us to find our own answers to those questions through the memory regression technique he has used countless times as a professional counselor and which he describes and documents in his book. Jerry Bongard joins Michael Newton (Journey of Souls) and Loel L. Whitton and Joe Fisher (Life Between Life) in exploring the boundaries before our birth and revealing the deep roots, the guidance and connections we bring with us on our life journey. His evidence is clear! A "must read" for any soul in search of truth and meaning, and a beautiful addition to anyone's metaphysical/spiritual library.

This is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read!!! It is one that I will continue to read over and over again. It is a true affirmation of life!! I will recommend it to everyone that I know.

The way it is described you would think you would learn some techniques for remembering birth experiences or past life experiences. There is no journey to center self but just a bunch of stories told about other people that remember their past which is completely unentertaining and useless to my life.

Causes deep thought on the subject of self. Recommended to broaden your inner awareness...we are all our own best compass for finding inner peace.

This is the first book that has inspired me to write a review, even though I read many books and reviews on Amazon. I am giving the book to all my friends and family.

It is a ground breaking book with discoveries similar James Hilman's A Soul's Code, Neale Walsch's Conversations with God, and stories of the near death experience.

The book reminds us that we are spiritual beings that have chosen this physical life. By telling the stories of people he has counseled, Bongard describes how memory regression through hypnosis will, at a minimum, cure people of depression, past abuse, trauma, and phobias, but more often his clients remember a time before the womb, where they meet God and discover their individual purpose in this life. Sometimes they learn about past lives or why they chose their parents.

This uplifting book reads smoothly due to the writing and the story telling format. I loved the Sufi koans that start each chapter.

Expecting at least a little critical thinking and examination by the author, I was sorely disspointed in this book. One would think that because he states early in the book he was worried he would be thought a "kook" by others that he would be more rigorous in his studies so that he could prove he was not. Instead, the book is pretty much about one anecdote after another, almost all with the same general theme: "So-and-so was regressed hypnotically, they saw God and/or a past life, and now they have made a positive change in their life".

I would expect he would try a few novel hypnosis experiments (with patient permission, of course) to further explore what was going on. For example, if people can migrate out of their body back in time, why not forward? They could tell him what happens tomorrow and see if it comes true. Or, if it doesn't work that way, fine, how about he hypnotizes them to travel to a foreign country and tell him what the weather is like. Compare their description to what the weather was really like and how likely they would have got it right by chance (e.g. sunny in the Sahara? Gasp!). Something! Anything! Instead, he just completely buys into whatever his patients say.

I'm sure Bongard's intentions are good, his job has been to heal people suffering from traumatic experiences, which is very noble. But selective truth-telling = lying, regardless of intentions. The best example of his non-critical thinking comes around the middle of the book when a patient gives him exact details of her car-crash death in a prior life: Names, times, places. So he checks the records to see if it's true and he can't find anything. Rather than conclude the obvious (that it's all made up), he instead concludes that it's not important whether or not the events really happened, but the message that the memory is telling us. Unbelievable. How much you like this book depends upon how critical you are. If you believe whatever people tell you, you'll be enthralled and fascinated by these warm and fuzzy stories of healing. If you are skeptical, you will be disgusted by the non-critical, non-verifiable, anecdotal, sketchy stories that lead you no closer to any kind of understanding of what's really going on.